Painting with Bubble Wrap

Long time no see...Long time no blog?

 It's been hard for me to post here lately and read anything kindergarten related because I just needed a break from school. I left my job of six years, which was a lot harder then I thought it would be. I need to be working closer to home and so right now I'm in between jobs.

It's been very nerve wracking because the county I want to work on has posted ZERO jobs in elementary ed for the past two months. I know this because I have been checking every day (multiple times) I know it is partly due to the fact that they are still going through transfers and all that jazz, but waiting is hard. It's hard to go through Target and see the sale on glue sticks and not buy any.

But anyway, I've been keeping myself busy at home cleaning out some areas of my house that desperately needed it and I was cleaning up my computer and found some pictures of things that I did over the spring with my students.

This is from Valentine's Day, but you could do this project anytime. Last year our art teacher, who we only see 3 times a year :( , did this more free form with the kids. I adapted it for hearts for a valentine measuring project, but you could really do any shape you wanted to.

1. Collect different sized bubble wrap (large bubbles, small bubbles, etc.) and cut them down to individual pieces for the kids. Roughly the size of a piece of 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper. Tape the bubble wrap to the table.

2. Have the students paint the bubble wrap and then make a print. I let them switch for different colors and different sized bubbles.

3. Let the paper dry and then have them trace their shape on the back. Then they can cut it out their shape. I purposely gave students different sized hearts since this was going to be a measuring activity. (Look its differentiated!)

4. I had my students measure with nonstandard units. I ended up putting these on the bulletin board put I have no pictures of that. They glued them to a sentence frame that said "I used _____  cubes to measure my heart." Some of my more advanced students got to pick their unit of measurement so their frame looked like this " I used ____   _______ to measure my heart."

Thinking back now you could do this with a shapes unit so you could review 2D shapes (K.G.2) and have them use a paper big enough that they could trace two object and then compare (K.MD.2).

Out of the Mouths of Kindergartners

Me: Oh B. you are just too funny.
Student: I know I was just born that way.

Don't you just love when they are hilarious without really knowing it.

Sorry I've neglected posting. I have some pictures of a bunch of things that maybe I'll get up this summer. I've been going through some personal stuff and its been a challenging end of the year.

I'm actually quitting my job mostly because my commute is an hour on a good day. I'm hoping to get a job in the district where I live, but I will probably have to sub next year. Next week once school is over I'll try to get some more of my projects from this year up and some reflections as well. Enjoy the rest of the school year to those who are not finished yet!

Reasons I love shaving cream

1. Easy clean up.

2. Cheap (especially when the teacher who had this room before me left 4 cans of it under the sink)

3. It makes my room smell clean.

4. It makes that last 30 minutes on a Friday when the kids can't sit still anymore because they have been stuck inside for the past few days and I've been giving them tons of busy work while testing for the end of the quarter just fly by.

5. Students can get that great sensory experience and fine motor practice ....(cough cough ok my principal is gone)...they get to play!

6. One of your students might say "This is my favoritest day ever!"

P is for Penguin

I started this post last month and then my laptop decided it didn't want to work. I know that everyone has moved on from winter but i thought i'd put the up anyway.

I saw these cute penguins on Keen on Kindergarten and since we happened to be studying P last week I thought it would be a fun project and a great assessment of motor skills.While making them a couple of kids kept asking about feet and so I just gave them some orange paper and let them go to town.

Reindeer Hats

A coworker made these with her kids and I took the idea. It made for good fine motor practice when they had to trace their hands and cut them out.

We did this project the last day before break so I only had a chance to grab a quick picture on my phone.

Can you feel it?

That Christmas itch?

Here's what happened around the K pod today (fortunately only one of these involved my students)...

The morning began with a student that glued their entire paper to the table. I mean full on 8.5 by 11 paper completely stuck to the table. They must have used an entire glue stick.







We got outside for recess (yay!)


Then during a bathroom break a student was climbing on the toilet and her foot "splashed in the water" according to another girl in the bathroom at the time.





Finally to cap off the day, two students decided that their white crayons should just be used on their blue paper but also on their blue chair seats.

Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday!

My heart is beating thump thump thump...

This is what a student said to me today when she moved her name up to blue on my behavior chart system.  But let me rewind since the above is probably confusing since I have not shared about my behavior management system.

 I (like many a K teacher before me) have found that students respond well when you give specific positive praise rather then just pointing out the things that the bad kids are doing....(cough cough...B. and A. not that I'm naming any names...). The positive praise makes the other kids (most of the time) sit up and pay attention because they want you to say their name. So over the summer while browsing the wonderful world of Pinterest. I noticed behavior charts like this one from The Clutter-Free Classroom

The students can move up for good behavior and down for poor choices. Even if they start a downward path they can improve and move back up. And for those who make more poor choices then others, I try to move them up in the morning so they have some wiggle room.

 I combined the clips system with another idea I saw around the blogosphere...behavior punch cards. I modeled mine after these from Mrs. Steberger's First Grade 

Mine have numbers 1 to 5. The kids get punches for good behavior and when they fill up the card they get to get a prize out of the prize box. If they stay on green on the behavior chart they get one punch, up to blue is two and purple is three. They are in charge of their card and they keep them in their pencil box.

Fridays used to be crazy when I had a system for Friday Prize Days. Now its only a few kids a day in the box. They know how to get it out and put it away and there is so much less management on my end.




The great part about today is that this student is not bad (I can't really call any kid bad)... she just makes poor choices at times and talks way too much...and so when I caught her being good today she was so excited that she was going to get extra punches on her punch card. Some days I feel like I'm doing something right.