I am SO excited!! My dear friend Wendell is finally being introduced to the world! Wendell Worm, the Accidental Adventurer finally has his own digital picture book! Wendell is a bookworm by nature, but always manages to somehow fall into adventures, which makes him...an Accidental Adventurer! His first story is complete and I am thrilled to share it with you!

In my classroom, Wendell is our learning mascot throughout the year. That means that I introduce him at the beginning of the year and then we do activities with him throughout the year.  My students love him and always ask when we will be working with Wendell next. Their excitement for Wendell has them motivated to discover and collaborate, and that engagement with learning is priceless! 

Since I first created Wendell, and saw how my students reacted to him, it has been a dream of mine to create a picture book for Wendell, to share his story and connect him with children everwhere, and that time has finally arrived! You can download a copy of the digital picture book for FREE here (or by clicking on the cover photo above), and I hope that you will share it with the children in your life. If they love Wendell as much as I do, then check out some of the Wendell Worm activities (available here) for children of all ages. (Two of his activities are shown below on previous blog posts if you would like to see Wendell in action!) And if you just can't get enough Wendell, feel free to follow him on Facebook and Instaworm. He would love to hear from you! Message him to share some photos of your completed Wendell projects, or to suggest some new adventures for him! He would LOVE it!! Thank you for stopping by and happy adventuring!!






Wendell Worm, the Accidental Adventurer
TEXT AND ILLUSTRATIONS COPYRIGHT © 2016 BY KRISTINE JONES

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author.

For information please contact:
teachingincali@gmail.com

I am SO excited for Valentine's Day!! I hope you are too... In class the kids love it when we jazz up our lessons to correspond with our themes and /or holidays. This year, as we work on opinion writing, my students will be writing a recommendation for their friend Wendell  Worm, the accidental adventurer.  (If you haven't met Wendell yet, scroll down to my earlier post, or check him out on Facebook. ) It seems that Wendell would like a little advice on what to get his best friend for Valentine's Day and my students are going to write an opinion essay to share their suggestions with him.  Right now this activity is free in my TpT store, click here to grab it,  if you would like to introduce your students to Wendell. He would love to meet them!

Happy 2016! I have decided that one of my New Years goals is to actually blog on here more frequently. My class is doing some amazing work this year and I really would love to share it with you all.  Right now one of our focuses is on STEM projects. I started my class off this year by introducing them to my new friend Wendell Worm. He is a book worm by nature, but has become a sort of accidental adventurer.

Their first hands on activity of the year was to rescue poor Wendell, and they had a blast! So now they enjoy doing any project involving the wondrous worm... haha. Our second project was to build the poor guy a sailboat.  They turned out awesome! (Pictures to come...)  So if you need a STEM mascot for your students, introduce them to Wendell. Then as a class, you can follow him on Facebook (click the photo above) and Insta-worm (aka Instagram) and post pictures of your experience with the STEM activities. He would love that!

Every year on the first day of school, I always take a picture of each student. I use them all year, for presentations, memory books, parent gifts, yearbook, etc. You can use them digitally, which doesn't cost anything, or upload them and have them printed out from a local retailer. I do both. Students love to see their photos and how much they have grown by the end of the year. One of the pictures I take on the first day is of each student holding a first day of school sign to commemorate the beginning of their year.  If you have never done this, I recommend trying it out. I think you will be happy you did.  To get you started, click here to get a fun collection of signs to use. Simply print the page for your grade level in whichever design you choose!

Been enjoying summer... hope all of you are too. Haven't been posting as much as I thought I would, but I do want to put up some freebies for the beginning of the year. Click here to find one of my favorite activities for the first day of school, and click here to find another one of my  favorites to use sometime during the first week... If you want more, visit my store at TpT and check out the whole packet of activities. Hope you can get some use out of them! Enjoy~

My students absolutely adore STEM projects. They have SO much fun and through it all, I know they are experiencing more aspects of thinking and solving than just textbooks and worksheets can give them. This most recent project was a culminating activity for our solar system unit.

Students were tasked with creating an orbiter that would allow their eggstronaut to land safely back on Earth.  They were given a specific list of materials and worked with their group to plan how they would build their orbiter to keep their eggstronaut safe.

They were then given 45 minutes to build their orbiter, with the raw egg safely snuggled inside. It was amazing to see all of the creativity the kids exhibited, and how differently each group proceeded.

I loved seeing their finished products. Some groups seemed to have bonded with their eggstronaut (so cute!!) and were hopeful that he would survive the drop. Once the build was finished, we gathered with the whole school to do the drops and see how successful the teams' orbiters truly were. It was a very energetic and enthusiastic crowd which made for a lot of fun! Definitely doing this project again next year... so easy to prep and really got students engaged in learning! If you would like a copy of this project, check it out here.

Open House was awesome!! My students are such stars...  They have worked on projects all year that I have saved for their memory books.  I do memory books every year, no matter what grade I teach. It is a gift for the students and families... a beautiful collection of student work, photos, and memories from their year.

We also created Masters Art Projects to display our own art museum in the hallway. They had so much fun and were very proud of their work.

For Mother's Day I wanted to do something different with my students. I have done projects (cards and gifts) based on flowers, cupcakes, teacups, etc. and this year I wanted to do something that was "green" and honored spring as well as mom's special day. So I created this seed packet project for my students. They are working on the opinion writing piece which will get hung on the wall with the students poster. This coming week they will be making the card and making the seed packet and filling it with seeds. I found this to be a sweet way to honor mother's day without being really expensive for me to buy the supplies. I was able to get a great variety of seed packets for students to choose from for just a few dollars. My hope is that my students will give this gift to their moms, but also have the shared experience with their mom of then planting those seeds around their home and watching them grow. If you would like a freebie copy of the card, click here. If you are interested  in the entire bundle of activities, click here.  I hope you have a great week, and a beautiful Mother's Day!!!

I love spring... it is one of my favorite times of year. In class we are having so much fun with the season. We are continuing to write everyday, and my students have loved writing opinion essays about Easter and spring. I also have added some springtime art projects and creative activities to keep students engaged. Check out some photos of what we are up to....