Materials arriving are from the following project…
"Young Scientific Investigators of Pre-K"
"The Building Blocks of Our Future"
"Seeing Is Believing...Believe in Our Education!"
"Run, Marble, Run!"
"Listen to Your Art"
In addition to the DonorsChoose materials, wonderful members of the online community, Offtopic sent our classrooms various items from our Amazon.com Classroom Wish List. Three members send 3 books and a box of kinetic sand.
Our class has a lot to be thankful for since so many people; friends and strangers has helped us out a lot.
OT FTW!
Whiffa
havenfx
TwiggSS
These three members helped our growing library by purchasing three books and add a little color to our sensory table with some blue kinetic sand!
The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! by Jon Scieszka has become a classic itself. This story retells the story of the Three Little Pigs from the point of view of the wolf. It's a great way to introduce our students to various perspectives. With a potential fairytale unit in sight, this book will definitely by used as a read aloud along with the original tale of the Three Little Pigs.
What If Everybody Did That by Ellen Javernick is a wonderful book that reinforces our students about good manners. In the beginning of the year, I spend 1-2 weeks on proper manners in school. Many kids understand and can differentiate between good and bad manners but when it comes doing applying it, a lot have trouble. This book wonderfully illustrates the consequences if everyone were to show bad manners. We've recently welcomed a new student to our classroom. With this book arriving at around the same time, it was a great opportunity to reteach manners to all of my students and introduce the concept to our new friend.
Kinetic Sand's popularity is one the rise. Playing with regular sand is very messy. Kinetic sand negates this problem and helps keeps children engaged as they manipulate, make, and mold. Adults find the texture therapeutic. The blue kinetic sand adds more color to our sensory table as our kids are gravitating to it any chance they get.
For Science!
I began tweeting my project on twitter and a generous CEO of a company donated a generous amount. With a big chunk of the project taken care of, various donors chipped in to help fully fund this project! When the materials arrived, I could not wait to see the reaction of one particular student. His obsession with dinosaurs was about to become bigger as these dinosaur figurines were brought into our class.
Dinosaur fossils were one of the materials we've received from this project. Instead of having students directly engage with these fossils, I thought it would be cool to create an excavation dig site. I used the activity bin and mixed in the molding sand in our classroom to set up the environment for our pre-k paleontologists. The result was pretty awesome!
Building Architects
The Building Blocks of our Future project on DonorsChoose sought to bring unique building tools for our children to explore. When the project was funded and the materials arrived, all we had to do was introduce our students to the new toys and wait to see the creative structures they came up with.
You'll see four students take a journey to our blocks center. They work together building a big structure with the blocks from this project as well as from past projects. As they work, each child has their own idea of what they are making and the purpose of their construction. To one child, it's a castle that houses many princesses. Another child views it as their own home and in it, his brother rests in one of its chambers.
At the table building center, the new candy construction allows our students to think differently. They are a big hit. Dogs, robots, house; with these new blocks anything from their imagination is possible. As we are approaching our unit about vehicles, our kids are using these new toys to create what is being discussed during whole group discussions.
A Work of Art
A lot of food, such as yogurt, fruits, and milk, go to waste during breakfast and lunch. These foods can easily be transformed into delicious healthy smoothies and shakes with the Nutribullet and help prevent wasting food.
Inked: Color the Pre-K World
Our Pre-K Printing Press project was a huge success. We are hoping to keep the color in our printer by requesting ink for our printer.
Amazon Wishlist
Wishlist requesting various items that will improve our classroom.