Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Formative Assessment #3 - Scientific Models

Formative Assessment #3 - Scientific Models


In the beginning of the school year, students are given the basic principles of science. This includes the scientific method, tools, lab safety, and MODELS. There are three types of models according to my Holt Science and Technology Book (soooo old) and this formative assessment helps to gather information that students have already learned in their prior grade levels without the assistance of their book. 

Try it out!






Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Organization Time!


Getting ready for the new school year means creating a binder, organizing my lessons, and getting my classroom ready for those wonderful students! This year, I created a calendar and binder set of chevron printables placed on teacherspayteachers.com. So far, I have created a chevron calendar, lesson planner, and inventory list. 

Here is an example of the chevron calendar:

The month of September can be downloaded for free on teacherspayteachers.com. Here is the link to download the free version:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Chevron-Calendar-September-794395

 
The entire 12 month calendar can be purchased here:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/2013-2014-Chevron-School-Year-Calendar-796044





The Lesson Planner can be purchased here:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Chevron-Lesson-Planner-Page-796856




Finally, the inventory list, which is interactive, can be purchased here:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Chevron-Classroom-Inventory-List-814194


Saturday was my mothers Birthday! She is such a beautiful and hard working woman that I aspire to be! I decided since her favorite thing to do is hunt, I would make her a cake that she would love. Since she has a sticker on her car of a deer logo, I decided to search through pinterest for inspiration and found the perfect cake that wouldn't be too difficult to do and would look awesome!

The final picture:
It is entirely buttercream! The hardest part about this cake is the camo all around. It took a lot of smoothing to get this done.

How to do it:

1. Prep 3 bags of your camo colors of choice with a tip 12 or smaller.

2. Create an outline using one color and fill in using lines of frosting. It will look like worms! Follow with a second color, and fill in the gaps with the third color.

3. Once the entire cake is covered in your wormy camo, get your spatula and viva paper towels. Lay a paper towel on the cake and begin smoothing. Word of caution: This will take forever to smooth! Don't give up until it is where you want it.

Of course it won't be perfect...you can still see imprints of the "worms" on mine if you look real close.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Recently, my cousin Juliona celebrated her 4th birthday party. My aunt always calls me up and is very vague in her details of how she wants her cakes. She simply told me..."She wants Dora & Boots cake. Any flavor is fine". How detailed on the instructions! I had never seen an episode of Dora the Explorer since I have a house full of boys, so I had no idea how or what to look for. After watching the opening song to this show, I came up with this:



Yup, that's supposed to be boots at the bottom. I thought it was an actual pair of boots she wore, but then I discovered it was a monkey! So funny...


I saw Dora sliding on a rainbow (came to my knowledge that this was from the old episodes) so I made the top layer into a rainbow. This reminded me of Rainbow Brite. I wish I could do a Rainbow Brite cake!


I also noticed there was a vast amount of different colored flowers in her show, so I did this for the bottom layer, along with Boots.
The top piece was purchased from a cake shop, and it contained stickers in the base for the birthday girl. I had a lot of fun making this one...


Transformers - Optimus Prime cake

I created this cake for my 4 year old son on his birthday. This was one of the most time consuming and detailed cake I have made yet. 


The truck was carved out of chocolate cake (5 layers). The tail of the truck was a single layer of chocolate.


For the exhaust pipes (please excuse me if it is not noted correctly) I used large pretzel sticks.



Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Ninja turtle cake

Recently, I uploaded this picture of a ninja turtle cake that received many repins on pinterest. I decided to upload it to my slowly forming blog to show those of you who wanted to know how easy it is to do!
Here is the picture uploaded to pinterest:

Before showing how it was made, here are the other three turtles:




To make the ninja turtle you need to have 2, 9 inch round pans. Each one of the turtles was a different flavor and was two layers.
After baking the cakes, level, frost inbetween the layers and place each layer on top of one another. You should have an unfrosted cake at this point.
With a carving knife or bread knife, cut the sides of the face at an angle so that about an inch of the cake comes off from both sides. One of these cut sides will become the nose of the turtle.
With a little bit of frosting, "glue" the nose a little higher than the center of the cake.
Make your green frosting. For this color, I used Wilton's "leaf green" color and mixed until I came out with the desired color. you will more than likely use the whole container.
Make the other four colors for their bands. In my picture, the purple looks like the blue but it is indeed purple in real life. Don't forget to make a bag of black frosting, and white.
The easiest method for frosting these babies is to place green frosting in a bowl and frost ONLY THE SIDE OF THE CAKE. There is no need to frost the top.
The next easiest method is to create the bands. For this, use a star tip #26 or any small star tip you have with the desired color and first make the outline of the band, allowing for about an inch from the top and right above the nose. Begin to fill in with star tip leaving two "holes" for the eyes.
The next step is to create the mouth out of black star tip. You will be using the same size star tip throughout this entire cake.
Fill in mouth with black or white, depending on the style you want.
Last, fill in the rest of the face with green star tip.
Create a border out of the same star tip where the board meets the cake.

Saturday, June 29, 2013

My son recently celebrated his 5th birthday party. Needless to say, I'm glad it is finally over! Ideas being fueled by pinterest helped to bring my party essentials together, including the three tiered cake I decided to try making. It was quite an adventure. Here is the way it turned out. Thanks to pinterest for the inspiration...
Everything turned out great! Happy Birthday Brandyn!