I’ve been hard at work on my list of products to put into the Teacher Stores, and today added some Race Track Math & Play Dough Mats (You can see more about how I like to use math mats here.) Here are the thumbnails:
You can find these in my Teachers Pay Teachers and my Teachers Notebook stores. Thanks for taking a look!
Right before our school year ended, I wrote about Pinata shopping in anticipation for our End-of-the-Year Fiesta. I wish that I had taken pictures of the cute little pinatas that I ended up buying for the event. Or pictures of the event itself, actually.
We always use two pinatas at our Fiesta. I believe that the original reason for this was because two generous parents brought them to our very first Fiesta, all those many years ago. (Okay, so three years ago.) We had already planned to use the “Ziploc bag” method of pinata candy distribution, so we assigned one pinata this purpose. The Ziploc Bag Method means that you put all the candy in sandwich-sized Ziploc bags. You label one for each child in the class, and then label several extra bags with stars on them for siblings. That way when the pinata breaks, every child gets a bag of their own, with an equal amount of candy for all. This avoids the potential for any fighting and/or squalling about someone not getting enough candy, and you don’t have to worry about children being trampled in all of the candy zeal.
However, when we ended up with two pinatas that first year, we decided to fill the second one with loose candy. That way the Little People could still enjoy the thrill of candy flying everywhere, and whatever they gathering from that pinata was just above and beyond their candy bags. Plus, with some of their candy vigor gone, they tend to be slower and less aggressive to gather this candy.
This has worked well for us every year. It did get a little tricky this year when our first pinata (the house) simply fell off the wire and plunked to the ground intact after only a few Little People hit it. However, any preschool teacher knows that part of the thrill of a pinata is just in being able to hit something. With that in mind, we just continued to give everyone a turn of two hits on the fallen (and quite sedentary) house. Which again makes so glad that we didn’t buy a person pinata. I just can’t imagine encouraging the Little People to continue to hit a fallen pinata person… Finally, when everyone had a turn hitting the house, we just lifted it up and threw the candy bags out on the grass. Then we did the guitar pinata with the loose candy.
It worked great. The Little People loved it. The parents loved it. Then we all went inside, had yummy refreshments, and called it a successful Fiesta for all.
Oh, wait – I did take two pictures – of these cute Fiesta cupcakes that one of our moms made. They even were hollowed out inside and had loose candy inside each cupcake. So cute…
There are some new items on the virtual shelves of the teacher stores! I was able to cross one item off of my “To Be Listed in the Store” list and put my Pirate Printables in. Here are the thumbnails:
You can find these in my Teachers Notebook and Teachers Pay Teachers stores. Thanks for taking a look!
Ah, the pleasure of summer stretching out in front of us…such a welcome relief after an always almost-frantic dash to get everything done at the end of the school year. Today is approximately Day #6 of summer break (depending on how you count). To my credit I have spent a little bit of time working through the boxes of things in the garage that I brought home from school. (Although I must admit that this was largely because I needed to find my phone charger).
I did buy this:
My very first planner ever!! No, no – I jest. It’s just that fresh, unused, (and cute) planners are one of the things that I find so hard to resist buying. (Well, that and digital clip art).
This is a nice one, with large months and lots of room for planning:
See, here are all of the items for the Teacher Store that I have in mind or in progress…
And here are my priorities of what to put in the stores first:
So as you can see, I have big plans for lots of computer time this summer.
Or, perhaps lots of time just writing down plans in my planner. Either way, we’re just on Day #6 of Summer, and as Pete the Cat says, “It’s all good.”
One of the traditions in our preschool room is to have a Fiesta at the end of the year. We have a short program in our room (singing some of our favorite songs from the year), and then we go out in the shady area behind our room to have a pinata and refreshments.
I’m not sure why, but we’ve never actually had to buy the pinata before. I suppose we’ve just had people volunteer them, or perhaps we asked for someone to donate one. Regardless, the pinata purchasing fell on me this year.
My co-teacher had mentioned that one of our local grocery stores had a good selection, so I went by there this morning. Sure enough, they had a good supply – a veritable plethora of pinatas, in fact. However, to my dismay, most of them looked like this:
Most of them were people. There was Dora and Spiderman and the Hulk, along with several others that I could not immediately identify. They were big, too – as big as some of my Little People.
As I stood there among the early-morning shoppers in the produce section, I could suddenly picture the scene: A little person standing under the pinata, armed with a heavy stick. A mass of parents and other family members forming a circle around them, all eager to encourage them in this end-of-the-year preschool endeavor. They are chanting and yelling excitedly, as all the while Dora hangs from the rope tied to a tree: ”Hit her! Hit her harder!”. Finally, Dora’s legs fly off, and everyone cries out in victory as the candy goes flying…
Um, nope. I just don’t think beating up familiar, life-sized TV characters are the best way to close out our end-of-the-year program.
So, I went with a small house (which the Little People happily called a gingerbread house today when they saw it). And a guitar. Plus I got an awesome crepe-paper decorated stick to beat them with. Which would just sound so much worse if they were people…
This is a great sight to see at this time of year – a container full of completed Memory Books:
I am always really happy to have these done at the end of year. My co-teachers and I put a lot of work into them, and feel like they’re our end-of-the-year gift to all of the Little People.
I have added pictures below of each of the pages from the year’s book – and the pictures are interactive! To find out details about the pages, move your mouse over the picture and click on the icons for more information.
It’s such a mixed bag at this time of the year. One minute I’m counting the days until we’re done for the summer, and then – I look up and see the Little People walking around with buckets on their heads. Adorable. I will miss them when they go.
This week we made some very cute sea life hats that we’re going to wear in our End-of-The-Year program next week. The Little People had a choice of three hats to make. A shark hat:
This hat was based off of this pin.
A crab hat:
And an octopus hat:
Any guesses of which hat won?
It was the shark hat, of course. Because the shark hats were just – awesome.
We’ve got a whole bevy of jellyfish swimming from our classroom ceiling this week. Or perhaps it’s a swarm or a herd – whatever a group of jellyfish is called. (Internet sources suggest a “bloom” or even a “smack”, but I think I’ll just stick with “swarm”, since those others seem a little – dubious.)
These are the same type of jellyfish that we make every year during our Ocean Unit. The idea is very simple – the Little People paint the plastic cups and glitter them heavily. I then poke a plastic hole in the top (I use the rigid plastic cups from the Dollar Tree that tend to crack easily, so I heat up the end of a wire coat hanger and “melt” a hole in it):
You then add a pipe cleaner “hanging handle”, like this:
As a last step, the Little People glue on eyes (we use black felt circles for eyes, although now that I think about I’m not sure that jellyfish actually have eyes. Clearly we’re going for general appearance over scientific accuracy here).
However, despite the simplicity of this project, for some reason we had a lot of trouble with the jellyfish this year. First of all, I for some reason told the Little People that these were octopuses, which of course, they are not. So on that the day that we made them, when the morning teacher walked through the room and said, “Hey, the jellyfish are looking good,” I said, “What jellyfish?” (Sigh.)
Then for some reason the paint would not stick to the cups at all. I had read somewhere to add some liquid soap to the tempera paint to help it stick to the plastic, and that worked in the past – but not this year. In fact, the paint just flaked right off (which made a huge mess, by the way). I ended up switching to acrylic paint after several tempera paint tries fails.
Then I had trouble with the tentacles. In the past I had used pieces of gift wrap shred to make them:
These strands had made glorious jellyfish in the past. See, here is a picture of a stack of them on their way to school year before last:
However, when I tried these strands this year they ended up looking more like this:
Yep, it was a Bad Jellyfish Hair/Tentacle day all around. So, between the flaky paint and the static-filled tentacles, our jellyfish project was having some issues.
However, I did find a good tentacle replacement. This “tissue paper” from the Dollar Tree made wonderful tentacles:
It came in pink, a kind of iridescent/clear color, and a greenish/bluish color. I cut pieces of this paper into thin strands, and then glued them into the inside of the cup.
And then they ended up looking like this – beautiful.
Now they’re all hanging from the ceiling of the room – not flaking, not static-filled, perhaps not scientifically accurate – and certainly not octopuses. But beautiful.
Today was a kind of an cooler and windy day – which is unusual for this part of California in late May. In fact, the Weather Watcher at school today reported that it was “cold and warm and sunny today” – cool in the wind (and especially in the morning) and warm in the sun. This was a little bit tricky to sing to the tune of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, as is our custom, but we managed.
Because it was such a windy day we decided to pull the kite out to see if we could fly it. We had tried this once before during “Wind and Kites” week. However, the wind was not at all cooperative that week, and I got tired of basically running all around the field outside our room to make the kite stay up (which is quite the mental picture, I know). The kite kept dipping down close to the kids, which made me quite nervous. (Many years ago, during my first teaching job in Texas, I was out flying kites with my students when one of the students crossed the path of the string and got quite the “string burn” on his neck.)
However, today the kite was quite cooperative, and soon we had it far, far above us:
Of course the Little People loved this, and ran around under the kite gleefully, chasing the kite shadow everywhere. I also got a little bit giddy with the fun of it, and started handing the string off to various Little People to hold it, wanting them to feel the hard pull of the wind against it.
Which is all well and good, except that in my exuberance I had forgotten to instruct the Little People to stand still with the kite, and how, if it dipped, to pull up on the string to send it back up. And then one of the Little People (in her exuberance) started running with the wind with the kite. When this happened, of course the kite suddenly took a huge dive, plummeted down to earth and consequently attacked a small child who was standing nearby watching all the fun.
We then we had to hurry over and rescue the kite and wrap all the extra string and apologize profusely to the small child (who fortunately was not hurt). It was then that we discovered that the dowel that held the kite open had broken. We tried to do a dowel repair with masking tape (mainly for the problem-solving element of it), but alas, it would not flying without dipping down precariously near the Little People.
So, I told the Little People that I would have to buy a new stick for the kite. (“Ummm,” one of them asked doubtfully, furrowing this brow at me, “Do you even know where the stick store is?”)
So the moral of this kite story is that a) kites are fun, b) kite strings can be quite dangerous, and c) don’t let your kite exuberance overwhelm any your common sense and/or any kite coaching that you need to give your students.
