Dig it Up Dinosaur Eggs Review and A BIG Giveaway!!

One of our reading basal stories we read is called The Big Circle. Since this story is about dinosaurs,  I thought it would be great to get these Dig It up Dinosaur Eggs from Mindware Toys. However, the week that this story fell on I ended up having to miss a few days and we didn't get around to doing them. Sad city!

These were too darn good to wait until next year to use, so I decided to use them with my 1st and 2nd grade after school program students. We spent about a month on this project since I only see them two days a week. First, we excavated the dinosaur from the egg. Whichever dinosaur they got was the dinosaur they would research in the computer lab. Then we spent some time in the computer lab researching the dinosaur. Lastly, each student took turns presenting their reports and telling us the cool dino facts they learned about their dinosaur. They loved this project and had so much fun learning all about dinosaurs.


The super cute writing paper is from Abby's Dino Centers pack. Her pack is the perfect addition to your dino learning fun! :)

I would highly recommend the Dig It Up Dinosaur Eggs to fellow teachers! Each box comes with 12 individually wrapped 3" clay eggs with instructions and chiseling tool for each egg. Every egg contains a different dinosaur which was perfect for our reports, because this allowed for us to learn about a variety of dinosaurs. Plus it made it so simple on who was going to do what dinosaur rather than everyone wanting to do it over the T-Rex for example. The box also comes with an excavation guidebook. Mindware even offers a FREE lesson plan HERE!! The excavating was simple... all you need to do is soak the egg in water and then carefully chisel away the shell to excavate the dinosaur inside. The kids went nuts when they began to see their dinosaur. And they felt like theirs was extra special because everyone had something different.


These were perfect to use for reports and they loved the mystery behind which dinosaur they would get and absolutely could not wait to see which dinosaur they got. My after school students would see me in the hallway during the day and say "hey Miss Elisabeth do we have you today!?" "We want to work on our dinosaur reports." I was so happy to see them get so excited about learning and doing these research projects. I know it was all because of their total excitement of excavating the dinosaur from the super cool eggs. They really loved this project and I know your students will too! I will definitely have to do this project again! SO MUCH FUN!!


For more great products, ideas, and more you can check out Mindware Toys at the following:    



I have a HUGE giveaway for you! I would love to give one lucky winner a set of the super cool Mindware Toys Dig It Up Dinosaur Eggs so you can do these research projects with your students too!! PLUS the winner will win a copy of my Dinosaur Shenanigans, Abby's Dino Centers, AND Cara and Abby's Science of May pack (it's FABULOUS!!) which includes DINOSAURS!! SAY WHAT!!??



Enter the giveaway by using the rafflecopter gadget below. GOOD LUCK!!!!


a Rafflecopter giveaway


This review of the Dig It Up Dinosaur Eggs from Mindware Toys is based strictly on my opinion. I was provided the sample free of charge by the company to provide my honest review. No other type of compensation was received. All ideas and opinions are my own.
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Gingerbread Week!

Merry Christmas Eve Eve! I've been such a slacker pants lately on my blogging. I must do better!  So, I wanted to pop in today to share with you some of the things we did during our Gingerbread week! 

We made Gingerbread boys and girls and imagined we were the real gingerbread boy or girl and wrote about what we would do. I think the little sweetie below has a great idea!!! :)

We ate some yummy gingerbread cookies for snack and made a quick little graph to see which part we bit first. The arm was apparently the tastiest part to bite first! HA This idea came from Deanna's Gingerbread unit.
I told my students that I just couldn't understand why the Gingerbread man just didn't swim across the river instead of hitching a ride on the fox's back. So we decided to do a little experiment to see what would happen if the gingerbread man tried to cross the river. They were very clever with their predictions! :) I found this great recording sheet here

We read several different versions this week. Students wrote which version was their favorite and had to explain why. I loved this little sweetie's thinking! :)
We compared and contrast the boy version of the story to the girl version.

Run, run as fast as you can to check out my little Gingerbread Shenanigans pack if you like the activities you see here. I'm having a flash sale and you can snatch this fun little pack up for $1.00!
The craft, venn diagram, and favorite version writing paper are all included plus more! :)




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Happy Birthday Sale! It's a BIG one!


Hey blog friends! I thought in honor of my 31st birthday (shhh don't tell anyone because I'm really 29! Ha!) that I would have a flash sale! Everything that is normally priced over $3.00 in my little tpt shop (including 2 bundles) is on sale for $3.10!!! Have a great weekend!
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Contraction Magic!

Happy Monday blog friends! This week we are learning all about contractions in room 4. I made our lesson come to life today by dressing up as a magician. The kids LOVED it! Isn't learning soooo much fun?? :)

I got the cape, wand, and mustaches at the Dollar Tree and the hat at Party City.
After discussing what contractions are watching a Flocabulary video and Brainpop, Jr video. We dived into the lesson. I had some special helpers come up and read two words to the class. They then dropped them into my magician hat, borrowed my magic wand, and let the magic happen!
My helper then went to the board and wrote what the contraction for the two words was and turned and told the class what they wrote. 


Then they got to try it out by making these Contraction Magic books. Their pencils became magic wands to help them with this little task! ;)


And we finished up with a little craftivity! Students were given two words and they put them (pasted) them in their hats, took the magic wand, and poof! We had a contraction just like that! 

These activities are in a new little pack of mine called Contraction Magic! If your interested you can click the pic below to find out all about this fun little pack.






Have a fun, magical week blog friends! :)

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We love Flocabulary!! Plus a BIG GIVEAWAY!!

Happy fall break friends! I'm popping in today to share with you about a wonderful resource that I started using last winter called Flocabulary. My firsties love Flocabulary and I think you and your students would too!



What is Flocabulary?

  • Flocabulary is a web-based learning program for all grades and subjects that uses educational hip-hop music to engage students and increase achievement.
  • Teachers in more than 60,000 schools have used Flocabulary’s standards-based videos, instructional activities and formative assessments to develop core literacy skills and supplement instruction across the curriculum.
  • Flocabulary offers more than 750 instructional units to support instruction in math, science, social studies, ELA, vocabulary, current events and life skills, with new content every week.
  • Flocabulary offers a deep instructional sequence that teaches standards-aligned skills and content while helping students develop literacy skills across the academic curriculum. Flocabulary support teachers in all content areas and help teach and assess reading and writing skills through the recently-released instructional tools we offer like Read & Respond and Lyric Lab.
  • Engagement has long been the “bread and butter” of Flocabulary—their roots are in catchy and accurate educational hip-hop videos. Flocabulary’s videos create authentic engagement, their complementary instructional tools provide new opportunities for learning, and their rhyme writing tool and Lyric Lab empowers students to get the creative juices flowing with their own educational raps.

Flocabulary has added lots of new content recently. One of my most favorite new additions is the contractions video for grades K-3. Next week we will be learning all about contractions and I plan to use this video and the activities on the Flocabulary site that go with it to introduce our contractions unit.

In this video featuring a funny magician and an emcee who’s a grammar whiz, students learn to identify and form common contractions. The video explains how to form contractions with “not,” “will,” “am,” “are,” “is,” “have,” “has,” “had” and “would” by replacing letters with an apostrophe. Watch it now.

This video, as well as the others on the site has a printable activity perfect for an exit ticket, quick review and fill in the blanks activity that can be projected on your smartboard. There are also lyric notes and the new lyric lab where students can create their own rhyme about contractions.

I plan on making these Contraction Magic hats with my firsties next week after we watch the Flocabulary video. These will tie in perfectly with the theme! :) 
For more Contraction Magic fun check out my newest little unit in my tpt store.

Would you like to win a FREE one year subscription to Flocabulary??? I'm giving THREE lucky blog readers a ONE YEAR subscription to Flocabulary so you and your students can enjoy this amazing site as much as I do! And that's not all... everyone is a winner... just for entering you will be emailed a free 45 day trail membership. So even if you don't win, you can still get 45 days of FREE access. So what are you waiting for? Enter below! Contest ends on October 16th, so act fast!







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Apple Week!

Last week we were all about apples and Johnny Appleseed in room 4. This is one of my absolute favorite units to do each year. 

We learned about Johnny Appleseed and made these cutie Johnny Appleseed crafts.


Students each brought in 2-3 apples and we used them for our apple investigations. We had so much fun measuring, weighing, and tasting our apples for the investigations.

We read a bunch of books about apples and completed a little KWL chart.
We also learned the life cycle of an apple and the parts of an apple. We made this little labeling craftivity to show off what we learned. One sweetie was munching on a apple today and pointed out the parts on their real apple. Melt my heart!

We did a taste test and the yellow apple was the favorite this year!


On Friday we ended our apple week by making some applesauce in the Crockpot. It was sooo good! Not to mention my room smelled heavenly all day! After lunch when my kids came back to the classroom they could really start smelling it, and were so excited they were saying I think it's ready for us to eat now. :) 

We also made an apple inspired snazzy snack...apple trees! This is super simple... it's a sugar cookie with frosting and M&M's and a graham cracker for the trunk.

Well friends that was our apple week! Can't wait to do it all over again next year! :)
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