Monday, April 22, 2013

Earth Day Sale!!

Just a quick note. I am throwing an Earth Day Sale! All of my products at TPT are 20% off from now through Wednesday, April 24.

I now realize I should try to create some products for Earth Day! I feel like caring for the Earth is one of the most important things we should teach to children. The Earth's resources are precious, and I feel that teachers often concentrate on Recycling, which should be the last resort. Please teach your children to REDUCE first and foremost.

I love this image from The Story of Stuff:

Happy Earth Day!!



Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Amazon River/Jungle Clipart

I made this clipart when requested by another teacher at TeacherspayTeachers. Check it out!


It's on sale until April 30th. Check it out here!

100 Days of School!

As we approached our 100th day of school in February, children brought in 100 items to show the class. It takes a lot of time for the class to count out 100 items, so we had a few children bring in items each day to space it out.

 100 magnets
 100 pages in a book
 100 paper clips
 100 writing utensils
100 shells

Letters R, S, T, U, and V - Art!

We made red rectangles for letter Rr! I had a couple of different sponges and a rectangular container for printing rectangle shapes. A few of the kids got a bit carried away and ended up with a whole red paper - but hey, it's still a rectangle, right? For me, the experimenting is the most important part of these activities. Oh, and a bit of alphabet reinforcement :)





For the letter Ss, we used string and did some string painting. As I often do, I let the children pick the paint colors. I liked their choices :)






For the letter Tt, we first cut out the Tt templates (from dltk.com) and glued them onto colored paper. Then, I let the children use our box of colored paper scraps and cut out their own triangles to decorate the T's. Most children chose to decorate one "T" with paper triangles and drew their own triangles on the lowercase "t." That was something they started on their own and became a trend. I love it!



Later in the week, we did our alphabet art with tea bags! The end result is not so amazing, but it was a fun texture activity for the kids. We also smelled the tea bags. Yum!





Our beginning-of-the-week activity for Letter Uu was Underwear! Don't worry, I just made photocopies of underwear and undershirt clipart. The children cut out the underwear and glued it onto the letter Uu templates. Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures!

At the end of the week, the children made underwater pictures. We talked about the different things we can find underwater. The children drew with pastels and then painted over with blue watercolor. This is the only picture I have of that activity. I might be able to put some more on later.


For the letter Vv, I got the idea to do violets from this web site. I cut a sponge into two letter "v" shapes. The children could sponge paint V's onto their papers in purple and/or yellow. They then made violets with their thumbs and fingers. 








Catching Up

Well, to catch up, that whole week of school in February, the school was nearly empty. I had almost no kids, AND I wasn't feeling too well myself. I was able to stay home that Friday. Anyway, it was great that we put the kids from three different classes together, and each teaching team (teacher/assistant) had time to organize and clean their classrooms. It was great! Then we had our February holiday. And I got out of my blogging habit (partly due to camera issues).

Well, now we are back from our 2-week Easter break and I am finally catching up! I hope you find something useful here!