Donor’s Choose

My classroom recently had a project funded from Donor’s Choose.  I cannot even tell you how excited I am about this!  Our project proposal was for a new dramatic play kitchen, which should be arriving by the end of this week. 

As I watched this project over the course of the last few months, I felt truly touched by the kindness and generosity that complete strangers showed to the students within my classroom by donating to this project.  I have been truly touched by this experience. 

Since learning that my first project was funed, I have now posted a new proposed project to purchase items for my dramatic play kitchen. Here is a link to my proposed project:

Mrs. K’s Donor’s Choose Project

Thanks for looking!

 

~Barb

Scarecrow Take Home Project and Bulletin Board

This month I sent home a scarecrow take home project for students to decorate at home with their parents for a bulletin board that we are completing at school.  We also made scarecrows and decorated corn with our fingerprints.  In case you’re interested, the corn pattern and idea came from The Mailbox Arts and Crafts Book Preschool/Kindergarten Edition.    Here are some pictures of the bulletin board (which is still a work in progress).

 

 

These are shape Jack-o-Lanterns that students made.

This is a close-up of one of the scarecrow’s with the writing prompt.

This is a close-up of the corn. Students used fingerprints to decorate their ears of corn.

Well in case you would like to use the same project at home or with your classroom, here is a copy of the pattern and letter I sent home:

My Scarecrow Take Home Project

Scarecrow Pattern for Take Home Project

If you do take home projects within your classroom, I’d love to hear your ideas for projects if you are willing to share!

Where the Wild Things Are

Recently in my class we read Maurice Sendak’s book, Where the Wild Things Are.  This is one of my favorite books of all time.  Although I haven’t seen the movie yet (it just opened this past weekend), I am so excited to go see it next weekend with my dear hubby.  I quickly drew a Wild Thing pattern which we painted in class and decorated collage style.  This project was so much fun and the students really enjoyed it!  After my aides and I put this bulletin board up, one of my instructional assistants had the idea to add a boat with a blank Wild Thing pattern to representing “Max” taming all of the Wild Things from his boat.  This board turned out so cute!  Here is a picture:

 

This is the completed "Wild Thing" board.

 

So–I would love to hear your thoughts on the movie if you were able to see it this weekend.  What did you think?  I can’t wait to see your commments!

 

~Barb

As requested…

I had a request for the Star Word chart (kindergarten sight words) so I thought that I would post these. I’m also posting a BANG! Sight word game that I made over the summer, a Roll-say-Keep game for practicing sight words, letters, and numbers, and the Today is…Song Chart that I made (see the post below for a picture).   I hope that you enjoy these!

Star Word Chart

BANG Sight Word Game

BANG Sight Word Game Directions

Roll Say Keep

Today is Song

Feel free to let me know of suggestions of things to add!

Miscellaneous Back to School Pictures…

I know that I’m running a little bit behind, but here are some pictures of my classroom boards this school year.   Sorry that the picture quality isn’t that great–I used my iPhone to take these pictures.

This is the back of the classroom. The bulletin board sets are DJ Inkers from Carson Delllosa and the paper is cloud and green fadeless paper that I purchased at my local school supply store.

 

This is a close-up of the name art that we did with Do-a-Dot Markers.

This is a board with some shape art to create school busses.

 

This is the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star Board. Students fingerpainted paper yellow and then we later cut them out and added glitter.

 

This board is the classroom bulletin board with information for parents.

 

This is the calendar/group time board. At the beginning of the school year we focus a lot on color recognition, but later in the year I will add concept posters for the Letter of the Week.

  

This is a close-up of a poster that I made to accompany a song that we sing in class. The days of the week were glued onto different colored cardstock and laminated. I added velcro to the back to attach.

 

This is a close-up of the Star Word chart that I made for students featuring the kindergarten sight words. Students also have a small version of this poster.

If you like these posters and you would like to make them too then feel free to ask!

This is the door with laminated DJ Inker pencil notebook pages with students' names.Birthday bears on cabinets--just ignore the mess on top of the cabinets!

 

Colors and color words bulletin board above the sink in the back of the classroom.

 

This is the classroom library.

Here is a picture of my fancy dancy chart stand (it's really a closet rack)!

This is a picture of my 'teacher' area behind my desk.

This is a picture of the schedule that I made for the whiteboard. I printed these, glued them to cardstock, laminated them and then added magnetic tape to back.

This is the giant Mr. Potato Head that I found at Costco. I think that it has four small potato heads inside. I just wanted to show you this because it's so cute!

Using Sign Language in the Classroom

There is a TON of reserch out there supporting the use of sign language in the classroom regardless of whether or not you have hearing impaired students.  Check out this teaching tip to use sign language in the classroom to assist with classroom management:

more about “Tricks of the Trade: Using Sign Langu…“, posted with vodpod

Incorporating sign language into your early childhood classroom not only assists with classroom management, but it is also promotes the long term retention of concepts by utilizing various modalities during instruction (to learn more about Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences click here).

In my classroom, we use simple signs in a variety of ways.  Probably my favorite way to incorporate sign language in the classroom is with music.  During my calendar time, students will sign and sing  the months of the year, the days of the week, etc.  I also use sign language with songs and books, such as Brown Bear.  One fabulous resource that I was introduced to this summer was the Signing Time videos.  These are fantastic!  Here is a video clip from one of the videos:

Click here to go to the Signing Time website for more information on their products.

Another resource that I love for learning new signs is the online ASL dictionary, which you can find here.  Just search for the signs they are alphabetically listed.  This website helped me tremendously, because I seem to have a more difficult time learning signs from books or pictures.  The videos of the signs are great, and most of the basic signs (colors, shapes, Days of the week, etc) can be found at this site.

Here are some links to printable sign language resources:

1. Baby Sign Flash Cards from Leading to Read
2. ASL Letter Flashcards
3. Basic ASL Survival Signs

Here are some other links to great sign language resources:

1. Sign to Succeed Blog
2. Babies and Sign Language there is simply a TON of information here.  Great informational articles too.

Feel free to let me know of any other great resources that are available!  Thanks for looking!

Graphing Ideas…

During my recent trip to Lakeshore Learning earlier this summer I purchased a Question of the Day chart set to use in my classroom, which I am so excited to use! Here is a picture below:

This kit retails for $49.95 from Lakeshore Learning.

So this has me thinking about graphing ideas that can be used in the preschool or kindergarten classroom. So, I thought that I would share with you some great resources that I have found.

• Jessica Meacham has an entire page devoted to graphing ideas, she also includes many great printables to create your own charts and she also lists literature links as well.  Just click here to see her go to her site.
• Jennifer’s Kinderpond website also has a page with daily graphing questions with printables, many of these have been specifically created to accompany Jessica Meacham’s graphing ideas.  Click here to go this page.
• CanTeach has a page with questions that can be used for graphing questions right here.
• Kelly’s Kindergarten also has graphing ideas on her Calendar page.  She also has some great documents to download as well.  Click here to go to her site.
• Here are some graphing ideas to use with literature:  Carol Hurst’s Children Literature Site
• ABC Teach has these great printables to use for many graphing activities:  ABC Teach Graphing Printables
• Check out this link here to find some great graphing lesson ideas to use with kindergarten students.
• Teaching Heart also has an entire page devoted to graphing here.  There are a ton of great pictures and lesson ideas here!

Have fun creating graphs with your students this year, the possibilities are endless!

Completed Letter Recognition Pages…

Hello everyone!  I just wanted to let you know that I just completed the rest of the letter recognition pages that I created earlier this school year.  So here are the links to the pages that I just finished.

Letter O Worksheet

Letter P Worksheet

Letter Q Worksheet

Letter R Worksheet

Letter S Worksheet

Letter T Worksheet

Letter U Worksheet

Letter V Worksheet

Letter W Worksheet

Letter X Worksheet

Letter Y Worksheet

Letter Z Worksheet

If you are looking for more letter recognition pages or ideas, then check out my ABC’s Letter and Sound Recognition Page.  I hope that you enjoy these!

Feeling Crafty…

A couple of days ago I  wandered around JoAnn’s Fabric store and Wal-Mart and bought some stuff to begin some new projects from my classroom.  While I was surfing the internet earlier today, I found some inspiration from Deanna Jump’s kindergarten classroom.  On her August page, which you can see here she has these adorable little monster puppets that accompany a pocket chart poem.  So, this got me thinking….hmmm…I can do that (I think).  I mean why not!  I have a sewing machine!  I have a glue gun!  So now I’m on a mission to make some puppets.

Oh, and by the way, I also remembered today that JoAnn’s Fabric store gives Teacher Discounts!  All you have to do is show your badge and sign-up for their teacher card and then you can receive a 15% off discount on your purchases.  I provided you a link too so you can complete this online:  JoAnn Fabric Teacher Discount.

So here is a picture of what I have finished so far:

The materials used to make these puppets were the following: felt, feathers, googly eyes, ric rac, ribbon and a glue gun. The total estimated cost to make these three puppets is $5.

Here are some other places on the web to go for ideas and patterns to create your own puppets:

1.  Ideas for Puppets there is a whole page here devoted to making different kinds of puppets.

2.  Edu Place this link goes right to a directions to make your own hand puppets.

3.  Felt Finger Puppets this link goes right to a great document on how to create some cute animal finger puppets.

4.  Duck Puppet Pattern this link from Michael’s will give you directions and a pattern to make this adorable puppet.

Have fun being crafty!

Getting Ready for Next Year…

I know, I know…I had big plans for this summer. I was going to organize all of my teaching stuff, clean my home office, and update my blog regularly. Well, that was the plan. However, Summer School has kind of sucked the energy right out of me. So I apologize that I haven’t updated my blog a little more this summer. As Summer School winds down, I have come to the realization that there is only three more weeks of summer until I return to school to start setting up. Where did the time go?!?

Well, one thing about summer school is you are able to share and get great ideas from other teachers. One of other summer school teachers does a “Chef of the Week” program with her kindergartners during the regular school year. Students complete a cooking station on every Friday (with the exceptions of parties, etc). The students in her class make a ‘cookbook’ of the recipes and draw a happy or sad face if they liked or disliked the snack. At the end of the year or at Open House, they take their cookbooks home. This sounded to me like such a cute idea! So, I think that I am going to try to implement this in my class next year.  Here is a cover that I made for your Chef of the Week Book:  Cookbook Cover.   I printed this on yellow cardstock, and my plan is to take a picture of the kids in a chef dress-up costume by my dramatic play kitchen.  Kind of like the picture below.

This chef-dress up outfit is pretty inexpensive. It retails for $14.99 from Amazon.

The picture  of the student will go on the cover and then I will laminate.  The inside pages will all be blank pages.  Whenever we complete a recipe in class, students will glue the recipe to an inside page and then draw a happy or sad face if they liked or disliked the snack.  I’m also planning on making an overall class book with pictures from throughout the year, and class graphs how many liked the snack, etc.  Once I finish these after the beginning of the school year, I will post some pictures for you to see.

If you would like to try cooking in the classroom, The MailboxMagazine always has a great section in their magazine about kids in the kitchen.  They also have a book titled, “Look ‘n’ Cook”.  Here is a sample page from this book:  Veggie Snowman Recipe.

This book retails for $22.95 from The Education Center.

Here are some links to some great recipes to use in the classroom:

1.  Perpetual Preschool Themes just click on the theme that you are teaching and then the snack link and then you will be directed to the snack ideas that correspond with the teaching theme.

2.  Kids Cooking Activities there are lots of pictures here, which is nice.

3.  Our Crafts n Things there are some super cute recipe ideas here in this great blog!

4.  Hubbard’s Cupboard I love this site!  It has everything!

5.  Making Learning Fun there are a ton of recipe ideas here too, you just have to dig for them in the theme pages.

I hope that you enjoy these!