Many
call me Leslie, but I'm also Mom, Mommy, Momma and Ms. Leslie depending
on which child is talking to me! I'm also
known as "wife of the Prez" in the blog-o-sphere. I don't use my
husband's real name on-line, but instead call him "The Prez" and we've
been happily married for nearly 18 years. Since my teen years I've
taught children in one way or another through church—currently teaching a
three-year-old class there. As a young person, I dreamed of one day
teaching illiterate adults to read, and I haven't given up on that
dream.
But
for now, my current field of learners are right here in my home! Since
August 2009, I have taught our children at home. Back then The Prez and I
had three children in our one-room schoolhouse, ages
10, 7 and 3. Today, we have six children in our one-room schoolhouse,
ages 14, 13, 10, 7, 7 and 3.
I
don't teach just one grade as our children are in various places in
their learning journeys, but officially they are just finishing up
grades 8th, 6th, 5th, 1st (2 of them) and tot school! Four of our
children were adopted from China through the Waiting Child Program, and
our 13-year-old son is my amazing ELL student having only begun English
learning at age 10 after he came home with us in 2010. In addition to
having an ELL student, I also have two children in our schoolroom with
speech delays and one with hearing loss. All of the different grades,
ELL
and differently abled learners keeps our one-room schoolhouse very
interesting and inspiring!
As
for my educational journey, I graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in
English, with an emphasis in Journalism, way back in 1995. I have always
loved writing, and blogging has given me an outlet to continue that
love. Before children, I worked as an Editor for a large publisher of
religious materials, and then freelanced with them for many years until
we had our third child. My blog became an outlet for continuing to
write, and currently this
blog
chronicles our daily
life as home learners living life large with six children at our home
on 15+ acres in the country soon. We will be moving to the country in a
couple of weeks.
I opened my
TpT store—Page Protector Printables and More—in July 2012 with my
Page Protector Printables Calendar.
It has become one of my best-sellers and I still believe in it so much
because I've seen it help two of our children with daily calendar work
in kindergarten and first grade. Up until the time I came up with this
idea kind of on a whim, I had not found a daily calendar that really
worked for them. I love to re-purpose items, and I had held onto these
9-Pocket Sports Card Page Protectors that I had long since emptied of
sports cards. One day I was looking at them and thinking these would be
so useful and hands-on, and the PPP Calendar Resource was born!
Since
making that product and seeing how useful and EFFECTIVE it has been,
I've created many more Page Protector Printables. I continue to believe
in the benefit of ACTIVE learning that engages young learners. Another
aspect of my products
that I love is that they are reusable again and again, and they are
versatile for many learning styles. They do require the teacher to be
involved in the learning process, but they also encourage small group
use and use in intervention groups as well as learners of varying
abilities.
We
use these resources in various ways, but when I first introduce a new
Page Protector resource to my students, I often use it to assess their
abilities in a given area such as
Fractions,
which is my newest Page Protector Printables product and utilizes a
10-Pocket Business Card Page Protector. Before my learners even realize
they are learning and/or showing me what they know, they are having fun
and asking for more! I believe children can learn so much more than we
often believe if we just present the information in a way that is
engaging and active.
Thank you to JoAn for allowing me to share a bit about myself, my students
and the products I have created for them to use and which I offer in my store at TpT.
I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed making my new Game Shows!! I'm working on one for Landforms at the moment, but have quite a few for 2nd-4th grade Math and Language Arts. I've really upped the game by adding game show contestants and actual on the spot automatic scoring. It's really added a LOT to the games and the teachers (and students) are having a fun time with them!
They are basically in a Jeopardy style format with categories and dollar amounts. There are four contestants, so you'd begin by dividing your class into four groups. Those four groups choose which "contestants" team they are on. One by one, a team will choose a category and dollar value. A question appears and the team answers. Once you guess an answer, you click the "Check Answer" button for the answer to appear. If you got the answer right, you click on your "contestant" to award your team the point value. You can now choose to go back to the game board to choose another question OR go to the scoreboard where you'll find the contestants at their game console, which also shows the current scores.
Who doesn't love Apple Themes at school?! We have had such a good time
with it. We even related it to habitats since a star "lives" inside an
apple. So here we are. We've talked about apples, graphed them, and tasted them. Now to stamping with them. It was exciting to discover the star inside, especially when we were about to stamp with them. Each child got half of an apple and dipped it in the red paint. Not all of the kids got the star to show up in their pictures, but the ones who did, were so proud!
The next center was to glue down Apple Jack cereal to their colored apples. I drew in dots as a guideline to where to put their dots of glue. They have not had a ton of experience with the glue bottles yet, so I was very impressed that the majority did so well with their dots! 
What better way to celebrate Johnny Appleseed's birthday, but with a game! I can't wait to share this upper and lower case alphabet interactive game with my little guys. We are just now introducing the letters, so I know it will be early for many of them. I know they will have fun with the graphics anyway. I'll take pictures and let you know how they did.
You can click on any of the pictures here to find out more about it.
So, go to the pin that you are wanting to know more about. In this case, I want to see where this Landforms activity has been pinned so that I don't pin it in the same place again.
See the number in the red Pin it box? That tells you how many times the pin has been re-pinned. 
Now click the number to see the boards this has been re-pinned to.
Do you love dice as much as I do? Because I LOVE them!! They have always been one of my favorite centers! There is nothing you can't do with dice! One year I gave them as Christmas gifts to my students along with several pages of math games we had been playing in class. They were SUCH a hit! I know we like to give cutesy gifts at Christmas... but you should REALLY consider giving dice!
Games to play with dice: add 2 dice together.. write out the equation on a dry erase board, roll dice and subtract, roll three dice and add, roll three dice & add two two of them together and subtract the third, roll and multiply, roll to see how far to advance on the game board, roll and cover that many squares on your hundreds chart... it's endless. I LOVE the idea of the containers!! I saw this on pinterest and the photo links back to the original pin if you want to repin it. I never actually did this in my class, but wish I had.. oh my gosh those dice can fly! 
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We had about 14 people from our district go to ISTE in San Antonio this week. I am still exhausted from it all. This is a national educational technology conference. .JPG)
But guess who I met? A bunch of characters, but my all time favorite has GOT to be Moby from Brainpop! I saw him last year as well at the TCEA convention in Austin. I took the picture and immediately sent it back to my students. They were just as excited as I was! 
One table lesson I went to was on QR codes, which I have been particularly interested in the last couple of years. This is something my 4 & 5 year olds can do. I am so excited to be making some lessons for next year and posting them online. I'll have to update this when I get some made. I love the flexibility of QRs..you can have them provide answers, ask questions, they can be audio, text, a link to a video, a picture, etc. I can see a lot of student initiated centers and learning going on with QR. 
Since
making that product and seeing how useful and EFFECTIVE it has been,
I've created many more Page Protector Printables. I continue to believe
in the benefit of ACTIVE learning that engages young learners. Another
aspect of my products
that I love is that they are reusable again and again, and they are
versatile for many learning styles. They do require the teacher to be
involved in the learning process, but they also encourage small group
use and use in intervention groups as well as learners of varying
abilities.
We
use these resources in various ways, but when I first introduce a new
Page Protector resource to my students, I often use it to assess their
abilities in a given area such as Fractions,
which is my newest Page Protector Printables product and utilizes a
10-Pocket Business Card Page Protector. Before my learners even realize
they are learning and/or showing me what they know, they are having fun
and asking for more! I believe children can learn so much more than we
often believe if we just present the information in a way that is
engaging and active.
