Sweet Integrations

TCEA 2016 - Second Year Gets Easier

I've been attending the Texas Computer Education conference for over 30 years. I've been an attendee, presenter, recipient of the Computer Teacher of the Year award and now as an exhibitor. As a vendor, I'm promoting my products to over 8,000 computer educators.

This is the second year for Nancy Alvarez, Jen Kimbrell and I to host a booth. We had such a great time last year, we wanted to continue with a booth in 2016. We have created product books to show as samples, goodie bags and sinked our downloads on Square Up.

Goodie Bags - Last year we placed goodie bags out for attendees to take. This year we have teacher sellers representing different grade levels, subject areas, and esl.

So, if you are attending TCEA this year, make sure to drop by Booth 222. We would love to visit.

Resources for February

There are so many celebrations going on in the month of February... Chinese New Year, Black History Month, Presidents' Day, and Valentines. Here's a sample of products that you can use in your classroom during February.

5 STEM APPS for the Elementary Classroom

I've shared 5 apps that will help you in teaching STEM in the upper elementary classroom

With so many classrooms having iPads, teachers are always looking for great apps to use with their teaching. I've found some apps that are recommended for teaching STEM. Some of these apps are for building and some are for beginning programming. If you are a Texas teacher, TCEA has these on their list for teaching STEM.

In this post, I've provided a fun snowflake activity your students will love. I also link to January writing prompts.

Happy New Year. I hope you survived your first week back at school. My granddaughter gave me her precious snowman art project and I thought it would be perfect for my blog post. If you live in the south, you probably see very little snow. We just imagine snowflakes and building snowmen. I have a few fun activities for those who need a little snow in your lives.

1. Make your own snowflakes with Borax and water.

Materials:

- 1/3 of a cup of Borax

- 2 cups hot water

- pipe cleaners (I cut into thirds to make the shape of snowflakes)

- string to hold the snowflakes in place

- pencil or popsicle stick to wrap the string around

- mason jar or some type of jar for the liquid mixture

Directions:

- Pour 1/3 cup Borax into the mason jar

- Add 2 cups of hot water and stir until the Borax is dissolved

- Twist the pieces of pipe cleaners together in the shape of a snowflake

- Tie the string at the end of the snowflake shape.

- Tie the other end of the string to the pencil or popsicle

- Drop the snowflake into the mixture (you can even add food coloring to the mixture if you want to add color)

- Leave for 24 hours or overnight

- Dry the snowflake on foil or wax paper

2. January Writing Prompts - Start the year off with these great writing prompts. I've provided over 20 different writing prompts in this packet for your class. Students can color the cover page and select the different prompts to write about.

3. Editable Snowman PowerPoint - For a review game, try this free editable PowerPoint game. Students answer the questions correctly to build a snowman. All you do is add your own questions and answers. The rest has been done for you.