Kinder-"Garden"

Our Exploration Room is back! This time our theme is plants, creepy-crawlies, and all things spring!

Our adorable reading center!

The flower shop: Petersburg Petals!

There are also wings and antenna headbands to dress up as bugs!

Hopscotch rug between reading and the math and puzzles shelf.

Science center complete with snakes, bugs, frogs, a pond, balances, magnifying glasses, and real bugs in acrylic. 

Blocks center complete with a barn, farm animals, and trucks.

Grass growers - one for each class. I think we'll go with a little green guy. I will let the kids name it and we can see which class can grow the tallest "hair!"

Art Center

Our door! 

 Adorable little planters! 

We named ours Alvin!

Planting a garden!

Working at the flower shop!

Reading buddies

He is making the shapes on the bucket.

Spring Fling in effect!

The art wall!

Winter Wonderland

You may remember that last spring, my fellow kindergarten teacher friends and I created an Exploration Room for our kids to visit as an enrichment room. Our first Exploration Room was The Ocean Room. You may view that here, if you wish! :)
Well, we are hard at work again! This time the Exploration Room theme is Winter Wonderland. We are creating this room so that our kids can explore the wonders of winter/the arctic with hands-on activities, through reading, and math manipulative activities!

Dramatic Play Center

                               A Ski Lodge with a restaurant.

plenty of scarves, gloves/mittens, and even ice fairy wings!

Art Center - packed with art supplies!

Craft sticks, cotton balls, cotton swabs, buttons, paint, markers, pencils, colored pencils, paper towel tubes, stencils, stickers, crayons, construction paper, magazines, scissors, and I'm sure I am forgetting something!

The art center also has a large area (with snowy hills) for displaying art work!

This table is between the Writing Center and the Blocks Center. It holds a matching/concentration game with mittens at the moment. (We'll see how long it lasts!)

The Science Center holds a balance, magnifying glasses, consumable science magazines, and magnets.

 The Blocks Area.

Writing Center - complete with pencils, paper, colored pencils, pre-made blank books, scissors, stamps...

 ...and for the boards - chalk, dry-erase markers, and magnets.

The biggest project (which took months of collecting/preparation) was for our Reading Center.

Our milk jug igloo! 

Who wouldn't want to crawl in there and read a book?

(Special thanks to Elizabeth Moss for putting the majority of this together!) 

 Another big project (Thank you Nancy Plyler!) was this amazing 3-D snowman for the Winter Wonderland door! 

3-D all teh way! Plastic carrot nose, real sticks for the arms, and a real scarf! AWESOME!!!

A few more decorations...plenty of snowflakes hanging from the ceiling. 

Gel snowflakes and spray snow on the window.

Kids enjoying the Winter Wonderland Exploration Room! :) 

 Reading Center in the igloo.

 Art Center

 Welcome to the Snowflake Inn!

 Play-doh shapes

Writing center - ice fishing for letters, chalk snow scene drawing, and much more!

Ocean Exploration Room - Kids!

So, the Ocean Room is finally complete! And the kids have been going for a week! --They LOVE it! 

Hula girls 

Going to the beach

making fish from play-doh

Making a marina out of blocks

Pete got to visit this marina!

More pics!

Ones of the classes put a "growing" turtle in some water for us to all watch over the next few days!

Nancy wrote a note for us (meaning the 5 other classes) and wrote a few quotes from her students. I added one of mine today!

These two sweet girls are reading together in the reading pool!

These two are hard at work in the Creation Station! I can't wait to see their completed projects - they had to leave them to dry until next time. 

 These two were having a picnic and dancing at the beach! :) 

 

The writing center - two kids are "fishing" for letters and writing each other notes!

The Creation Station - hard at work!

How cute is she?! She made flip flops from construction paper, pipe cleaners, and star fish stickers!

Remember those turtles and other animals we put in the water to "grow?" Well here they are a week later!

These are the live fish and snails!