May 20, 2010

Summer Reading Charts

This year I made game board type summer reading charts for the kids. Each chart has 30 spaces, and on every 5th space there is a sticker. Every time they read a book (50 pgs. for my son, 150 for my daughter) they get to stamp a space. When they reach the sticker space they get to choose a small prize from my stash, and when they get to the treasure chest sticker at the end they get a bigger prize (which is a Klutz book this year).




For prizes this year, I bought a bunch of Silly Bandz and those Japanese take apart puzzle erasers at the parent teacher store. My kids love collecting those things. I think they're pretty cute too.



I let the kids decorate their reading charts with stickers and such. Maren put word stickers that say things like "you can do it!" near the prize squares. Funny girl.

We'll start the charts on June 1st. The kids are really excited about them and wish they could start them now.

May 16, 2010

More Teacher Gifts


I received a couple of teacher appreciation gifts from some preschoolers this year, and thought I'd share their cute ideas! A little girl gave me a packet of flower seeds with a note that read "Thanks for planting the seeds of learning in my heart".
A little boy gave me two marble magnets his mom had made with the words "Thank you for magnifying your job as my teacher!"
She had used two large glass marbles that are flat on the bottom like you use for flower arrangements and can find at craft stores. She had glued some cute paper on the flat side of them so that the pattern was magnified through the glass. Then she glued a magnet on the back. Very cute and pretty on my fridge.

May 11, 2010

Children's Book Week!

I love children's books, and children's book week is a good excuse to spend an extra lot of time reading with the kiddos and doing fun activities. Here are some ideas we have done from
past book weeks:

Scranimals is a fun book filled with poems that combine animals and fruits/vegetables, such as the avacadodo, broccolion, and radishark. For one activity, we had two bags - one filled with animals, and one filled with fruit/vegetables. We took turns drawing one from each bag and trying to combine the words to make a new creature, then we'd try and guess what it would look like, where it would live, what it would do, etc. . .


Another fun activity we've done is with the book Mrs. Wishy-Washy, in which a cow, duck, and pig roll in the mud and then have to get baths from Mrs. Wishy- Washy. After reading the book, I sat the kids at the table and put a scoop of chocolate pudding "mud" in front of them to mush around and play in, write letters in, and then eat.

Teacher Thank you gifts

This year I decided to go a bit cheesy for teacher appreciation end of year gifts. I bought a 5 lb. bag of Kopper's mint cookie malt balls from Amazon.com and divided them into bags. They actually arrived a bit melted, but there were still enough to use, plus Amazon then sent me more, so we have a lot of malt balls. I added a tag that read "Thank you for being such a great teacher! Your service has "mint" a lot to us and we've really had a "ball" this year." The teachers loved them and the malt balls are delicious!