I'm not sure who's idea this is to give them credit for it (probably Kathie?), but it's one that I'll probably continue to do for as long as I'm ever teaching kindergarten. Here's the link if you'd like a copy of the mini poem to glue onto the handprint, as well as the parent page. This year, I also attached a "first day of kindergarten" photo of each child to go home along with their handprint. They all looked so cute, and since I was scheduled to pick up a bunch of photos from Walmart anyways, I decided to add them to my online order, thinking that if I were a kindergarten parent, I would love a photo like this of my own child on their first day :)
One thing that I've always loved about the first day of school in kindergarten is reading The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn. It's a really sweet story about going to school for the first time, and how kids feel about leaving their homes and families, and also about how their parents feel about leaving them at school for the first time too! Each year that I've been in kindergarten, our team has done a craft/activity of some type related to this story, which the children are able to give to their families as a little gift sometime during the first week of school. I think this version is my favorite idea: having the kids stamp a handprint (either by painting their hands or having them ink their handprints on a washable stamp pad), onto which we glue a poem, add a special heart sticker, and stick a piece of adhesive magnet strip on the back. I then paperclip the hand to a larger paper with a little explanation/background of the story for families to read, so that they understand the significance of the gift. I'm not sure who's idea this is to give them credit for it (probably Kathie?), but it's one that I'll probably continue to do for as long as I'm ever teaching kindergarten. Here's the link if you'd like a copy of the mini poem to glue onto the handprint, as well as the parent page. This year, I also attached a "first day of kindergarten" photo of each child to go home along with their handprint. They all looked so cute, and since I was scheduled to pick up a bunch of photos from Walmart anyways, I decided to add them to my online order, thinking that if I were a kindergarten parent, I would love a photo like this of my own child on their first day :) Again, this is another brilliant Pinterest idea that I had pinned a few months back. For my version, I painted white acrylic letters onto an old chalkboard, so that the letters wouldn't smudge when the kids held it. I figure that I can get a lot of use out of this board by just washing off the bottom part that shows the year and repainting that each year. Definitely an idea that I will do again next year! I have yet to do this, but in the next week I'd also like to take another beginning of the year photo of the whole class with this sign in front, as well as have each child hold up another chalkboard or whiteboard which says "when I grow up I want to be a..." I think it would be really cute to take one of these at the beginning as well as at the end of the year to see whether or not their career ambitions change or stay the same! I'm planning on putting these shots in my class Shutterfly book this year (which I did for the first time last year, and like many ideas that I'll be posting about, is one of the BEST ideas ever! Thanks to Kathie Gibbons for piloting this idea for the K team a few years back...definitely another keeper of an idea!) But that's another blog post... :)
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So this has undoubtedly been one of the best ideas I've come across since I've started teaching. I've always loved creating bulletin board displays of student artwork, but found it so tedious to staple papers to the wall, and then pull all those staples out and do it all over again. In kindergarten, especially, I find that we do lots of drawings, artwork and crafts that I would love to display and change quickly as our themes change. A few years ago, another teacher at Duclos began using clothes pins to display her students' artwork in the hallway, and since then, I've never gone back to the ol' stapler! Every school year, I buy a cheap pack of wooden clothes pins from either the dollar store or Walmart for this purpose. Once we know our class lists, I write each child's name on a miniature accent and hot glue it to the clothes pin. I then put a strip of fun tack on the back of the clothes pin to adhere it to the wall. I've had very good results with this over the past few years. I've also seen a variation on Pinterest where a flat metal thumb tack is hot glued to the back of the clothes pin to stick into the wall...however, since fun tack doesn't leave any marks on the walls and I've had really good results (i.e. no pins have come off of the wall until I've taken them down...even when holding heavier paper crafts!) I'll be "sticking" with the fun tack (pun intended!!) What I love about this method of displaying student work is that parents (and kids) always know where their artwork is displayed, it's super easy to switch out, and since the artwork is always in the same place, it's easy to see which kids are missing a project, either because they need more time to finish up or if they were absent and I need to catch them up.
This year, I've incorporated clothes pins in several other ways in my classroom to help keep the kids and myself organized (thanks again to Pinterest!) I sense another blog post in the works... :) So excited to begin a new school year! Every year at our school, it's been status quo that we hand out a little treat of some kind to welcome our new students to kindergarten and to the school. In the past, I've used the same adorable idea that Kathie Gibbons gave me, which was a little goodie bag filled with trinkets that had a meaning behind them (ex/ an eraser because we all make mistakes, a Hershey hug cause we are all need hugs now and then, a small box of smarties to represent how much we are all going to learn this year, etc.) This year, however, the first meeting day seemed to sneak up on me and I found myself with one day to spare and not enough time to run around Bonnyville and gather everything I needed before the stores closed (which is 5pm on Sundays in our town). Alas, Pinterest to the rescue! I came across this idea and not only did it save me time and money, but it's also cute, and the kids all appreciated it which is all I was ultimately aiming for! I bought mini ziploc baggies at the dollar store ($0.99 for 100...perfect snack size, and they helped me with my portions), 3 bags of Rainbow Goldfish Crackers, and some super cute labels that I came across on Teachers Pay Teachers (and for free no less!! Click here to go to the TpT site and link directly to this cute freebie!) For my next post, I plan on sharing a really neat idea for displaying artwork in the hallways, which I wish I had known about when I first began teaching...I cringe to think about how much time I spent in my first few years stapling up displays and procrastinating changing them out because I dreaded having to pull all those staples from the wall, and then pick up the stray ones from the floor, and then staple up the new display papers...this new system has definitely impacted my enthusiasm for changing student artwork in the halls in a positive way! Depending on how busy tomorrow is with one-on-one meetings, my post could happen as soon as then or by Friday if life gets too busy. I'm excited to get back into blogging, and hope that someone, somewhere can find something that I post of some use. I've learned so much from so many great teachers over the years, and since I love to share and help out, this is just another way that I'm able to do that. I'm always interested to learn about how other teachers do their thing in their classrooms, and I hope that by sharing some of my own ideas, whether original or not, I can maybe give another teacher out there a new idea to try out, or even a way to change something that they're already doing to make it work better for them. Happy Monday, everyone! :) C. |
Christina Scudder (Twerdohlib)Teaching is all about sharing great ideas! Many of the best things happening in my classroom came from others' ideas, which I have adapted to work for me. I plan to share lesson plan ideas, tips, favourite book titles, how I am integrating technology, etc. Some ideas are my own, most come from others more clever than myself! :) Archives
November 2012
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