Happy Saturday! Today I get to go on my free school supply shopping trip at a local organziation called the LP Pencil Box. Teachers can go once a semester to get some free supplies. It’s not much, but every little bit helps! Especially when you’re sitting 23 deep and getting a 7 year old on Monday. 7 years old, in Kindergarten who’s never been to school??!! WE CAN DO THIS! And onto good stuff!
I have been a busy bee! I have created two new creations for my classroom using my new favorite clipart! I mean seriously, how cute is this stuff???? Especially if you are a dog person and a St. Bernard person like me!
Anyway, enough about my clip art obsession. (I also have new Jeep clip art I need to put to good use!)
Here is a freebie for you all! It’s a part-part-whole work mat! Click for your freebie!
One of my most fun and favorite back to school activities is the Bean Names that I make with my kindergartners every year! This is our introduction to the glue bottles and how we use BABY DOTS of glue! BABY DOTS! I know I repeat that phrase a billion times a school year. And without fail, one of my friends never truly gets the baby dot concept. It’s more of a giant St. Bernard drool spot dot of glue. This activity is great for learning names, learning the letters in our names, and it builds fine motor skills. And most importantly, it’s a lot of fun! (Some teachers, and that would be no one who reads this blog, like this activity because it’s time consuming…especially on a Friday when you have 23 students…uh, yeah, I don’t think that at all)!
I use construction paper to match my classroom theme and write the students names in my very best teacher handwriting (which is still ATROCIOUS! Seriously, I would pay someone in blog land to give me a handwriting course!) using my trusty black Sharpie. After a lesson in baby dots, I turn them lost to make their names with beans!
By the way, the pinkish tint to all of my classroom pictures is because I covered my evil and distracting fluorescent lights with pink plastic tablecloths from Wal-Mart. For 1.97 you can cover two lights. It’s so nice to not have that lovely fluorescent glow illuminating my youthful manly teacher good looks. And it’s fun when my end of the hallways is dark and there is a pink glow cascading from my open classroom door!
I love the final results. They look visually stunning displayed in our classroom all year! And with a quick glance, you get a feeling for who has and who doesn’t have fine motor skills and who is a perfectionist and who is not. Guess which one I am? Perfectionist? Or not?
I hope you’ll also check out my sale at TPT tomorrow and Sunday! Maybe you’ll even find a new Jeep themed something…sight words? numbers? letters? I dunno…but you should go look just in case!
