Last Project of the Year

One Last Project

I cannot take credit from either of these projects.  

The first project I want to share is the poster my class made for me for Christmas.  

My wonderful room moms organized all the children to create a reindeer.  Then they put the herd of reindeer together on the poster.

  It is a wonderful addition over my TV.   It reminds me each day during vacation of the wonderful children I teach. 

The second project I wish I had one of these.  

The first graders made these in art class.  

We have an amazing art teacher at our school.  I don't know what steps or directions she gave.  I can only share the final product with you. 

Each one of these projects is amazing.  

I only had time to take a few pictures.  These are so beautiful.  I know if my child brought one of these home I would frame it. 

Reflecting 2013

These were my simplistic goals in January before I knew that I would be switching to first grade.  Once that decision was made my focus totally changed.  I needed to prepare for someone to take my place in kindergarten.  Organize the materials I needed to take with me to first grade and integrate the materials that were left behind for me. I needed to move classrooms and set up a whole new room.  

Each week my goal is simple to try to incorporate hands on activities into the traditional curriculum that exist at my school.  

I am trying to organize my ideas by weeks so that next year I will not have to spend so much time planning and reading. 

My goal for this blog for 2014 is simple. 

 I want to post at least three times a week.  I hope to post one freebie, my favorites of the week, and one idea I find and incorporate into my classroom.  

2013 in Review

My 

Top 10 School Ideas/Moments 

of

2013

……………………

This has been an emotional year for me.  I left kindergarten after teaching there for 12 years and moved back to first grade.  It was a hard decision to make however I am happy I made it.  With this change I find myself completely unprepared each week.  I spend hours reading and planning and prepping for the week.  I am so thankful for teachers pay teachers.  I also left my comfort zone of my blog The Very Busy Kindergarten and started a new blog The Very Busy Classroom.  I don’t have a lot of readers this year mainly because I am not consistently blogging, however I do have a few loyal readers who read and I am grateful for them. 

1…. Martin Luther King Art/Writing Project

This was one of my favorite kindergarten lessons and one of those lessons I hope to incorporate in first grade.  I found the picture of the cover on Pinterest but I didn’t know what the teacher did in the inside.  So I had created three lessons around three different books about MLK and I love the way it turned out. 

2….Winning the Ipad at Mayfair Mall

This was a surprise moment in kindergarten.  I was entered in a contest by a parent at Mayfair Mall.  Then lots of parents, friends, friends of friends, bloggers anyone willing to vote for me did….and I won.  I was able to get an ipad for my classroom.

3….Card Making Art projects

I made two adorable ladybug cards for the children this year, a welcome card and a birthday card.  The children made lots of cute cards as well:  Valentine Cards, Easter Cards, Thanksgiving, Christmas Card Exchange, and Reading Buddy Card.

4….My organized Desk

This is my organized desk at the beginning of the year.  I wish I could say it was this clean all the time.  However that is not true.  I generally have lots of papers on it for me to correct.  I do like the space.  I spend a lot of time here correcting papers.

5.....Red Check Curtains

I cannot say enough about my red checked curtains.  They just make me happy every time I look at them.  They remind me of my mom, who made them for me.

6…Self Portraits/Rainbow Names/First Grade is Fabulous

I spend a lot of time as I teach looking at this wall and it looks fabulous.  All the kids portraits and lots of colors always bring a smile to my face.

7.  Reward Coupons

The reward coupons are a hit with the children.  I wasn’t sold on the idea at first however Kristen Smith from A Day In First Grade recommended them.  I trust her judgment plus she wrote a great post about giving the children incentives that were not always material things. 

8.  Lots of Freebie Poetry

My goal each week is to make sure I post my poem of the week.  It is always a freebie because I feel it is important to give back to all the teachers who give to me.

9.  Community Map

This social studies project took a lot of patience and planning however the students really took it over.  They were thinking of lots of places in the community to add.  They were very proud of their map and they wanted to share with everyone.

10.  Minute to win it

I found this idea on Tunstall’s Teaching Tidbits, she had the game A Minute To Win It.      I quickly threw it together with the materials I had on hand and the children LOVE IT!  They were so engaged in the activity we played it several times. 

See you in 2014,

Sue

Class Favorite Project of the Season

Once again this Holiday Season, I participated in a Christmas Card Exchange.  I found this one on the www and it was a little bit different than last year.  However my students loved it.  We were in a group of 30 schools grades pre k through fifth grade.

We made 31 cards, one for each school and one for the person who organized the exchange.  We marked on our map where each of our cards were going too. 

Each of my students brought a stamp to school and we mailed all our cards.  Then we waited…..and waited…and the cards started to come.  We received two, three sometimes five cards a day. 

My students loved looking on the US map and finding the states where the cards came from.  Then we checked them off state by state.     We compared the number of boys and girls in each class and added them up to see how many children were in the class.  There was cheering everyday when new cards arrived.