Weekend Warriors: Open House and More

I am so excited to share that I am one of the newest members of the Weekend Warriors, a group of bloggers that come together at the end of each month to bring you thematic tips, tricks, and ideas.  These ladies are amazing and I am humbled that they have asked me to be a part of this group.

We don't hold an Open House at my school site in the spring.
However, each year we hold a school wide 

Art Show!

The timing of the Art Show varies from year to year but it is typically in the spring.  Each year, students are asked to bring in a piece of art to submit for the show.  Student artwork can be of any medium: watercolor, oil pastel, collage, mixed media, colored pencil, charcoal, photography, fiber arts, crayon, mobiles, tempera, ceramic, sculpture, recycled art, digital media, etc.  The piece can be something the student made in the past, in school, at home, an art class, or something new.  The important part is that the artwork is student selected and student created.  

Our gym is then transformed into an amazing art gallery!  

Here are a few of the fantastic submissions from this year...

There are also classroom art projects submitted to the show...

Third Grade (our mascot is a dragon)

Second grade

(this one is my daughter!)

We decided as a class to submit our Eric Carle inspired insects!

I posted a little more about this project here.

Do you have a school wide event or open house?

Link up and share!

Hop on over to each of these blogs to check out their ideas for 

Open House and More!

An InLinkz Link-up

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Five for Friday

Another week down and I'm back to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to share 5 things about my week.  This week was all about Earth Day and Worms!

This week's bookshelf.  I love all of them!  Some weeks I hardly get to any of my read alouds.  This week I tired to read as many as I could.  My kinders also have access to these all week.  They love to share them with friends and read together.  The conversations they have are so wonderful to listen to!

Our Worms anchor chart.  I love to use post-its so that we can move things around and easily add things to this chart throughout the week.

If you're going to learn about worms, you really should get to play with them, too!  We observed both redworms and Night Crawlers.

Our Earth Day bulletin board

We talked a lot about Earth Day this week.  My kinders did a fantastic job with their writing!

We had a little visitor in the school garden this week!  This little guy may look cute but he had NO fear of us!  We tried to shoo him away and he arched his back, bared his teeth and growled at us.  He was not intimidated by 20 Kindergarteners or their teacher!

I hope you all had a great week!

Go check out Doodle Bugs Teaching to see what everyone else has been up to!

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Wordless Wednesday

Today I'm linking up with Miss DeCarbo for Wordless Wednesday!

Here is my picture...

Anybody else feeling exhausted wearing so many different hats at once?

#isitsummeryet?

Now head over to Miss DeCarbo's blog to link up and see what other pictures are being shared today!

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What's on your Teacher Wish List?

Today I'm linking up with Mrs. Wheeler's First Grade for her Teacher Wish List Linky!

I have been eyeing this printer for a while now.  I do have access to a color printer at school and that is great...when it works and has ink!  It would be so great to have a reliable printer that works on a regular basis.

I have had my iPads for 3 years now and the cases have seen better days.  I'd love to get something a bit more rugged to withstand the Kinder "love" they endure daily.  I was thinking something like this...in orange of course!

Magnatiles!  My kiddos love to build and create.  These would be a great addition to our manipulatives.  Can you imagine the 3D shapes they could create!?!

I'd love to build my own Sensory Tool Kit.  Over the years, I have more and more students who would benefit from having these tools readily accessible in the classroom.  Although this kit is a pipe dream, I think I could create one for myself.

What would be on your wishlist?

Head over to Megan's blog to check out what others have on their lists.

This post contains affiliate links for Amazon. By purchasing an item on the Amazon site using these links, I will receive a small commission on your purchase. 

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Five for Friday

I am linking up again this week with Doodle Bugs Teaching to share five things from my week!

 I started off my week by playing hookey!  Ha!  But for a VERY good reason...

The Giants home opener!

 We played some fun subtraction games this week.  This one is a classic and SO easy.  I call it simply "The Subtraction Bag Game."  Catchy, right?!  Place 10 objects in a brown paper bag (I used sea animals).  You'll need a number line from 0-10 and a clothes pin.  Students play in partners.  

Player 1 has the number line with the clothes pin on number 10.

  

Player 2 takes a hand full of sea animals out of the bag.  

Player 1 moves the clothes pin down the number line to find the difference.

Player 2 takes the rest of the sea animals out of the bag to confirm.

They then say the number sentence (10-2=8).

Easy peasy!

 We did Tara West's close read on Butterflies this week.  My kinders have really stepped up their game with our close reading this year.  I have been so impressed by the conversations and the level at which they have been able to use the text as evidence to respond to questions.  If you teach Kindergarten, you have to check out her Close Reading units!

 

 You can't study insects and not observe caterpillars!  Ours came this week and we have been learning all about the life cycle of the butterfly.  I love this time of year!

I introduced my kinders to our new Touchtronic Letters this week!  They LOVED them!

Head over to Doodle Bugs Teaching to see what everyone else has been up to this week!

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