Ninja Notes

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Holidays and Seasonal

9 Things To Do During the First Month of School

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Getting back into the school year is an exciting time, but there is can be so much to do that it can be difficult to prioritize what needs to be done first. Come read through our must-do list during the first month of school in your upper elementary classroom and we'll help you out.

As a student, I never appreciated the first month of school. It always seemed like we didn’t get too deep into the content and spent a lot of time playing games and doing art projects. It wasn’t until I became a teacher that I recognized how much work teachers do during the first month of school. While we created a list with nine of the most important, there really are so many more that could be added.

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9 Spectacular Art Projects For a Pen and Paper

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If you are looking for some very simple art projects you can do in your upper elementary classroom with just a pen and paper. We've included all the instructions so you can create these beautiful but very simple art projects for elementary students. Come take a look and find the one you'll save when you need something in a pinch.

Sometimes you need a quick art project that uses a pen and paper because you either don’t have access to other art materials or the time to set up something more complicated. That’s okay! There are many different art projects you can create using just a pen and paper. These are some of our favourite art pieces we have tried over the years with our upper elementary students. We have included basic instructions for you here. Continue reading to learn more.

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Spring Classroom Activities To Make You Bloom

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Spring is here and we have collected our favourite spring classroom activities to help you get through spring fever. Come read our list a get some ideas you can use right away.

Spring is a great time in upper elementary classrooms. By this point in the school year, students understand the routines and things tend to start running smoothly. Of course, there is also the spring fever that tends to creep in and make students a little squirrely as the weather changes. Nothing says spring like the smell of damp socks and slushy halls after recess breaks.

We put together some of our favourite spring classroom activities that we use to keep students learning and moving forward. Come see which of these would work in your upper elementary classroom.

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Heart Art Projects You’ll Love

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Heart art projects are great any time of year. We collected some of our favourite art projects that use basic materials like markers, pastels and crayons and put all the instructions in one blog post. Come see which one you can make with your upper elementary class for Valentine's Day, Pink Shirt Day or just to show how kind your students can be.

We love to create art projects that use simple shapes but teach students different techniques. Heart art projects are perfect around Valentine’s Day, but they are a universal symbol that can be done any time of year. These art projects are some of the favourites that we use year after year. Best of all, they mostly use common materials you can find in most schools.

Check out these heart art projects that you can use to decorate your classroom, make gifts or share the love.

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How to Use Logic Puzzles in the Classroom

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Logic puzzles are good for your brain. They encourage reading for information, tracking and critical thinking. Come learn how we use logic puzzles in our upper elementary classroom.

Logic puzzles are a series of written clues that readers use to fill in a chart. The chart shows which items match each other. These types of puzzles have been a life-long favourite and come in a variety of levels of difficulty. We created puzzles for our students to solve for fun, but have also looked at how solving logic puzzles helps students become better readers. Read on to learn the ways you can use logic puzzles in your classroom to help teach reading.

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Free Winter Classroom Activities Worth Scooping Up

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Are you looking for some simple and free classroom activities to keep your students busy during the long winter months? We collected many winter activities for language arts, math, scrience, art and some just for fun and put them all together in one big post. You can use these activities for instruction or give them to your students during indoor recess on those long winter days. Come take a look!

Depending on where you live, winter can be a very long season. In northern Canada, where we teach, winter can start as early as October. It continues up to the end of March. That means we are always on the lookout for winter classroom activities to use in class. More importantly, we use them during those dreaded indoor recesses when it is just too cold to go outside.

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