Light Bulb Grinch from Honey Bee Books

Now you know this is just too cute! What a creative, "green" craft to complete after reading "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" from Honey Bee Books! Although it may be too late to do this craft this holiday season, that gives you a whole year to save your old light bulbs for Christmas 2012 :).

 And although the Arte de Fazer blog is in another language (Portuguese??), there are lots of adorable holiday light bulb ideas there, also.

Happy Greenmas!!

The Green Classroom

I am definitely not an expert on the environment, nor do I always remember to bring reusable bags to the grocery store or turn the water off as I'm brushing my teeth or put my Sprite Zero bottle in the recycling bin. But doing my part to help the earth is important to me, as I believe it is for many people. Thankfully, I have an awesome green team at school that teaches me new tips all the time.

As teachers, we have so many opportunities to make a difference, and one of those I believe is educating our students on how to take care of the environment, whether at home, in nature, or even in our own classrooms.

I hope this blog will become a great resource for ideas on how to be green in the classroom through recycling and reusing what we already have to creatively instruct our students.

Right now, the content is slim! I've posted "link parties" under almost every category, so please browse around and add your own green ideas. There are so many amazing ideas out there, and I'd love for them all to end up here.

Thank you for your help! As I tell my kids, "Somos los héreos de la tierra." We're earth's heroes.

Sra. Carro's Class Recycling Center

I purchased these cute, little recycling bins from buy green.com for a pretty penny! But they work grrrreat because they are stackable and the students can easily grab and carry them when it's recycling day.

The only issue is that it seems to be too small for all our paper. But I don't think that's the bin's problem, I think it's more my problem of using too much paper.

The sign below is what is posted above the center - "We are earth's heroes!" Or sadly, we can be her enemies :(. But if all teachers would use their influence on students concerning the environment and being responsible, we really could make a HUUUGE difference.

Do you have a class recycling center or school recycling center? Please link it up here!

Happy Recycling!

Box Storage Containers

Most boxes (cereal, breakfast bar, crayon, etc.) can be used as storage for different activities.

All you need to do is:
1) Reinforce the top flaps with packaging tape on both sides.
2) Add velcro dots under the flaps for opening and closing.

3) Use whole sheet sticker printing paper to create unique labels for your box.

Or just use an index card and cover with packaging tape. Crayon boxes store flashcards well.

Soda Bottle Rain Gauges (Catchers)

Have fun catching rain with soda bottle rain gauges (catchers).

1) All you need is a small or large soda bottle. Cut the mouth off at the top where the bottle starts becoming smaller.

2) Afterwards, take the mouth of the bottle and flip it down inside the bottles to serve as a funnel for the pebbles.

3) Add small pebbles to the bottom of the bottle through the funnel top to give the bottle some weight.

4) Start marking the bottle with a permanent marker using centimeter or inches. * Be sure to start the markings above the bottom grooves of the bottle so you will have a consistent reading.

5) Do a rain dance and see what happens!

Obviously these rain gauges are not a standard measure, but they will give students a physical demonstration of what one is.

Happy Recycling!

RePurPosed PUZZLES!

Have old puzzles that need a new life? Here are two ways to do that!

BJ Mama from For What It's Worth or Not shows a super-duper adorable way to transform old puzzle pieces into reindeer ornaments. Click here for her post.

Here is a cool video from Mr. Smith at Teacher Tipster for using puzzles to reinforce math facts. Fantastic!

Compound Word Plastic Eggs by Lesson Plan Diva

Have left over Easter eggs? This is a great way to reuse them, and I'm sure a lot many more come to mind. Click to see this post from Lesson Plan Diva.

Station/Center Bottle Caps

I just saw this in a fellow teacher's classroom and LOVED it. Using some sort of metal strips, bottle caps, and magnetic backing, she has a quick and cute way to sort students into different literacy centers.

Math Bottle Cap Ideas

Here are some ideas I have done or come across so far to use bottle caps, lids, milk caps, etc.

Use caps that open and close to create these fun bottle cap answer keepers. Click here to see the full post from me at FlapJack Educational Resources.

Check out these cute ladybug lids from Amanda Formaro at Crafts by Amanda. Students can count the dots on each ladybug (And Amanda has many amaaaazing recycling crafts at her site.)

I used a post from Amanda to create these funny little monster lids. We then did math and graphing with them in a lapbook. You can check out the guestblog post here at The Organized Classroom (freebie graph included).

Cindy from Love2learn2day has many great activities for recycling. Here's one of her posts on using milk jug caps to teach math.

Growing in PreK shows this great idea in a math center post that originated from Msv1st grade's blog. You'll need to scroll down to see in detail.

Here'a a math facts bottle cap activity that my students and I have so much fun with. Free labels are included in the post here.