Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Read Read Read!

It is that time of the year where schools across the country dedicate their already reading lives to more... well... READING!

Dr. Seuss books have captivated children for years upon years. As a child I can remember loving to finish my parents sentences while reading those books. The rhyming in them is contagious.

Our school decided to celebrate Monday of Read Across America Week by dressing up on each day.

Day 1- Monday

This was our day to dress up as our favorite Dr. Seuss character. The Grinch is by far my favorite, but since I already did that for Christmas I opted to be the Cat in the Hat.

The outfit was effective yet easy. For anyone looking for a quick outfit this is the way to go. I took black dress pants and a black sweater for the the base. I cut out an oval from white felt to make the stomach. This was glitter felt so it added a special touch. White winter gloves made the perfect hands. I used eyeliner to draw on a nose and whiskers. Finally I already had a giant red bow and a hat to top it off. 

The kids love it, especially my nephew!

 The students loved dressing up too!

Thing Hair

I enjoyed dressing my entire class up as Things for the day and parading them around to lunch and specials! To do this just take a long piece of bright blue paper, staple to fit your students head, and then cut down in strips. Take the ends and curl and bend them down. Viola! You now have a bunch of Things in your classroom!

Thing Art Project

To go with our bright blue hair we made our own thing dolls. Students traced their hand on blue paper to make the hair. 

I printed out pictures of their faces to glue on for the face. Then students traced and cut out their other hand and left out the middle finger. This created a cute little body. Lastly, I gave them thing labels 2-15! So easy, promotes find motor skills, and it is super cute!

I had my whole class of living Things and a whole horde of doll Things!

Day 2

Crazy hats and hair!

Cindy Lou Hoo inspired me for this wonderful hair do. It was so much fun to participate in this. 

For those who want to give it a try I used an empty paper coffee cup, kids can use dixie cups.

First I separated my hair into three parts. One main part on top and then hair on either side to make the pig tails, the top part is in a triangle section. I used some hairspray and combed the hair straight up covering the cup in the middle part. When you put the pony tail holder in and pull it down it holds the cup in place. Then I braided in pipe cleaners to the two side sections and pinned them up. The pipe cleaners help hold the shape. Last I curled my extra ends.

Day 3

Reading is a Breeze in the Truffula Trees

This was a wonderful opportunity for students to show off their skills to older friends. The kiddos prepared their books and practiced with their friends to get ready to read to first grade. When the first grade came in they took their older partner to the Truffula Trees and read them a short story. The first grade then read to our Kindergarteners. They even made them a special badge!!!

New Bulletin Board and Truffula Forrest 

I decided to change up the bulletin for this week as well as outside my classroom. I found a quick and easy way to make Truffula Trees online.

Materials 

Plumbing Insulators 6 foot (1.24 a piece)

Tissue paper from the dollar store (8 pieces per top)

Yellow Duct Tape

Thin Jewelry Wire

It was pretty entertaining buying these materials fro 16 trees! 

Directions: Use the yellow duct tape to stripe the pipe insulators. Very simple! Take 8 pieces of tissue paper and accordion fold it. Tie a pieces of wire in the middle. Cut both ends into a point on the tissue paper. Carefully pull apart the tissue and form the flower. Push the ends of the wire through the top of the tubing and tie it off and cover with duct tape. You are DONE!

My friend and I made about 16 of these in 4 hours! So simple with a dramatic effect.

Bulletin Board

I used them for this bulletin along with some Seuss characters that I drew.

"Would you read here? Would you read there? Mendon students read EVERYWHERE!"

Truffula Forrest

Outside my room I hung them with fishing wire from the ceiling. I added the title "Reading is a Breeze in the Truffula Trees" along with some hand made characters. They look like magic and the kids love them. They are each assigned a spot in the forrest and we get to take the last 15 minutes of the day to silent read. They have never been so excited as they are now to read in our forrest.

At the end of it all the students decided they wanted to put their thing name tags on the desk. This number is the same as their hallway number for their work and class number. It helps them remember as well as myself! 

Time Flies!

Woah, boy does time fly. I woke up this morning to find out that I was already 100 years old. Where did the years go?

 

One of my fellow teachers was in rough shape as well. Yes we are all female teachers!!!!

After wobbling to work in my walker and cracking a few bones I was amazed to discover my class was also 100 years old!

I did not realize until the students were asking questions that my hearing started to go as well. I had to have students repeat sentences over and over and sometimes I really got the words mixed up. I am still trying to figure out why one student told me they had a kitten in the back pocket?!?!

On top of that it seems that my memory went as well. I could not remember what I had even eaten for breakfast.

Luckily these little whipper snappers were still on their A game and helped me around for the day.

Ahhh what a lovely way to celebrate 100 days of school!

Brighten Up Your Smile!

For science our room learned all about keeping our teeth and mouth happy and healthy. We learned how to brush out those invisible nasties that hide in our teeth. Every child received a booklet on tooth care with a tooth brush and some tooth paste. Then we even practiced with a giant toothbrush!

The students were handed a set of nasty yellow teeth. Ewwwww! Their job was to brush those yellow teeth to a brighter smile. They did this by taking a small paintbrush with white paint and brushing (painting) the teeth in a circular motion.

After getting the smile nice and white they decorated the paper to look like them by drawing a face and glueing on some hair. Very simple yet fun project!

They all had wonderfully bright smiles by the end!!

Chinese New Year

There are so many great opportunities to dress up your classroom and have fun with holidays. Not only are they exciting and capture student's attention but they are a wonderful way to introduce the world to young minds.

This year I decided to take Chinese New Year to a whole new level in my classroom. First, for my fellow teachers who read my blog, I purchased some really nice decorations this year from Oriental Trading. They were running a special on free shipping and have 12 ft. long dragons to hang from the ceiling for a reasonable price. Also, I purchased 6 set packages of 12" red lanterns. These will be perfect to leave up for Valentine's Day!

Giant Dragon

My favorite project we have done all year was this giant dragon. I used a large roll of white craft paper and laid it out the length of our room. Students were assigned a section and were able to decorate their area with any designs and colors they wanted.

They were very excited and got straight to work on making it look beautiful.

Some of the students even threw in some of their own designs within the pre-drawn scales. They were very enthusiastic and this brought out their creative side.

For the head of the dragon I used the empty Oriental Trading boxes to construct a giant head. The head was made by super gluing two boxes together. The mouth section was created using an Exacto knife to carve a zig-zag. I then hot glued the top of the mouth at a slight slant. The bottom of the mouth was attached to the side with brads so that it was able to open and close. I cut out small holes on the sides to act as the handles. The final touch was to paint it red and add some side flares. Here was the final product.

After the entire dragon was completed, we took it on a traditional dragon dance parade of the school. We flew through the halls and entered classrooms proudly roaring. We had one girl control the head from the inside and another girl walk in a traditional dress opening and closing the mouth. All of the students in the other classroom were excited to see the students' creation. This was amazing because every student was a part of this creation and got to show it off. No one was left out!!

In the halls

Chinese Lanterns
At the end of the day we learned about Chinese lanterns and made our own. The students decorated them with colorful pictures and fireworks. Then, the paper was folded in half, small cuts were made, the yellow was glued to the top and bottom, and finally rolled up to make a lantern. Very easy but beautiful project.



Chopstick Race
This year we have read a few stories that included other cultures that use chopsticks. Every time this happens in one of our stories the students love to talk about it. For our celebration I brought in 8 sets of chopsticks. We learned the correct way to hold the chopsticks and how to use them. In two separate races, the students raced to move Smarties and a Laffy Taffy from a red sheet to a yellow sheet, keeping in the tradition of Chinese New Year colors. It was very amusing to watch the students come up with their own ways to get the candy to move. The prize at the end was getting to enjoy delicious fortune cookies.

 

It's ok to be silly!

**** Part 1 of Christmas Picture put up today. Please check the post below this as well!

December has been a blast to say the least. I have pretty many posts from this past month and still getting caught up on all the excitement that happened.

Our school has been trying to raise money to make a math lab, which is not a cheap venture by any means. Well one of the teachers came up with the brilliant idea of having the students vote with coins to see who would have to kiss an animal.

Needless to say the kiddos in my room were pretty determined to get me on the stage and kiss an animal. In the end I got 2nd place!! Thank you to all of those who supported me and got these animals to walk the red carpet, literally we put a red carpet down, at our school. And without further waiting here are the pictures......

 

Walter the donkey was my first choice to kiss. It was a cute moment since I used to own Walter as a little girl. It was great to see his adorable face again and the student's could not stop laughing as I puckered up for this dude. I brought some lipstick to put on first!

This poor little guy had such a hard time walking on the gym floor. Although he was slipping and sliding down the red carpet he still made a big impression.

 

Next was a cute little calf.

Last, I had to kiss a duck. I do not yet have a picture of this happening. Maybe I hope that it did not actually happen. I am not one for birds, ducks, or anything in that area. Eeeeew

At the end of the assembly I got my nephew to come take a ride on Walter! 

 He is just sooooo stinki'n cute!

Before saying goodbye my whole class wanted to say hi to Walter!

Another huge happening this month was the creation of my very FIRST fondant cake. I found one online and based mine off of the picture I found. I never thought/knew that there were special pans, tiers, and accessories for cake making.  Due to this lack of knowledge I sprung right into my project and just went with it as I could.

 

Doesn't it just scream Dr. Seuss?!

I have to admit it turned out pretty darn good for my first time. I can not even begin to tell you how many rods I had in this thing to keep it up as I went. I am very proud of this cake but know in the future to do some research first!

Lastly, I took Christmas Spirit to a whole knew level this year. I think the students may have started to wonder if I had lost my mind. Here are some of the days that I dressed up:

 I have too many ugly sweaters to count!

 Rudolph

 Candy Cane Day

 Penguin Day (My Favorite)

 Red & Green Elf Day

PJ Day

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!