Spring Break! Woo!

Spring break was never a thing for me when I was in college.  I would just go home and hang with my family.  And right now, I'm so happy to be spending the week with my two little ones!
This week, I really tried hard to keep my kids on track even though they definitely have spring fever.  It's been so long since we've had a decent break, and we've been really focused on testing.  Here are a couple of things we did to have fun and learn at the same time:
1.)  I introduced new math centers!

I can't tell you how happy I was to hear "oooh!" when I added these new centers to our math area!  There's something about colorful practice that really keeps my kids engaged.

With their math test coming up at the end of April, I really want to keep reviewing the strands my state considers to be areas of focus.

In this center, students interpret expressions to find the mystery number.

In this center, students solve operations using decimals and then compare the results.

 I just posted this product today!  I'm so proud of it!  If you are interested, it's a set of 6 cheerful, spring-y math centers: equivalent fractions matching, order of operations practice, multiplying and dividing fractions word problems, know that number (a decimal or whole number of the day style center), and place value riddles.  Check it out here: Spring Math Centers for Upper Grades.

  It's on sale from now until Tuesday night!

2.)  New books arrived!

Oof, sorry for the glare!  I was just SO excited to add these to our reading program.  My Tale Of Despereaux guided reading group just finished their book, so they are going to get The One and Only Ivan.  My literature circle reading the City of Ember really wanted to read the sequel, so they are getting The People of Sparks.  I LOVED The One and Only Ivan!  And I really eager to share this with my reading group!

3.)  I ordered more books!  One of my relucatant readers complained that we don't have enough graphic novels so I let him spend some time on Amazon reading reviews and selecting a few new hardy boys books.  I also ordered Shredderman for another reader to celebrate his recent running record!

4.)  We did an egg hunt!  Well, a math egg hunt!  With an hour to go until vacation began, I knew I needed to get these kids moving and having some fun.  So I hid eggs and math problems around the room for them to solve!

Inside each egg was a multi-step problem that teams worked together to solve.

There's nothing like a little movement and fun to get kids ready to practice!

If you are interested in checking out my Egg Hunt Cards, I'm taking $1 off from now until Easter for all of you hardworking teachers who are in session this week.  The package contains four different egg hunts: multi-step problems, fractions, operations and order of operations expressions.  For each set of cards there are six problems, an answer sheet and an answer key.