I love April Fools Day! Well, mostly when I'm the prankster, and not necessarily the fool :)

When I was a classroom teacher, I looked forward to some good ol' fashioned fun trying to trick students.  As luck would have it, between weekends, pd days and Easter, I believe I only got to experience 2 April Fool's Days at school.  But I made the most of them!

One of my all-time favourites that got countless high school students and a bunch of staff members, was the old Oreo switcharoo.  Take a box of Oreos, open 3/4 of the cookies, scrape out the icing and replace with toothpaste.  Keep the other 1/4 in a specific row so you know which ones to eat.  Walk around the hallways with the box, with you and a few helpful students eating the untarnished ones, and inevitable someone will try to mooch a cookie.  Offer the box with the other end out (where the minty fresh cookies reside) and voila! Instant fun!

Unless, of course, you get the student who LIKES the minty, gooey toothpaste flavour and eats 2 before they catch on, haha!

Of course, some of my all time favourite pranks have happened in the media, where people spend a lot more brain power coming up with spectacular jokes and reach a far wider gullible audience than I can.  In honour of this fun filled day, here are a few of my favourites:

1. Nixon for President -- NPR announced on April 1st, 1992 that Nixon was running for president once again, under the campaign slogan, "I didn't do anything wrong, and I won't do it again."  Read more about public reaction here.

2. Google Gmail Motion -- Tired of having to type and swipe your commands on a keyboard? Last year Google announced it's motion activated Gmail.  Still makes me giggle! Watch the introductory video here. 

3. Johns Hopkins Drops the Extra "S" -- On April 1st, 2010, officials announced they'd be fixing the "typo" that led to the extra 's' on the end of John.  Hee hee.  Read the full article here.

4. Metric Time -- Keeping up with the switch to metric measurement, Australia announced they'd be switching to metric time in 1975.  No more seconds, minutes and hours...instead they'd be known as millidays, centidays and decadays.  LOL! Read the full explanation here.

5. Winner of Mega Millions Jackpot -- Just yesterday, a prankster and his buddies pulled off the most successful April Fools joke to date on Twitter.  He tweeted a fake picture of the winning lottery ticket and bam! Thousands of followers, inquries and his very own worldwide trend.  Read about it here.

Have a great April Fools day, and make sure to check your sugar before you put it in your coffee :)

Vanessa

Happy Friday everyone! I hope that all of you who are on Spring Break this week have had a relaxing time off; for those of you who are heading into break soon, only 5 more school days!

A very quick Fresh Look Fridays post for this week.  It's been an absolute gong show at our house for the past 10 days (hence my lack of posts), but I promise I'm back into the swing of things here again, so get ready to read :)

I thought it was time to review a great Art site for the kidlets.  The National Gallery of Art has a fantastic section of their site called the Art Zone.  

This website is jam packed full of awesome little art activites - some with lots of structure, but most that encourage experimentation and development.  In the classroom, this would be a great site to pull up on the SMART Board, and use to both demonstrate certain art techniques as well as encourage small group artistic freedom as an activity center.  So many awesome features to check out and applications with your kids!

I personally like Brushter, Still Life and Collage Machine, but there are too many other excellent activities on this site for me to review them all.  Put it up on your board and let the kids play (and learn!) away!

Most importantly, have fun!

Vanessa

I know, I know.  My Fresh Look Fridays posts usually center around an interactive website/app that can be used by students in your class.

Well, today I went a different route.

Maybe it's the fact that my baby sister is convocating from Education in a few short months, maybe it's the fact that I love organizational pieces, or maybe it was the nostalgia I felt goiing through my box of elementary stuff from my 6 months teaching Grade 5...whatever the reason, I had bulletin boards and certificates on the brain.

And so, I give you a few resources to find templates for these areas.

First up? Educationworld.com

Not a super fancy website (and with one of those annoying 'sign up now' ads when you first enter the site), but a fair list of templates none the less.  Check out the certificates and classroom organizer templates.

Next up - ABCteach.com

I personally like the portfolios section as well as the bulletin boards area.  Not sure if I'd be printing off 18 sheets of paper and cutting them out to make a border, but hey, that stuff's expensive at teacher stores!

Finally, check out certificatesforteachers.com

A subdivision of Teacher Planet, this website is entirely devoted to certificate templates.  What I really like is that it is also broken down by subject, and not just the usual "star student" categories. 

Enjoy your weekend, everyone!

Vanessa

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

As with every holiday, there are TONS of great ideas floating around out there for you to use in your classroom.  I know, I know, it's Saturday, but it might be fun to do some themed activities with your students Monday morning, or even play around with your own kids on your computer today.

The SMART Exchange just keeps growing and growing, and with that growth comes an abundance of activities for you to use on your SMART Board or SMART Table.  Not sure where to start? Click here to see the list of idea with a St. Patrick's Day theme.

Some of my favourites are listed below.  Just search the actual title of each activity on the SMART Exchange if you're looking for a specific one I've mentioned. Remember that you can preview a thumbnail version of the activity by clicking on the image online.  Saves you time and effort to see if you think it's worth downloading before you commit to doing so :)

1. St. Patrick's Day Logic - Just a few run-of-the-mill logic problems using items of St. Patty's Day.  Cute, easy, no adaptation required.  Probably appropriate for Math in Grades 3-5.

2. St. Patrick's Day Alphabetical Order.  Another basic activity that has been adapted to fit this theme.  Again, no further changes required by you, although it would be extremely easy to add more pages to this Notebook file.  Probably best for Grades 2-4, in L.A. 

3. History of St. Patrick's Day.  An integrated web activity with follow up questions embedded into SMART Notebook.  Use this with your students in upper elementary in their Social Studies class.

4. Spring.  Have a SMART Table? Lucky you (maybe luck of the Irish?).  Check out this table pack for a quick and easy activity centre centered around St. Patrick's Day.  Obviously, most appropriate for Grades K-2 (although the little, little ones may need some help with the word based activities).

5. Counting Shamrocks.  Some great pages made here centered around number sense for your primary students.  Obviously, the skill is a Math one, but it's fun to mix up some of the usual activities and link it to a St. Patrick's Day theme.  Again, no changes required by you! I highly recommend checking this one out if you're a Grade 1 teacher!

6. St. Patties Day (their spelling, not mine, haha).  One of those creative attendance Notebook pages.  You'll have to ungroup the students names with the gold coins, retype YOUR student's names, then group them with the gold coins to make this one work.  But a cute idea, nonetheless.

That's all for this year! Have a great day everyone!

Vanessa

I often look at my 8 month old son and wonder just what technology trends he will witness in his lifetime.  I mean, c'mon...it wasn't THAT long ago that people were celebrating the introduction of an affordable colour TV, motion pictures with sound or cameras that didn't require bulky film inserts.

No place is this the rapid growth of technology more evident than in children's toys.  Let me tell you - it is nearly impossible to find a toy that doesn't have some razzle-dazzle feature of blinking lights, magical music or dancing animations at the touch of a button.  We've tried to really hard to balance these exciting items with some that require the use of good ol' imagination...but it's not easy.

Luckily, our little guy seems to be super attracted to books.  And no, not the Kindle kind.  I'm talking about those with actual pages that you have to physically turn and read aloud making up your own voices.  Shocking, I know.

He has quite a few favourites - "Ten Little Fingers & Ten Little Toes", "The Going To Bed Book" and the age-old classic "Goodnight Moon".

Thankfully, some creative soul has adapted that last book to bring it into the 21st century, and make it a bit more true to the experiences that this generation is growing up with.  I give you "Goodnight iPad":

Thanks to @ryflinn for bringing this gem to my attention on Twitter last week.

Vanessa