Phases of the Moon

I found this great idea on Pinterest! (I love finding things on there!)

The students used Oreo Cookies to model the phases of the moon. 

They had a blast and were excited to munch on a few when they were done! 

I had them working in pairs because I wasn't sure if I would have enough cookies. I find that when I randomly pair students together it works the best. They all got right to work. It was a huge success!

Snowglobes

We made this before Christmas but left them up in the window thru January. 

I traced out the shape of the black base and blue inside. 

The students cut them out. 

Each student was given white, brown, black, red, orange, and green paint, a q-tip, and a tooth pick. 

I instructed the students that they had to have at least 1 snowman. 

I love how creative these third graders were! Birds, bunnies, and SF Giants hats. 

Multiplication

       I decided this year that my 3rd grade students needed to start working on multiplication facts early on. For the first several months of school we had "Multiplication Mondays." Most of the students really looked forward to this time. I took the unit on multiplication and spread it out over every Monday. I found this helpful because it gave the students a good amount of time to learn each math fact family.
       At this point many of the students are slowing down in how much they practice their multiplication. About 1/3rd of the class has finished x1-x12. I'm so proud of them. Each of them received a gift certificate for Baskin Robbins. I make a big deal about it. I want to make sure they know how proud I am of them. Those who are finished have moved on to division facts. Woo Hoo!!

Wall Stickers

I was so excited when I found these at Michael's Craft Store. And I'm pretty sure they are reusable! Awesome!

Easy/Practically Free Bulletin Board

Last year my co-teacher and I had a Road Trip theme. I love having a travel theme. My favorite part of a travel theme is collecting post cards. My 3rd grade students jumped at the challenge last year. We had so many post cards, over 100. Our largest bulletin board was dedicated to the postcards we collected. In the center I had a map of the United States and I cut out "Road Trip USA" using my cricut paper cutter.
Students asked friends and family to send postcards. A few of my students had grandparents who were retired and did a lot of traveling. We got some great postcards. As we got postcards the students stuck a straight pin in the state where the postcard came from. We made a few goals throughout the year as we gathered postcards. Our last goal was to get at least 1 postcard from each state. We didn't quite get there, but we had fun trying. At the end of the year we counted how many postcards we had from each state.