Door Decorations

Ok, this post is about 2 months overdue, but I had to share it before I forgot. Here’s a picture of the door decoration that my kids and I did during our ancient civilizations unit. I was pretty pleased with how it came out considering I put a group of 12 year olds on the project.

And finally, here’s the last door decoration for the school year. My kids came up with the idea to use an interactive facebook and twitter door to say goodbye to classmates, younger students, and teachers. We created fake profile pages here and even tied a pencil to the door so people in the hallway could leave a tweet with their well wishes. We’re proud of how it turned out.

Seuss-tastic Door Decor

Hard to believe it’s already Dr. Seuss week again, but hey, time flies when you’re having fun, right? Here’s the fun we’ve been up to in our corner of the world.

Door decorations galore-

Every time that a new theme or event comes up, there’s this unspoken gauntlet that gets thrown down amongst the teachers for classroom, hallway, and door decorations. I like to think that I’m not really a competitive person, but my coworkers and partner would totally disagree. Once they made the announcement about door decorations at our staff meeting last week, I summoned all the creativity I had (aka- I turned to pinterest) and set out to create my masterpiece. Although there aren’t awards or prizes for best door, I’ve already won in my headJ Here’s the final product:

The Lorax- of course.

Ms. Amanda's Sneetches door

 

Interactive World Map

Holy Moly, where do the weeks go? Sorry I’ve been missing for a while. We’ve jumped in head-first into our geography theme unit and I haven’t had time to catch my breath. Speaking of geography, here’s a little somethin’ that I’m doing with the kiddos this month as a homework/taskboard tie in with the theme.

I drew up this large world map on a sheet of butcher paper, making sure to not include anything except the outline of the continents. Then, I created these little daily geography activities and put them in an envelope ranging from drawing and labeling countries to locating mountain ranges to writing a journal entry from an early explorer’s perspective…the possibilities are virtually endless for this theme. Anyway, every day the kids choose one activity from the envelope to complete either for homework or during task board time. Then, we discuss our findings as a class and a couple of them transfer it from their homework onto the big map and color it in. At the end of the week, we have a short online quiz through edmodo over the content that they learned. It’s been pretty successful so far and they seem to be retaining most of what they’re learning, so I’m happy.

In addition, we've been working on a couple of interesting geography projects and gearing up for our math day competition at the end of the month. Needless to say things have been busy. Here are a few pictures of our interactive map board and the activity sheet I created if you’d like to try it in your class. Happy almost Friday, everyone!

Thankful for 30

Sorry I’ve been MIA all week…. You see, it’s Christmas and my mom’s here visiting all the way from America, so that’s my excuse. Anyway, I wanted to share this little thing that I did in class over the past month.

I got the idea from some facebook friends of mine in November. Basically, it’s a daily post about something that you’re thankful for and why. What better time for reflection than the holiday season, right? I thought this was the perfect morning task for my students in the month leading up to Christmas, so I printed out some blank ornament templates and made a “Thankful for 30” board on my door.

Check some of these out:

 

Hope you had a great Christmas with your loved ones!

Deck the hallways

Even though it’s not beginning to look a lot like Christmas here in Vietnam, we are doing our best to get into the holiday spirit around school. In my class, we’ve been practicing our performances for the Christmas concert, delivering donated gifts to a local hospital, and even writing letters to Santa. Aside from trying to wrap up the academic side of things for the semester, there are also a lot of things to physically prepare around school like hanging hallway decorations, making props for the concert, and, of course, transforming your door into something Christmas-y themed. I have to admit that I’m not excited about all of the extra work that has to be done this time of the year, but it is really neat for the kiddos.  

This year, I don’t have an assistant so when they announced that we had to start putting up decorations, I panicked. Over the next two days, everyone’s doors were decked out in snowmen, reindeer, and every other imaginable holiday icon. I was officially the last one to tackle the door project, leaving me with limited options. That meant 2 things; 1- that I’d better hurry up and get something on the door, and 2- that mine had to be better than the others. Challenge accepted! I grabbed my kids on Friday afternoon and we came up with a few ideas about what we could do to win the unspoken door decoration competition that I’d created in my head. Luckily, I had an hour and a half block for art on Friday and was able to get my students to do the brunt of the work during that time. They were just like elves, working away all day to help make our class door the best in school. Here’s a picture of the (nearly) completed masterpiece…

Back to School

Well folks, it’s that time of year again…Wednesday marked the beginning of a new school year, and with it, the endless possibilities and promises that it brings. It’s always fun to watch the kids file into school on the first day with their new shoes and big smiles, excited to see all of their friends and check out their new classrooms. Lucky for me, my students had the same excitement despite knowing that there are only 4 of them! Also lucky for me, these are amazing kids. I’m truly excited about all of the progress we’re going to make this year. Good stuff.

Anyway, most of week one was spent getting to know each other, going over the rules and syllabus and, of course, playing some games. The syllabus was something that I wanted to improve this year because it’s really important for the students and the parents to know what your expectations are, how you grade, and the learning objectives for the year. My new colleague created this awesome magazine for his kids and I had to steal the idea (thanks, Mr. Joseph).

Other than that, things are in full swing as of Monday morning and I’m really excited about our first theme unit on Citizenship & Government. We’re doing some really great projects and incorporating a TON of computer/IT components. What a neat thing the internet is, I tell ya. It really is learning for the 21^st century. I’ll post more on thematic teaching and how we create cross-curricular plans later. For now, it’s Saturday night and my book and glass of wine are calling. Have a great weekend everyone! Here are a few pictures of the (mostly) finished classroom decorations.

 

Our computer station with a list of teacher-approved websites.

The front of my room. Where the magic happens.

The writing process display... a MUST HAVE for any primary classroom.

Bookbag storage and supply closet.

Class timeline that we'll be adding to throughout the year.

Room 21

Well it wasn’t the way I wanted to spend the first week of my vacation, but I did manage to tackle a big chunk of my classroom decorations last week. Here are some pictures of the stencils I did on the walls in my room.

I’ve been looking for an excuse to try this technique for a LONG time. All you need is Microsoft PowerPoint, a digital projector, and some paints. I’m so inspired that I might take the projector home one of these weekends and do something with our spare room. Here’s my step-by-step on stenciling. Happy painting!

Easy Peasy Wall Stencils:

·         Choose the images that you want to stencil- I used Google Images but I’m sure there are other options. Remember to choose a picture with sharp lines and large pixels. The larger the pixels, the easier your life will be… trust me on this oneJ

·         Import your picture into MS PowerPoint- once it’s in PowerPoint, the image will appear without a heading and all that other stuff, which is helpful.

·         Plug in your projector- this can actually be the hardest part of the whole project. In my case, I had to move the projector back really far from the wall to get the size I wanted so just play around with it until you get what you want. 

·         Trace with a pencil- Pretty self-explanatory.

·         Go over your outline- This step is probably easier for those of you who live near a Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Michael’s, etc. Unfortunately, life is a bit more difficult here in Vietnam and finding what you need can be a chore to say the least. I used water based poster paints because they’ll be easier to cover at the end of the year, but I’m sure acrylics or interior paints would be your best bet.

·         Ta Da- stand back and take in your masterpiece.