Fun in First

A Teaching Blog by Jodi Southard

Astrobrights

Summer Learning Chain

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I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking towards the end of the school year.  I always like to send something home with my students to keep their little minds working over the summer.  I have sent home activity calendars in the past, but wanted to make it a little more exciting this year.
I came up with the idea of a Summer Learning Chain using Astrobrights colored paper.
I printed a list of summer activities onto different colors of paper.  I used a huge variety of colors including my favorites of Blast-Off Blue, Solar Yellow, and Fireball Fuschia.
Each page has a different activity.  This makes it easy to cut and stack the activities for each student.
After they are printed, I can stack up all of the papers and cut the activities into strips using the paper cutter.
After the strips are cut, I will place a stack into a baggie for each student.
The students will be able to take these home on the last day of school.  Throughout the summer, they can pull out a strip and complete the activity.
As they complete an activity, they can tape or glue the strip into a circle and create a chain of activities.
Students will be able to see how long they can make their learning chain.
You can easily make up your own activities, but if you would like to download my set of FREEBIE activities, click HERE.
What a fun, and colorful, learning activity for this summer!
 This is a sponsored post. I received payment, trade and/or products from Astrobrights in exchange for promoting.  However, all opinions are my own and I only promote brands and products that I love.


A Bright Minds Partnership

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I am thrilled to announce that I am partnering with Astrobrights as one of their Bright Minds Edublogger Ambassadors this year with these amazing ladies. 

I have partnered with Astrobrights in the past for their Colorize Your Classroom campaign, and I have always been so impressed with this company.  They truly care about teachers and students and want to make the teaching world a better and brighter place.
This is the perfect partnership because I LOVE color!  I’m happier when things are colorful.  I love to decorate my classroom with bright colors, and I like to use color in my lessons as much as possible.  Colorful paper makes everything more exciting and engaging.
As a Bright Minds Ambassador, I’ll be posting creative ideas throughout the year about how to use color to enhance learning.

I’ll also be sharing opportunities for you to engage with Astrobrights, and let me tell you, they have some really exciting things planned!
The other Astrobrights Edublogger Ambassadors are ALL amazing!  If you aren’t familiar with each of them already, you should be.

 April McNair from A Modern Teacher  Instagram @amodernteacher

 Jennifer White from First Grade Blue Skies  Instagram @firstgradeblueskies

 Maria Manore from Kinder Craze Instagram @kindercraze

 Marsha McGuire from Differentiated Kindergarten  Instagram @differkinder

Reagan Tunstall from Tunstall’s Teaching Tidbits  Istagram @reagtunstall 
 

Be sure to follow @Astrobrights on Instagram the week of Feb. 29 for a Bright Minds takeover!  You’ll get a peek at who we are and why we love color!
To learn more about the Bright Minds, visit thepowerofpaper.com/ambassadors.

 

Colorize Your Classroom

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The Astrobrights Paper Colorize Your Classroom Challenge is back, and I’m thrilled to be teaming up with Astrobrights for this campaign.

 

Studies show that color can increase memory by up to 50 percent and help students remain engaged.

 

ColorizeYourClassroom.com gives teachers a gallery of inspiration and ideas on how color can help transform their classrooms.

 

The Astro Bright Minds have issued four different challenges that tackle problems teachers face when creating the right environment for their students: classroom décor, organization, differentiated instruction and memorization.
I will be discussing how I use color in my classroom to help with differentiated instruction.
I love using color to differentiate sight word lists for my students.  I begin by finding out which sight words my students still need to work on. (This year, I had an amazing parent volunteer help me with this.)
After figuring out which list each student needs to start on, I give the student a “bookmark” with that list of sight words.  I print each list on a different color of Astrobrights cardstock.
I print these 2-sided, so each student actually has two sight word lists to work on.  Once they have mastered this list, they move onto the next color.
My students can keep these in their pencil boxes, on their desks, or in a book they are reading, so the lists are always at their fingertips.
I also love to use color for differentiating my small groups.
I received these tubs from Lakeshore Learning Resources a couple of years ago, and they are perfect for my small groups.  I can place the items that we will be working on into these tubs for the week (books, sight word cards, fluency passages, etc.).
I also have correlating tabs in my Small Group Binder with the color for each group.
This allows me to find my reading resources, like Running Records and other reading notes, quickly.
I’d LOVE to hear how you use color to differentiate in your classroom?
Think you have a bright idea? Check out the challenges on ColorizeYourClassroom.com, upload an image of your own solution using color paper and enter to win a yearlong sponsorship from Astrobrights worth $5,000.
Enter up to four times, once for each challenge.
 Submit your idea and Astrobrights may feature it as the pick of the week on Facebook to help other teachers colorize their learning.
Visit ColorizeYourClassroom.com for details, official rules for entry and hundreds of ideas on how to Colorize Your Classroom.

 

 

Back to School with #25DaysofColor from Astrobrights

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I obviously LOVE color! I mean look at my blog design.  Color just makes me happy.  I love using color in my classroom.  Color can make learning a more fun and impactful experience.  I am so excited to be teaming up with Astrobrights for their 25 days of Color.  For 25 days, Astrobrights Papers will feature a project using a different color of its paper, providing ideas and inspiration on how to #ColorizeYourClassroom. 
I received a box of paper from Astrobrights to use.  The colors are gorgeous, and the quality is amazing!
Since we know that color paper can add creativity to everything in the classroom, I was so excited to get started.  My hero (focus) color was Orbit Orange. 
I decided to create an entire back to school ice breaker activity with the orange theme.  On the first day of school, during our Morning Meeting, I will begin with the classic knock, knock joke;
“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Banana.”
“Banana who?”
“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Banana.”
“Banana who?”
“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?”
Then, we will sit in a circle, and I will hold an orange in my hand.  I will tell one reason why I am glad that we are back in school.  Then, I will pass the orange to the next person in the circle to tell a reason why they are excited to be back in school.
When we are finished going around the circle, the students will return to their seats to draw and write their reasons.
When they are finished, we will have oranges as a snack.
I will also be using this color to make welcome bags for my students.
 I would love to fill them with orange pencils, stickers, paper, and more.
You can download the free printables from above by clicking HERE.
Another one of my hero colors was Rocket Red.  This is kind of a pinkish-red color.  I loved it paired with other colors from the Astrobrights collection.  I thought it would be perfect to make my Back to School Flip Book even more eye catching!  (The All About Me page is the Rocket Red color.)  I LOVE the result.
My last hero color was Re-Entry Red.  I included this in my Back to School Flip Book as well, but I also wanted to use it for my Welcome Letters.
I mail these to the parents before school starts, and thought printing them on colored paper would make much more of a statement than white.  I also used some other colors (Martian Green & Galaxy Gold) to print off my other information sheets.

You can get the printables above for free by clicking HERE.

How do you use color in your classroom?
For more ideas on how to Colorize Your Classroom, be sure to follow #25DaysofColor, Astrobrights Papers social feeds and visit ColorizeYourClassroom.com.
Post your own project using Astrobrights Papers with the hashtags #25DaysofColor and #ColorizeYourClassroom for a chance to be featured as the Colorize Your Classroom project of the week.