Fall Festivities!

Hello! I, of course, have been very busy creating new things for the classroom and doing more arts and crafts in the classroom.

Arts and Crafts

I often get to play art teacher at work and enjoy coming up with projects for the class to make.  This one with the fall trees was really great for helping them continuing to practice their fine motor skills-- particularly ripping. They had to rip all of the pieces for the trees and with assistance glued it down to make a fall tree picture!

I also had the class make scarecrows back in October. They practiced using scissors to cut the fringe for the "straw" coming out of their scarecrow and then with or without assistance they practiced using crayons. I had them draw circles and green lines for their pumpkins. They also practiced cutting out circles! It was a great cutting/gluing project.

Cooking

Something really fun we've started to do in class is cooking!.. or a kind of cooking. So far we've made trail mix-- students practiced pouring ingredients into a bowl and stirring and scooping into bags. We've also made smores-- students practiced assembling the smores in the proper order.

Back in October, for our "cooking" we decorated cupcakes! I found a pinterest idea for mummy cupcakes. I just baked chocolate cupcakes and bought icing and M&Ms and ta-da! Mummy cupcakes! They helped me guide it in strips over the cupcake and then set the "eyes" on top. It was neat seeing some of the students very particular on making sure the M was face down. It was a delicious Halloween :)

Until Next Time

I've been asked to post about some of the different communication strategies I use in the classroom so I'm getting some pictures and information ready to post about that. Look for that next week. Happy Thanksgiving!

Last week of school!

This week was the last week of school and is my last week at Welborn in KCK. I am sad to leave many things, but very excited for a new opportunity. I'm also happy to say there are only 2 days (well, 1 now!) days of school left before summer break!

Balloons

I did this last year and did it again this year. I originally started with about 15 balloons counting down school. In each balloon is a slip of paper with an activity that the class gets to do the next day if we have a good day.  Today's balloon was to have a "slumber party" in the classroom. I have students bring blankets and pillows and we spend the entire day on the floor for our last day festivities. The students really loved it last year and I'm sure they will again this year!  (The last balloon has my age in it because for some reason this class is incredibly interested in how old I am!)

 Sunglasses Project

I'd seen the sunglasses with lines on TpT (It does cost money, but this is the link!) so I broke down and spent the $2.50 for the template, bought some big poster paper and let the kids' imaginations run wild! 

In the glasses they had to write 2 paragraphs about what they are doing or would like to do this summer. Then they were to draw themselves doing something they mentioned in their paragraphs.

These are only a couple of them, but they are turned out really great and I think the families are going to be excited to see these too!

Keepsake books

Many of my students didn't get yearbooks so each year I do keepsake books where they write about their friends and their favorites. I posted the link for it on my post last year if you're interested!