Our Winter Wonderland Bulletin Board #1

That was our bulletin board before winter vacation. The snowflakes were made out of popsicle sticks, glue, and glitter. Yes… glitter… It was very controlled though… I had just five students at a time come to me to get their snowflake “glitter-ized”… I had squeezed glue into small bowls and had the kids paint glue on their snowflakes using a paintbrush. I then asked each student what color they wanted their snowflake and I sprinkled the glitter on myself. It actually went really well.

After they dried, I then used three clear pushpins per snowflake and secured them on the bulletin board. Just make sure to use three pushpins, because using only two will inevitably make some of the more awkwardly shaped snowflakes to fall if the wall is banged and then create a cascading glitter avalanche all over the back of your new computers. Trust me on this one…. Haha…

Just before the students left for winter vacation, the snowflakes were taken down and given to the students so they could use them as ornaments. The border remains the same though because tomorrow we will make penguin crafts, which will be used to fill up the board and give my felt and pipe cleaner snowgirl some company.

Oh… and if you’re wondering why there are random black letters in the title, it’s because I had used all the other letters around the rest of my room and ran out. I always intended to get another set of that blue lettering, but with the before Christmas craziness, I never got the chance to… Yeah… It still bugs me too.. Haha..

Also, here’s a wider picture view of that part of the classroom…

…You can see some of the other crafts we’ve done this year…

Dr. Seuss Bulletin Board Ideas

Ok.. So even though I haven’t seen the inside of my classroom, I’ve still be dreaming of things to put up. A few days ago, I actually sketched some things out. Sorry about the awful handwriting, but this was just a quick sketch of what was in my head around midnight.

The title is “Oh, The Places We’ll Go In Kindergarten!”  It will have a sky background. The large hot air balloon will be 3D with some sort of balled up paper behind it to give it depth and I’ll draw myself in the balloon basket. The rest of the board will be left deliberately empty because on the first day, I would have each student color in their own balloon and draw themselves in the basket and add their balloons to the board.

That’s a close up of the explanation of the balloons the students will complete.

I also thought about the behavior chart I could do for the students. This idea is a take on one that I did during my student teaching that involved colorful scales on a fish for tracking behavior. This idea is very “Cat in the Hat”.

Keep in mind I sketched it as if I had all of my students from both classes on a single bulletin board. Now that I think about it, if I were to do something like this, I’d try to make a double sided display so that each side could have a single class and seem less chaotic. I also envisioned taking a photo of each student during the first day of class and putting their own face under the hat to make it more personalized.

This is an explanation of how the behavior chart worked. Each day, each student starts out with 3 red stripes on their hat. If they misbehave, they get a stripe removed. If they misbehave again, another strip taken away. If they misbehave a third time, the last strip taken away. Students always have the chance to earn back any stripes taken away during the day. If a student has been particularly good, they are given a special bow tie for the day. However, I haven’t thought about specific rewards and consequences regarding what state their cat in the hat is at the end of the day.

So this is the type of stuff that has been going through my head lately… When I last saw my principal, she said that the school’s theme for the year will be “Cooking Up A Great School” since it goes with her “our school is like a soup” theory. I don’t know if we’ll have to continue that theme within our own classrooms or not. If we do, I’m going to have to rethink everything. Since I have a bunch of Dr. Seuss stuff already, I’ll probably try to just incorporate “Green Eggs and Ham” and “Cooking With the Cat” but we’ll see.

Today’s Silver Lining: No matter what theme, I’m still super excited to get started designing my very own first classroom! Is it August 16th yet?!?