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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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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