The Box

I did an experiment in my classroom the past two weeks.  I rescued a box from the garbage pile,

 

and covered it with white butcher paper.  I set out some markers and did not say a word about it.  On the first day, no one said anything about the box.  No one even asked me about it.  BUT, on the second day . . . .

it became an easel!  It also became a wonderful place to make . . . .

PATTERNS!!!!!

The power of junk!  I'm a going to try and find something "different" each week for my students to draw on.  Do you have any ideas for me???  If you do, please post them in the comment sections!
THANKS!

Winter Week Part 2

We were having so much fun during our wonderful winter week that we decided to extend it for a few more days.  I had a big surprise for everyone on Monday morning . . . . snow bowling!!!  During Christmas I had emailed everyone I knew and asked them to save me their gift boxes.  You know those flimsy little white boxes???  They made perfect bowling pins!  Everyone had a great time trying to knock down our "snow pins" and we even had a few strikes!!

Our art project on Monday was very special!  We turned ourselves into snow people.  Lucky for me my local Walgreens had a sale on their photo developing and believe you me, I took advantage of it! 

Aren't these the cutest things you have EVER seen???  Of course the snow was made with our fingers.  Boy, the Moms loved these!

 

I had another fun surprise on Tuesday!  I gathered all the scrap pieces of white construction paper I could find and wrote our numbers, colors and shapes on them.  Next, I wadded them up and put them in a big tub.

Everyone got to pick out a "snowball" and read what was written on it.  Next, (here comes the fun part!) you got to "throw" the "snowball" into the . . . .

snowman's belly!

 

We could have played this game for hours!  It was such a big success that we left him in our room and everyone played the game by themselves!  Now, that was a fun game!

 

It has been very cold here but remember, our school is in the "DEEP" south, so snow is something we hardly ever see.  But that didn't stop us from making more snowballs!  A little baking soda and water and suddenly . . . .

 

snowballs!!!!

we even made a snowman!

Okay, now here comes the fun part . . . . everyone took turns dropping their snowballs (or snowman) into a big bowl of vinegar!

 

Sizzling Snowballs!!

SUPER FUN!\

 

I am always looking for fun ways to help us review our shapes so during the winter months I made us some cute little "shape penguins"!  The children have had a lot of fun playing with them.  The star penguin is their favorite.



 

We read the book, Snowballs by Lois Ehlert and my class loved it.  It is a wonderful book about making a snowman from found objects.  Well, we had to make our very own snowmen/women from some things we found.  Aren't they wonderful?!?!?!

 

This snowlady has a bowtie pasta for a hair bow!

This snowman has a leaf for a hat!

Each child carefully picked out all the parts of their snowman/snowlady.  Just a note, we did not use our regular school glue, we used some Aleene's Tacky Glue that was left over from Christmas.  We had a great time!



Quiet Spray

I have had a landslide of requests for my "Quiet Spray" label. As always I am happy to e-mail you the label. If you would like a copy please do me a favor, leave me a comment (with your name and e-mail address) and become a follower of my blog. THANK YOU!

USA!!

I've said it before and I'll say it again . . . "I LOVE THE USA!"  What an amazing week we had talking about our wonderful country and some of the people who made it great! 

We started out with one of my all time favorite ideas.  Each child was assigned a specific person who helped shaped our country.  I went to the library and found historical books about each person.  My class loves when I show them "grown-up" books.  I know, most of the information in these books was too advanced for my class, but we loved the pictures and there were a lot of exciting details that our normal books lacked.  I also gave them little details all week about their specific person and by the end of the week everyone was referring to each other by their character's name!  My favorite moment came when I overheard Abraham Lincoln say, "Hey George (Washington), do you want to play with me on the playground?".  SUCCESS!

We started our week by talking about George Washington.  Talking about President Washington was fun and exciting for my class, especially when they saw his hair and clothes.  We spent the day chopping down the cherry tree and working on this amazing craft.

This was so simple but so much fun!  At the same time we were talking about George Washington we started discussing Betsy Ross.  Well, sweet Kloe (a.k.a. Betsy Ross) said she wanted to make Betsy Ross instead of George Washington.  Uhhhh . . . . okay, here is Kloe's version of Betsy Ross!

The bonnet was ALL Kloe's idea!  She saw it in one of our books and nothing would do until we figured out how to put a bonnet on Betsy,  I LOVE IT!!

Wednesday was spent talking about our flag.  We talked about the 13 stripes and counted ALL the stars (over and over and over again!).  We looked at pictures of older flags and flags from other countries.  We also made our very own American flags!

The only part of the flag that had any assistant from me was the blue square.  I drew it and the children did the rest. 

 The children used their fingers to make the stars.

We had a wrench thrown into our plans on Thursday but since it was such an opportunity, we did not mind.  One of our local TV meteorologist came to visit us.  James Spann came to talk to us about the weather. 

'

Since we were talking about our flag, we made Mr. Spann a very special flag!

 

I think he really like it!  We even made it onto the local news on Friday night!

 

After Mr. Spann left we spent the remainder of our day talking about Abraham Lincoln.  Since everyone was amazed to learn that he lived in a log cabin, we made one for very own.

 

 

Look closely and you can see the numbers written down the side.  I took ten strips of paper and wrote 1 through 10 on them.  The children had to put them in order to form the log cabin.  Of course the rest of the art project was a good way to review our shapes.  Good 'old Abe had a circle for his head and 2 rectangles made his hat.  And the log cabin had a rectangle door, a square window and a triangle roof.  We used the child's fingers to make his beard.

Finally our Fabulous Fun Friday arrived!  Our letter of the week was "U" so we declared Friday "Unusual Day"! 

Our day begin by our class coming in to see all our new unusual classroom.  We removed the "regular" blocks and replaced them with . . .

well, I'm not real sure what these are but I found them in our supply closet.  I think they are some type of cardboard supports.  We used them along with some cardboard boxes my friend Laura gave us for some really cool buildings.

We actually called them "logs" and used them for our log cabins. 

I also added a new fine motor skill game.  It was so simple, I glued little cups to a large rectangle box and added a golf ball.  It was a big hit! 

We had so much fun trying to move the ball through out simple maze.

I will admit the most fun activity we did this past week was very unusual!  We drew pictures under the table!

We used markers and colored pencils to make some amazing art work (which of course I didn't get any pictures).  But, it was so much fun!

As our week came to an end we headed to the kitchen to make some (very) ugly cookies! 

We added several different colors of food coloring to our vanilla icing to make the "ugliest" color.  We spread it on some graham crackers and YUM, they were so good!

Because of President's Day on Monday, our week was a little short, but we managed to squeeze in a lot of fun.  I hope you find some of these ideas helpful for your classroom and hope you stop back by again!

Ring My Bell!

I love when I find something lights a "spark" with my class!  Last year while carefully dissecting the newest items at my local Dollar Store (a.k.a. a teacher's best friend!), I came across a little desk bell.

OK, this is NOT the actual bell!  

There are NO flowers laying around in my classroom :0)

It came in handy last year when the noise level got a bit too loud in our room.  Towards the end of the year, all I had to do was give it a tiny "ding" and my class would come to a sudden stop and look to see what was next.  But alias, that was last year and this year's class is not quite ready for that YET (we will be soon).   ANYWAY. . . . . the other day while we were all in "circle time" playing "The Color Game", one of our favorites, a child found our "color of the day" way to quickly so I said, "what shape is it?".  When he told me the shape I made my famous, or maybe I should have said infamous, "ding-ding-ding" sound and an idea was born!  I jumped up, grabbed the little bell and brought it to our circle.  Suddenly, the same 'ole circle time game had a new twist.  When the child found the color AND could tell us the shape of the object, they got to "ring the bell"!  Now, EVERYONE wants to participate and ring the bell!  Of course, I have the the old disco song, Ring My Bell stuck in my head!

New School Year 2012-13!

First, I must say how very sorry I am that I have not posted over the summer.  Heck, I haven't had a chance to post since APRIL!  OH, I'M SO SORRY!  It seems that I underestimated the amount of time it would take to do some renovations in our house.  But, it is done and I am (almost) ready to head back to school.  We start with our  "Teacher Work Day" on Monday and I am very excited.  Let me show you a couple of fun new ideas that I have for my class this year.  The first is our new "Color Word Puzzle".

 It cost me absolutely NOTHING to make!  I used an old "Grime Boss" container (I think it is the generic version of a "Swifter" refill container)

and some paint chips from my local Lowe's.  I used by NEW Cricut Imagine (a Christmas gift from my sweet son) and added some letters.  INSTANT GAME!

Each one of the paint chips is a different shade of the color, and you can see in the GREEN picture that all the puzzle pieces fit nicely into the container.  (NOTE:  Before someone gets all upset about me "stealing" paint chips, I did ask if I could take them and was told "of course" by the sales associate.)

My next new item is a little attention grabber I made from an old box of sea salt.

Since all the salt would not come out of the bottle,

I figured I might as well do something fun with it.  First, I covered the box with some of scraps of scrapbooking paper.  I found this cute little guy on the internet and he looked like he was "trying to listen"

so I added him to the bottom.  I wrote "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?????" and glued it on the top.  The idea is simple, when we start to get a little loud in our circle time, I will shake the bottle.  As the noise settles down, I will shake it softer and softer.  You must be quiet to hear the salt shaking in the bottle!

I wanted a new chart for our "Number of the Week" activity so I made this -

Each week we will be able to see the number, the word and count it all on a new chart!  After it is laminated,  I am hoping to let the children write the number and it's name with a dry erase marker.

Okay, I know everyone has seen those adorable "First Day of School" frames floating around on PINTEREST and of course, I had to have one too!  Here is my version -

I can hardly wait to try it out!

I have a few more ideas that I will be busy working on this afternoon and I promise I will take some pictures of my classroom when I get it finished.  THANKS for visiting and I hope you stop back by soon!!

Ocean/Sea Unit

(I'M STILL BEHIND!!!  AHHHHH!  I guess this will be my battle cry until the end of school and I am so sorry.  Little did I know that remodeling a few rooms would be so stressful and time consuming!  But then again, it could just be me!  OKAY, enough excuses, let's talk about our week.)

What an amazing week we have had!  We just completed our unit on "Ocean/Sea"!  We have spent the entire week "barking" like seals, "blowing" like whales and dolphins and "putting a fish bubble" in our mouths while we  walk down the hall.  Let me show you some of our fun . . . .

We started on Monday with one of my all-time favorite activities - finger paint!  I've had several classes over the years that just flat would not finger paint!  Lucky for me, this year's group is all in!  We mix blue, green and white all together to make . . . .

an ocean!  The next day we cut some seaweed.

and made a few hand prints for our sea creatures.  On Thursday,we glued everything on, we added some tan paint for the sand.  I like to find different and sometimes unusual objects for my students to paint with.  To paint our sand we used some old make-up brushes that a sweet neighbor of mine gave me.

The end results were amazing!

Sweet "H" ask me to take a picture of artwork!  

I guess they are getting use to my camera!

During the week a came across some alphabet stickers in our supply closet.  Everyone loves stickers and we have several fine-motor skill activities that are always a big hit.  Like this one - 

(I know SANTA STICKERS!).  Instead of tracing the circles (BORING!), I laminate the pages and we use stickers to make our circles or other shapes and numbers.  The stickers come right off with a little wipe of water.  Okay, back to the alphabet stickers I found!  I laid them out on the table one day after lunch 

and WOW . . . .

suddenly we are making words!  VERY COOL!

I found some large old copies of a fish stashed away in my cabinet and I thought we could do something  neat with them.  First we colored them using good 'ole Dot Markers.  Hmmm . . . I could see my class was looking at me and thinking, "really, this is it?".  I had to do something and quick!  I found some rubbing alcohol in my cabinet

 (WHAT?  You don't have rubbing alcohol in YOUR cabinet?) 

and the FUN began!  Everyone loved smelling it (YUCK!) and painting with it too!

The alcohol made the ink from the markers soften a bit.

The results were pretty cool!  Later in the week, I cut them out along with an extra piece of plain construction paper.  Next, we stapled the two pieces together and the children stuffed them with some old pillow batting that I found in our supply closet.  (Sorry, no picture of the final results, but trust me . . . CUTE!)

I found some activity cards over at Tiddler Approved and we have had so much fun this week in circle time as we acted out each of the sea creatures.  I hope you will check them out!

Our Fabulous Fun Friday was even more fun than usual this week because of an amazing gift I received.

Can you believe someone was going to THROW THIS AWAY????????  Good thing we rescued it!  Our class spent the entire day Friday painting the box.  The final project . . . .

The world's LARGEST aquarium!

All four sides of the box were paint with every shade of blue and green that you could imagine!  We added some seaweed (see the pieces floating?) and some little fish from the Ellison machine.  Someone asked me at the end of the day if I was going to throw it away.  REALLY!?!?!?!  NO, we are saving this masterpiece for our art show in a few weeks!

Thanks for stopping by and visiting with us.  I hope to catch up with our other activities very soon.  I hope you will check back soon!