Friday Freebie!

Have you seen this adorable freebie from Erin Palleschi over at Once Upon a Classroom?

What a sweet reader for Thanksgiving time! I know my Kindergartener and 2nd grader will really enjoy this!

Friday Freebies!

Today is a very exciting day for freebies! There is a Facebook Frenzy going on today! It starts today at 8am EST and ends Nov 11th at 8pm EST. The way it works is you go to a Facebook page of someone participating, look for the little "FB Frenzy" tab and click on it. Then, after you have liked that Facebook page, you will be able to download an exclusive freebie and get the link for the next freebie in the hop! What fun!

Here is the map so that you can pick the appropriate grade level(s). After you have collected your freebies, make sure you check out all of the sellers' wonderful TpT pages for more freebies and products! Enjoy!

Facebook Frenzy coming soon!

Are you ready for the next Facebook Frenzy? This is my first time participating and I'm so excited! It's less than a week away now! It's all happening over on Facebook and there will be maps for various grade levels. Mine will be in Grades 4-5 and I will link up the map once it's available.

museum monday!

We hadn't hit up a museum in a few weeks so I thought it was time. We headed out to the Museum of Science this morning and had a really lovely time there! It was relatively empty with only a few school groups, the typical toddler crowd, and a few other homeschoolers. Here are a few highlights of the trip.

We checked out a fun Pixar exhibit which showed elements of digital design, lighting, and modeling, and had a fun station to build your own mutant toy (like Sid in Toy Story).

F's mutant toy.

H playing with 3D modeling.

If there are tubes, my kids are there. Word. 

Squee! Definitely the coolest part of the trip imo.

Found: Rodent mandible and tons of other bones!

When H spotted the Periodic Table, he skipped over quickly to check it out. He has been choosing different elements to learn about from the library and was excited to recognize some. Nearby, we checked out a cool leaf shape sorting activity.

Of course F was enamored with the ocean themed I-Spy table. He loves I Spy books right now and we looked hard to find everything!

There was a seashell game very much like "Guess Who?" which the kids really liked! They played several times.

This station was fun: sorting shells, then rotating the table and guessing how your partner sorted their shells.

We also saw a 3D movie about Sea Monsters!

Wicked awesome. I was thrilled to be able to add to our Engineering is Elementary storybook library as well:

Hooray!

After our museum fun, we came home and raked, and I pruned the blueberry bushes and tended the strawberry beds. It was a perfect homeschooling day!

Top 5 freebies over at Primary Paradise

Have you seen Primary Paradise's Top 5 freebies list? I am thrilled to have one of my products featured today:

Be sure to check out the freebies archive as well for more fabulous freebies, and check out Primary Paradise's TpT store too! Tons of great products!

Wonderful NBT blog posts by a fellow blogger!

Brenda over at Teaching...Seriously has just completed a series of blog posts highlighting resources for teaching Numbers and Operations in Base Ten, grades 3-5. If you need to teach to the Common Core, you are going to want to check out these resources! Here are a few of the resources she has included:

Fine Motor Paper Pumpkin Crafts for Halloween

Pumpkin and Origami Halloween Crafts 

Here are two crafts that are so much fun for Halloween! I hope you enjoy these pumpkinspired ideas. Not only do they help use fine motor skills, you can incorporate measurement tasks and logic as well!

Woven pumpkin!

Materials Needed for Woven Pumpkin Craft

• orange paper (I used extra large construction paper for the pumpkin)
• pencil to draw your pumpkin
• scissors to cut out your pumpkin
• paper trimmer or cutting blade to make slits on your pumpkin and to make weaving strips

1. Draw a pumpkin and cut it out!
2. Cut some slits either vertically or horizontally. Mine are spaced about 1" apart.

 3. Cut strips of paper (there are 1" wide) in another color. I chose another shade of orange.

 4. Weave!

5. Glue the ends down and stem to your pumpkin. If yours came out really well, laminate it! It makes a lovely fall place mat!

Origami Balloon Halloween Crafts

Here is another cute one! I was obsessed with making origami balls/balloons as a kid and I thought they would translate well to mini jack-o'-lanterns! There is a great tutorial with videos on how to make the balloon. After you have made your shape, use a marker to draw your face! I trimmed a pipe cleaner for a stem and put it through the space where you blow up the balloon. Voila!

 

Some more ideas: a black cat, some ghosts, and...

Spookley the Square Pumpkin Halloween Craft

Spookley!

If you need to draw on a flat surface, unfold it. The face goes as shown.

This is where the logic skill can come in. Because most young kids will need help with this project, you can ask them where they think the face should go before you fold it up. Then after you make a few you can show them that it's easier to find the location after it's been folded up once! You can even fold it, lightly pencil in the face, unfold it, darken and detail the face, then fold it back up again!

Enjoy!