Bulletin Board: Together is Our Favorite Place to Be

I'm one of my district's two remote learning kindergarten teachers, and moved from a classroom I've occupied for twelve years into a new space that amazingly, has been an ideal fit for my materials, curriculum, and virtual learning plans.  While the bulletin board displays within the space will be easy to reference during live Zoom instruction and photograph for close-ups that can be added to Google Slides or elsewhere, this year my own students won't be navigating the school's hallways or displaying their artwork and creative constructions. I anticipate that I'll experience a serious case of withdrawals.

Despite my own students learning from home, the on-site classrooms of my colleagues are nearly ready for the arrival of eager, masked children.  These kids will be passing by my door as they begin and end their instructional days, and I want them to see something cheerful.

This is likely the last year that I'll use my "scribble kids," because frankly, they're more wrinkled than I am, but seeing them has cheered up my days and lowered my stress levels, and I hope they have the same effect on those who pass by them every morning and afternoon.

Whether on-site or remote, together is our favorite place to be.

Spring has SPRUNG Bunny Craft

My pattern for this adorable spring bunny with accordion legs is available in my TPT Store!



Click here for the pattern, or scroll through my TPT store's widget near my blog banner.

The pieces for this cute medium sized bunny can be printed onto construction paper, cut apart and assembled by your students OR you can cut out construction paper using the measurements provided for more of an assembly-only activity. Cutting instructions include cutting off corners to make edge rounder/curved and cutting oval, circle, or triangle shapes from a simple square, which you can easily model to students.

I've included measurements for a LARGE bunny as well (or you can enlarge the printable template as large as you'd like)- it's almost as tall as a kindergartner!

Construction paper color combos I used with my students include:

white bunny, tan details, pink nose, black marker/crayon eyes
black bunny, light blue details, pink nose, white crayon eyes
tan bunny, pink details, pink nose, black marker/crayon eyes

I imagine solid colored bunnies with patterned scrapbook paper would also look darling!




Let me know if you decide to make these cute bunnies- I'd love to see them!

~Michaele~

P.S. It seems my egg shaped bunny ALWAYS gets pinned each spring- remember this one?

Toothbrushes and T-Rex Friends

February is Dental Health Month!

My Super Star kindergartners love to learn the proper way to brush and floss, and are excited to learn that dentists and healthy foods also help them to maintain their bright, beautiful smiles.  To help us remember healthy teeth habits, we made oversized toothbrushes and added the words "dentist, brush, floss" and "snacks" to our writing page:





I created a PDF available on TPT for this activity! Included in the PDF are a list of needed materials, directions, and printable text pages that include the following options: preprinted sentence,  preprinted sentence with traceable words, and preprinted sentence with blank writing line pages so you can choose exactly which activity will integrate well into your dental health lessons.  The Oversized Toothbrush Craft will be available for $1 this month (2016)! Click on the photos below to be taken to my Teachers Pay Teachers store:

My Stars also completed a fun T-Rex tooth subtraction activity this week, counting out ten sharp teeth, and then subtracting some from their dinosaur's mouth.  They expressed the loss of teeth in a math equation too:

Now our hallway bulletin boards are full of T-Rex friends and toothbrushes!

Take care of those chompers!

Lions and Lambs

Discussing March weather before Spring Break began, my Super Stars could be heard judging conditions each morning as they entered from the chilly line outside, fingers crossed that it would be warm enough later for recess:

"We are soooooooo going to have a lamb day today."

"I'm grumpy.  I think it's lion-ing out there today, so we won't get to play outside."

Lamb Day.  Lion-ing.  Of course I enjoy eavesdropping and catching all of the verbiage. 

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Here's where I posted the lamb craft originally.

The lions were a quick shape review activity, using 11 X 11 orange squares, tan ovals, white circles, black triangles, and tan semi-circle ears.

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Do you think the upper middle lamb resembles Bert?  Maybe it's just me.  

Wildcat and Jayhawk Bulletin Board

Harmony between Kansas college mascots CAN happen, especially in kindergarten:

(My post about the purple wildcat craft can be found here.)

Spooktacular Pumpkins: Numbers Greater than 10

With several months spent away from the blog, I'm afraid it's gotten a bit cobwebby in here!

~sweep sweep~

~dust dust~

~cough~

~SNEEZE~

Goodness!

Experienced kindergarten teachers know what new-to-service kindergarten teachers discovered in August and September: the beginning of the school year, though exciting, is c-r-a-z-y busy.  Throw in a barrage of new germs shared by many enthusiastic children, and you can imagine how difficult it can be to find not only the time but the energy to blog once the dismissal bell rings.

The big payoff to all of the extra time and effort spent teaching, practicing and reteaching routines, rules and procedures is apparent when students and teachers alike enter the classroom one day, and can feel the rhythm and step right into the tempo of our scheduled activities.  Last week was when that magical stanza was reached by my Super Stars, and I was extremely grateful to find it ~still~ in place today, after students returned from a three day weekend during parent teacher conferences.  

With a smooth transition after calendar and story time, the Stars sat through directions, and returned to their seats to assemble large orange blobs, and black, white, green and brown construction paper into jack-o-lanterns with toothy grins.  The goal?  To fill each jack's mouth with MORE than ten teeth:

The candy corn footprints are helping us learn to count by fives (parent volunteers discovered how many students have ticklish feet!):



Has your year gotten off to a good start?  I hope so!

Let me finish sweeping the place and letting some fresh air in... I'll be back to my regular blogging routine soon!

Back to School Bulletin Board: Silhouettes

This year, I've decided to add some silhouettes of children to my welcome-to-kindergarten bulletin boards in the hallway.  I'm not talking about this kind of silhouette (though Santa is more than welcome to tuck one under my Christmas tree this December, hint-y hint hint), but rather, this one:

Finding some clip art of children's shadows, I enlarged and locked them into position on my SMART Board.  Using black butcher paper, tape, clips and a white pencil, I traced several samples that I thought would work well for the size of boards that I have:

I used the clips to hold the roll of paper in place and keep it wrinkle free, but if you pull several pieces of paper that are the same size of your interactive whiteboard, you won't need them.

Isn't this one cute?

Once all of the silhouettes were traced, it was time to cut them out v-e-r-y carefully:

I like to keep my first boards of the year fairly simple and easy for my Super Star kindergartners to identify as they become used to navigating the hallways of our school.  They shouldn't have any problem remembering to look for the stars and kids:

 My students often have younger siblings who come and visit Big Brother or Big Sister at school, so I thought I'd include a little one for them:

The Stars read "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Stars, I Wished for You and Here You Are!"

I'm considering adding colored bow ties, shoe laces, and hair bows to the shadows, and of course my students' names will be added to the board once I have my class list.

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I'm back to work August 1.  When will you return to the classroom?  We'd love to see photos that you post of your bulletin boards!  Link up below:

Where the Wild Things Are

"Mrs. Sommerville, can we make Wild Things for our craftivity this week?"

As we're listening for and writing Ww this week, I was happy to oblige.  Here's what we used (but a lighter tan for the 8 X 8 square and a darker brown for the 12 X 12 would work too):

I had my students cut the corners off of the white 8 X 8 piece of paper, and then told them to glue it to the center of the brown 12 X 12 piece.  I then modeled how to draw a large oval on the orange 2 X 3 rectangle for the nose, and a large circle on the yellow 3 X 3 squares.  We glued them to the middle of the white circle for the face.

Pupils were cut out of the black 1 X 1 squares, and we added some shine to the eyes with a white pencil, though a crayon would work nicely too.  We drew a smile with a black marker, and then used the 1.5 X 12 inch strip of paper to cut triangle teeth that we glued to touch the line of the mouth.  Students then cut zig zag lines around the whole face, trimming off some of the brown:

As you might have suspected, Kindergarten is Where the Wild Things Are!

Ants in My...

... NOT pants, thankfully!

Today I went to my classroom to work through some changes in my furniture arrangement for the upcoming school year, and while sliding tables, drawers, and dramatic play toys around, my daughter and I uncovered a MOUND of ants in front of a window:

... and they FLEW.  Thanks to our wonderful summer staff, the exterminator was called and the room (and exterior building walls) were sprayed, baited, and sprayed some more.  

Can I tell you how glad I am that I didn't wait until the end of July to return to school?

Along with furniture switcharoos, I'm changing some of my bulletin board displays too: black paper for focus walls, with natural boards framed with trimmer for the rest.  

Here's the room prior to the ant discovery:

I know, I know, such pretty blue paper...

But I'm liking how the other colors *pop* with some black thrown in:

The blue calendar board will be the last one finished since it's on the wall that had to be sprayed.

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What changes are you considering making for the fall?

Flower Power: A Recycling Project

As we learn about reducing, reusing and recycling, I've invited the Super Stars and their families to create spring flowers using materials found at home... materials that might otherwise be tossed out with the trash.  Take a peek at some of the creations brought to school so far:

Cardboard, plastic, scrap fabric...

Bottle caps and glass stones were added to a tough tote lid... 

Magazine pages, plastic lids and cardboard tubing filled a plastic bottle vase...

Plastic cups and a bottle were painted and then framed in a cardboard lid...

The flowers are sharing our hallway bulletin board with our Earth Day painting project.

Family collaboration makes this a fun activity for the weekend, but it would also be easy to add materials to a creative construction zone or other crafty center in the classroom as well.  Families can donate the materials that their students enjoy using:

~ cardboard

~ plastic lids

~ bottlecaps (decide in advance if you'd like to accept all bottle caps or only those from non-alcoholic items)

~ bottles

~ yarn

~ paint

~ newspaper or extra book order forms/ scratch paper

~ scrap fabric

~ cardboard tubes

~ cereal boxes or frozen food item boxes/ trays

~ plasticware

What kinds of artwork do your students enjoy creating using recyclable materials?

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Visit me again tomorrow when I'll show you our Earth Day painting project!

*****

Today being April 1, my Super Stars had fun fooling me!


Student 1: "Yeah, so Mrs. Sommerville? I can totally speak Dolphin now."

Student 2: "Mrs. Sommerville- today is my 18th birthday. I'm supposed to tell you I'm ready to move out and get a job."

Student 3: "School's been called off Mrs. Sommerville! You can leave right now and go shopping!"

Student 4: "Uh, Mrs. Sommerville, don't freak out. The world ran out of coffee."

Did your students try to ~fool~ you today? If so, share with us over on Twitter:

#kindergartenaprilfool