Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Indian Corn Art

My kids created this Indian corn using Legos! The Duplo Legos are the perfect size for this activity. Their hand prints made the maize even cuter.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Fire Safety / Community Helper Fireman Activity

The kiddos enjoyed painting a picture of fire using finger paint. We used red and yellow, and the kids were excited to see that these colors create orange when mixed together. In small group, I gave the kids precut shapes, and used positional words (and also modeled) where to place the shapes to create a fire truck. 

Magic Appearing Letters

My kiddos loved this crayon resist activity. Before the lesson I wrote the first letter of each student's name in white crayon. The kids used liquid watercolors to make the letters appear. This was a fun way to encourage the students to recognize the first letter in their name.

Environmental Print Word Wall

The kiddos are really enjoying adding to our environmental print wall. They get excited with every new word they're able to "read". Every time a new word is brought in, I first attach it to our "I can read___" sentence strips. They like to use pointers when reading the sentences. After a few days we'll place the environmental print label under the the correct beginning letter. The kids can bring in environmental print all year long.

Fall is here!

My favorite time of year has arrived, and my kiddos have been busy learning about Fall and the changes this time of year brings. Here is my new door. The web and spider are Dollar Tree finds, and the kids enjoyed making these cute handprint spiders complete with googly eyes.

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Classroom Door

   
This is my classroom door that has welcomed my kiddos these first 2 weeks of school. And what an amazing two weeks they've been. My students are just perfect! They are cute, smart, sweet, and I'm just loving them. We're all (myself included) catching on so very well. 
     This door was inspired by something I saw Pinterest. The original pin can be found in my "Classroom Door" board on Pinterest. Unfortunately that board will not benefit me this year as we are no longer allowed to put paper on our doors. So this will not be up much longer. I will still pin classroom door decor on Pinterest, so hopefully others will find it useful.

Friday, July 11, 2014

Slow Progress

     I'm slowly making progress in my classroom. I wanted to share a little crafty fun that took place this week. I mentioned in a previous post that 13 different stations are required in my room, and space is quite limited. So I made the decision to get rid of the teacher desk. Yes, I did it. It's gone! And guess what? It feels great! My students can enjoy more space now, and everything fits perfectly without feeling to cramped.
     My reasoning for getting rid of the teacher desk, besides giving me more space, is because I don't believe I will be sitting much anyways. I'm teaching PreK this year. I'll be with the kids day long with no planning break. It doesn't make sense to keep the desk.
     Instead, I now have a small cart for my computer, printer, and maybe a small filing box. So, this is my lovely cart "before & after". This poor little cart was found in storage at the school. Dirty, slightly rusted in spots, just unfortunate looking. I was able to fix it up with a little black spray paint and some chevron contact paper that you can purchase from Target. (However, my contact paper came from my fabulous mom who found this paper at a yardsale for a steal!)

     So here it is! I'm happy with the way it turned out :)

Cheers!