Fall crafts!

My class has been loving fall! For the last few weeks we've been immersed in everything apples, autumn, and pumpkins. Here are some of the crafts we've made.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fall trees were very easy-just torn paper for the grass, tree trunk, branches, and leaves. Then students told me something they like to do in the fall and we added the typed sentence to the bottom of the paper. I like how each tree really has its own personality!

 

The apples are probably my favorite craft though! I don't ever want to take them down from our classroom windows-they look so pretty! Just put an apple outline on some clear contact paper, have the kids fill it with tissue paper squares, then cover with another piece of clear contact paper and cut it out. Pretty quick and easy projects! 

 

Spring is here!

I've been so busy lately that this is my first blog post this month- and now I log on today to find out that Blogger has completely changed! I just don't know if I can handle this-can I make it go back to the old layout?!

Well, moving on, my kindergarten class has been studying spring weather, insects, animals, and plants this month! We made these darling ducklings that I saw here. We also made umbrellas out of paper plates that we cut in half and added pipe cleaners to. I was brave and let my students get out their water color paints to decorate the umbrellas-they turned out pretty cute!

We have been learning about the parts of a plant and made these darling art projects as well. This idea is from April Larremore's All About Plants unit which I totally recommend!

We also made this cute carrot graph from the unit. I loved getting my kinders to eat some healthy carrots for a snack! I think next year I might go a step further and have them try eating all different kinds of veggies that represent the different parts of a plant (i.e. carrots for the root, celery for the stem, spinach for leaves, and broccoli for flowers). Then we could graph which part of the plant we think tastes best!

We did some fun experiments in science to learn about plants too. The students loved seeing the leaves of the celery change color as the celery stems sucked up different colors of water.

We are also growing bean plants in baggies on one of our windows. I sure hope they grow! Some years I have had great success with growing beans and other year the beans just rot- I have no idea what makes for successful bean growing-so I am crossing my fingers that things work out this year!

During shared reading this week we read a fun poem about plants. This poem can also be sung to the tune of "Row, row, row your boat." We have been working on highlighting blends in our poem. We also read the big book Jasper's Beanstalk which I love. It is a cute book about a cat that tries to grow a beanstalk and isn't very patient about it. My favorite thing about the book is that it is a day of the week book (similar to the book Cookie's Week ) and each page tells what happened on a different day of the week. I have been encouraging my kinders to try out writing books like this in writing workshop and some of them have made very cute books using this structure. 

We have also been doing some fun math activities to go along with our study of plants. My students enjoyed measuring different things using sunflower seeds-and of course they liked eating the seeds when they were done with math!

We also played the "Plant a Garden" game, which you can download for free here. Students take turns picking a flower card, and and using the number at the top to put the card in the correct spot on their game board. First player to get all their cards in the right number order and "plant their garden" wins.

I know I have not been great about updating my blog lately, but I do have several posts planned for this week to show what we've been up to in literacy and math stations and some center freebies too. I also have a tour of my classroom library coming up too-so please keep following my blog! I'd love to hear what you've been up to this month in your classroom!

Can't Wait for January!

I have missed all of my blogging friends this month! I can't believe this is my first post of December....I will definitely make it a New Year's resolution to blog more in 2012! I am ready to be done with December and move on to January! I love how kinders come back from the holiday break magically able to do so much more than they could the first few months of the year. I am ready to see their reading and writing really take off now that we are into a solid routine and have a lot of basic skills under control. I also absolutely love the themes we study in January. I'm getting planned for winter animals, Martin Luther King, Chinese New Year, and the 100th Day of School (has it really been almost 100 days?!).

So, what have I been up to this month...since I clearly haven't been blogging? Holiday craziness! Even though our last day of school was December 16-those first 16 days of the month were crazy! All my students could think of was the upcoming holiday and all I could think of was end of the quarter assessments and report card writing! So glad to have that behind me! Writing papers for my grad school classes just made that first part of December all the more hectic-so I was more than ready for the break to start on December 17! And then the first day of break I woke up with the flu...just absolutely a terrible way to spend the first part of winter break! Luckily, my break has drastically improved and I am gotten to spend plenty of quality time visiting family in Chicago where there are tons of fun things to do.

I have also been getting very crafty over the winter break....I blame Pinterest. I have been pinning craft projects and school projects like crazy. A few weeks ago I pinned the most darling yarn wreaths with little felt flowers....and then I attempted to make them.

My attempts actually went fairly well, and I made these three wreaths. My sisters share my owl obsession, so I had to attach little owls to their wreaths (the owl free wreath was for my mom). If you ever decide to try making your own felt flowers or yarn wreaths, there is an awesome set of directions on this website. 

I also made these little button trees. It was definitely time consuming pinning each individual button on, but I love how they turned out! I hope you all have had a restful winter break. I am a bit in denial that it's almost time to head back to school. I guess I better enjoy these last 3 days off!

More Crafts!

I have just had a weekend full of crafts! I did not stop after making the tissue paper flowers and the paper lantern caterpillar yesterday...I just kept going! I've finally gotten around to making several of the cute things I found on Pinterest and I'm very excited to get these crafts into my classroom to start decorating!

The most time consuming craft I did involved spray paint. I have been seeing this craft all over the internet lately and just had to give it a try. I spray painted several jars and they turned out great!

Here are my spray painting tips:
1. Spray paint outside (the fumes are terrible-you will probably want a mask too-I wish I'd had one!)
2. Lay down lots of newspaper- more than you think you'll need (the spray paint goes everywhere!)
3. Be patient- do many light coats and let the paint dry between coats (if you spray on too much paint you get drips!)

I'm going to bring some in to school to put on my desk to organize my supplies. I'm also going to keep some of the jars at home and plant flowers in them- I think they will look lovely on my kitchen windowsill. I think I might even spray paint a few more jars, but this time try spraying the inside of the jars so they look more glossy.

I had never used spray paint before...but I'm afraid that I'm addicted now! It's amazing how easily a coat of paint transforms something (okay, more like 5 coats of paint, but still!). I'm on the lookout for other things I can spray paint now since I have so much left over paint. Any ideas for me? Has anyone ever spray painted something really large...like say a beat-up old bookcase with chipped paint that looks terrible in their classroom (I might just have a few of these...).

Here's a sneak peek at my next craft...

I bought this huge stack of scrapbook paper at Michaels. I lucked out and was able to use a half off coupon so it was only $10 instead of $20. My plan is to run up to school tomorrow and use the die-cut machine on this scrapbook paper to cut out the entire alphabet A-Z. Then, I want to string it together to make a garland like this fantastic one I found here.

Wouldn't this look amazing hung on one of the walls in my classroom? I know mine won't look exactly the same-but hopefully it is similar. I'll let you know how it goes!

Getting Crafty

Since I haven't been able to work in my classroom yet, it seems I have been directing all of my energy at making things at home for my classroom. I'm going a bit decoration overboard...and Pinterest isn't helping! I keep finding pictures of darling classroom crafts everytime I'm on that website!

So, here's what I've made so far this weekend...and I have more projects in the works!

These big tissue paper pom poms just make me happy. They look like big flowers and will be hung from the ceiling somewhere in my classroom. I was surprised at how simple they were to make. Click here for directions. I have also seen kits for making them at Michaels and Party City...but that's no fun! Choose whatever colors of tissue paper you like and make your own.

If you're wondering what this is....imagine that it has antennae and a body (still working on those details!). It is going to be a Very Hungry Caterpillar made out of paper lanterns.

 Click here for directions on how to make this darling caterpillar. I found inexpensive paper lanterns at Party City, and just used some colored cardstock I happened to already have at home to make his face. The eyes and nose glued on very well with a little modge podge (I would have used my hot glue gun but it's packed away at school!).

I'll have to do another post next week on the rest of my craft projects. Please share what projects you have been working on for your classroom!