Attention Target Shoppers

Attention all Target Shoppers the school supplies are out and the dollar bins with supplies for teachers are back! This is what I found on my trip this week! Name plates for summer school,hand prints for cubbies, mini dry erase board erasers (my kids love these! I bought a class set last year and I want more! They held up really well!), and name tags for the first week!

These dry erase erasers are amazing!

I bought some of the boards a few years back and they've lasted or I don't feel bad about pitching ones that get ruined.

Ta ta for now remember never leave a teacher unsupervised in the dollar section!

-Lindsey

Summer School Classroom

Well another summer teaching summer school is well underway! I'm 2 weeks into the 4 week session. This summer I'm teaching 1st grade (well intro to 1st grade) and have 21 kids on my roster. Only 15 of them have shown which is fine with me. The kids have breakfast and lunch at school and then have reading and math with me.

So here's my room this summer in reality it's a kindergarten classroom but I've tried my best to transform the classroom that I'm guest teaching in into a 1st grade room.

I hope everyone is having a great summer! Two more weeks of summer school to go!!

-Lindsey

Engaged!!!!

hello my blogging friends! So I've been disconnected from the blogging world this spring and i got engaged!!  Over Spring break while vacationing in San Diego my boyfriend popped the question and I said yes! 

So needless to say its been an exciting spring with new adventures for the two of us! 

This month I moved in with my fiancé and internet is finally hooked up so I can get back to blogging, pinning, and well wedding planning!  So what have we done? we chose a venue (Yay!) on the Chesapeake bay and have a date for the beginning of next summer! 

So things are finally moving forward I'm so glad I have a full year to plan!

- Lindsey

STEM day

We had our first annual STEM day at school. My Kinders learned how to make Gak (thank you to my blogging friends for sharing your experiences with them.

We made Greenhouses and planted seeds.

And we had our local weatherman from NBC4 visit and talk to the kinders about his job and how he helps the community. I highly recommend getting in touch with your local news station and getting your weather person to visit! 

Every grade at school did a variety of activities associated with our curriculum throughout the day. The kids loved it!!

OT on a promethean

I never considered the range of accommodations I could provide to students now that we have a promethean! For my students getting OT our board has been awesome allowing the hands on practice for fine motor tasks, manipulative activities, confidence building and writing (shown)! Now I'm getting more motivated to fill out a TPT for an iPad for the classroom!

Yay!! Look at what I had installed!

Look what I had installed last week!!! Now where do I start! Membership to Promethean Planet acquired.
Basic calendar routine is underway this week. Can anyone suggest a flip chart to replace my "weather bear" where my kid dressed my panda with clothes to represent what they should be wearing to school? The only thing I found on Pro. Planet was a person one and I'd prefer an animal. Any words of wisdom please send them my way!



- Lindsey

3D Figure Recycling Project

So mid March at the end of our geometry unit my kids have a huge STEM project given to them. Our class collected recycled materials for about two weeks prior to initiating the project. Then I give them an open ended project to plan, design, and build something using the recycled materials. The only requirements for the project is they must use at least 6 containers. On Day 1, I read them a book about architects and how they use blueprints to design buildings and my little designers get started drawing their plan. We discussed how parts of our body and buildings and other things are made of 3D shapes and we needed to include those in our design. You can see one of the kids designs in the photo below.

 Day 2, I let them go to it! I had sent emails home prior weeks asking for rolls of masking tape so I had one for every two kids. They started cutting and taping and I let them do their thing! This is when you really see their creativity come out! Yes, I support with their taping and help to make sure the tape sticks. 

 

Day 3 some kids were done taping and we just put some reinforcement tape on it and others needed the full day to finish building their design. Before being allowed to paint my kids have to go back to their design and identify what colors they will need to paint their project. This helps me with what paint to put on the tray and well get them thinking about where they are going. 

 Painting lasts 2 days the first day we talked about making a "base coat" and then the second day I handed out detail brushes so they could add details like spots, stripes, and windows to their projects. I use the big butcher paper on the first day of painting because they ARE VERY MESSY and the butcher paper really soaks up the mess.

 

 The last and final day my kids have to write a story about their finished project to read to the class. They were so incredibly cute and were so proud of their completed projects! I was too! I had all sorts of things built from people to giraffes to a school bus to rockets to a castle! Here is the finished product of the original design I showed you earlier!