Peaceable Kingdom = Fabulous Cooperative Games!

We made a 'sad' discovery in my classroom this afternoon- we lost an owl to one of our favorite games, Hoot Owl Hoot by Peaceable Kingdom.  My first thought was that I was going to have to figure out a way to design a small circle piece with one of these owls on it as a replacement..... hmmm.  Second thought, I do not have a mental capacity for this on a Friday.  

At some point (during lunch) I got the idea to look up the website for Peaceable Kingdom.  A quick call to customer service and the very friendly associate said that it wouldn't be a problem at all to get a replacement owl.  

I was an instant fan of this company after purchasing my first game about a year and a half ago.  Two games (and a wish list full of many others) later I am not only impressed with the game concepts, recycle-friendly materials and adorable graphics but the customer service.  This company absolutely gets my (invisible) seal of approval!

Of course, you'll want this: http://www.peaceablekingdom.com/Departments/Games/Cooperative-Games.aspx

The other Peaceable Kingdom game currently on my game shelf is Stone Soup.  Games consuming my wish list are the following: Count Your Chickens, Snug as a Bug in a Rug, Lost Puppies, and Seeds for the Birds. 

Happy Shopping!

Double Bulletin Boards

Apparently this school year has been way busier than I thought- two months without a post! Here's a double to make up for it.

In my Kinder class we have monthly home projects.  The projects are given out with each monthly newsletter and include very specific directions.  Each project is designed to require a minimal amount supplies needed to complete it. When the projects are returned to school students take turns sharing their work, after which it is added to the hallway bulletin board.

October's home project and bulletin board:

In an effort to avoid the Halloween-fest that is all things October, my monthly home project was to write/draw about a Fall tradition in your family.  With specific instructions not to turn the pumpkin paper into a jack-o-lantern, families decorated with crayons, markers, photos and a few even glued on some leaves from the back yard!  The traditions ranged from apple and pumpkin picking to jumping in piles of leaves.

The bulletin board title reads: "Check out our Fall fun as it hangs on the vine. All our hard work just looks so fine!" The vine was assembled by twisting strips of green butcher paper and attaching the pumpkins right under.  I cut out a leaf for each pumpkin and attached a typed out version of what each child said about their traditions.

November's home project and bulletin board:

In November we spent a large amount of time talking about being thankful (of course).  We talked about harvesting crops and how the Pilgrims and Native Americans worked together for the first Thanksgiving.  For our home project each child was given a vegetable outline and asked to use magazine cutouts, photos, illustrations and words to describe things they were thankful for.  I was impressed with my little Kinders and their creativity with things they were thankful for.  While every other Writer's Workshop story is about Legos or a video game system, these home projects were full of things such as family and friends.

This bulletin board is not what was originally planned.  I wanted to make a large cornucopia out of butcher paper.  It turns out, I don't actually know how to make a cornucopia out of paper.  Next plan, make a basket.  Let's just say that when I use this display next year I will have some adjustments in place to make the basket look more like a basket and less like the bottom of the Mayflower...

Thanks for reading!

Open House Ideas

Last night was my first open house as a solo classroom teacher. I finally had a chance to use some of those ideas I have been stock piling for a while.

This apple favor serves as a nice 'thanks for getting a babysitter and hanging out in a tiny chair for 20 mins' gift and also as a tool for taking attendance easily. The poem can be found online. I printed it on green paper and cut it out in the shape of a leaf. The apples are in fold-over sandwich baggies. I twisted the top of the bag and used it to hold the leaf on. My good friend, Mrs. G (who I got this idea from) uses pipe cleaners to hold the leaf on and to act as a stem.

Each child's seat housed a pile of items about classroom proceedings and of course book order flyers. A top the pile was a 'love note' written by each child ('written' with pictures, this is a K classroom after all). Parents were instructed when they entered to use the matching blank paper to write their child a note. Students whose parents did not attend received a note from either myself or another teacher in our hall.

On another table I set up a pumpkin patch. I cut out orange pumpkins on construction paper and wrote an item from the wish list on each pumpkin. The harder items also had photos on the pumpkins (as much as I love Do-A-Dot markers, very few non-educators know what they are).

The front table housed conference sign up sheets and a list for volunteers (farm hands). Next to the conference sign up sheet were slips of paper saying, 'my conference is on ______' for parents to fill in. The front door was equipped with a sign (positioned to obstruct an easy exit) asking parents if they had signed up for conferences.

Overall it was a good night. 13 of my 17 families attended and I made it out of the building shortly after the, 'the building will be closing' announcement.

Good luck to everyone with upcoming Open House nights!

Welcome Back Bulletin Board

It's hard to believe, but that elusive first day of a school is right around the corner- who else can feel it staring us down?  Like so many other teachers, I have been running around my classroom trying to get my room ready for the invasion erm, first day.  

I have adopted a farm theme for my new Kinder classroom.  Along with my cow and pig cubby tags, farm name plates, and book barn bins (library) I have pieced together this farm scene welcome board.  Usually, I opt to make everything myself but this BBA (bulletin board accessory) was too cute to try to re-create with homemade items.  It came with two 'multicultural' farmers who were pretty much the least multicultural, ever so they got stuffed in the closet.  I tried to represent my homemade craftiness by making my own glitter text.  The board reads, "Welcome to the herd" and the animals and hay bales feature student names.  I may add something with my room number and 'Kindergarten,' but I'm not totally sold on the idea just yet.  

Have a great first day!

Feel free to support my classroom via Adopt-A-Classroom!

Free cleaning!

My hunt for donations continues!  I came across this offer from Clorox tonight.  All you have to do it register (free and quick) and upload your class supply list or create a list on their site (also, free and quick).  The only thing that I was unsure about was that the site requested the principal's name.  The two free canisters of wipes come via coupon in 4-6 weeks, mailed to your school.  It says supplies are limited and that the offer will end on 7/31 or when they run out.  After submitting I received an email with a copy of my supply list telling me that if my list qualified I would be sent the coupons.  


Clorox Canisters for Classrooms link




Happy cleaning!

Adopt A Classroom Donation Site

Hey everyone! It's been a while since my last post- but as all teachers know, the end of the year can be a bit chaotic.  This year I will be teaching Kindergarten in an add-on classroom.  I am discovering certain benefits to being an add-on class.  One, is that you have a smaller class size than teachers did the year before (across the grade level we are going from 25 to less than 20 per class).  Another, is that you don't have to go crazy going through piles of stuff the last teacher left in the room.  Really, it's a great opportunity to design your space.  The downside to being the add-on class is that you don't have the supplies left by the teacher from the year before (and all the other teachers before him/her).  With a small budget I have turned to Freecycle for my manipulative toys (Legos, K'nex and such), art supplies and picture books.  While I am collecting donations on a fairly regular basis, it's just not working to get the books that I need.  Mainly because I need leveled readers to be able to facilitate a Daily 5 approach.

So, what do you do when you know your shelves are empty and your budget is tiny?  First I checked out Donors Choose but the logistics of the site are complicated and I did not like the way your project is funded/ possibly not funded.  Someone I know who writes grants for 'small budget' schools recommended Adopt A Classroom.  Setting up an Adopt A Classroom profile was quick and simple.  The site has options to create projects with set goals or to just be available for donations.  I set up a project to build my library (currently non-exsistant).  I posted my project link to Facebook (and option available on my Adopt A Classroom profile) and quickly received two emails notifying me of two donations made to my classroom.  All donated funds must be spent through a list of vendors on the site.  Let me tell you- the vendor list is great!  It is loaded with sites that I order from for my classroom on my own.  I have not purchased anything yet but the site gave me the option to spend my two donations immediately after they came in, no waiting forever like at another site.

There is an HTML script on the Adopt A Classroom profile to add a donation box to my blog- I tried various ways to get the box to work but was unsuccessful, so far at least.  I would love some tips if anyone has any!

Check out the link to my profile to get an idea of what guests will see.  Hey, while you're there feel free to make a donation- every dollar helps!  Ms C's Adopt A Classroom page

Just in case the link doesn't work for you, copy and paste this: http://www.adoptaclassroom.org/classroomdonation/results_teacher.aspx?ClassroomID=163680&schoolID=59090

Good luck to anyone else searching for supplies!

Free Online Animated Books

Another free and useful online resource!  I found out about this via Mo Willem's Twitter oddly enough.  I will say that without the link it was hard to search for on it's own.  Barnes and Noble has this great free resource on the kid's section of it's website.  B&N has a collection of stories read by celebrities, frequently the book's author.  Each month features a new book but you can access past stories by using the scroll bar on the bottom.


Here's the link so you don't have to hunt it down!
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/storytime/index.asp




Enjoy!

Parent- Teacher Conferences Schedule Manager!

Hey teachers out there! How many of you have wished you had a personal assistant to do some of those little jobs like scheduling conferences? I'm thinking, "hello! personal assistant- sign me up!" Sorry to say, personal assistants are still not in your school's budget. However, the latest trend with P-T-C's is online scheduling. I searched a bunch of sites and found one that does not require membership and does not require the parents to sign up for anything either. It is designed to manage volunteer events and also includes a link for teacher use.

The site you want to use is called Volunteer Spot. It took no more than 10 minutes to set up two days of conferences with time slots and sign up limitations. After completing one day I was able to copy that format to the next day. Once I established my event (P-T-C's Spring 2012) I had the option of generating a link, which I did. I emailed the link to my classroom distribution list and was done. This site lets me track who has signed up and provides an option for a schedule print out. The one option it doesn't do (at least not that I have found yet) is stalk, erm, 'remind' parents to sign up for a conference.

Volunteer Spot is a great tool and I highly recommend it. Short of getting that personal assistant we are all longing for, this is the most stress free conference scheduling I have done.

Link: Volunteerspot.com

Here's to a well planned Spring conference season!

Another free find on the web!

Just a quick post tonight. I was searching for a resource for some math activities today and stumbled on a new website.

Check out Education.com for a load of free resources. Items are categorized by grade level and then subject matter and again broken down within each subject. This site has activities and worksheets- and lots of both.

All in all, I consider this find a great use of a prep block!

Happy searching!

Happy Birthday Dr Seuss! (Read Across America day)

At the end of the day today I walked into the classroom next to where I am long term subbing. Sitting on the table was a Seuss activity, ready for the morning. There I was, teaching in the home state of Dr Rhyme totally forgetting his birthday- opps! I came home from school with a mission- find Seuss ideas for tomorrow.

All I have to say is that after Google and Pinterest searching I remembered that Dr Seuss has an amazing website. If you don't know what i'm talking about you need to immediately follow the link at the bottom of this post. Seussville is a website for students and teachers complete with everything from games to lesson plans (there is a parent's section as well). The educators section has a month by month event guide featuring teaching guides for various books correlating to the 'holiday' of the month.

Check out Seussville! (http://www.seussville.com/)

Just remember that at the end of the day (after you've heard your name a million times over, you are convinced you're going to be saying the same name in your sleep that you said every 2 minutes and you just can't wait to get to 100 gems/jewels/compliments/marbles/whatever so you can have pj day), “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

Have a Seuss-tastic Friday!

Sheppard Software Free Game site!

My quest for free online resources continues! Today's find is a multi-level collection of games supporting each of the core subjects. While I was leery of the website as it appeared to be a software company, it actually has a plethora of free games.

After getting past the visually overwhelming design of the homepage I was excited to explore the numerous categories. I discovered as I was selecting options around the page that many of the words and icons I scrolled over were being read aloud. I tried out a few of the games and found that this read aloud feature continued within the games, including a read aloud of the directions.

Along with being able to select by subject you are also able to select an additional Preschool collection. The games in the preschool collection have softer graphics and are great for Preschool and Kindergarten usage. If you hang out with the big kids, there is oodles of stuff for you on this site as well!

Within the Preschool-Kindergarten section of the website I think the Animals section is the best feature. The animal section features a collection of activities themed for ocean, jungle, forest and farm. The direct link to this portion of the site is: http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/preschool/animals.htm

If you hang out with the big kids, there is oodles of stuff for you on this site as well! I liked the the life cycles activities. These activities are themed for frog, butterfly and bird life cycles. Once a creature is selected you have the option of watching a video or playing a game. I played the butterfly game and was presented with icons for the different stages of the butterfly life cycle. To play the game you organize the icons onto a life cycle circle. When the incorrect icon is selected the icon would fly back to the start point rather than attach to the circle. The direct link for the life cycle science games is: http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/scienceforkids/life_cycle/index.htm

Link to Sheppard Software homepage: http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/

Link to Sheppard's Preschool page: http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/preschool/preschool.htm

Thanks for reading!

NCTM Illuminations Review

I was thinking with all of the website reviews I've been doing this week I was falling into a pattern of literacy focused posts. How do you fix this situation? Well, by taking a look at the list of websites bookmarked on your computer and searching for something other than literacy.

A few weeks ago I was helping out in a First Grade classroom and learned about a kid's section of the NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) site. My mother has been teaching math for about 30 years and while NCTM is a well known organization in our family, it's something that I never paid much interest to as an Early Childhood educator. Who knew it was full of easy to play, developmentally appropriate games? (Clearly, the First Grade teacher I was helping out).

A definite challenge with this site is getting to the games. The teacher I was with told her First Graders to, 'think yellow.' Following the links from the homepage with these steps:

1. Select the "Activities" button (yellow- and on top)

2. Select the "pre-k - 2" yellow stars (also on top)

3. Click the "search" button

4. You are now on the games page- pick a game. (The class I was with was directed to play a specific game).

It would be beneficial to add a link directly to the games page for that grade range to the bookmarks menu of the computers students will use. Of course, this is one of those ideas that takes the extra time we are often strapped for.

One of the games I liked was "Patch Tool." Patch Tool is a virtual play mat for pattern blocks. I would begin by using the blank canvas option for exploration and eventually moving to the "puzzle" outlines. One of the challenges to the puzzle outlines is that to complete some of the puzzles some pattern blocks require rotation.

A second game I could see myself using is "How Many Under the Shell." How Many Under the Shell is a subtraction game featuring a fun animated octopus. In this game the player is given a number of bubbles per round. After viewing the bubbles with corresponding numerals some of the bubbles become hidden by the shell, leaving the player with the remaining bubbles to count up from.

Link for Illuminations home page: http://illuminations.nctm.org/

Link for the First Grade games page: http://illuminations.nctm.org/Activities.aspx?grade=1

Check out the games and feel free to leave your thoughts on them here.

Thanks for reading!

Storyline (Online video book collection)

I figure since I'm having such luck finding free and useful websites, I should keep Googling. A few interesting key word searches later I located a website run by the Screen Actor's Guild. While SAG is not the first agency I would think of for classroom freebies I can honestly say that they put together a nice resource.

Storyline is a video collection featuring actors reading picture books. The videos transition smoothly from the actor/actress holding the book to pictures from the book. The videography is well done and the videos are enjoyable to watch. Be sure to click the 'more stories!' button at the bottom of the displayed links to access the variety hiding on additional pages. When you select a specific video you are provided with addition links for complimentary activities for that story. http://www.storylineonline.net/

Happy viewing!

Read Write Think Website Review

For years, I have known about a few websites that offer a handful of activities for free and charge for membership when you attempt to download what you are really interested in. I recently posted about a website offering free access to a collection of videos for lesson extension. Well, I have found another free- and useful site.

Read Write Think offers a collection of lesson plans ranging from interactive web based games to whole group instruction guides. The menu on the left side of this website categorizes the LP's by grade level or type. Use the grade level option to then access a searchable collection for your classroom level. Check it out! (http://www.readwritethink.org/)

Be cautioned that the grade levels assigned to the LP's are not always appropriately designated. As with many resources, I always check the grade levels above and below the one I am teaching.

Enjoy!

WatchKnowLearn Review

Wow, it's been a while! I have been inspired by the influx of Pinterest re-pin notifications flowing into my inbox on a daily basis and went searching for some new resources myself.

I like to include technology as lesson extensions rather than as an area of the classroom to plop a student in front of a computer for a bit. While I agree that computers have a place in elementary school classrooms, I consider 'integrating technology' to be more than a center activity. One of my preferred lesson extensions are videos of 'animated' books (as opposed to video versions of books) and really, quick videos in general. I work primarily with younger

learners and need developmentally appropriate videos often to assist in making abstract ideas concrete while working with short attention spans.

It is often a challenge to locate high quality materials to complement my lessons. Imagine my excitement the other day when I happened upon this fantastic collection of such quick videos ready to go on a number of lesson topics and picture books! I have bookmarked this site and highly recommend you do the same. Teachers and parents can find something on here.

The much anticipated link. (http://watchknowlearn.org) Use the menu on the left to find videos by subject. You will need to click on the + bubble (not the subject name) to load the drop down within the topic.

Happy exploring!