The day I became a bag lady…

Ha! Yesterday, I had the rare opportunity to attend a workshop led by The Bag Ladies! Have you heard of them? Well, if by chance, you haven’t….you should check them out! They’re two creative teachers that share ways to use paper crafts in your classroom to increase engagement in ALL subject areas!



We had lots of hands-on, cut, paste, rip, tear…turn it this way, fold it that way….FUN! I’d heard lots of wonderful things about this dynamic duo for years and was totally excited about having the chance to learn form them. What made the training immediately usable is that they’re classroom teachers too.....So they “get it”. They know what will work and what will grab and hold a kiddo’s attention…and they’re f-u-n-n-y, funny! Really, funny! Our wheels were turning mid-way through their presentation about how we'll use the techniques they shared with us!



Here’s a picture of a couple of my favorite peeps on the planet exploring and buying some of their awesome resources. They were even sweet enough to sign them for us! *LOVE!*



Live in Florida? Well, you may recognize these creative, lovely ladies, BUT you don’t have to live in Florida for them to come and present at your school. They hop on a plane most weekends and present all over the country. This weekend, we were lucky enough to get them on our campus……smack dab in the middle of Texas! If your campus is interested in having them present, they’ve got wonderful ideas to share and will travel to bring them TO YOU! Until then, catch up with them on Facebook. You definitely won’t be sorry…..and don’t forget to tell ‘em Tanya sent you!

I was so inspired by these two, I even managed to get my lesson plans done a whole day early! Say what?!!! Stop the presses! Somebody, shout hallelujah, lol!

  



These are the real deal, 4 pages of all that glitters and giggles that I turn into my campus principal each week. I don’t want her to be too shocked about me finishing them early, so I’ll wait a little bit to email them to her, lol!

I’ve had several really sweet friends ask for an editable version. Because my small group pages include a format that I’ve adopted from a published author, I can’t exactly do that. I can share with you, however, how I am using them in my classroom. If you’d like to view them or get a closer look, you can download them by clicking HERE. If there comes a time, when I change the format of my small group pages (which is highly possible), then I will also post a blank, editable format.

Still being a newbie bag lady, we’ll try our hand at a simple project this week and let ya know how it goes. If you’d like to grab an activity we did in class last week, click the pic below. There are actually days when I teach math, ha!!!! This day was a fun  one!



…..and it was one of those projects that takes a while to do {wink, wink}.  I copied the turkey head and body onto brown construction paper. The feathers were copied onto different random, fall colored paper. I did a “rough cut” so that I had four stacks of feathers, one stack for each way we'd show a number. As a class, we discussed each of the forms, one at a time. I wrote/assigned each student a different number ranging between 30 and 50 (on their desks). They, then wrote the number on their turkey’s tummy and created a 3-number sequence by writing the number that came before and after it on each wing.

Once I saw their number written and created correctly (using base-10 blocks), they drew the base-10 blocks. We went over what each of the number forms would look like, one feather at a time and set it aside. After we completed the 4th number form, students cut and glued to put their little place value turkey together. Nothing like a little rigor for Thanksgiving dinner!

Laters, gators! Have a great week!