Just a Bunch of Tubes

Last week, during our Dr. Seuss week, I had this "great idea" to do something with empty paper towel and toilet tissue rolls.  You know those lovely tubes that "you just can't throw away".  I have everyone collecting these for me so I have quite a large supply.  Alas, my "great idea" just never came to be.  There were so many other things that I wanted to do that week so I crammed all the empty cardboard tubes into my closet for another day.  Well, this past week I was in the mood for something different.  Right after lunch on Wednesday I pulled out my stash and dumped it on our tables.  I had already punched holes into each end of all the tubes (I know, but it was a great way for me use up some nervous energy) and added some chenille sticks (better know to us old folks as "pipe cleaners") and stepped back.  OH MY GOODNESS, we had fun!!!

Can you see the look on the little boy's face in the stripped shirt?
He just realized how to connect the tubes so they would not fall apart!

 

Of course for the first few minutes I heard, "what do we do?" and "I can't!" but soon those negative comments turned into "LOOK Mrs. Karen!".  I knew they were having fun!  I loved watching my sweet "S" when she realized how to bend the pipe cleaners so that the tubes would stay together.  That was all it took!  Soon everyone was busy building their very own sculptures.  By the way, I knew this was really fun when I announced that it was time to get ready for our playground time and no one wanted to go!  I hope you try this and if you do, please let me know how it goes. 

Transportation and "T" Week

AHHHHH!  "T" Week!  This is an exciting week for us and yes, it is ONE of my favorites.  Let me show you some of the terrific stuff we did during our "T"ransportation Week!

We started off the week reviewing the shapes we have been talking about and making our wonderful shape car!  This ended up being more fun than I expected because everyone got so excited when they recognized the shapes.  I know this is simple, but it was very fun and effective.

Tuesday is a day when I try and have "extra-fun" art for us because we do not have any of our "special" activities (i.e. Spanish, Music, Chapel) and that can make for a long day.  This Tuesday really was extra special because we started our day with SCISSORS!!!!  I have to admit that this class LOVES to cut with scissors and they are very good!  We cut and cut and made these adorable little sailboats.

Of course everyone got to pick their favorite colors!  While our sailboats were drying we started working on making some water for them to float in.

The water was really fun to make because we just squirted blue, green and white paint onto the paper and started mixing it up!  WOW, the results were amazing!  I love projects like this because the children are so proud of them.  Here are the final results!

 

Everyone had such a good time all week practicing our "T" sounds.  We decided our favorite "T" word was turtle so we decided to make one.



 He is very simple but look closely . . . .

there is a tic-tac-toe board on his back!!!

 

Our Fabulous Fun Friday was extra special this week!  We headed to kitchen was all of the plastic trucks and cars that I could find.

 

We had a great lesson in sharing and mixing colors!  Can you see the green????

 

Now, finally my favorite part of "T" week began . . . "T"ubes and "T"ape!!!  OH MY!!  This is the one of the best days ever!  All we did was collect lots, lots and lots of paper towel, toilet paper and even wrapping paper tubes.

(This is only a small portion of the tubes.)

 

My friend and co-worker, Mrs. Christi and I cut long sections of masking tape and the imagination took over!

 



Some were small, some were tall, some were just plain HUGE!  No one cared, we just had a great day.  My favorite part of this activity is seeing the children's faces as they proudly take their creations to their parents at the end of the day!!!!!

 

WOW, this was really a terrific week.  Thank you so much for visiting with us and I hope you stop back by again.





Friends!

"Friendship isn't a big thing – it’s a million little things."  I think this is one of the most true sayings I have ever read.  I am very thankful to work with a wonderful group of ladies each and everyday.  During the last few weeks I have had to rely on my friends a little more than usual.  So, to all my friends. . . THANKS!  I LOVE YOU ALL!

This is my sweet friend, Tiffany!  For our "T" week she came to school dressed in a teal shirt, tiara, tennis shoes, a tutu and brought her baton so she could twirl for us!!!!  The look on the children's faces were absolutely priceless.  She is really good too AND she let everyone take a turn twirling!  TONS OF FUN!

 

Next, my dear friend Lauren dropped by our classroom to play her tuba and her trombone!  This girl can play tons of instruments!  She even let us all have a turn pushing the buttons while she blew the notes!   Seriously, how cool is this!  Of course, the rest of day was spent with us making "ummmppaa" sounds!

My final thank-you goes to my true "partner-in-crime", my sweet friend Mrs. Christie!  You see, I did the dumbest thing two weeks ago.  I stepped out of my kitchen and twisted my ankle.  After a trip to emergency room and a set of crutches later, I decided that being at school was not a good idea.  For the first time in my teaching career, I missed an entire week of school!  It was okay, I knew my class was in good hands.  So, thanks Christie - you are the best!

"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!