Monday Make-It - August 11

Well, another week has flown by - getting that much closer to my month off.  I have been busy making things for my room, so I am linking up with Tara.  I love Monday Make-It, it keeps me creative and inspired.

I take a lot of pictures when I go to Disneyland.  So since my classroom is Disney theme this year - I decided to make a memory game with some of the pictures.

This was super easy to do.  I printed doubles of each picture at 4 x 6, then put a piece of 4 x 6 scrapbook paper on the back. This set has the black polka dots on the back.  Laminate the photos and you have a great memory game for free centers.  

I am going to make one set with just the princesses using a different scrapbook paper, so they don't get mixed up.  I can add more picture cards to each group, when I feel my little ones are ready for it.

 A set with pictures of the kids would be a great beginning of the year center. 

This center was inspired by Jennifer at First Grade Blue Skies.  I have used the little photo albums before in my classroom, but it got me all inspired with the possibilities.  I made my own set of letter printing practice flashcards using a Disney theme, of course.

I made a set of uppercase and lowercase letters, then put them into two albums.  This way, I can have two students at a time in the center, then they can switch the albums

My head is swimming with different ideas for these albums.  

You can find it HERE

I, finally, finished my ABC small books - it was a year in the making.  My little ones did the books last year, but I needed to finish putting them together in a packet.  There are 24 books, because X, Y and Z are in one book.  My kids loved them.

You can find it  HERE

Have a great week and thanks for stopping by.  If you go back to work this week, I wish you calm days.

Five for Friday - July 18

It is Friday, ok, maybe Saturday morning, but woo hoo!!!!  This week was easier than last week - so I think it was a success.  I am linking with Kacey this week.

I, finally, took a picture of the Mickey board with the kids' pictures added.  We left some blank Mickeys, too.  I think this board turned out amazing for the first couple weeks of school.  I'm going to hate taking it down, but it needs to be replaced with student work.  I will leave the rosettes and just take down the Mickey heads.

I re-did my Center boards.  I made new leis, because I gave each of my babes' one at the end of the year.  I found the cutest center clip art from Krista Walden.  Since, I have an autistic child this year - I needed to make everything with visuals, plus it is just good practice.  I think she has about 6 or 7 different files, I probably should have bought the whole bundle.

This is the easiest way for me to control centers with my little people.  If the leis are gone, then they can't go to that center.  There is never any fighting.  You could always use plain ribbon, beads or yarn to make the necklaces.

I found this great sensory activity on Pinterest, that I knew would be perfect with my class.  You cook spaghetti noodles in kool-aid and it dyes the noodles.  

One package of spaghetti noodles, divided into 3 portions.

3 packets of Kool-aid or other drink, unsweetened

5 cups of water for each portion/

Put the water in a pot, add the drink packet and boil.  When it is boiling, add one spaghetti portion and cook until tender.  Drain, rinse with cool water.  Add noodles to a ziploc bag and repeat the process.  When finished with all three portions, add 1 tablespoon of oil to the ziploc bag and squish.

Put the noodles in a bowl and let them play.  Their hands will be a little slimy, but just wash with soap.

My kids loved it, except for one.  I think it was a texture thing. 

This week, was all about the Letter "A", so we made paper art apples for their ABC books. This was their first attempt with glue and they surprised me with their glue portion control.  Ok, it was more like shocked me.  They did a great job.

A year ago, a husband of  one of our Kinder teachers died while he was on duty.  It is sad.  She hasn't returned to work yet.  An apple tree was donated to the Kinder playground and we planted it.  We have loved and watered the tree.  It is a daily reminder to us, how special life is.

Today, when we watered the tree - we found 5 apples.  Yup, 5 of them.  The Kinder teachers were excited and sad at the same time.  A few of us shed tears.  Yes, it is only an apple tree -

 but it is a very special apple tree to us.

Five for Friday - March 21

Wow, this was a busy week.  I had lots of personal things that needed to get done this week, along with all my classroom stuff.  There is not enough hours in my day to fit it all in.

I am linking up with Kacey for lots of sharing.

I love doing directed drawing with my kids.  I am able to hit so many different skills - listening being the most important one.

I knew we had to make these leprechauns the minute I saw them on First Grade Blue Skies.  You can find the lesson here  She posted it as a freebie.  Jennifer, always, has amazing ideas on her blog.  I love all of her artwork.

My TK kids did these and I think they turned out AMAZING.  I am super proud of them.

I introduced the St. Patrick's Day sensory box.  These are so easy to make and most of the goodies are a $1.

This is the first time they took everything out of the box and sorted it.  One of my little ones came and grabbed me by the arm, so she could show me all the things they found.  She asked me to take a picture of it.  I think she thought that the leprechaun brought all the goodies.

Yesterday, we celebrated the first day of Spring by reading the "The Very Hungry Caterpillar".  This is one of my favorite books.

We made these headbands to wear home.  The parents thought they looked adorable.

I am planning more activities to do with this book next week.

I got this idea for this center from Deanna Jump's Center session at the Kinder Conference.  It was super easy to make and the best part is I already had everything - so the cost was zero.  I just needed to gather all my supplies.  I love projects like that.

I used the big oil pan.

I printed out the kids names, laminated and added a magnet strip to the back.

I sorted the foam magnet letters that came with my teaching kit into a  plastic craft box that I had at home.  The kids are going to love this center.

My grand daughter called and asked if I would make her a costume for her school Open House.  She was going to be Aphrodite.  

Ignore her goofy face, she was messing around when I was trying to take pictures.

The kids had to make a poster, dress up like the god/goddess and do a speech - during Open House.  They were getting a grade for the entire project.  They stood next to their poster, in different parts of the room and the parents came up to them to hear their speech.  We could ask them different questions about their character.  My grand daughter rocked, she is a little bit dramatic sometimes - but stinkin adorable.

Such a clever way to get the kids and parents to come to Open House.  Her teacher said that she 100% participation for 6th grade.

I love this girl.

I hope you have a great weekend and if you are lucky enough to be on Spring Break, enjoy.

Rainbow Salt Printing - Conference Idea

My first conference project was inspired by Deanna Jump - Rainbow salt printing.  Deanna had a friend that used a box lid then added construction paper and salt for writing.  I  liked the idea, but I had visions of the lid being dropped during transporting and the salt going everywhere.  Plus, I was worried about storing the lid on a shelf.

I decided that I needed a container with a lid, so I went to Wal-mart to get a couple of containers. I thought I had the perfect size container not too big or too deep.  The problem - I didn't check the inside of the container and I bought the divided containers, geez.  I, really wanted to make it for my kids to use right away - so I checked the house and found two Ziploc containers that I could use.  Of course, I couldn't find any construction paper in the house - so I scavenged through my scrapbook paper.

Total cost of the project - $.48 for the salt.  Score.

Below are the directions for the project.

First, I made a template of the bottom of the container and traced it on to black cardstock for a base.  I thought it would be easier to attach the rainbow pieces to something.

Gathered my cardstock, which is so much brighter than construction paper.

I divided the base into 6 sections and made a paper template - then traced on to the color cardstock.

I found the middle and worked my way out.  I tucked the pieces under the other color cardstock - so there were no gaps.  I used scrapbooking adhesive squares because I wanted to be able to move it around a little when I was laying it out and tucking the paper underneath.

This is what it looked like when it was finished sticking to the black piece. I turned it over so the black side was showing and cut off any of the color rainbow that was sticking over.  Per Deanna's recommendation, I laminated it - so the salt wouldn't get in between the rainbow layers.

I taped it to the bottom, but will probably end up gluing in down - not sure yet.  Pour in the salt.  I used about 1/2 the salt for both containers.  If you put in too much salt, it is hard to move the salt around.  I understand why she used the box lid - it gave them a bigger working surface to move the salt around.  But, I still like the idea of not having the salt everywhere and the kids being able to manage this center on their own.

I gave them a small paintbrush to write in the salt with.  They enjoyed writing in the salt.  I will probably make letter and word cards for them to copy in the salt.  They were super quiet when they were playing with this center.  Cleanup was easy, they put the brush in the container and made sure that they snapped the lid on tight.

I noticed that I had a pin on my Pinterest page where they put the salt into a pencil box.  This idea would work that way too - but I didn't have any pencil boxes at home.  I couldn't wait to get it made for the kids.  I will probably try that idea, too.