Fall Decorations, Bucket Filling, And Book Recommendations!

Fall Decorations--- A Cozy Classroom---- Sets the Mood for Learning!

Stimulating student imagination often happens via the senses.  Colors, smells, texture are exciting when the seasons change.  Fall has the smell of cinnamon, bright gold, red and yellow hues of the leaves, round orange pumpkins, the texture of straw, nuts and burlap. Owls, scarecrows, squirrels also add a fall touch.  

Fill the classroom with fall treasures to enhance the classroom ambiance.  A  candle will provide the cinnamon sent.  A garland of leaves brings nature into the classroom and lots of color!  Gather a few woodsy animal friends and you have a cozy fall classroom. A few things added can go along way to bring your students into the magic of the fall season.  Have Fun!!!

Here are two of my favorite art projects for fall:

   

Bucket Filling ------ A NEW Twist-- Take it to a NEW Level! 

 Reading Incentive Bucket Filling!

A Teacher’s smile, pat on the back, an encouraging note will do wonders for a student’s self esteem.  When a student does the same for another student, wonderful endorphins are released inside the child’s brain and joy happens.  Memories are made with a simple compliment scratched on a piece of paper and lovingly delivered to a classmate.  Why wait until Valentine’s Day to spread the love in the classroom?  Get started with a Bucket Filling system this week.  I know, some of you have already incorporated the bucket system because it has been around for years, SO I have something NEW for you!  You will LOVE the new twist to my bucket filling system.  

Bucket Filling System--- Getting Started
Student buckets are located on the front of my desk.  Each cup is attached with velcro and the name plates for each student is a magnet plate.  Fortunately, my desk is a metal desk!  Students write notes to fellow students on Friday and these notes put smiles on their faces, ending the week on a high note.  

Here is an example of a bucket system I used in 2nd grade.  The side of the air conditioning unit was magnetic.  Perfect!

NEW Use for Bucket Filling:  Surefire Reading Incentive- Double Duty System 

After hearing from a good number of parents at Back to School night about their concern that Johnny does not like to read, I developed this plan that has worked magic!  

In the supply bucket at each table group is a receipt pad.  Each receipt (NCR paper) makes two copies.   After a student reads a book from the classroom library, a receipt is filled out with a book recommendation.  I explain that a recommendation is like writing a short book commercial, which entices other students to read the book.  Students also rank the book from one to three.  Three stars is considered an outstanding book.  The white copy of the receipt is placed inside the book, so others may see the receipt.  The yellow copy is either given to another student by placing it in the bucket, or given to me.  Here are the great benefits of the system.  When I look at the library, I have instant data showing me which books are being read.  One group of boys read only Captain Underpants books, so I took the group aside I encouraged them to broaden their book reading experiences.  A group of girls, who are high readers, have started their own book club.  Girls that were not friends at the start of the year are now book buddies!  I can easily discover a student’s independent reading level. I see first hand that the struggling reader lacks the skill to reflect on what he/she has read, so I can give a mini-lesson on getting engaged in the story and what makes a good story.  The smiles at the end of the day on Friday are brighter and wider because they are excited about the complimentary notes, but also because they get a book recommendation!  Monday comes; the student is excited to find the book that a fellow student recommended!  Life is good!  Students are hooking other students to READ!  I discover what books have gone viral!  Book Buckets! Try it!

   

In non-teaching related news I have been redecorating and jazzing up my house like a mad woman.  Here are a few videos of my progress.  Be sure to subscribe to my shesparkletv YouTube channel!

My Garden:

My Pinterest yellow and grey guest room: 


Thanks for reading and watching all the way to the end! 

Watch Out! Kinders With A Driver’s License?!?!

I am excited to announce Sprinkle Teaching Magic’s fun in the sun summer book winners!  Congratulations Shannon, Jennifer, and Pam!  I will contact you shortly with all the details.



Mr. Winemaker and I just got back from a weeklong Oregon family vacation.  We enjoyed horse back riding, pinot noir wine tasting, family dinners, Oregon rain, bizarre ice cream flavors, and loads more.  Click on this link, She Said G Said, to see the latest post on our Oregon adventures!  Also, I put a new post up on ‘A Teacher’s Quest For Balance.’ 
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Fun Part 2:
I love kicking off the year with a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom theme.  This photo collage showcases a creative Chicka Boom Boom art project kids love.  First, students make the palm tree trunk with their footsies.  Students are shocked that they take off their shoes and socks at school!  Students use bright colored paints and fingers to make the palm tree pop off the page with alphabet fun.  Foam letters, sparkle paint, alphabet stickers… the possibilities are endless.

At the end of the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom week, students make palm tree hats.  We head out to the blacktop and write alphabet letters with chalk.  Upper grade buddies stop by to help us form our letters and remind us of tricky alphabet letters we may have forgotten. 


A Fun Way To Get Kids Walking In A Tidy Line Year Long!
I spend the first few weeks of school exposing my cuties to classroom rules, routines, and expectations.  We practice until our classroom runs like a well oiled machine.  All teachers know that little cuties tend to have a hard time walking in a straight and quiet line.  There are the wanderers, the talkers, the pokers, the drifters… you know.  I start by brainstorming with students the importance of car safety.  Then, I pass out laminated wheels to my students (I make these out of construction paper)  and I tell students that we will practice driving our cars in a straight line around the school.  While driving our cars around school in a line there is no talking.  Students must look at the head in front and keep their car driving straight.  Students receive a license when they can follow these line rules.  This is a BIG deal! Students bring in their favorite wallet and their new driver's license goes inside.  If a child breaks line rules their license is removed and must be earned back.  Students take this very seriously.  I beam as I walk the halls with my little ducklings following close behind in a nice neat line. 

     

Long Time No Blog

The end of school and the start of summer vacation is a whirlwind blur of packing up my classroom, putting on a class celebration, saying goodbye to my dear sweet kinder class, a fancy dinner out with Mr. Winemaker to celebrate the end of school, his New Jersey family flying in, and then adventures to the coast/wine country/bbq fun/shopping and much more!  Head over to my other blog “She Said G Said” for a picture journey of our adventures!
It feels good to be back in the blog state of mind and back in the blog world.  I missed you!   
It feels like the last week of school was years ago!  What was I up to those last weeks?  Putting together gifts for my volunteers, principal, secretaries, and a gift for my students. 
I decided to put a different spin on volunteer gifts this year.  Instead of heading to a store to purchase something cutsie (that usually adds up and ends up out of my budget) or spending hours on Pinterest getting sucked into cute crafty ideas which would require computer ink and printing, I headed to my small outdoor garden.  Let me preface this by stating I have a love boarder-line obsession with succulents and over the years via gifts, thrift stores, and Ikea I have collected quite a few little pots.  The beauty of succulents is you can cut off parts of the plant and viola they grow a new plant.   Succulents are also incredibly hardy and require very little water.  Seriously,  no-green-thumb-no-worries succulents are user friendly.  My kinda plant, I tell ya!  Plus succulents are becoming quite popular especially as favors, bouquets, and even cake toppers at weddings!  Check out my Pinterest board devoted entirely to succulents!  Back to the volunteer gift… I took a scissors and snipped off succulent parts, planted them in soil, and I was done.  Easy as that.  I got so into it; I made a new succulent table centerpiece for my kitchen table, and I made my fantastic principal and secretaries their very own succulent collage. 
Process:
       


Final Product:
          


These gifts were a hit!  The special touch, they came from my garden, which made the creation even more special. 
As I thought about a gift for my students, I really wanted to give them a special memory of our kindergarten class that they could hang in their rooms.  When I first joined Pinterest, melting crayon art was the craze.  In fact I think melting crayon art was my first pin ever!  In the back of my mind I knew I wanted to try it out some day, and finally my seed of an idea/pin has come full circle. 
With the help of my fantastic volunteer moms, we purchased small canvases from Michaels.  Using leftover crayons from student’s crayon boxes and a few extra purchased crayon boxes, we used a knife to cut the crayons in half.  We taped two colors to each side of the canvas at the top.  This way students could pick their own colors and arrange them on the canvas the way they wanted without crayons rolling off.  Crayons were then hot glued to the canvas.  The blue painter’s tape was used at the bottom so the melting crayons would go over the tape.  This way we peeled of the tape and had room for students to write “I Love Kindergarten”, their names, and the date.
      
Now for the best part of the entire art project!  Students came outside and helped melt their crayons with a blow dryer.  The colors were AMAZING!

Here are some snapshots of the finished product! 

We have a winner!

Congratulations Angie from Rulin' the Roost it's your lucky day!!!  You just won yourself a $80 Blog Makeover from Cutest Blog On The Block!!!! 

(Angie, I will be connecting with you sometime this week!)

Have you checked out my other blog She Said G Said???  Be sure to check it out!   I posed Mr. Winemaker the question:  What is it like to date a teacher?  He has answered in all his honesty and glory and it is up on the blog.  A must read for teachers and more importantly spouses, boyfriends, and anyone else that is very close to a teacher.  I love this comment a reader left after reading his post:

"Found this blog from "your teachers" comment on another teacher blog and I loved this! I want to leave it open on the computer for my husband to read because he would enjoy it!"

If you get a chance to check out our other blog please leave Mr. Winemaker some comment love and consider following.  

While you are at it you may want to read this post I did on She Said G Said awhile back on teaching kinder. Click HERE!

What's happening in my kinder room?  Craziness...utter end of the year craziness I tell ya!  We are currently gearing up for Father's Day.  This year my mom and dad moved out of my childhood home and 50 + cigar boxes were dumped in to my classroom with hopes that I could put them to use.  Well, I did triumphantly!  Father's Day here we come!  I pulled out my gigantic bin filled with art bits and bobs, and I pulled out my magazine bin, and finally I put on some fun working music.  The kids were engaged for THREE solid days no joke!  In fact with the extra boxes left over students are creating treasure boxes for themselves.  

Check out my cuties hard at work:

 

         

We made some cute Father's Day Dress Shirt/ Tie Cards.  

It's all about the hearts in kinder right? 

 Melting....

What I learned from this project:  

The kids LOVE free reign in decorating and letting their artistic creativity go wild.  The messier the tables became while doing the project meant the more fun that was being had!  This project is hilarious and I was shocked at how well students know their dad ("My dad loves beer so I am cutting out this beer for him.  See look!"  When I looked closely they had cut out a soy sauce bottle.  LOVE!)  Students were so very proud of their boxes that I let each of them wrap their gift in bright green wrapping paper.  Everything about this project was homespun.  I hope when the dads or grandpas see the wrapping paper crumpled, smushed and taped slapped on everywhere their hearts melt a little.  Cigar boxes, oatmeal containers, shoe boxes....really anything would work.

Have a great weekend teacher friends!

Oh and don't forget to join my link party fun!  I have loved reading the links posted so far!  Click on the picture below to join in.   Keep Calm And Blog On!

Talking Tokens

Pablo Picasso Art Project:

Talking Tokens:

Last week was spring break and I knew my students would come to class anxious to share their spring break adventures.  Instead of the usual sit down and draw and write about your vacation...yawn... I wanted to come up with an activity that had a little more zip and incorporated more of the common core standards.  Thus, Talking Tokens was born and boy was it a huge success!  I have never seen my kinders more engaged and having such detailed conversations with each other.

First, students brainstorm events that happened to them over spring break.  Then they drew a quick picture for each event.  A picture that would serve as a symbol to remind them.  They wrote one word on the line to sum up the event.

They colored in their tokens, cut them out, and put their initials on the back of each token.  As students finished they gathered in groups on the carpet and took turns sharing their tokens.  I left the expectations for the parter sharing very loose.  I was amazed how students structured the share to meet their needs.  This group below shared and put their token events in order! 

 Each kinder in this group shared one at a time.  While a person shared, the others listened carefully and asked questions.

I constantly struggle to get my kindlers to share with each other, stay on topic, ask meaningful questions, etc!  Talking Tokens was the greatest success I have had making this expectation list happen.  Students who normally don't talk or are ELL's had  a picture to use as a starting off point.  Students who have a hard time retaining information and remembering events had a visual to jog their memory.  No joke my students sat for a good 10-15 minutes chatting with each other, and as I walked around I could see the tokens in their hands and hear them staying on topic!  Later in the day we turned our tokens in to a Spring Break Art project.  Students glued the tokens down and made a flower scene.  

I love the symbols this student used (the slide from pump it up, play date, camping tent with thunder outside, campfire and talking around the campfire, going to the park, and an Easter egg hunt)

Here are some freebies!  Click on the picture!

For more Talking Tokens and very detailed directions for implementation I made a unit for sale in my TPT and Teachers Notebook stores.  Check it out! Only $3 for a 21 page packet!  Click on the picture below.  

Non-related to school but fun nonetheless!  Have you heard of Mixbook?  It is a very fun online scrapbooking program.  2011 was a big year for me and I wanted to put all my favorite photographs in to a scrapbook.  I received my book in the mail and wanted to share with you how it turned out! 

  

My boyfriend and I met on eharmony!  It works!  Anyways, I included our profiles and all the juicy emails we sent back and forth to each other.  

This was my profile:

Our Emails

I loved experimenting with the different backgrounds and stickers.  

I was even able to use photos from my iPhone and make one big photo collage.  Drag and drop it was seriously that easy!

Mixbook has tons of layout options!

Photography is a fun hobby of mine and it was exciting to showcase some of my more prized photos as very large images. 

I did this Mixbook in a week!  Over 100 pages!  Yes, I went cross-eyed, and developed a claw hand from hours at the computer.  My goal this year is to create the scrapbook a little each month so that at the end of the year I have a gift to give myself.  I was even thinking a Mixbook could be a great end of the year gift or memory for students.... hmmm...