Educational XD XD

I LOVE celebrating Valentine's Day in the classroom. Even though February is a short month, it can feel quite long! Today I want to show you some of my favorite ideas and goodies from Oriental Trading to make your February awesome! My kids are OBSESSED with our new Valentine Spinner ! I set it up while my kiddos were at specials one day, and they came back and had all sorts of questions! I left them hanging for a few days before I finally one friend give it a big spin. A video posted by @simplycreativeteaching on Jan 18, 2017 at 4:17pm PST We have a jar of gems (drops in the bucket) that we use as a whole class incentive. Many times I'll just call on a friend to go put a certain number of drops in the bucket, but now... we SPIN THE WHEEL to figure out how many drops to put in the bucket! We go all out with drum rolls and cheering -- the kids LOVE it! I'm thinking of making it into a math center, too. The possibilities are endless! I'm also excited to make these adora

Do you ever feel like it takes your kids FIVE BILLION YEARS to clean up and transition to whatever is next on your agenda? This year, my class is having the hardest time! They've really been struggling with transitions when we're cleaning up math and literacy centers. Usually we have choice time during the last 15 minutes of our Fridays, but last week... NOPE. My class "cleaned up" math centers for their entire choice time. Natural consequences? I guess so. But I knew I HAD to implement something a bit more intensive for this little group. I always call my kids my SUPERSTARS whenever I catch them doing something awesome (even the little things). When we've had class meetings to discuss how to effectively transition, I've had to tell my kids that I know they CAN BE superstars, but they don't always show it. So last night I decided that I wanted them to show me that they can be TRANSITION SUPERSTARS! It's pretty simple. I made cards for every letter in T