$8 closet makeover

I was inspired to organize by this blogger's post. She used dollar tree bins and tags that she made on the computer.  Cute!  And I have a desire to ba all organized and can't seem to pull it off, so anyway, one small closet at a time, right? 

Here is the before picture of the closet:

I bought 8 bins at the dollar tree and made my own tags.  I just did free-hand drawing so they are all different.  But I think that makes them cute.  I hot-glued the tags to the bins.

Here is the after:

The sheets had to go to another closet, but that's okay because there was room.  There was one left over bin so I used it for cleaning supplies under the sink.  I feel very accomplished, and the labels will help me and future hubby keep our things in the right places.

Rainforest Cafe Field Trip

After the Rainforest Unit that we (the third grade teachers) taught at school, we took the kids on a field trip to the Rainforest Cafe.  We did the same thing last year, and there was quite a bit of time between the hour at which we were finished eating, and the hour at which the bus came to pick us up.  So this year, I designed some activities to keep the students busy so they wouldn't tear down the rainforest enhance our learning experience.

One activity was a simple chart the students had to fill out.  They locate as many animals as they could among the Rainforest Cafe's decorations, write down the animal's name, colors, type, and in which layer the animal is located (forest floor, understory, etc...)  You probably need to have the kids bring a clip board for this activity.  I had them bring their whiteboard slates that we use for spelling practice and math activities and gave each child a large binder clip, and viola!  A clipboard!

Download the Chart (Microsoft Word Needed for this one)

Here are some of the kids using the chart:

The other activity, which we ended up doing outside due to the Rainforest Cafe kicking us out of our seats because they needed the space, was the Rainforest food web.  You need to take yarn and roll it onto a ball ahead of time.  Print the rainforest script.  I also printed pictures of each animal and plant and glued it to a card.  Then, using a clothespin, I attached the animal and plant cards to the children.  Then we read the script and as you get to each plant of animal, you unroll part of the yarn ball and have the students hold onto it.  I read the script and pause and let the children read the underlined words.  We do this all the time as way to check for the students following along with any reading.

When you are done, you have what looks like a spider web.  Here is where you teach about conservation.  I talk about how all the animals and plants in the rainforest are connected, and depend on each other, and must remain in balance- not too many nor too few of any species.  Then I choose one animal or plant (child who is holding the string) and have him or her give 2 gentle tugs on the string.  anyone who felt that tug, gives 2 short tugs, anyone who felt that tug gives 2 short tugs until the whole web has been affected.  Then I talk again about balance and how all lives in the ecosystem affects the others. 

It's great fun, and people who were walking by the Rainforest Cafe downtown were very impressed with this lesson, and were stopping to observe.  I felt like super teacher.  Ha ha.

Rainforest Unit

In Miss Kelly's third grade class, we finished a unit on the Rainforest recently.  Each child did a research paper and built a diorama on a rainforest animal. Then, thanks to great planning on the part of my esteemed colleague, we took the kids to the rainforest cafe on a field trip.  My students do not get to visit downtown Chicago that often, so this was a great adventure for them.  Strange that they live a short bus ride away from downtown and yet rarely go there, But I digress.  The kids did a great job on the dioramas and the research papers!  They have gotten so good at projects!  (So have their parents, in helping them.) 

My students require quite a bit of hand-holding to get a project like this done.  I printed the pictures of the animal for them from www.enchantedlearning.com in order to inspire the, to get started on the projects.  I send home a very detailed packet with example pictures of dioramas and explicit instructions and the rubric.  It helps that my students' local library has a teacher on staff to help students.  We took the kids on a trip to the library at the beginning of the year and it made all the difference this year with our research projects this year.

Here is the hallway display, all set up for parent-teacher conferences.

The dioramas had to include the rainforest surroundings, the animal, and what the animal eats.  They had to make sure it was 3-D too!

Fruit Bat:

Blue Morpho Butterfly:

(you can see my rubric attached to the box, ha ha)

Tarantula:

Aye Aye

Anaconda:

(He is hiding in the grass)

Emerald Tree Boa:

Sugar Glider:

This one is not from my class, it is from my next door neighbor's class but it was so clever.  This child (or his parents) made an electric eel out of a grey sock.

Howler monkey: (and gorilla too, I guess)

Here are some of the research papers.  I should have taken better pictures of those.