ABC Countdown to Summer!

Each year we do a Countdown to Summer with ABC's! 
Here is a link to the letter and calendar we use.  ABC Countdown to Summer Calendar  ABC Letter Home


I haven't been as camera-crazy this year as I have in the past, but here are some pictures of the recent ABC Days. This also collided with my school's Relay for Life Spirit Week, so we are have a crazy week!

These are the 4 kids who dressed for Tacky Clothes Day!

(I love this one!)

So, Spirit Week said it was Tacky Day, but our ABC Countdown said it was H Day - Hawaiian Day!

These 4 cuties and I (and Pete the Cat!) dressed for Hawaiian Day!

We have ABC Countdown to Summer journals that we do each day and I wanted to share this one in particular. I had shared my photo album from when my husband and I went to Hawaii on our honeymoon 2 years ago.  I showed them the black sands beach we visited and explained that the black sand was really lava from the volcanoes. 

This child drew himself on the black sands beach (I love the palm trees!), with a speech bubble that says: HAWAII!

Here we are again - this time doing the Hang Loose symbol!

The Kindergarten Team!! Love these ladies! :) 

I - Ice Cream Day!!

The deal was each student got to make their own ice cream sundae, but first they had to draw a picture of it and complete the sentence "I like ____ ice cream."

Our ABC Countdown overlapped the Relay for Life Spirit Week. So Friday was K Day - Kindness - and also Hat Day for spirit week. Here is a picture of my class all wearing hats! (And of course, we picked out a hat for Pete to wear too!) For Kindness Day, we had a competition to see which student could be "caught" being kind the most. The deal was they couldn't run and tell us that they had done something kind, they had to get caught! It made for a pretty great day!

O Day is Outrageous Outfit Day! Keep in mind that Spirit Week was just last week, so the kids had just had a Tacky Day. *sigh, so only ONE student was brave and went all out with Dory and me! Thank you sweetie! :)

Sooo, next year, I will anticipate Spirit week (our ABC Countdown was planned first!) and I plan on borrowing this idea I found over at What the Teacher Wants!

Looks like they had a blast! ;)

I added our W Day to a new post! It was a WILD day! :)

However here is our X Day! X stands for X-citing Surprises!

The first X-citng Surprise was a pinwheel! We put them in the book baskets like this:

and every now and then throughout the day, we would say "The wind is blowing!" or "Is it windy in here?"

 and the kids would blow on their pinwheel and make it spin!

The next X-citing Surprise was a silly straw with a single serving Hawaiian Punch packet. (We didn't actually do this today with the water bottles, maybe we can get more for field day!?)  I got the idea from Pinterest. They used a Koolaid packet with a card that said "Have a Kool Summer! :)

Art at School

To be clear - I am not taking credit for the following projects! :) 
These are just too cute not to share! 
The Art Teacher at my school is fantastic! The kids love her and she is so creative!


I have seen this idea on Pinterest several times, but I saw Ms. Kitchen do it first! :) She has a crayon wreath, too! 

Another idea I have seen on Pinterest that Ms. Kitchen did with her students - use the bottom of a soda bottle to make flower prints. So cute! (I also love the way she displays things in the hall! With clips hanging from thumb tacks. Easy to change out artwork!)

Close-up of one of these cute flower boxes!

The Lorax and Earth Day

Our field trip this year was to the movies to see The Lorax! SUPER cute movie, by the way! We went today as a wrap-up to a week or two of Earth Day studies! Perfect! I found so many great ideas on Pinterest and used several in the last week as part of the unit.

Here is the hallway display:

      "The Lorax talks tot he trees."                                          

I found this little guy is on TPT:                 And the Truffula Trees I pulled 
                                                             from this unit (also on TPT):

                                            

                                           

Ocean Exploration Room

We have finally begun setting up our Ocean Exploration  Room! This Exploration Room will change several times next year (that's the goal anyway) with our different themes throughout the year.

We are just beginning and this is our first room! Please keep in mind that this room is still in progress! But I couldn't resist sharing our hard work so far!

The left shows our reading center - complete with a "reading pool!" The right is a close up of the netting. 

So cute!

These are sitting areas for the reading center - boogie boards and beach chairs. (And of course the pool!) We will also have rafts and beach towels that kids can spread out to lie on!

Next is our science center. Books; shells; plastic, rubber, and stuffed sea creatures; pan balances; wave-in-a-bottle; and sorting cards.

This a cute board (in progress!) above the blocks/building center, which will have blocks, boats, and maybe some creatures.

Next, we have our puzzles center. Right now it appears to be a rug with puzzles on it. (In progress!)

What kind of Ocean Exploration Room would it be without sand and water tables?? We have shells, toys, shovels, buckets, and we plan to have a "sink or float" activity to use at the water table as well. 

The back door with Dollar Tree window gels!

This will be the math center. we have connecting fish, counting fish, magnetic numbers, fish counting books.

This is the art center area. 6 classes will be sharing this room, so we wrapped the walls in paper for our little artists to display their work for all to see! (That paper is actually the same color blue as the bulletin board above, not sure why it came out green here!)

We covered the shelves (that have become junk collectors for 4K and 5K over the last 2 years!) with a pirate ship table cloth and a grass skirt! Cute! (Hey is that Nemo!?)

These are cut-outs that a fellow-K teacher/friend's husband made for us and we had the kids paint them! Look out fishy! :) 

"A Whale of a Tale!"

Smaller fish cut-outs, painted by the kinders!

Another cut-out - the anchor! We used more grass skirts to cover the back of the dramatic play area.And the towels are draped over the back of a dowel shelf. (You can see the other side below!)

The "inside" part of the dowel shelf - dramatic play has floppy sun hats, flip flops, leis, goggles, sunglasses, and we plan to add trunks and sundresses!

Dramatic play will include a restaurant and Shell Shop! This little picnic table will be the restaurant/picnic area!

Pretty net over the Play Doh area.

Water table. (No water in it yet - it leaks. ANY SUGGESTIONS to plug the hole??)

Sand table.

Writing Center

Exciting...wait for it...the bathroom door! :)

 This tank will hold the growing animals. We got some animals that take 96 hours to grow to full size. We are thinking of making a chart for each animal or class so we can all keep track of each others' animals!

 Blocks is below this area.

 Math center also has a Nemo-look-alike! That pink fish on the right is hanging from the ceiling. 

 Personal Writing Area - if anyone wants to make a surprise, or not be bothered while working on a project. 

Ok, more photos of the Ocean Room!!

This lovely sign is just outside the door!

The "ocean" in the hall is just waiting for creatures to swim into it! 

More things have been added to dramatic play! And there is still more to come! 

"Welcome to the Shell Shack!"