Subtraction Bowling

It's the end of the year, and I am getting bored...so I have been all over Pinterest lately trying to find activities that are fun, engaging, not a lot of work to set up, and still work on IEP goals!  I think I found a good one this week....subtraction bowling!  When I went back and looked over my pin boards, I realized I had pinned this bad boy 2 times...so it must be a keeper! ha!  The only materials are plastic cups and a ball!  We had both laying around the classroom.  We only had clear cups, which I was worried would make it hard to tell if they had been knocked over or not...so one of my students helped me out and painted the cups all different colors!

End of Year Celebration!

We may have over 2 weeks left, but we still celebrated the end of the school year with families this week.  We invited all the parents and siblings to attend this day of events with us, and we had a pretty great turn out.  We started out our day with a Double Decker Tour of our city.  As I have talked about in previous posts, I got a donorschoose grant for this trip.  So many of my kids have not had the chance to really explore the city they have lived in their whole lives.  We prepared for this by doing mini research projects on different places in our city.  The kids also did presentations on these projects (check out the visuals we used for "presentation behavior" here. 

Preparing for Summer

We have already begun preparations for the end of the school year, summer school, and the beginning of next year.  In year's past, our kids have had summer school all of July and our next school year always began after Labor Day in September.  All of my kids have scripted "no school in August" for years to help themselves understand this change in routine.  However, next year, our school calendar is changing and we are starting school in August.  When we broke this news to them, they were in shock...like a few jaws were little hanging open (haha).  So, to help all my kids really understand these changes,  I made them calendars for the next 3 months.  

Preposition Activity

I found this activity on Lakeshore Learning and got it as part of a donorschoose grant.  It is an awesome, hands-on way to work on prepositions (which so many of my students struggle with).  I also like the visual cards that come with it to help my students understand the directions.

Kool-Aid Playdoh and FREEBIE

As the school year is winding down, I have been on the look out for some fun, new activities to keep school interesting for the kids and (not going to lie) for me too!  I found a lot of great ideas on Pinterest, including home made play doh using Koolaid to give it different smells.  The activity was fun, the play-doh turned out great, and the kids seemed to enjoy themselves.  However, I definitely should have allotted for more time than I did.  I did the activity with two students at a time and thought we could do the activity in 15 minutes.  We came close, but I was feeling rushed to get through all my groups.  Since we were rushing, I feel like the activity wasn't as educational as it could have been....at least I know now for next time!

Currently June

Another month, another Currently from Farley.  Head on over to her site to link up!

Healthy Door Contest

This past week, we put on a family reading night that went along with a "healthy" theme.  Leading up to the family reading night, we had a door decorating contest.  We didn't win, but my kids did such a nice job, I wanted to share our door with you!