New School Year 2013-14

The 2013-14 school year has officially begun!  It is quite a difference from last year.  I went from having 6 students last year to 9 this year.  I must confess that I really like a large number of students.  I know, most people think I'm totally nuts when I say that but to me there is so much less fussing with a large class.  As always, I held my breath the first day with my students.  Most of them already knew me because I had their brother/sister in my classroom or they had seen me at school last year.  A few were new to our school so I prepared for the worst.  I pulled out all the "extra" fun items from last year, I guess I was going for the "WOW" factor and it must have worked because we had NO tears!!! HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY!!!!!!  All in all my classroom is pretty much the same as last year.  Here are a few pictures.

This is my new birthday wall.

When the child has a birthday

we will add another candle to their cupcake.

This is our "Art Gallery".

We hang up very special pieces of art.

A close-up of our "Art Gallery" sign.

I love the lettering! 

My sweet son and his sweet bride-to-be gave me a Cricut Imagine last year

and boy have I used it!

I'm extremely lucky because my classroom is so large.  We have plenty of space to spread out.  Heck, I'm not lucky, I'm blessed.  I work with the most amazing people everyday.  I never say, "I've got to go to work", I say "I'm going to school".  Work is something you DO, school is something I WANT to do.  Okay, okay enough of that mushy stuff, let's see what we did last week!

We really don't have a theme or set curriculum for the first week.  We call it our "Getting to Know You" week.  We spent the first day taking pictures and talking, mostly talking.  I always try and pull out some paint the first day, because well, everyone loves to paint!  Of course we made an apple, but ours was a little different.  As one child said, "it looks like someone ate it already!".  It made me giggle.

 

I hope you can tell, we used our finger prints for the seeds!

On Thursday, we made a giant apple tree!  Again, we used our precious fingers for the apples.

Here is the special little poem at the bottom of the page.

Friday was a very special day!  It was our first "official" Fabulous Fun Friday and we had so much fun!!!  We made our very special "Friendship Pudding".  Now, if you have never made Friendship Pudding you are really missing out on some fun.  All you need is a couple of packages of instant pudding, milk and an empty container with a lid.  This year we used chocolate pudding and an empty Maxwell House Coffee tin.  I covered the tin with some red (our color for next week) construction paper and we added the pudding mix and milk.  Everyone took turns shaking up our concoction.  As we practiced sharing we also practice learning our names.  It was so much fun, by the end of the day we were all friends. 

 

 

While the pudding was setting up in the refrigerator we worked a little more on our sharing.  We covered our big kitchen table with butcher paper and everyone got big cups of paint.  I was careful not to give anyone their "favorite" color.  There was several very sad faces, but I had a plan.  Everyone got busy painting their masterpieces and then the fun began.  We started swapping the paint!!!  Next thing you know, everyone was calling out their friend's name asking if they would swap paint.  It was so much fun!  Here is our masterpiece! 

Of course the grand finale of our day was eating our WONDERFUL Friendship Pudding.  It was a great first week! 

The 2013-14 School Year Begins Today!

I can't believe it!  Where did my summer go???  I'm excited to start a new year but at the same time I'm a little sad leaving my sweet hubby after enjoying three fun months with him.  Oh well, my car is packed and I'm on my way!!!!  I can't wait to see what this year brings!  Wish me luck!

Teacher Appreciation Days at Jo-Anns!

Jo-Ann is hosting a Teacher Appreciation Days savings event August 10 and 11!  Teachers will receive 25 percent off all purchases throughout the weekend at Jo-Ann stores nationwide. And the best part is no coupon is needed! Simply present your current teacher identification and state-issued photo identification upon checkout.  Don't have a Teacher Appreciation card?  Then head over to http://www.joann.com/teach2014 and sign up today!!!!

Did You Know?

Did you know that teachers and educators can save 15% every day on every purchase in-store or at Joann.com by signing up or re-enrolling in the Teacher Rewards program?  That's right, teachers and educators can register at http://www.joann.com/teach2014 or in-store to receive discounts on classroom craft and sewing projects, classroom décor and organization products. 
Benefits include:

• Free discount card for 15% off every purchase.
• Bonus coupon for 20% off any one total purchase when you enroll or re-enroll in the program.
• More money-saving coupons as a Jo-Ann Preferred Customer.
• Personal notice of the latest sales offers, crafting trends and inspiration.

You know you are going to spend the money anyway, so hop on over to Joann.com and sign up today!

 

Under the Sea

Our "Under the Sea" week turned out to more fun than even I expected!  Usually by the time we get this deep into the school year, the students tend to get bored more easily.  NOT WITH THIS UNIT!  WOW, we had so much fun! 

This is my classroom!

I don't even remember where I got this large poster.

Someone threw it away and I retrieved it from the trash!

One of the most fun things we did this week was walk down our  hallways.  REALLY?!?!?!  Yes, we had so much fun swimming like a fish, crawling sideways like a crab and even floating like a jellyfish down the hall.  A real plus here is that fish are very quiet, so it was a wonderful way to keep us quiet as walked.  Okay, now let me show you some of the fun (and messy) things we did this week.

For the past couple of years, we have made a giant ocean scene.  It takes a couple of days but it is really fun.  First we have to paint the water.  Now that just didn't seem fun enough for us, SO we decided to do it the Mrs. Karen way!  First we squeezed on paint different colors of paint (green, blue, turquoise, and white).  Next, we used different types of rollers, brushes and scrappers to spread around the paint.

 

While that was drying (and it did take a full 24 hours to dry), we made different sea creatures out of our hand prints and cut out seaweed.  

Everyone was so very proud of their work!

One of our favorite books this week was Please Don't Eat the Teacher by Nick Ward.

 

This quickly became a class favorite and I was asked to read it everyday!  After reading it, there was no way my students were going to let me get through the week with a shark art project.  I think I nailed it!

 

Of course, there were those who wanted to make a hammerhead shark!



 

Here is a close-up of his/her mouth.  The children painted the inside of a small paper plate.  Then they cut (I drew the lines) little triangles all the way around the plate.  When you fold it in half it makes a perfect mouth!



 

I saw this amazing file folder game on PINTEREST but unfortunately the link did not work.

I loved the idea and I wanted everyone in my class to be able to do it.  Guess what?  We did!  Here is our Counting Octopus.

The octopus is a girl.  See her hair bow!

 



A close-up of our legs.

I will admit this activity is not for everyone.  There was a lot of circle punching involved in this, but I think it was worth it.  The children loved counting the circles and gluing them onto the legs.

Friday was our "Q" day.  We tried (really, we did) to be quiet, but as you can imagine it was more fun to be quick!  We also started working on our big Friendship Quilt.  This year we used real material.  Everyone picked out their favorite color construction paper and glued on different shaped pieces of material.

This is where I get to say "OPPS!"  I forgot to take pictures of the finished pieces, but I will and I will post them in a day or two.  We will join all the pieces together to form our giant "Friendship Quilt" and it will be on display for our end-of-the-year Art Show, which will be this Thursday.

 

Thanks for stopping by and visiting with us.  I hope you come back and visit with us soon.

We are Wild About the Zoo!

What a fun week we have had!  I think we spent more time this past week just "talking" about our topic than ever before.  Zoo Week was just plain fun!  Our circle times were lively and not only full of questions, but animal sounds too!  Here are just a few highlights from our busy week.

We celebrated "Earth Day" on Monday.  We talked about "reusing" items to help protect our planet.  One of the things that we do in my class is recycle lunch containers.  It seems that at least one child brings applesauce to school each day in a disposable container.

The students love to rinse them out for me so we can use them to hold paint or glue when we do an art project.  It may not seem like much but we are trying to do our part!  In case you missed it, here are a couple of our beautiful recycled spring flower -

 

Everyone loves monkeys so our very first zoo art project had to be a monkey!  Ours was so cute and so much fun to make.

 

 

It is probably hard to tell by the pictures, but the students actually cut the arms, legs and tales out my themselves.  We let them dry just a bit before we accordion folded the arms and legs.  I just love them.  We also spent the ENTIRE DAY talking about monkeys and apes.  Of course there was a lot of monkeying around too!

 



I was really excited when I saw this next art project on PINTEREST .  I instantly fell in love with it.  I also knew my class AND their parents would really like it.  But of course, I had to add the "Mrs. Karen" twist to it. 

The original art work used the child's hand prints for the zebra and the grass.  We needed something a little more fun.  Can you guess what we used to make the grass? 

If you said a "fork", you are right!

 

Everyone really enjoyed painting with an old plastic fork, which by the way we had leftover from lunch on Monday!  (Don't worry, we washed it!)

 

On Tuesday, we painted old paper towel tubes green and after they dried, we added dots with fun little paint dabbers.  Now that was just plain messy, fun but messy!  Everyone kept trying to guess what we were going to do with them.  Finally on Thursday they all found out! 

 

Let me be the first to say that this art project DID NOT turn out like the original one I saw.  Here is it-

http://eighteen25.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/arts-crafts-tp-roll-snakes.html

But to honest, I like ours better!  They were silly fun!  We also spent the entire day talking about snakes!  (Footnote:  I do NOT like snakes!  But my class does, so I an forced to keep my feelings to myself.)

 

One of the topics that came up during our circle time was zoos versus wild.  Hmmm . . . kind of a deep subject for a group of four year olds, isn't it?  Well, that started a unique discussion about the pros and cons of being a zoo animal versus being an animal living in it's natural habitat.  WOW, my class really surprised me with their ideas and comments.  So, we did an art project that represented the animals in their natural environment.

We found some jungle stamps in our supply closet that had never been used.  It was fun to use "new" supplies.  Again, since our cutting skills are SO GOOD, I feel like I must mention that our "tree trunks" were cut by the children!  I really wasn't sure how much the children would enjoy this art project.  It really didn't say "FUN" to me.  I WAS WRONG!  Everyone loved picking out their favorite animals and stamping them in the jungle.

Friday was our "ZERO DAY"!  This year's class loves to do BIG group projects.  We covered our tables with butcher paper and laid out different circle shaped objects along with some colored pencils and markers.  Everyone had a blast tracing the circles and make ZEROES! 

 

Honestly, several of the students could have done this for HOURS!  I will say that the trick to making this successful is having a LARGE variety of traceable objects.  This was just an easy and fun way to work on our fine motor skills AND our sharing skills too!

Thank you for visiting with us.  I hope you can use some of these ideas for your classroom or just to do with your own children.  Next week we will be talking about the OCEAN!  I hope you drop back by and see what we have done!

Earth Day 2013

HAPPY EARTH DAY

from

Mrs. Karen's Class!