Halloween Art

Halloween Art is Howling Fun!

I have a lot of patterns to run through the copier which require the children to practice those cut on the line skills, as well as tracers of those same patterns for those years the copier wasn’t cooperating!  However, I love watching my students create their own art using the concept of TLC Art.  Using squares and rectangles of specific sizes, we are able to cut circles, ovals, triangles, etc as we create amazing art.  Developing visual perception takes a bit of work, but as the year progresses, the children truly improve in that area.  Today I thought I’d share our witches and trick-or-treaters.  The trick-or-treaters is from an old TLC Art book or freebie.  The witch we made up as we created it today!  I think they turned out cute.  We added the witches to our “What Are You Afraid Of” hall display. 
We use discoveryed.com & my kinders love the "spooky favorites: twelve days of halloween." 

Here’s how we made the witch:

Construction paper & sizes

Light green 6”x9” (head)

Dark green 1”x3” (nose)

White 2”x4” (eyes – fold in 1/2 to cut 2 eyes)

Black 1 1/2”x3 (eyes – fold in 1/2 to cut 2 eyes)

Purple 1/2”x12” (hair)

Black 6”x9” (triangle for hat)

Black 1”x7” (hat band)

Orange 1”x7” (trim to fit above hat band)

Use black scraps from the hat to make a mouth (some made their mouths like the photo below & some made zigzag mouths!)

For circles & ovals – cut corners & trim/round the points

For triangle – fold in half & cut on the diagonal

**This project took my class about 30 minutes to complete!!

October Activties

October Activities

October has been so busy!  We are working on a Farm unit as we prepare for our field trip to the farm at the end of the month.  In addition, we are studying about Halloween as well as beginning our AMSTI unit on Trees, and squeezing in Red Ribbon Week activities.  Combining all of these has been an amazing feat for the 4 K teachers.

Red Ribbon Week 

And of course we combined our farm art with our Red Ribbon door decoration!

Farm

Shape Tractors and Scarecrows

Halloween

Frankenstein was fun to make 

(and I see we need to repair one!)

The children shared silly things that frightened them!!

They really loved making these Frankensteins!!  We painted a small paper plate green, added a fun hair piece, eyes, nose, ears, and drew a zig-zag mouth.

October isn't over yet, and we have more things on the wall and more fun things to make!  Learning is so much fun!

Tens Frame

A great interactive way to work with the tens frame developing kindergarten

and first grade math skills is at the illuminations website.  http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?ID=75

What a busy beginning of the school year this has been!  We started school mid-August and had to deal with days off because of Hurricane Isaac.  That just meant we had another first day of school with our precious kkids! 

With our k’s focus more on numeracy, I’m adding an anchor chart “All about the number ?” and have a corresponding page for the children to complete for their math journal.  Enjoy this freebie.

 All about 7 seven

this link will take you to a pdf file – I still can’t figure out how to put a thumbnail of a pdf file on my blogger site…I’m working on it though J.

Just got the key to my classroom! I was very excited for the work our custodial staff has done this summer. Freshly cleaned and waxed floors, and all of my furniture returned to the classroom!  Thank goodness my 15 year old son went with me!  He is helping me rearrange the room and get things ready for a summer program we are having in my room next week!
  I see potential for those sterlite drawer containers.  Thanks to kinderkraze and pinterest!  As the next few weeks pass, I plan to have polka dot curtains, bulletin boards and more! 

Here's a picture of what I want to do with my sterlite drawers!  Be sure to click on the picture to go to kindercraze for directions! I know the directions indicate using scrapbook paper, but inexpensive gift wrap could be used instead. (Thanks to my sister, Ruth for that suggestion!) 
It's so stinkin' cute!!

And a link to teacherspayteachers for some free polka dot labels.

Sarah

Bridges to Kindergarten

The education foundation that serves the public schools in my hometown offers amazing summer enrichment programs taught by teachers.  I applied to teach a program this summer, and submitted a proposal for an introduction to kindergarten.  I was excited when they said, "Let's do it!"  We had it scheduled for two different weeks.  One of the weeks was canceled due to lack of participants - this was surprising to all of us!  We thought we would have to cancel the second week as well.  Yesterday there were 3 families interested in the program, and the educational foundation called parents to cancel.  Today we had enough to hold the "camp," and the parents were called again in order to inform them that we would indeed have the program next week!  

My teenage son and I made a mad dash to the school this afternoon to begin prepping the room for the 3 hours a day for four days Bridges program.  I think my teen was excited because I offered to pay him to be my assistant next week! (What money will do for a teen boy!)

Now to finish my plans and ideas for next week!                                                                                     

Daily Five in K

I am awaiting the arrival of my copy of The Daily Five.  I want to start reading this book and search for other k teachers who are using this in their classroom.  I've located Mrs. Shelton's Kindergarten who has answered questions from chapter one of this book.  On the blog Beg Borrow Steal, I found great info for chapters 2, 3, and 5.  While reading through this blog, I found a link to 




where chapters 4, and 6 could be found.  I can't wait to get my copy of the book, and I look forward to reading these blogs as well as others who have linked up to share about The Daily Five.

While I was searching for book info, I stumbled across Leelou Blogs, for cute templates and backgrounds for my blog!  I'm using one of her freebies right now, but I am already itching for a custom title design and more!  I'll try to add her button later, it wasn't working right for me at this time. Just be sure to click on the title of her blog until I can place a button on this page.


The Best Math Book I Ever Read


One by Kathryn Otoshi


A great book to discuss colors, numbers and acceptance of others.

1 More Month!!

With only 1 month left of my summer, I think I need to start hanging out in my classroom to prepare it for the first day of school & beyond! I've enjoyed gathering ideas from Pinterest; now to start using some of these ideas in my classroom. I do have a list of things to accomplish in the next couple of weeks: make new curtains, arrange room, clean & dust, meet with co-teachers to prepare plans for the first 2 or 3 weeks, and so much more! Today's goal - go to school to get key & call some families about the Bridges to K program. Today's goal - go to school to get key & call some families about the Bridges to K program. Math Coach's Corner is sponsoring a giveaway. The giveaway entry deadline is July 27; the first day of the Olympics! Head on over and enter to win. While you are there, check out her blog & TpT store! Math Coach's Corner