Twiducate

Twitter has been growing by leaps and bounds this past year. I've enjoyed following a number of great teachers. Recently someone tweeted about a new social networking site for classrooms. I logged on to Twiducate right away, signed up to be a member and started playing with it. This site allows you to have a classroom social networking site that it just for your students and you control it! No chance of outsiders logging in with inappropriate content. The site is in beta and the teachers who are developing it are working hard to update and make it as user friendly as possible. It's been fun to watch the site develop via twitter. One tweet talked about wanting to have several classes and within a few hours that change was made to the site. As soon as they added a link section they twitted about it. Retweets spread the world across the world and people from all over have signed up and are following Twidicate on twitter. Click on the title and read a bit about this new social networking site for classrooms. Think about using it to have students respond to a question. Add a link for students to use for a particular project. Put reminders on for homework assignments. I think you'll come up with lots of ideas as you explore twitter and twidicate!

Recess Craft Ideas

DLTK always has lots of great ideas for crafts. I was remembering when I made snowflakes as a child and would spend hours trying to get the right cuts. Here is a great snowflake type of craft to try out with students. Another great idea from this site is the 3-D snowflake. Scroll all the way to the bottom to find the template.

Free Kids Crafts has directions for Snow Stars. Looks a lot like a snowflake to me! This same site has a few more great ideas. Keeping with the snowflake theme consider Q-Tip Snowflakes. Lay a sheet of wax paper on a table. Use Q-tips to make a snowflake on top of the wax paper. Squirt glue on any spot where 2 Q-tips meet. Let dry completely and peel off of wax paper. Don't forget, you don't have to use whole Q-tips, you can break them up and use pieces too! Try Pasta Snowflakes. Draw a large X on a piece of construction paper and then put a line down the middle to make a guideline for a snowflake. Use a variety of pasta shapes to glue on top of the lines and form a snowflake.

Dave's Snowflake Patterns is a great site for printing out templates for various snowflakes. He shares several patterns.

Kinderart has 8 patterns for snowflakes. When you click on the pattern you will be taken to an ad that you may click to skip. You will then be taken to the directions.

Tired of snowflakes? Check out Kaboose for winter printables. You'll find lots of neat coloring sheets for kids here. Keep looking and you'll find word puzzles, mazes and picture hunts.

Recess

I've watched the snow fall all day and know that teachers who have recess duty are wondering what to do with all those students when they can't go outside. I've been doing some searching for sites that might have some good ideas and here they are...

Family Fun always has neat ideas for anything and everything. They have page after page of games or activities. Keep in mind that this magazine/website is written for parents not teachers but I know you will find some good things to try out in your classroom. I especially liked the Chopstick Pass on the first page.

Kids Games has oodles of games listed. Many are outdoor games but if you check out the links to circle games or mental games, you may find some ideas. Seven-Up is always a hit and the directions for that are listed under favorites on the left side of the page.

How Stuff Works has links to new and exciting activities to try out with your students. I like Tag Team Art and think the kids would enjoy it.

Family Education has hundreds...well almost hundreds...of great rainu day activities. This site has organized them by category and all you need do is click on a title to get the directions. Charades caught my eye!

Indoor Games is a great pdf that you can look over and print out for your files. Most of the activities seem to be for younger students.

Hope this helps you to find some new activities to share with our students. Happy Recess!!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

Get a Voki now!