Guest Blog from Bermuda!!

Happy Saturday!! We (Amanda and Stacia) are blog "hopping" over to  Live, Teach, Create where we are guest blogging and we have a guest blogger here (yay!!).  After you are done reading Lynn's post below, hop on over there to read our post (pretty please!!!).  If you follow each link, you'll end up in a circle and get to meet a lot of new bloggers!!

First of all – many thanks to Amanda and Stacia for hosting me!  

I’m Lynn from Fun in the Fours. – a third grade (Year 4) teacher from Bermuda. 

My blog is still a baby but I’m really glad to be a part of this new teaching world – it has been INSPIRATIONAL seeing how many wonderful, creative and dedicated teachers there are. I feel re-energized every time I read the amazing posts that are out there.

I had a lot of “get ready for January” plans for the holidays – some are still works in progress (like the double-lined blue blinds for the windows that I decided I should make so that I can actually USE my Smartboard in the afternoons!) and some I managed to accomplish that I’m really excited about. I introduced some of these to the kiddies this week.

1. We're going to start class journals. We do weekly student journals but I’ve been wanting to try group writing for a while and when I read about these on I Love My Classroom I knew I had to try them. I’ve bought the books, made the covers, got cute colored pens to write with (will definitely suggest they do a draft copy first!) and am ready to roll. We’ll start with four different topics and see how it goes.Here are 3 of them.

2. We are ready to “energize” with some cool games I found on TpT Cap'n Pete's Place

– and some Scoot games I made myself. I have some active little girls this year and I’ve found that getting them moving around is the best way to teach. We’ve been doing lots of center work but I’m dying to try more energizer activities – we did some with fractions before Christmas and they loved it.

3. I finished my first Rainforest Fact Finding Expedition with Mathematical Matches and it is printed and ready to play with. The double-sided cards have facts about rainforest animals on one side and place value matches for 4-digit numbers (standard form, expanded form, written form and base ten) on the other. By matching the place value cards my girls will also find out facts about 10 different rain forest animals. They can copy the facts into cute little booklets that will go in their Topic books. I’ve planned a few more Expeditions as well – they’ll make great center activities and “I’m finished” activities!

4. Meg at Fourth Grade Studio has just sent me her design for class Academic Learning posters that’s she’s customizing for people. I have a rainforest theme and her posters are AMAZING! I can’t wait to put them up! I’ll post photos of them on my blog once they’re up on the wall. This week we’ve been discussing all the ideas on them.

5. And finally we are looking forward to a Flat Gingerbread exchange that I signed up for with Christina from Sugar and Spice. Our gingerbread template has arrived and I am looking forward to seeing how my class decides to “Bermudianize” him before we send him  (or more likely, her!) out to 10 different schools.  It’s going to be a LOT of fun!!

So here’s to a bouncy, inspirational, creative and organized term – and a great New Year! 

Lynn







Thank you Lynn for your blog post!  Click her link and head to her blog and check it out!!  The Flat Gingerbread Man sounds so fun!  It would be so neat to get a Gingerbread man from Bermuda!!

Don't forget to check out our post!  We are writing for Jennifer at Live, Teach, Create.  :O)
Amanda and Stacia