I am on vacation, and I hope you are too.  I am bringing back Freebie Friday to celebrate.  This week I am giving away a bingo board template that you can use to review in your classroom regardless of your level or subject.

My juniors and seniors love playing games as much as my middle school students did when I taught middle school.  Any chance I have to incorporate competition, gamification, or games into my lessons or review, I will jump at it.

My Blank Bingo Board Freebie allows you to do the same.

This blank bingo board is a five by five board that is a fully editable document.

You can fill the boards in yourself, or you can work smarter:

Give each student a blank board and have them fill in the squares before playing a review game.  Students can select their own squares by pulling terms off from a spelling or vocabulary list or out of a chapter.

All of my vocabulary products include lists that can be used in conjunction with this bingo board.

Check out all my other Freebie Posts

Adjective and Adverb Test

Spelling/Vocabulary Word List

Student Weekly Assignment Sheet

Recommendation Letter Template

Traits of a Hero Graphic Organizanizer

Social Studies Bell Ringers

One Bad Tweet Informational Reading

Grading Notebooks with Mailing Labels

Personality Puzzle

Map Game

TPT Seller Stats

Sub Plan Form

Nonfiction texts have become the "new thing" in education with the push for the Common Core Standards.  Regardless of how you feel about the standards themselves, I would argue that more nonfiction texts never hurt anyone.  In fact, many students find them more engaging than fiction stories or novels.  

 I have received a complimentary copy of this book to review from the publishers, but the opinions here are 100% mine!  This post contains affiliate links.

Nonfiction pictures books aren't just for elementary students.  I love using them with my high school classes to teach background information and prior knowledge as well as to show text features and nonfiction analyzation.

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Adventures on the Queen Mary

This engaging true story about life as a teenage bellhop on The Queen Mary will delight any mind that has an interest in ships.

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To the Stars! The First American Woman to Walk in Space

I tried this picture book out with my high school women's studies class, who decided it was a winner.  Kathy Sullivan was the first woman to walk in space; her story will inspire any girl to head into the STEM field.

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Henry David Thoreau for Kids

Books with poets and poetry line the shelves of my Advanced Placement Literature class; students seem to be much less intimidated by poetry if it is found in a picture book.  In addition, the activities in this book ask the reader to interact with Thoreau's ideas.

I find that my students enjoyed perusing this book to read and analyze as nonfiction.  In addition my own daughter enjoyed looking at the pictures in the text.  I would love to add more books like this our classroom collection.

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Child Soldier

Our school taught They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky as part of our One Book, One County movement about five years ago.  This picture book would have been perfect to build prior knowledge; now we teach that novel as part of English 9, so Child Soldier will be making regular appearances too.

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Ten Ships That Rocked the World

My last pick is another book about a ship; well, actually ten ships.  This selection of quick reads about important boats in world history will engage any maritime or history buff from age 1 to 101.

Christmas is a week away and if you are anything like me, you still have a few gifts that you have not gotten covered.  These two DIY gifts are quick and easy to make, but they always get wonderful reactions from the recipients because they are so special.

Framed Family Cloud

Isn't this gift the cutest thing you have ever seen?

My oldest gave this one to her grandmother as a Christmas gift.

I have made no fewer than ten of these word clouds and each time the recipient has gushed about them.  We have one for our family that hangs in our hallway.

The first step is to type out all the family members first and last names in a word processing documents.  By having them in a document, so you can copy and paste or come back later if you are interrupted.

To create the image I use the site Wordle.  Word takes the number of times a word appears on your list and makes the word that sized based on the number of times it appears.  This is why you want first and last names so the last name will appear larger.  I also copy the adults' first names a couple extra times, so they appear larger than the children's names.

Then hit go!

Wordle will create your cloud of names.  Then you can change the font, color,  and formation until you get the combination that you LOVE.  This is my favorite part.

The last thing to do is to print and frame it.  I personally like them framed with matting as it makes it dressier to hang on the way.

 The whole gift takes less than an hour from start to finish.

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Document Holiday Ornament

I am a packrat; I save all kinds of documents: every Christmas card, birthday card, notes from the teacher.  I have worked to sort and trash some of the boxes of papers that I have, but some are too precious to pitch, so I had to come up with a way to use and display them.  The document holiday ornament was born.

All I used was a clear glass bulb and the program from my friend's wedding.  I knew that I didn't need to keep the program from the ceremony, but I also knew that I did not want to throw it away.

Using my scrapbook paper cutter, I sliced the text of the program into one-inch strips.  Some of the border I trashed, and I could only use one side of the document.

Next, I rolled each strip into a spiral around a large marker that I had lying around to curl them.  I had to roll them fairly tight to get the strips into the bulb, but they uncurled once inside.

I was able to get five strips into the bulb without it looking crowded.

As the strips uncurled, you could see the back of the program as well, which was a very nice bonus.

What document would you like to put into an ornament for yourself or for a gift?

I adore Mid-Month Confessions today.  Time to make myself feel better about my shortcomings.

1) My grading got neglected this month

Every teacher has those times when they just can't bring themselves to grade another paper, right?  I was caught up after Thanksgiving, but that didn't last long. I guess being aware is the first step.

2) I bought a two-piece bathing suit for summer knowing I need to get fit in order to wear it.

Maybe I should put it on a hanger for display in the dining room...

3) I am afraid of all the things I regret doing and not doing.

This is why I have been trying to push myself to try new things lately.  I have set goals for blog writing- haver you noticed?  I also applied for two teacher programs this fall and to speak at a couple of conferences.

4) Balancing all my stuff is hard.

I want to do everything well, but I am finding that it just isn't possible.  Teaching, being present with my kids and husband, my blog and business, friends, housework and errands, sleep, and working out never seem to all fit into seven 24-hour days.  Randi Zuckerberg says you can only pick three; my problem is that my three are never the same, and I have two jobs: teaching and my business.  Sometimes I feel like I am spinning my wheels.

5) I enjoyed the quiet after giving my students new seating charts.

It didn't last long and the next day I had to 'remind' a few students to move to their new seats.  As a rule, I am generally not strict about seating charts, but a couple of my classes got out of hand.  I may have to change them up once a month from now on.

6) I still miss our dear kitty- Shadow

We lost him in November after he showed up on our deck two and half years ago.  We took him in (actually I woke up to him in my bed with me) and never looked back.  I still come around the corner into the kitchen and expect to see him on the rug in front of the sink where he loved to sleep.  He was so tolerant of everything as you can see.  Twitch has been a very lovey cat since we lost Shadow.  Just writing this is getting me choked up- I just miss him.  He did go quickly in my husband's arms, but his absence if felt in our home.  Hug your kids and kitties tight!

On a much lighter note, what do you have to confess to this month?

Museums, science centers, and cultural exhibits are some of the best trips that I have been on.  I also love EPCOT at Walt Disney World because I get to spend the day traveling around the world meeting new people and trying new food.  While not the mecca of Orlando, Florida, The Grand Rapids Public Museum has offerings for the whole family.  Our family has had the opportunity to visit this institution several times.

The Grand Rapids Public Museum hosts wonderful traveling exhibitions in addition to their regular collections.  We have seen the Titanic Experience, The Robot Zoo, and American Spirits in addition The Discovery of King Tut that is pictured here.  The Discovery of King Tut was one of our family's favorites.  Right now they have an exhibit on The Peanuts comic strip that looks like something our family would love.

As a social studies teacher and someone who has always adored anything to do with Egyptology (What kid did not want to be Indiana Jones?) This exhibit was a must-see trip for us.  Museum admission ($8 for adults and $3 for kids) includes some special exhibits, but others require special add-on admission, which usually runs about $13.

While everything was a recreation because the originals are no longer loaned out by Egypt due to damage that occurred, not a single piece was blase'.  The amount of gold in the exhibit was awe-inspiring.  My photos don't even do it justice.

My husband and I couldn't get over the number of artifacts found within King Tut's tomb.

One of the most interesting parts of the exhibit was that you got to walk through the tomb to get to the interior of the exhibit.  We had the chance to experience what Howard Carter saw when he first unearthed it; there were numerous rooms before arriving at the sarcophagus of King Tut.

Most of us have seen photographs of King Tut's sarcophagus, but seeing an exact replica was breath-taking.  It is a truly magnificent piece of art to memorialize the most famous pharaoh of Egypt.

The Grand Rapids Public Museum also makes sure that there are plenty of opportunities for photographs and for kids to experience the museum hands-on.

Do not forget to take a spin on the historic 1928 carousel before you leave the museum.

While you are in Grand Rapids, be sure to go across the street to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum (The only presidential museum not connected to the presidential library) and see all the great memorabilia from our Michigan president.

I was in no way compensated for this post; the opinions here are 100% mine!