"T" Week and Transportation

"T" Week was TERRIFIC!  But then again, I knew it would be ;)  I had tons of fun activities planned and to be perfectly honest, heck, I was even excited about it!  Nothing says Transportation like a good 'ole Truck, so we had to do an art project involving a truck.  We started by making truck tracks all over our paper.

Everyone enjoyed picking out different colors of shapes for their trucks.  The final results were TERRIFIC!

It didn't take me long to realize that for some strange reason EVERYONE was very excited to be at school.  We tip-toed our way to our big Music/Spanish room to work off some energy and what better way to burn off the wiggles then with a game of tennis!  That's right, we played "Balloon Tennis".  The rules were very simple, just hit the balloon with our special tennis racket, (a.k.a. paper plate) and try not to hit anyone else.

It took a little longer than I expected for everyone to grow weary of our game.  But after a while we noticed several of the little girls sitting over on the side.  Okay, time for a good circle time!  

I had a fun surprise for our circle time discussion.  A taxi cab!  Not a REAL taxi (we are in Central Alabama after all!) but look what I found.

Can you believe that someone was actually going to throw this away????  REALLY!  Well, it now has a new home with me!  Everyone loved climbing in and having their pictures taken in the taxi.  I made a little take home sheet for everyone that said, "T is for Taxi" and we glued our pictures to it.  I thought it would be just a little something special for the parents to keep.  I like to keep an eye out for film developing specials.  I think it is nice for the parents to get little "surprises" from time to time.

Since our taxi pictures were going home on Tuesday, I decided that we should call it "Taxi Cab Tuesday".  We even did a special piece of art to go along with it.  

Don't you just LOVE Rick Allen's hat?
He had been to New York over the summer and

he told me that the "Taxi People" all wore hats!  

I LOVE IT!

Okay, I know there has to be more to transportation than just taxi cabs and trucks, but wow they were so fun.  Wednesday we spent the day talking about other forms of transportation.  I loved it when one of the boys started talking about "boats".  That was it, we had to do an art project with boats!  We started by painting our water.  I love to paint with unusual items.  I want everyone to "think outside the box".  We painted our water with old make-up brushes.  They were the perfect thing to help us swirl the paint to make our water.  

I just dropped big blobs of blue and white paint onto a sheet of paper, then a added some glue for texture.  We swirled and swirl!  WOW, what fun and what beautiful art!  Unfortunately someone (that would be me!) forgot to take pictures of the final results.  But, I sure you can use your imagination to see our boats and the airplanes made from shapes.   :(

No good "T" week would be complete without a turtle project and I didn't want to miss an opportunity to do something extra fun.  Our Tim the Turtle started off the night before. My sweet friend and fellow teacher, Mrs. Christi and I used hot glue fun to add a little extra fun to our turtles.  

Everyone was so surprised when they started painting.  

All of a sudden, Tim the Turtle had a tic-tac-toe board on his back!  Our end results were truly amazing!  

I love him!

Now anyone who knows me knows how much I LOVE Fridays!  Not because it is the last day of the week, but because we have Tremendous amounts of FUN on Fridays!  (I always want the students to WANT to come back to school on Monday!)  This Friday was no exception.  Our artwork was simple, but fun.  Lots and lots of hand prints made lots and lots of great art.

These alone are just terrific, but we live in Alabama AND it is football season.  So a few of my die-hard football guys got to make something a little different.  

See, I really am an equal opportunity teacher! ;)

I took out all the blocks from my classroom and replaced them with bottle tops!  

At first everyone just looked at me kind of funny.  But soon the fun begin.  By the end of the day everyone wanted us to keep the tops in our room all the time.  It seems they were a little more fun that I thought!

I also had trucks instead of cars in our room AND all our fun counting games had the counters replaced with tops!

The real fun for Friday started when we headed down to the kitchen for snack-time.  We ate a train!  

It really tasted terrific!

While we having our snack my sweet, sweet friend and fellow teacher, Mrs. Tiffany slipped in the back door.  We all had an amazing time watching her twirl her baton.  

WOW, she is really good!

Don't you love her tennis shoes, tutu and tiara!

Of course she gave each child a chance to twirl and everyone loved it!

The big surprise of the day was waiting on us we when came back to our classroom.  Tons tons of tubes and tape!  We spent the rest of the day working on our wonderful sculptures.  Some were tall 

some were not 

and some were . . . . well, I guess you could just say, some were just fun! 

What a terrific week!  Don't forget when having your own "T" week be sure to walk on your tip-toes, remind everyone to talk, not yell and when lining-up be sure to touch the wall with two fingers.  Adding fun little distractions like this not only reinforces the letter of the week, it sure does make the week more fun!

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you come back soon and check on us!