Video Maker

I am so excited to be the Student Council sponsor at my new campus!  We have televised morning announcements, giving me the chance to advertise for the club in a new way: through video!  I had no idea how I was going to create an ad, and spent hours on youtube trying to steal someone elses work without any luck.

Fortunately, I stumbled upon Animoto, a FREE video creating site.  And when I say it was simple, I am not kidding.  I made two 30 second videos in about twenty minutes.  They already have slideshow templates to choose from and a huge library with music.  You just type in what you want it to say and it does the work! 

I don't think I will win any advertising awards, but they turned out pretty darn good:







I love this site so much, I am going to have to find ways to add it to my lessons, either by the students creating something or during instruction!

~Mrs. Scott

Homemade Christmas Gifts

Pinterest inspired me to give homemade gifts for school Christmas presents. I actually came up with ideas for my boys teachers without stealing them from someone else, and they didn't include they typical coffee mugs that teachers always end up with!

Homemade cake balls:

1 tub for each teacher and a jar-full for daycare.

At school, our Student Council gave baggies of Jolly Ranchers to all of the staff:

~Mrs. Scott

Adopt-a-Family

This is why I love being a Student Council Sponsor:

Tonight I am organizing 76 gifts from our Fall service project: adopt-a-family. This year we have adopted a family with a single mom and four children, ages 5, 8, 9, and 11 years old.

Our members stepped up and really took care of this family, ensuring they have a wonderful Christmas. One of our members even purchased gifts (including shoes for mom) with her own money because she said a few years ago, she was "one of those families." What a perfect way to pay it forward!

Anyone who complains about "kids these days" needs to step into a junior high and see that there are plenty of children (teenagers too!) with huge hearts!

Picnik

I am slightly obsessed with picnik. If you have never used the website before it is amazing! And a lot of the features are free! Basically, it is a photo editing site, but you can also use their goodies to turn pictures into cards and collages. Their image templates and cute text makes activities like printing class rules/posters and sprucing up your school webpage super easy.

I just recently found a new use: awards and Student Council acceptance cards. We printed 75 of these from Walgreens for $7.50 and it took all of 5 minutes to create and export:

~Mrs. Scott