Amazed

This holiday season I have locked myself to the computer. I have organized files, deleted unnecessary files, and went shopping for wedding stuff. The one thing I have accomplished is updating old files. 

When I began my TpT journey I did not realize how hard it was to format centers. I had always made really simple centers and did not use clipart often. I found myself frustrated and annoyed. I felt this way because I was constantly comparing what I did to everyone else. It wasn't until 4 months ago that I discovered PowerPoint to make centers instead of using Word. 

If you are new to making items for your classroom, whether it is worksheets, centers, or classroom management tools PowerPoint is the way to go.  I know there is a ton of other formatting programs out there. This is one many of us have on our computers. I have used an older version and a newer version and I am so happy I read someone's blog about this. 

Tonight instead of getting ready to ring in the New Year, I have been updating a few of my centers. ( My fiancé is a fireman saving the world so I didn't want to go out and have to drive in the dark). My fluency in working on activities is always improving. I am in no way a professional nor do I have any affeliaction to Microsoft, but if you ever have any questions in how to troubleshoot basic tasks please feel free to contact me at missstetsonclassroom@gmail.com. 

This is a link to my updated center. Please feel free to download for free and leave feedback. I would appreciate your feedback so I know how to improve my product. 

Free Product Link

Thanks for your support as always, 

Miss Stetson

Reflective Bins

   Last school year I found myself getting overwhelmed by grading my students work. If you are a teacher you understand the hassle of trying to balance lesson planning, assessments, and grading papers. Well, I admit I have not mastered the art of not having a stack of papers as tall as I am to grade. So this year I was looking for a solution to at least making it to the papers of the students who need my help. I saw on Pinterest different ideas about how to turn in work. So naturally I created one myself after seeing many examples. 

The purpose of the bin is to encourage the students to reflect on the activity. Many times there is a student who does not wish to raise his/her hand or finds themselves wanting to ask but nervous to ask. I am hoping by dividing the bins into 3 categories this may help ease some stress around peers. 

 I will use them for the students to turn in everyday activities. I have thought about having them underline there name in a marker in the coordinating color. Attached to the document from TPT is an example letter that I will send home to the parents explaining the coloring in the corner or the underlined name. I believe this will help the student to communicate with myself and the parents about the confidence level of academics. 

Please use the link below to view my TPT store. 

Reflective Bin on Teacher Pay Teacher

I look forward to trying this in my classroom. Please leave any comments below if you have used this style of turning in work and how it worked in your classroom. 

Thanks for reading. 

Miss Stetson

Mealworm Habitat for FOSS Science Kit

Insect Unit

In Miss Stetson’s 2^nd grade classroom we have been learning a lot about insects. The newest members of our classroom include 200 meal worms, 25 crickets, 50 wax worms, 8 painted lady caterpillars, 50 milk weed bugs, and a praying mantis egg. Our classroom is completed “BUGGED OUT.”

Meal worms:

I found a link on Pinterest while I was looking up activities about meal worms. The habitat was a 3 tiered housing unit for the meal worms.  I found this much more visually appealing for the times we were not observing the meal worms. The unit has 3 layers and cost me about $20.00 total since I had some of the materials at home.

The top layer houses the adult meal worms. I put wheat bran and old fashioned oats for the adult meal worms to eat. I also put an old egg carton ripped up for the meal worms to climb and hid under. (They love to hide) They will begin to mate in this section and their eggs will drop into the middle layer.

The Middle Layer

The middle layer houses the pupa and eggs. I call this the resting chambers. I learned the hard way that too much handling can cause harm to the mealworm pupa. When the eggs hatch (9-20 days) the bran will begin to move little that is how you know you have baby meal worms. I did keep a fresh apple in this layer in case over the weekend any eggs hatch or meal worms transform into their final stage.

The Bottom Layer

The bottom layer was my classroom’s favorite layer. It was filled with 200 meal worms. I put cut up apples in the drawer on for the meal worms to drink. If the bran starts to look like sand it is time to change the bran. (The meal worm droppings are great food for your plants) Every morning I assigned a student to go through the bottom layer to look for pupa to put into the middle layer.

Benefits to this system

I found it was much cleaner and I did not get grossed out having worms open for the class to see. The students looked forward to watching the entire life cycle of the meal worms and enjoyed searching for them. We had some causality in our meal worm container, but they learned this sometimes happens for no reason.  We even once caught the adults “playing” aka mating in our habitat. It will take the meal worm about 1-4 days to begin laying eggs.

Cons to the System

I found out that if you put the mesh on top of the drawer that a meal worm may get stuck underneath the mesh. I had to remake the liner only once to get it to work. I hot glued it underneath. It did make it stick a little but it kept the meal worms safe. I also found that opening the top drawer sometimes makes a mess. So I would open the middle and top together or put a plate underneath habitat for the bran to fall on.

After the Unit

I have a student who has many chickens. I am donating the habitat to his chickens since I have had many delicious eggs this school year.

We really enjoy this habitat and I hope your student do as well.