Jellybean Jamboree!

Can I share with you the most AMAZING curriculum for K-2?

Can be found on Amazon.com

The book comes with a CD with wonderful printables and the book is full of lessons about Angry Arlene, Friendly Francine, Decision-Making Dean, Emotional Eugene, Me - Maurine the Self-Knowing Lavender Jellybean, and everyone's favorite trouble-causing Ornery Ordeen.

Finish each lesson by giving the kids a few jellybeans and you'll have some friends for life!  

Mario Kart Bullying

We have to address the fact that videogames teach kids bullying behaviors.  It's super fun to smash someone with a shell on Mario Kart and race passed them for the win.

However, we cannot allow these behaviors to carry over into "real life" situations where we hurt feelings and think it's funny. (Not HAHA.)

I developed this slideshow to engage in a classroom lesson about bullying.

Here are some samples slides:

Then there are some suggestions for dealing with bullies:

It's a fun lesson to engage kids to talk about bullying in a fresh way!

Can't the Minions Just Get Along?

I was brainstorming a fun way to teach PEACE to kids, and I became inspired by minions.  

Because we have a giant one at our house.  Giant minion = oxymoron or no?

They are literally always fighting!  There are tons of funny videos of them (here's one, here's one, here's one. Do you believe me now?)

They need guidance and counseling, y'all.

They are also super cute and they need our help, y'all!  I developed this lesson to discuss getting along, peace, and conflict resolution.  

I created this little booklet and a slideshow, and my class visits went like this:

1) I showed the videos and we discussed conflict.  There has been and will forever be differing views and ideas in this world.  Conflict is inevitable.  It's how we handle it that matters!  Also, we can laugh at the minions, and at videogames ~ but when real people are involved, it's not funny.  

2)  We talked abut the color white, and how it represents peace.  If you take pure white light and separate it, it makes a rainbow of different colors.  We want to take our differences and bring them together for pure white light.  Peace.

3) I passed out these little booklets I made in Pages and fired up this slideshow .  Examples of my creations:

Avoiding or attacking will make the problem worse!  Mark those two out and circle WORK TOGETHER!

FORGIVE!!!

This was a super fun lesson!  How much do I love minions? 

Current Facebook Profile Pic!

Olaf is my BFF

How much do I love Olaf?

Me, Halloween 2014.  Enough said.

So of course I wanted to make an Olaf bulletin board for Christmas time!  My artsy friend drew Olaf, and I found some sticks outside to complete his hair and arms.  Then I printed these free printables with words like friendship, love, warm hugs, smiles typed on them.  I glued my printables to paper sacks, and added some tissue paper.
Here's Olaf's reminder that "The best gifts come from the heart!"

Of course the guidance lessons in December centered around "Generosity!"

Don't you just love, love, love Olaf?

These Aliens Have Manners

Don't you love that scene in Jerry Maguire where he gets fired and when he leaves the office he shouts, "These fish have manners!"  Cracks.  Me.  Up.

Well, we all know that manners matter.  I found a fun Monster Manners game for the younger elementary grade levels at File Folder Fun (click here) but didn't know what to do for my older elementary kids.  I settled on using Fuzzoodles.  After a discussion on manners, I split the kids into groups of 3 or 4 and gave them some Fuzzoodles.

You can buy these on the internet!  So much fun to make monsters!  

Kids were instructed to create an alien out of their fuzzoodles and to name their alien.  

Then, I gave them one of these papers with different situations (lunch room, meeting a new person, etc) and said, "If your alien just landed from another planet, could you give them the "do's" and "don't's" so they don't embarrass themselves in these situations?  You are so helpful to your alien!"  

It was really fun for the kids to present their alien to the class and a great reminder to USE YOUR MANNERS!  

iLove an Easy Bulletin Board!

Because I know you have tons of time during testing season to work tirelessly on a bulletin board (yeah, right....) Here's a fun and easy bulletin board idea for testing season that you can throw together pretty quickly.
I made these "apps" (click for the link to all the apps!) in Power point and printed them out in color.

Then I made giant iPads out of paper, and glued on the apps.
The title of my bulletin board was iKnow Test Taking Strategies!

Was this perfect?  No...  Was it my original idea?  Probably not (thank GOD for Pinterest...can I get an AMEN!?!)

iHope you have an amazing testing season this school year!