September 2014 – Patties Classroom

Halloween Pumpkins and Bat Art

I was thinking of some fun art projects I have done in the past. Here are a few of them.

Cute little Striped Jack o Lantern Art Project. Just glue orange stripes onto black paper. Cut it in half. Use one half to cut out a pumpkin turned the other way. Some will be horizaontally striped, others vertically striped. It makes a pretty cool bulletin board.

Here’s our weekly graph chart…we graphed our favorite Halloween candy!

We always do a Weekly Graph on Which Is Your Favorite Candy? Since everybody is heavy into the excitement of getting FREE HALLOWEEN CANDY! That used to be my favorite part of Halloween!

This was a really striking Halloween bulletin board…we got lots of compliments on it!

This cute bat is made from 2 handprints. The kids can trace and cut them out, then I just cut out the head and fangs and they glue them down with a pom pom nose and wiggly eyes. It is an easy project. It is fun to add a BAT acrostic poem.

Mrs. Moss trying to be Cher…..or just a hippie!

This is a fun skeletons project to do in pairs….boy that’s a lot of bones!

Here are some Halloween MAD LIBS on cute Pumpkin paper, but you could also do a Pumpkin Acrostic. For Art here are some cool graphic pumpkins!

This was a Martha Stewart white spider web, and pumpkins made of swirled circles of orange. I had the kids add a picket fence the pumpkins were sitting on and a black pom pom spider. It was a lot of work. I wouldn’t do it again, but it was cute.

Well, Here is something else really cute!
Minnie Mouse and Dorothy from Wizard of OZ.

They have grown up a bit since this picture, but they are still cute as bugs….(or mice).

Classroom Decorating

Here is my Classroom this year. I’m in a new grade too. This is a Kinder classroom. We have “Star Students” as the theme and lots of lime green, pink, purple and sky blue as the color scheme.

Here is the rug area. I use the board behind the bookcase to teach from at the rug. I do a minimal calendar time and I use the little apple pocket chart to teach sight words and word families from. I have a set of whiteboards and green chalkboards we take turn using at the rug so kids WRITE the sounds/letters daily using word families.

Here is some of my center games. I have a large classroom library too. At the top are monthly listening post boxes with books and tapes that go with each season. In the bookcase are monthly sets of books that I will read aloud for that month. On the far right is the monthly word bank. This helps the kids with copying words correctly in writing. Each month I change it out for a new icon with words for the month. To the right of that is my computer/ipad center and listening post.

This is my reading area at the left. The vocabulary for the month that goes with the Journeys series is in the blue pocket chart along with math vocabulary for the week/month. I just add to it. I bought the cute little chalkboard owl and some mini black whiteboards and NEON whiteboard markers I use every day at the reading group. We will do word families and rhyming CVC words for now. Writing is a great vehicle for reteaching sounds, letters, spelling AND writing. DON’T EVER wait to teach writing. It is reciprocal to every other subject.

Here is my Show Off board in the back of the room. I will put something up we did every 2 weeks all year. The little crayons have the kids’ names on them in alpha order. You can see some of my puff balls hanging from the ceiling. The orange one with the orange star hanging from it hangs over the orange table 6. I have one in blue, purple, lime green, pink too. Math manipulatives and center games are in the back too. Birthday Pixie Stix with big, Happy Birthday balloons are in the green vase in the back. Magnet center is the 2 black filing cabinets pushed together. I have about 8 magnetic games.

My desk area. I bought this cute, fabric banner at Quilted Bear in Draper. I had my daughter put the Pink lettering on with her Cricut. I love how it turned out. The blue little 3 drawer has “warm fuzzies” in it that each table can earn in competition. I get good teamwork using these fuzzies for motivation. When the table earns 20 they can spin for a big reward.

A few of the center tables. This is the stamping center. They stamp words and then rewrite them or trace them. The pocket chart center is to the right. It includes a small, tabletop pocket chart full of different games and 2 wall pocket charts.

The decor on this green wall changes every month. I put up pumpkins and witches in October and Shamrocks and Leprechauns in March. And I usually add a new poem or song.

Birthday Pixie Stix and a Box of Bookmarks for the birthday boy or girl.

I get the Pixie Stix from Sam’s Club in the summer and add all the balloons to the top. Then I add some curly ribbon.

Some of the reading area. I got some little camp chairs on clearance from Walmart one year. The tubs are from Hobby Lobby

The rug is from Target. I recovered an old chair in Arthur schoolhouse material. It needs a new cover now I think. 😀

Take home backpacks. I have 21 of them in all sort
s of themes from Curious George to Skeletons to Rainforest to Football.

I have 8 center areas. This is the math center. It changes out every week. I also have listening post, reading rug/read the room, computers/ipads, pocket chart, magnets, stamping center, and art center Sometimes I leave out the art center and put math manipulatives or play dough there with some kind of learning game. HERE is ONE I downloaded free off TPT. It’s a work in progress always isn’t it?

Johnny Appleseed Art, Math and Writing Fun

We made some cute Johnny Appleseed Art last week. We used wiggly eyes and buttons and patches out of scrapbook paper. The “pot” on his head is funny to the kids. 😀

The students made their own “favorite color of apple” and glued it on the overalls too. Then we made a class graph of our favorite apple color to eat. And we read some stories about Johnny Appleseed.

The link for this fun freebie is from Anna Sanchez. We also have a weekly graph in our classroom we use tiny pics of ourselves to graph things in the graphing pocket chart. I also punched out green, yellow and red apples for kids to choose as they came into the classroom on apple graphing day. Red apples won the vote. I forgot to take a picture of the graphing pocket chart though. My bad. 😀

I Am an Apple by Jean MarzolloJohnny Appleseed by Steven KelloggJohnny Appleseed by Madeline Olsen

We sang this song with my auto harp and some instruments for fun.

Do You Know the Apple Man?Sung to tune of “The Muffin Man”

Oh, do you know the Apple Man,
The Apple Man, The Apple Man?
Oh, do you know the Apple Man
He planted apple seeds.

He wore a pot upon his head,
Upon his head, upon his head.
He wore a pot upon his head.
His name was Johnny Appleseed.

John Chapman was his real name,
His real name, his real name.
John Chapman was his real name;
But, we call him Johnny Appleseed.

We played this game for math. Then I put it out at the math center. I printed all 32 and then put them in page protectors and have 4 for each season. It is “roll the dice and add 1”.

The link for this game is HERE at Oceans of First Grade Fun. Just click on the apple game. There were 32 games!! Woot!

Yolanda at First Grade Fun also had a doubles roll the dice game that is great for more advanced kids too. Thanks so much Yolanda!

These guys did a GREAT JOB for their first writing project. I am proud of them. All of them did the Capital I correctly without any do overs. My gifted first graders used to forget and do lower case i. I think I have taught these guys well. 😀

I started this activity by showing an 8 minute youtube video on Johnny Appleseed. Then I read a short book to the kids asking them questions. One of my favorites is the Steven Kellogg book on Johnny Appleseed, but I also have a little Scholastic one I have used too. Here are some of the questions I ask…..Was he a homeless guy? How did he cook.?What did he do with all those apple seeds? Was he a friend to animals? How long ago did Johnny live? Was he a pioneer?

Fernando has really nice handwriting, yes he does. 😀

These Johnny Appleseed projects turned out so cute. I love dem…..

The challenge in kinder is to get them to write ON THE LINES. They did a pretty good job!

Johnny Appleseed bulletin board for fall. Love it!

These Johnny Appleseed faces are too funny. One of them has shark teeth! (snicker)

The writing paper we used was really great because it had a word bank embedded in it. This ALWAYS makes for better writing for beginners because it scaffolds them. They can pick and choose a word to copy and it is right there.

This one is from Hello Literacy. I thought it was OH so cute! The kids loved coloring after writing their favorite color of fresh apple. Some also copied “Johnny Appleseed”. So it can also help in differentiation. Higher kids will write more. Emergent writers can copy “I like red apples” even in kinder. 😀

Love the barely there hair, don’t you? lol

I found a few very cute, free writing papers for Johnny Appleseed. One is from Dawn M. Key. It would be great for first or second graders who can write a few sentences or a paragraph already. A cute word family game I found as a freebie from Ivy Taul too. It was really cute for beginning readers.

I really liked a few freebies I found on Teachers Pay Teachers too. This one from Teaching with a Twist had some great graphic organizers for developing comprehension of the story.

Another freebie by Lisbeth Radcliff had a cute apple math addition worksheet and a mini story about Johnny Appleseed that were great. I liked this Centers Activities set from Abby Buettner too.

There is a list of Doltch Sight Words with cute apples on them from Amy Lattin I downloaded and put on red cardstock and laminated. It will make a great center to put in the pocket chart or to work with at the reading table too.

Speaking of apples, Check out my Dried Apple Head Witch Dolls we are getting ready to do for Halloween! Here’s a link. It is a fun thing to do in October. Have a Happy Fall Ya’ll!

Minion Art Projects for Kids

I thought Kindergarten could make some cute little minions from the movie Despicable Me. I’ve seen them so often on cupcakes, so I thought about doing them in blue and yellow construction paper!

The Minions turned out great….they chose how many eyes theirs would have and how many teeth!

Cute little Minions art project turned out fun and funny!

I had an idea for a cute banner too…..”Mrs. Moss’ class has a Minion reasons to love Kindergarten!”

Classroom Bulletin Board for August. I am late in getting it on my blog but we also added the personality plants to the bottom.

I LOVED these minions made into a bulletin board. But look at these CUPCAKES! I have GOT. TO. HAVE!

Minion cupcakes are too Cute! ( by Gallamore West) Yumm.

Kindergarteners are pretty good artists!

And we sure had fun making them!