Fun way to set up partners

In science, we use partners almost daily. Kids get tired of the same old same old partners. I know a lot of people have used Clock Buddies (me included) and other ways, but here is just another way to do it.

iPartners Journal Pages (click on the picture to get it)

Students use the symbols to partner up with another person. They write their names on each other's boxes with the same symbol. They only have 6 to fill out, then...they glue them in their journals! They cannot lose it unless they (heaven forbid!) lose their journals. When you are ready for new partners, do it again and add this new page to their journals.

When you are ready to partner up, just say, "Find your Recycle partner." I also like to color and laminate the large cards for each symbol. Then I can have it on the board and the students know to find their partner when they come to class without me saying anything. Then we are ready to go! Its just a fun way to do the same thing we have been doing.

Monday Made It - Door Sign

I am joining the Monday Made It Linky from 4th Grade Frolics today. Click on the picture below to join!

Every teacher needs a cute sign above their door in the hallway. I don't know how many of our sweet kids check above the door to make sure they are in the right place before entering EVERY day. Since I changed from safari to robots, I had to change my door sign to match, too.

This was pretty easy and quick(ish) to make. I made it Saturday while the kids were napping. I took a piece of cardboard from one of the many Amazon.com boxes lying around and covered it in some robot fabric I found at Wal-Mart. I like using fabric or fadeless paper for my walls because they last longer and stay bright. I made sure I had enough to wrap around all the edges. On the back, it is folded over, attached with permanent double-sided tape, then hot glued. 

For the front, I found foam glitter letters at Wal-Mart (let's just save time and tell you everything was found at Wal-Mart) and glitter foam sheets. I hot glued the letters to the fabric, to make sure they would stay, and then I drew and cut out gears from the glitter foam sheets to match the colors in the robots. This was the most time consuming part. If you know me, you know the gears had to be perfect. I traced two different sized circles from each color and then I had to divide the circles into 12 even pieces. The back of the foam sheets was paper, so it was easy to draw on. This is where I am thankful for my Trig class from way back when (and you said you would never need it! Ha!). Then I drew a small line on each of the 12 lines and connected every other line with a curved one, like this:

Cut out the circle and on the bold lines. Each line is 30 degrees apart. I cut them out and hot glued them in place.

Voila! A nice, big, colorful above-the-door-sign (batman pajama legs not included)!

I cannot wait to show you next Mondays Made It. I am almost finished, but need a few more kid naps to get it done :)

Back To School Find!

Here is something I just found, literally 45 minutes ago. I could not wait to share it, except for the moments between getting home and now where I had to make some homemade peach ice cream real fast :)

Anyway...

I am joining up with Teaching with Moxie's Back to School Linky. Click the picture above to see what others have found. Here is the awesomeness I found.

Shaped stickies. Leaves, speech bubbles, thumbs up, and (my fav) iPhones. They are $0.97 at Wal-Mart for a pack of 100, and they are Wal-Mart brand. I bought 300 of each, so two sets worth of each for my group of 115. Think of the uses. Exit tickets...thought trees...anchor charts...class discussions...the list goes on and on.

I can see the iPhones used for descriptions or paragraphs. They are lined and have more space than the other shapes. The leaves could be on a bulletin board where each student gets to write something about leaves changing color and light energy (we will be doing light energy about the time the leaves start to fall in this part of Texas). The thumbs up can be used for voting or agreeing or disagreeing with a statement. They just turn the thumb the way they want when they write on it. I absolutely LOVE these, and they are so much cheaper than the $3 Post-It brands. As soon as we actually get to use these, I will post pictures of how it turned out. 

How do you see using them!

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Robots, robots, robots

I am sure you read how excited I was to get into my classroom today. Well, I had to make some Class Schedules for my room, but I needed a background to match the cute Robots clip art from Melonheadz. After searching for exactly what I wanted (and not finding it), I figured it would take less time to just make my own. I think they are cute and came out really well, so I am going to post them on TpT. Before I do, I am offering them here for free for you, first! Once they are on TpT, they won't be available here anymore! Just click here and download them.

Finally!!

I went up to school today to take care of some things, and magically my room is not being used for summers school AND it has already been waxed!! Yea! That means I can start putting it together :) I am so excited! I already put up 1 1/2 bulletin boards today, found all of the decor I already had stored at school and got it out, and I started unpacking everything. I am so excited! Did I already say that! As soon as I get things up and running, I will post pictures of what my new STEM Robots room looks like. Excitement!