Summer Preschool

So, as I mentioned last week, I have been teaching a summer preschool program at our elementary school focusing on kindergarten readiness skills and I wanted to share some of my favorite things from this summer with you! Thanks to Pinterest, my new "teacher-hack" favorite is using pizza boxes to store art projects and work in the classroom! They stack perfectly, can be decorated a million different ways, and keep projects with paint or glue that need to be dried! Salvadore's Pizzeria in Erlanger, KY was more than happy to donate these for our group this summer and the parents LOVED going through the month's work on our last day!

We even added a surprise tic-tac-toe board on the bottom with colored masking tape so that they could play with toys or cut-out shapes at home!


Some of the projects from the summer that the families were able to see when they opened the boxes:

 Paper plate painted peacocks (we made these after we read "Elmer and the Big Bird" by David McKee) just because peacocks are prettier than bullying vultures.

 Here's a quick and simple, very colorful, Elmer the Elephant project with bingo dobbers!

 Farm animal projects after reading Doreen Cronin books about those tricky ducks and cows!

Our last week of summer preschool has been a blast!

Farmer Georgia from Sunrock Farm in Alexandria, KY visited on Tuesday with goats, lambs, a bunny, piglet, and baby chicks for the kids to play with. Here's my little princess brushing Ginger the lamb :) I just love this picture!

We also had a great time with Ms. Joan from the Cincinnati Zoo's outreach program on Wednesday! She brought Nessie, a Chinese Water Dragon, and Mozart, an African Grey Hornbill to teach about everyone's marvelous adaptations and what makes us each special!

What a fun summer! Can't wait to carry over some of these fun projects with my kiddos during the school year!

Our Fairy Garden

I've posted about our fairy garden on Facebook and Instagram, but since the plan is to make this blog for my classroom and mommy friends... I'm gonna post about it one more time :)

I had seen some beautiful outdoor fairy gardens and a super cute post about a greenhouse place across the country that specializes in selling miniature plants just for these miniature gardens! (I started following @laurakellydesigns on Instagram after following Mayhem and @2sisters_angie for a while now - both are very creative moms with fun and artsy ideas for kiddos! LauraKelly had just posted about the greenhouse...) So, I did a search on Pinterest for some indoor fairy garden ideas - most still called for real plants, which would have been an open invitation for our cat to play with the fairies... not a good plan... but I did see one with stuff planted in an old birdcage! That got me thinking about the birdcage I had sitting in my basement for the last five years. It was the card holder at our outdoor wedding in June of 2009 and hasn't been touched since:

 

Then I took my little girl to Joann Fabrics to gather some no-dirt-required plants and other ideas for little things we could add. We found a perfect little birdhouse, fence, stone pathway, moss, and flowers with a little help with Grandma and Papa! When we got home, I showed peanut some ideas for how we could put our stuff inside the birdcage so that fairies would enjoy the garden...

 Next steps: letting peanut paint the house while I figure out how to attach the birdcage to a stool so it would be at her height. I had to have some help from the hubby to screw the bottom of the cage to a block and attach those to the stool. When that was finally done and the tiny birdhouse became a fairy house, we started adding our pieces and creating the fairy oasis!

 Caylee's favorite part was adding the stone path and, even though I had to help with the hot glue, I think it turned out pretty great. When she went to bed, I explained to her that some fairies might see the house and decide to move in that night... no "Elf on the Shelf" mystery, just a fun little imagination game... and mommy stayed up for a couple hours adding little details and "planting" the fairies' plants - I definitely used an ENTIRE pack of glue gun sticks, but I had SOO much fun with this part of the project and couldn't wait for her to wake up and see if any fairies had moved in ;)

 Final touches before she saw it the next morning - a ribbon table skirt, birdies back to visit, and a sign on the door.

Since that first day, Caylee has decided to add two seashells that she painted at daycare and she told me that the stones were sleeping (like the trolls from Frozen). So, we picked up a couple bigger rocks to paint like trolls and add later :) We will continue to add things and change things around as the princess wishes, but I love that it is really all about boosting creativity and imagination! Such a fun, cheap, and easy mommy-daughter project!

Time for a new (out)look!

I've been so inspired by several mom-bloggers this summer thanks to my new addiction to Instagram! I know that I have a LOT to learn about the whole blogging world... but here goes! I am finding that the things I get the most excited about when planning for school and the things I want to share with you all on this blog are more often inspired by my little girl lately, so I have thought about working on a blog that combines these worlds. I have seen other mommy-teacher blogs that are so well written and inspiring - I am not here to compete or out-do anyone who is making a career from this amazing technological world - but I do think I can use this as a place to share creative classroom projects, artsy (and not-so-artsy) stuff we do at home with our three-year-old princess while preparing for baby #2, and sometimes just vent to anyone who's willing to listen... or read ;)

A perfect example of these two worlds I live in becoming one is in the summer preschool program I am teaching this month. It is a short and simple program - 4 hours a day, 3 days a week, 2 groups of 6-8 kiddos each day - and I'm given so much freedom in the planning! This summer, I promised parents and administrators that I would focus on some kindergarten readiness skills and I am amazed at the progress the students have made in only 3 weeks! Yesterday was our big handwriting focus day and I tried to make it a little more fun by allowing the students to pick foam animal stickers first, then write about the animals. Some simply traced the animal names, while others were copying sentences from models. This was so easy to differentiate - we were able to put stickers on one side of the page and animal names on the other for students with fine motor deficits to simply draw lines matching the correct pairs - so I brought a few home for my little girl too. Proud and boasting mama that I am, I swear she's already ready for kindergarten (as if I could get up the nerve to send her at only 3!) but she does need to work on those pre-writing skills. Animal stickers + trip to the zoo = Motivation!!! And since I'm sure you'll see as I continue this blogging adventure, I am a behaviorist after all, so motivation and reinforcements are always a big part of learning in my book!

So this is my idea... I want to be a part of this community of learning and sharing online. I have an adorable, sweet, smart, creative little princess at home, a second little one on the way this fall, a classroom full of students I will always refer to as "my kids" too, and an amazingly supportive group of people around me - my family, friends, and coworkers. I love to take inspiration from blogs, Instagram, and of course Pinterest, and make those ideas work for someone in my life. I love to be creative (although I promise I won't video myself singing anything for you). I want to use this blog to share those inspirations and what I do with them with you - for your kids, students, family, friends, and coworkers.

Update :)

Sorry, y'all - thought I had already posted these! Here are a few things from the last few weeks that has brought us up to Spring Break!

Mr. Canfield and Mr. Burke hosted an awesome Night of the Arts at Dietz Auditorium in March - I loved seeing my kiddos dance along with the music, check out their own artwork on display, and cheer on their classmates! Great job, everybody!

I love our new Spring bulletin board too! Pinterest-inspired of course :) with handmade flowers by the students!

More Dr. Seuss - as promised :)

Yay! I remembered to take pictures of some of our fun Dr. Seuss week activities :)

The Cat in the Hat - 100s chart picture/mosaic:

The Cat gets a New Hat art activity with do-a-dot markers:

Oh the Thinks you can Think following directions paper craft:
These were fun! We also practiced making them "Think left and Think right, Think low and Think high" by moving all kinds of Dr. Seuss characters around on the white board with those labels!

 

 Anyone who knows me knows I cannot stand touching feet! But, I couldn't resist the combo of "The Foot Book" and "The Cat in the Hat" art project - each of my kiddos got to make another cat hat out of their footprints!

Here's another quick activity with The Foot Book - labeling, cutting, gluing, and reading/rhyming practice :)

This week was lots of fun!
Oh! I almost forgot my Cat in the Hat inspired bulletin board ---

Each picture in the window is a copy of a photo of my students reading a Dr. Seuss book with a rhyme like "I love to read in a boat! I love to read with a goat!" They have loved naming their friends' pictures and the animals chosen to read with them all week and I gotta say I'm pretty proud of this one!

Til next time...
:)Amanda

Dr. Seuss "Pin-spirational" Stuff

So, I went to pick my daughter up at daycare on Friday and saw that they are diving into the Dr. Seuss birthday celebration and Read Across America Day/Literacy Month theme too! I had just talked with my student council members about helping our school librarian promote Literacy Week activities and get their classmates involved, so I was already planning a Dr. Seuss week instructional unit in my head! I spend lots of time over the weekend planning for this week, and I sent home a few things today without taking pictures - I'll try to remember tomorrow! - but I wanted to go ahead and share Caylee's artwork inspiration from her daycare!

I think my kiddos get a little tired of me always asking them to do handprint artwork, so we read One fish two fish red fish blue fish this morning with some rhyming and labeling practice!

How cute is this "Green Eggs and Ham" activity!?? It's pretty simple, we'll try to squeeze it in later this week, but I just realized I don't have this book in my classroom library! How did that happen!??

And the Lorax's mustache of course! One of my favorite activities planned for this week (I think Friday) - we're going to make a Truffula tree out of a pool noodle, tape, and tissue paper then take pictures holding it with Lorax mustaches! CAN-NOT WAIT for that one!

More pictures to come, as promised!
:)Amanda

Minions!

Maybe I should've posted this one first tonight... keep scrolling down for the recent updates on actual classroom related goodies! I just can't get enough laughs out of the Minion meme!

I think I'm more like the last one a little more often than the other 2 but I have my good professional meeting days and my crazy "purple" days too! :D gotta love the minions!

Oh! And the OLYMPICS!!

We also spent 2 days this week on the Winter Olympics... we talk a little able it every morning during our Calendar math, but we also made some cute skiers and Olympic rings art projects! I forgot to take pictures of the skiers but here's a run down of what we did!
1. Cover the table in blue butcher paper
2. Cover a styrofoam ball in white paint and prepare for a mess!
3. Roll the ball gently to your friend across the table
4. Repeat until the blue paper looks like it's covered in snowy hills!
5. Move the paper to another table to dry while everyone colors and cuts out coloring page skiers...
6. Glue the skiers to the painted sheets of paper and write the student's name with "Going for the Gold!"

They turned out so cute and the kids LOVED the chance to "paint" with something different than the same old brushes!

I did remember to photograph a couple of the other crafty project... We used an empty paper towel roll and different colors of paint on a paper plate to "stamp" rings! I didn't worry so much about color and placement, but we did talk about how the rings represent all of the country's competing and that they are connected with 3 on top and 2 on the bottom! I personally love the "not-so-perfect" art projects we get when the kids just want to be creative!

While posting this, I've been checking up on the stats and results of more 2014 Winter Olympics events! I am enjoying this year's excitement, but I gotta say I really look forward to the summer games more, only 2 more years! haha!

On an unrelated note... I just saw on facebook there are less than 30 days until SPRING! Hallelujah! Bring on the sunshine!!

Presidents' Day!!

I found some great books at the library about presidents and everyone - adults included! - loved the presidential fun trivia! We only spent 2 days on presidents' day activities, so here's a look at our anchor chart with describing words and activities! I had a bunch cut out and gave them out one at a time to the kiddos - if it was a word/phrase that did not describe the president, they got to crumble it up and throw it in the trash!

 

Next, we made these crafty George Washingtons - Coffee filter neckpieces and cotton ball wigs!

The last fun Presidents' Day activity: Our faces on Mount Rushmore! Here's our speech therapist, Ms. Dexter rocking George's space - the kids were cracking up and I got some great pics to share with their parents... still need to print them out though! It's been a busy week!

Presidents' Day was fun - hard to believe how much stuff we've squeezed into February and there's still a week to go! I had to create a separate school board on Pinterest for all of the Winter Olympics, Valentines, 100th day, winter ending, dental health, Groundhog Day and Presidents; Day stuff! Next week, we're focusing on money and getting ready for March... I need some new fun bulletin board ideas! Pinterest, here I come again!

Don't Blink... 100th day of school!

Finally! With all the snow this year, I thought we'd get to the 100th day in April! Haha! But, our daily count in our morning routine finally promised just 2 more days... just 1 more day... the 100th day is here! Our monkey friend, Zero the Hero brought 100 paper bananas to our sticker board! We also made posters with 100 stickers, 100 pom-poms, and 100 puzzle pieces! We built stacks and invented games using 100 styrofoam cups - definitely my favorite part ;)  and we even created art pieces using 100 post-it notes (time 5 different colors I think... I'm not sure, I know there were a lot and the white board looked awesome!) Here's a quick pic of all our activities!

On to Valentine's Day and Presidents' Day and SPRING!!!! :)

Groundhog Day

Super cute Groundhog Day crafts!
Peek-A-Boo Punxatawny Phil!

We also painted paper plates and made groundhogs holding signs that showed a sorting page (winter/spring) and the kids circled "Winter" since Phil saw his shadow this year...man, I'm so ready for Spring!!!

Letter M is for Mouse!

It's been a while since I posted about our letter of the week activities. This week's mice were just too cute not to share! I saw something similar on Pinterest of course, but I love the way my kiddos adapt the examples I give them and make them their own!

what's winter without a penguin theme??

Well, some of our penguin theme lesson plans have been pushed back for later because of all of these snow days... but here's one craft I just couldn't wait for! Water bottles stuffed with leftover white crafty materials (tissue paper, cotton balls, pipe cleaners - anything to work those little fingers), then decorated to look like penguins! I love pinterest!!

 

Aren't they just so cute!??

SNOWFLAKES!

We haven't been back to school much this month it seems, but on one of those fun days we made these super cute handprint snowflakes! I found a book at the library called "No Two Alike" that fit in just perfectly with our little poem and handprints - because just like snowflakes, we're all unique :)

 

Sorry the pics are sideways... don't know why I'm having trouble with these today :/

snow day? blogging? what do you think??

My facebook newsfeed is full of guesses about tomorrow morning - snow day or no snow day? I am going to have to say I think we'll have our winter vacation extended a day due to these crazy low temps expected, but nonetheless, parents rest assured, if my Pinterest newsfeed is any indication, your students will be experiencing some pretty awesome lessons once we do get back to school! haha! Yes, I do consider pinning ideas "planning" and my fellow teachers are hard at work on this long break! I just added some pins of my own to my "Stuff for School" pin-board (mostly they are links to other blog posts on here for my non-followers).  I think I'd really like to expand my use of this blog and try to get a bigger following of teachers out there... so I'm thinking about writing - really writing - not just posting pics of our craft projects. What do you all think? If you are reading this, PLEASE comment, like, or pass along to others so I can know if this would be something to consider ;)

Thanks so much!
Amanda

I had forgotten how fun watercolor painting can be! Here's a picture of what I think has been my little girl's favorite winter break activity!