Spring Themed Unit

Spring has sprung and it is time to redecorate the classroom. Instead of doing a bulletin board myself, I decided to get help from my little kindergarten and first grade friends. The first thing we did was cut our favorite things out of magazines and glued pictures on paper plates to create flowers. The kids then picked out their favorite ribbon to weave through the punched holes in the paper plates. The following day each kid wrote on a cloud shaped piece of paper what they love about spring. It was great to see all their unique ideas. The last day we read the story The Lorax by Dr. Suess and planted our own truffala trees (marigold flowers). Each kiddo has their own pot. Every week we are recording what we noticed is happening in our plant journals. Hopefully in a few weeks we will see flowers bloom. Growing the flowers has been an amazing activity to tie in the whole bulletin board and unit. A different student has the responsibility of watering all the plants each day. It is the best to watch their faces light up!

Saint Patricks Day

This month the theme has been GREEN. In my art class we have been talking about this Irish holiday and how we are each lucky. This past week each kiddo decorated a four leaf clover and wrote all the reasons they are lucky. The things they came up with we're very thoughtful and deep for little kindergarteners and first graders. This week we made leprechaun traps. I just put out a bunch of cereal boxes, cups, popsicle sticks, stars, paper, cotton balls, etc and let the kids create their own traps. They started out looking all the same but as the kids got into the activity the unique qualities began to show. We set all of the traps in my office since we use the classroom for lots of different classes. Those pesky leprechauns destroyed the traps and left a huge mess. They also left gold and green necklaces and tons of gold candy. I normally do not give my kiddos candy because they don't need anymore sugar and it's not good for their teeth. This is a one time event. Hope it doesn't backfire. The leprechauns also left a note for the kids in tiny tiny writing. I wonder what the kids will think....

GR8 Reader Projects

The past two years the Bridge Project has been participating in a program called GR8 Readers. It is a program based on the idea that the more access kids have to books, the higher their reading scores are. Our program is modeled after the research by Richard Allington and Anne McGill-Franzen of the University of Tennessee. Their study determined that students who received books for summer reading at home showed significantly higher levels of reading achievement. Check out the amazing article at:

 

University of Tennessee at Knoxville (2010, July 22). Summer reading is key to maintaining or improving students' reading skills. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 1, 2011, from http://www.sciencedaily.com¬ /releases/2010/07/100721112234.htm

Many of the kids I work with do not have access to books at home. Each summer, kids select 8 books that they will read and create projects with. At the end of the summer they get to take the books and the projects home. The kids love, love, LOVE doing the projects. I try to select projects that cover all the story elements. These project include: puppets, story diorama, postcard from the main character, puzzle, picture collage, etc...

 

Froggy's First Kiss by: Jonathan London

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by: Laura Numeroff

The Aliens Are Coming by: Meghan McCarthy

No,  David by: David Shannon

Mercy Watson by: Kate DiCamillo

Miss Nelson is Missing by: Harry G. Allard

 

What awesome projects. I can't wait to see what creative projects they make this year!

How to Make a Trailer Feel Like Home

To say that I despise the trailers is an understatement. Nobody should ever have to work in a building that shakes when the wind blows, has leaks when it rains or snows, has one bathroom that is only in working condition 1/3 of the time, and has thin walls that do not block any noise. Just recently we learned that the windows can be broken just by pounding a fist on the glass. We are very secure! The drama of the trailer has added so much to everyone's job at South Lincoln. We have a heightened need for security, have to be extra positive in front of the kids about the situation, and always need to meet different maintenance mean to fix the lights, the ramp, the toilet, the sink, the toilet, the windows, the toilet...Are you sensing a theme? If we were all in one trailer that would be fine but the kids go back and forth between the trailers for their different classes. In one trailer is the main office, social emotional class, and computer lab. In the other is the tutor room, my office, and my "classroom". On a nice fall day this is no problem but lets face it, we live in unpredictable Colorado where the weather is always changing. Just yesterday when we had a snow storm, I saw kids one by one fall down and knock each other over like bowling pins trying to walk up the icy ramp into trailer #1. It was hard not to laugh at some of the kids who were trying to ice skate on it and immediately ate it. I warned them! Disclaimer: Nobody was hurt while ice skating. What was i supposed to do, stop teaching so I could shovel??

Anyway, I have done my very best researching countless hours on pinteret on how to make my hallway of a room feel like a classroom without spending much money. I couldn't use any fun furniture because we can barely fit three white tables and 20 chairs as is. In the corner I have two tiny tall bookshelves to hold our "library" and classroom materials. I have used countless packs of 3m tape since we are unable to staple, pin, or attach things to the walls in any other manner. The trailers have to be returned in the same condition that they were when we got them. HA! Packing in over 90 kids a day in two trailers daily is not going to work. The first day it snowed the carpet was destroyed. Below is a picture of what the classroom currently looks like. I think it still looks bare but the kids love it. They love to see all of their work posted up all over the classroom. The take ownership of their work when they know it will be posted or hung up for everyone to enjoy. I teach K-5th grade so work from all different grades are included. I think it helps kids know what will be expected of them the next year.Take that Lakeshore and every other over-priced teacher supply stores that charge teachers way too much for a silly posters. The power of student work makes a classroom a home!

Elmer the Elephant

In my kindergarten-first grade art class I have decided to incorporate literacy. Anywhere I can push books and reading I do. Every class I start out by reading a book and coordinate an art project to go along with it. This week I read the book Elmer by David McKee. The book is about an elephant that is multi-colored instead of grey like the rest of the heard. Elmer always is made fun of because of the way he looks. One day he decided to cover himself in mud to look like everyone else. When he blends in, the other elephants start to miss him. He didn't know how much people appreciated him. Then the rain comes and washes the mud away. All the elephants are so excited that Elmer is back, that they cover themselves will all different paint colors to look more like Elmer. This book celebrates diversity and being and individual. After we read and discussed the book, each student was given a cut out of an elephant. I provided each table with a variety of tissue paper squares. They layered tissue paper on their elephants to make their own design. Tissue paper and glue is much more difficult for little kindergarteners to work with than I had planned. Talk about a mess in the classroom. While the elephants were drying, each kid decorated a setting for their elephant. Some created a zoo while others chose to draw a jungle. When everything was complete they glued their elephants into the setting. We had an extra 10 minutes in class so I put on a movie about baby elephants. The kids went nuts! They loved how it all related to the book we started with.

Other book/craft projects we have done that I didn't document with photos include:

-Little Cloud by Eric Carle. We created shapes out of cotton balls and gluing them onto blue paper.

-I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Leaf by Alison Jackson We painted leaves. I cut out leaf shapes from coffee filters. The kids used watercolors and saw how the colors blended. Once the leaves were dry we hung them up on the wall for decoration.

-Ten Apples Up on Top by Dr. Seuss. We wrote our own story. Each kid was given a page that said ___(name)______ has _____ apples up on top. They drew themselves and decided how many apples they had on their head.

-I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Rose by Alison Jackson. We made our own valentine's for classmates.

-All You Need for a Snowman by Alice Schertle. We made our own snowmen out of marshmallows. I used the tiny marshmallows for the craft. Each kiddos drew three circles with glue and placed the marshmallows on the glue. They then decorated the snowmen. As a treat I brought in large marshmallows to snack on after.

-My Mouth is a Volcano by Julia Cook. In class we have a lot of kids who like to blurt out answers and stories. This is a great book to bring up the conversation about why blurting out isn't always okay. We then created three volcanoes for our class. I had already glued a 2 liter bottle of diet soda onto paper plates and made a triangle out of construction paper. The kids then put different pieces of construction paper squares on the volcanoes. They decided what colors to use and how big the volcano was. Then we took all three volcanoes outside and blew them up. **Make sure you do this part outside. Drop a whole pack of mentos into a 2 liter bottle of diet soda and watch the volcano erupt. The little ones were so excited.

I have many more art project/book ideas that I have tried in my classroom. If you need anymore, let me know or share some of your own.

Valentine's Day

This is a few days late but I had the best Valentine's Day this year. It was simple and did not include chocolates, flowers, or a boyfriend. I was surprised by all of my kiddos with Valentine's that they had made in another class. All they used was pink paper and markers to make these wonderful cards that brought a smile to my face. I am so lucky to work with such amazing kids.

James and the Giant Peach

This is a little late but in my 2nd-3rd grade movie-bookclub last year we read the book James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. Since the reading levels of the kids were all over the place I read the story too them which they followed along in the book. We spent a lot of time discussing literary elements of the story and new vocabulary. When you work with ELA kiddos, the more discussion and exposure to the English language the better. We would spend half of the class reading the story and half of the class watching the movie. It was amazing to see the lightbulbs go off when kids noticed the similarities and differences between the two. As a project, the very first week each student created a peach. We mailed a photo of our class, the peaches, and a letter to many friends and family around the country. Thank you to everyone who participated! The idea was to see the peaches travel the country and learn about its adventures. My friends and family were wonderful. Everyone sent the peaches back with photos of the peach at a variety of places in their home town as well as a letter. Some even sent extra goodies for the class. We tracked where the peaches traveled on a large map. It was a great project and very simple to do. The peaches are simply circles with orange, yellow, and peach tissue paper glued on. Allow 4-5 weeks from when you send the peaches out to get them all returned.