summer
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Personalize your playground with children’s artwork
At school we’ve been focusing on making our playground a fun place for the children to explore. We did some fundraising so that we could purchase a beautiful new sandbox, but I also wanted the children to be able to put their mark on the space. The Reggio Emilia philosophy encourages us to find beauty in our surroundings and create aesthetically pleasing learning environments, so I rounded up some ideas that will add color and whimsy to the playground! Recycled water bottle sun catchers Cement garden balls DIY stones with natural impressions Natural materials garden stones Tin can lanterns Stone and stump games I can’t wait to do some of…
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Ideas to start your summer off right
Happy Memorial Day! I hope you’re enjoying your holiday weekend and taking some time to appreciate those who’ve served our country! Since today is the unofficial start of summer I wanted to share some posts from last year that list a ton of ideas for summertime activities with the kiddos. These activities are great for the classroom, or for your own children at home! Summer fun at home Summer fun around town Ice cream activities If you’re still looking for fun ideas to fill out your summer calendar, be sure to check out my Preschool Summer Ideas Pinboard and enjoy the rest of your weekend!
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Friday Freebie – Summertime
We made it to Memorial Day weekend! This is definitely cause for celebration, and I’ve got another reason to celebrate – I’m presenting at the OAEYC Conference in Sandusky Ohio today. If you’re going to be at the conference this weekend I’d love to meet you! I’ve presented at OAEYC a few times, but I’m especially excited this year because the conference is being held at Kalahari Resort and Indoor Waterpark, so I’m taking a mini-vacation with some of my favorite teachers. In honor of the unofficial start of summer I found a really cute freebie for you today. This ABCs of Summer book from Whitney Parlin would be a…
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Easy Alphabet Match Activity
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Ideas for gardening with young children
Young children desperately want to help with everything, and gardening looks like so much fun because you get to dig in the dirt and get your hands dirty. Gardening together is a great way to teach responsibility, and to help children learn where their food comes from, plus, children are a lot more likely to try new foods when they’ve had a hand in growing them. There are a lot of things that children can help with in the garden, starting with choosing the plants. Ask children what kind of plants they would like to grow. Encourage them to think about the kinds of vegetables that they like to…
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August Currently
Yes, I realize that August is halfway over, the beginning of the month was a bit of a whirlwind for me. Just because I’ve been super busy, that doesn’t mean that I want to miss out on a currently! Here’s mine for August, you can check out the others at Oh Boy 4th Grade. Listening: It never fails, my husband chooses a show to watch and then promptly falls asleep on the couch and I end up listening to a show about cars that I neither understand nor care about. It’s probably better this way, when I’m not paying attention to the show I get a lot more work done!…
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Beach play – without the beach
We’ve been doing water play once a week, with different activities each week (ice, car wash, squirt toys, etc.), this week it was wet sand. I knew that all of the boys would love the opportunity to make a giant mess, but to be honest I was shocked by how much all of my students loved this experience. It took me a while to realize that they loved playing in the wet sand because it was just like being at the beach, and in these last few weeks of summer, I’d be happy to have a beach day too! In addition to the sand table that we always have available,…
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Friday Freebie
It’s Friday and it’s a holiday – double celebration today! I have a really cute freebie for you, i’m so glad that I found this one, because it is definitely something that I would use in my classroom, so I’m excited to share it with you. This letter match and counting set is from Special Teacher for Special Kids. I love the colors, the graphics, and the simplicity of this set. It includes cards with each letter of the alphabet in uppercase and lowercase so that children can match them. It also includes number cards that children can match with quantities of patriotic themed objects. This set could also be…
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No plans for the 4th? I’ve got you covered!
The 4th of July has always been my favorite holiday, even as a young child I would choose July 4th over Christmas. Now, some of this may have to do with the fact that my birthday is on July 9, so my family often had my birthday celebration on the Fourth of July. But even as I got older, I loved singing along with the patriotic country songs that they play on the radio all day, wearing my star spangled t-shirt, saluting our troops, creating the barbecue to end all barbecues, and oohing and ahhing as fireworks exploded in the sky. We never had huge Fourth of July celebrations, but…
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It’s not procrastinating… It’s learning something new
I was supposed to be at school all day today, and I ended up finishing an hour early, so I essentially had an extra hour in my day today. The entire way home (a whole 10 minute drive) I made a list of all of the things that I wanted to accomplish with my extra time – blog posts to write, new bundles to start, and a project that has been on my list for a while, I was going to get it all done! Ha! When I turned on my computer I remembered that I had downloaded Inkscape over the weekend, and I hadn’t really had a chance to…
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When I was a kid…
I found this article on facebook last week about giving your children a 1970’s summer. You have to take a minute to read it, it’s hilarious, and so true. Of course it got me thinking about what summers were like when I was a kid. It wasn’t all that long ago to be honest, I grew up in the 90’s, but I still had a good number of summers before we had the internet (gasp!) or instant messenger (remember that?!), and I feel like those were some pretty innocent, carefree days, at least in my house they were. I put together a list of the things that I spent my…
