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!

Dr. Seuss

My classroom is ready for a Dr. Seuss study! Since Dr. Seuss' birthday was on a Saturday this year (and February FLEW by!) we will be doing our author study this coming week! Part of my theme is Dr. Seuss, so there are characters up all year my classroom and on my door. To go a little further, I made these truffula trees for the door!

I will add more to this post this week as we do cute Dr. Seuss activities!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I know this is a little late to a be Valentine's post, but I have spent this weekend being sick....so here we go:

My Valentine's Day begin with a sweet friend at work bringing me and my TA breakfast! What a tasty way to start the day!!

My school does this every year - Bilo offers heart shaped cakes and those big cookies for $6.50. The school gets to keep $1.50 of each cake/cookie purchased and the kids get to decorate their own! Very neat!

 Most kids wrote their names or initials and then they all got to add red, pink, and white sprinkles. Fun!

The best part about this year, a grandparent came into my classroom the morning that the money for cakes was due and asked how many students had not paid. The answer was 14. (You can do the math!) She pulled out her checkbook and wrote a check for the remainder of the kids to get to decorate a cake! :) What a kind thing to do. She said someone had done it in her grandson's class the previous year and she wanted to pay it forward. They had a great time! (And for our writing activity that day, those 14 students made Thank You cards for "Nana!")

What kinds of fun things does your school do?

Shapes, shapes, shapes!

My school uses Everyday mathematics and one of the lessons is to have students make shapes out of string in small groups.
I took some pictures (as I always do!) of this activity and got some really good shots!

triangle

square

pentagon, or as the kids called it: a house!

"long triangle"

...and my favorite - the star!

100th Day Projects

Tomorrow is the 100th day at my school! My class has been really creative this year with their 100th Day of School projects, so I couldn't resist sharing them!

I got the "100th Day" on sale last summer from WalMart.

I LOVE this one! So creative!100 fish swimming in the sea. She used colorful goldfish snacks and real grass for the seaweed!

Adorable - 100 colorful pompoms! Love the snowman in the middle!

100 eyeballs! Can you find the faces?

Another project with pom poms, this one makes the number 100!

My class got their picture taken for the school website!

Another creative project with the stars and our school and a school bus!

What if I was in a snow globe?

This was the prompt I gave my class in writing one day last week. I asked my students if they knew what a snow globe was. Only about half knew what it was. When we began describing it, I had several "Ooohhh!"s.  I showed them the shape that a snow globe is - a big circle with a trapezoid base. I had my kinders think about what they love to do in the snow (which takes some imagination since we don't really get snow in our little section on SC!). They got to share their idea out loud, something I don't always allow for fear of idea-snatching! ;) I then encouraged extra hard beautiful hand-writing, good spacing, and periods.
The next day, I had my kids put on their coats and hats and gloves if they had them and sit on the rug. (What?) Then I read two winter stories at a time and had the kids act out what they wrote! 
I took the photos with two kids and cut them apart as you will see below (to save paper!).

Then, I cut the pictures super close and glued them into the snow globe!

Lastly, I let the kids finger paint show!

Pinpirations found here! Thank you so much!

http://www.mrsjumpsclass.com/February.htm

http://www.ashleigh-educationjourney.com/2011/12/winter-wonderland.html

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!