Trick or Treat! Tricks AND Treats for Busy Teachers

I have such amazing memories of Halloween from when I was little. As an adult, I love Halloween BUT it can be exhausting too! So....I am excited to be partnering up with Rachael at The Classroom Game Nook and several more teacher bloggers to bring you some TRICKS AND TREATS for Halloween. Each teacher blogger will be giving great advice, sharing a free resource AND running a contest for some awesome prizes. The blog hop will run from October 24-31.

At our small school, we don't have an art or music teacher. I want to expose my students to both, but on top of all the other items I prep every week and add in data collection, SLO's, intervention documentation, I feel a bit stretched each week. I have found my saving grace in The Art for Kids Hub on YouTube. The artist on the video, Rob, is fun to watch and he knows just how to explain everything in kid friendly terms. He is also so encouraging and helps kids understand art terms and that each piece will be unique.

Our first attempt with this video/art combo went so well that we have already tried more! Rob explains step by step how to draw these cute pumpkins and how to blend and shade each part. The ONLY supplies we needed were white paper, a black marker and oil pastels (but we just used regular crayons and it worked out great). My students were so engaged! Here are some pictures of my students' artwork.

Each pumpkin is hand drawn by the students and then they add shading and blending techniques. My students learned so much about using more than one color on a section, how to blend the colors, and how to use shading techniques to give it a realistic look. Each student then added their own flair to their pictures and we hung them up on the wall. The BEST part of this was it took less than 30 minutes from getting out supplies to hanging the artwork on the wall. I call that a MAJOR success. We even tackled an origami project in less than 30 minutes this week.

I am telling you that you will thank yourself for incorporating The Art for Kids Hub into your week. It is a wonderful brain break for you and your students. Check out the video here:

I am also excited to share with you one of my students' favorite games to practice their division fact fluency. The Monster Bump Division Game is available to my blog readers for FREE this week only, so make sure you snag it now. This is my go-to game when my students need fact fluency practice. Busy teachers need easy to create games for their centers and practice time. All you need to do is to print the game board and the game cards (fact cards) that you want your students to practice and have some type of game pieces. (I use Unifix cubes.) It really is THAT SIMPLE. My students request this game ALL the time.

If you are interested in a similar multiplication bump game, here is Bump That Paw! Multiplication Game.

How would you like to win 6 of my most popular Third Grade math resources? There are 131 pages of time to the minute, bar graphs and line plots, number sense, multiplication facts, division facts and addition up to the sums of 1000. Enter with the Rafflecopter below for your chance to win.

Preview the Third Grade Math Bundle here.