Pinterest in the classroom: success and failure

My coworkers and I are all about the Pinterest swing and using the many ideas we love in the classroom. So we found this totally cute idea for Mother's Day where you decoupage a photo to a ceramic tile to make a pretty plaque or coaster. It was fool-proof, we thought. So Miss Amanda lined all the little munchkins up in assembly line fashion, handed them each a little chalkboard to hold with "Mom" written on it (awwww!), and started snapping away.

  A day or so later we had the pictures in hand. Our staff loved the photos. They were each adorable and we just knew our moms would love these hand-made tiles bearing their children's adorable smiles. We began the process of cutting the photos out, using Mod Podge to adhere them and seal them onto the tiles, and then topping that with an extra coat of spray-on Mod Podge sealer. Voila! We were so excited and so proud to present these.

What we didn't give any thought to was how the children's shirts looked in the photos. We had lots of children with slogans on their shirts. So we get this little gem done and although the child in the photo is precious ( and hopefully his Mom has a sense of humor), our Pinterest idea had failed miserably on this one gift:

(a close-up of the slogan with our Mom sign-sorry for the poor pic quality)

Yeah, so now he's grandpa's MOM. Oh boy, that is bad. Funny, but not necessarily something to hang on the family room wall. Well, we live and we learn. Next time we do this you can be sure we will stand back and assess the photo shoot before we actually make the shot. lol

Blessings!

Handwriting Helps

 Our preschoolers, ages 3 and 4, are learning to write and recognize their names. We usually print each child's name using http://www.handwritingworksheets.com/, a nifty worksheet generator that allows you to input any word/name and print off a practice sheet in the writing style of your choice. We love these but it does get costly to print them for sixteen children every day. Last year I tried to laminate them and use Expo markers to be able to re-use them, but depending on the brand of laminating pouches used, I found that wipe-off markers didn't always wipe off easily or completely. A handful of kids were so rough on their sheets that the lamination came apart after only a couple of months. And if by any chance a child wrote on his or her sheet with a Sharpie marker by accident, the sheets were ruined. Also by reusing the sheets we found we had nothing to send home to track progress. We had a small problem.

 Pinterest to the rescue! Somewhere out of the thousands of pins I've read and re-pinned, one of them had the simple but effective idea to write the child's name in plain pen or ink and allow the child to trace over the lines with a marker or highlighter. I had an assortment of highlighters in a drawer and got to thinking (dangerous, I know),  "What if the teachers wrote the name in one color of highlighter, say yellow, and allowed the child to trace over the letters in blue or pink, to make a new color?" My daughter and I spent an evening playing around with the idea and it worked great. We pick colors that we know blend to form a new color and encourage the kids to make the new color appear when tracing. It's like magic!

My daughter got in on the act with a blue and pink highlighter.

Written in blue

Adding pink....

=purple! ta da

   As long as the teacher has good handwriting and demonstrates proper letter formation to the children first, then staying on the lines is a fairly simple way to make inexpensive handwriting practice pages. You could even add a starting dot point to each letter if you find your children need that. You can let them watch you as you slowly write the original word for more practice. 

  Getting our children to write might be a little more fun when color-changing letters are involved. You could use this method to teach simple shapes, animals, and line art...any image that is easy to draw and trace over would work just fine.

Dollar Tree round-up

 Here are some random items I found today at the Dollar Tree to use in our classroom:

A bubble blower, large bottle of bubbles, and pool noodles (I cut them in half to make safe ball bats). This stuff will go on our playground.

A cookie sheet becomes a magnetic word wall just by adding a bright ribbon hanger. The little basket under it is to hold our magnetic ABC's and came in a set of 2, so I kept the other one to use at home. This can be hung on even a small wall to make an additional center. The basket can be hung beside or under it with an adhesive wall hook. Place laminated sight word flash cards on a metal ring to place in the basket so that kiddos can use their letters to make the words on the cards.

This cute safari hat would be great on the playground or in our dramatic play area. I think I'll pick up a couple more. 

The Dollar Tree is an excellent place to find cheap books. I got some of these for our science center and the others are for our book center. I prefer the hard back board books for our class of three year-olds as they hold up better to the daily wear and tear.

Not shown but also found today was a pack of ten mini food storage containers, about the size of  baby food jars. The plan is to poke holes in the top of each lid, then place cotton balls saturated with either soaping scents, perfume, or imitation food flavorings inside. Glue lids on (we're trying hot glue) to make Sensory Sniffers. When I get these made I'll post photos. One could recycle old spice containers, salt shakers, or even glitter tubes to make these. I just happened to be right in the aisle and grabbed these containers instead. I had glitter tubes but the lids would be a choking hazard for my class. For my Sensory sniffers I am using leftover soap-making scents from my crafting stash, with scents like Blackberry Jam and Butterfly Meadows. 

I would love to hear about your dollar store finds/ideas.