Just like the Pilgrims did!

    Thanks for your patience with my blog!  I have a post I’ve been wanting to write for weeks but because of personal things going, I wasn’t able to take the time to write it!  So although it is late, I am so excited to share about our Thanksgiving festivities!
    I follow a blog by Julie Lee, another kindergarten teacher, and years ago she had written about her “Pilgrim Life” centers.  I loved the idea so much, I decided to copy it and apply my own thoughts and creativity!  Using the book, The Littlest Pilgrim by Brandi Dougherty, I created a few different centers for the children to pretend.
    Here’s some examples of the centers:

The first center was to practice “cooking” during Pilgrim times.  I made a turkey out of a styrofoam dome and feathers.  The children then “plucked the turkey” and to add some academic skills, they sorted the feathers by color.

The second center was “sewing.”  The children were given lacing cards and practiced how to sew as the Pilgrims did!

The third center was “making dolls.”  Back in pilgrim times, boys and girls would use cornhusks to make their own dolls.  To mimic this, we used strips of paper bags and tied them together just as they would with the cornhusks back then.

The fourth center was a “fishing” center.  The children went fishing and when they caught a fish it had a number on it.  The children then had to match it to the card with that many tens and ones.

The fifth center was “stacking wood.”  The children stacked cardboard blocks in neat “woodpiles” and then counted how many blocks they used.

The sixth center was “stuffing the mattress.” The children estimated how many plastic bags it would take to fill up their “mattress” which was actually a pillow case.

The seventh center was “picking the berries.”  On a big piece of felt, I attached pom-poms with velcro and stuck them on as if they were berries in a bush.  Once the children picked all the berries off the bush, they graphed them to see which “berry” had the most and which had the least.

Each time the children finished a center they wrote a page in their pilgrim booklet which downloadable from Julie Lee.  www.mrsleeskinderkids.blogspot.com

Feel free to Download my free “Pilgrim Life” centers pack.  Just click on the picture!

Here are some other pictures of the fun we had for Thanksgiving!

We made a Wetu!!  Made out of flexible PVC pipe, paper bags, and LOTS of tape! :)

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Now on to Christmas...

Grandparent's and Special Friend's Day 2015

Just a couple weeks ago we had our annual Grandparent's and Special Friend's Day!  It was so fun and sweet to see my adorable kiddos with their grandparents and friends.  They were so excited!  We set up centers around the room that they could do at their leisure.  The centers were coloring, puzzles, a handprint craft, a fall tissue tree craft, and leaf rubbings.  It was a great day!  Here are some pictures to share:

Super cute!

2015-2016 Classroom

Whoa!  It’s already week 5 in our school year and I feel like our first day of school was just yesterday!  I promised an updated post about how my classroom turned out.  I decided to do a nautical theme this year and have gone back and forth on how I feel about it.  I think I like it!  Stay tuned for a more informative post as soon as I get my life together!  It’s been a whirlwind, but a good one!  My class is ADORABLE and so much fun! :)

I decided to do something a little differently with my silent reading set-up.  This year I have a chart on the wall for the children to see which books they can read, (red, blue, or green).  Over the past few years I have had a book bin for each individual child and with bigger classes it really takes up a lot of room.  I'm hoping this system will allow more book opportunities for children and less prep time on my end.  The colors have different levels: approaching, on-level and advanced.  The children look to see which they can choose a book from during silent reading.  After they read 3 books from the bin, they can then look at a book from our ABC's basket, our library book basket, or a book from our classroom shelf.  So far I like the system.  The only thing I would do differently next time is put a color sticker on the books so they remember where to put the books back.  They get a little mixed up and that drives the OCD person inside me completely insane! :) 

I'm excited how it turned out but in the pictures it looks a bit like a crayon box exploded in my room, but at least it's not boring! :)  What do you think?