You’re on the Right Track

As part of our transportation unit each year, we travel to our local train station and take the train to the next stop. From there we take the bus to the airport where there is an observation tower by the runway to watch planes take off and land. This field trip is easily one of my favorites. I used to take the train all the time in college to get from my dorm to the airport to fly home, but for most people taking the train is a rare opportunity and most kids haven’t been on a train before our trip.

Since the transportation unit comes pretty early in the year, I thought it would be fun to start the year with that theme as well for our “welcome” display. To start I created an engine and some train cars for the outside hallway display. The train track was just strips of black construction paper resting on green bulletin board paper for the grass. For the background I stretched a long rectangle of blue bulletin board paper and place the green paper and train tracks on top. I also added a sun with a smiley face because apparently I am really a kid at heart.)

To make the train I cut a silhouette of an engine out of black paper. Then, for each car I used a 12” x 18” sheet of colored construction paper and then added two black wheels at the bottom. I put several children’s names on each of the cars and wrote across the top in “smoke” letters:  “You’re on the Right Track in Kindergarten!” After the first week of school I put each child’s picture next to their name on the “kindergarten train.”

I actually ended up liking the train so much that I saved it and transferred into my room the next year. In this room we had these huge soffits that came down around the middle of the classroom. I hated the big bare spaces but had never gotten up to put anything there. That summer I made the same outdoor background using bulletin board paper and attached it to the soffit using stapes and glue. Then I attached the train so it looked as if it was running across the soffit. I made each car a different color and as part of our color unit the kids found and attached different representation of that color to the correct car on the color train. Classic teacher - we can reuse anything under the sun, which is probably why we save everything as well!

A New Year is Popping Up

It’s that time again to think about how you are going to welcome your future friends to a new school year. I spend a ridiculous amount of time deciding what my start of year display is going to be and typically use at least one workday to get it all done. I like to tell myself that it’s because first impressions matter (which they do), but secretly I think it is just one of those teacher things I dreamed about doing (like using an overhead) and now that I can finally do it I may go over the top a little bit.

I’m almost positive I originally saw this idea (or one very similar) in a Mailbox magazine years ago. A teacher had taken a large sheet of bulletin board paper and stretched it for a background display. Then he or she had cut a large bowl out of paper and put it at the bottom. Inside the bowl and popping up all around were pieces of popcorn with the students’ names on them. The title said “Look Who’s Popping Up in Kindergarten!” Too cute.

Keeping with the food theme, I also saw a display that was an apple tree that “grew” from the hallway floor up to almost the ceiling. From the tree were hanging apples with each child’s name and the saying “You’re the Apple of My Eye.” I also think it would be cute to have the same food - apples or popcorn - as a snack for families at the Open House. Yum! 

The Pursuit of “Hoppy”ness.

Many teachers have a theme or “thing” that defines their classroom. For the room next door it is turtles, down the hall it’s cats, across the way it’s the ocean. Lots of times there is some alliteration like Smith’s Stars or Davis’ Dogs. I don’t have a thing – except I like my room to be neat (which probably doesn’t count). So one year while I was frantically stocking up on everything I needed (and many things I didn’t need) from the local teacher store, I saw that there was a line of frog products from stickers to name plates to decorations to notepads. Now, I don’t like frogs and probably if I saw one would steer clear, but there’s something about Carson-Dellosa because they make everything look happy.

So I loaded up my cart with all the frog essentials and decided my welcome to kindergarten display would be called “I’m very HOPPY you’re here!” I bought two big frogs and a bunch of smaller frogs for each child’s name to go in the “pond.” If I had been thinking, tadpoles would have been cuter, but I’m not sure most kids would have gotten the joke. (Actually, some of my parents probably wouldn’t have either.)

Before school began I worked on my welcome display, which as I've mentioned, is one of my favorite parts of the year. I made a cute pond from blue bulletin board paper and then cut green paper in a circle around the blue "pond" to look like grass and flowers. Inside the pond were some lilly pads and fish. I placed the two big frogs on the lilly pads and put mine and my assistant’s names on each one and then the new kindergartners names on the little frogs.

I did like the display, but the frog theme never caught on for me in the room. That’s OK; in fact I’m a little “hoppy” it didn’t! (Sorry – had to)

The Beautiful Kinder-Garden

One of the most played up takes on Kindergarten is, of course, the Kinder "garden." Like most teachers I have planted the Kindergarden outside, but since I do not have a green thumb I am always more excited about plants and flowers I can’t kill.

I was always amazed at how much students grew in Kindergarten. Sometimes it seemed they just shot up over night! So a few years ago I started measuring kids during the first week of school. I would then cut a strip of green construction paper (about 2 inches wide) to their height. They would then decorate a large flower to put at the top of this green stem and finally add some leaves to the sides. Since I was the last room in the hallway, there was a stretch of about fifteen feet outside my door to the end of the hall that wasn’t really used. After our flowers were done, I would “plant” them outside in the hallway for the year. During the last few weeks of school I would measure the kids again and cut another strip of green construction paper to their height. This made their second stem. Again they would decorate a flower for the top and add leaves or other details. We would “plant” these flowers next to the ones from the start of school to see how much our garden had grown and at the end of the year the students took home both flowers from their “kindergarden.”

A Pooh-fect Time of Year

As a kid I loved Winnie the Pooh, probably because my grandmother (who watched me during the day) thought Winnie the Pooh was the best. As I was older and babysitting for family and friends, I used to watch The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and even had a few laughs then. One year for my outside display I decided to create a Pooh theme. After finding that you cannot purchase large prints or posters of the Pooh characters I found black and white images and copied them on transparencies and used the overhead to blow them up to “life size.” I traced each character on its primary color (e.g., orange for Tigger or pink for Piglet) and then used markers, construction paper, and paint to color the other key to match. After I had my life size shapes I put them outside in the hallway on top of a “100 Acre Forest” scene I had created from bulletin board paper (basically a blue background, green grass, and a tree trunk). I then placed the characters around the display so they looked like they were having a great time and wrote on the top “It’s a Pooh-fect Time to be in Kindergarten.” Around Pooh and his honey pot I glued bees with each child’s name on it.

As excited as I was about Pooh and his friends, I learned that year that Dora was much bigger than Pooh with my class. Something like “It’s a Dora-ific Time to be in Kindergarten” may have been more popular, but at least I enjoyed my trip down memory lane. J

It’s a Beautiful Day for a New School Year

As I’ve mentioned, I love decorating for a new school year. One of my favorite “welcoming” displays was one I have used twice. It involves making a cute outdoor scene with blue poster paper as the background and green paper as the grass. And, then if you’re like me and have a slight case of OCD, some kind of border so it looks all neat.

You can then make several oversized sunflowers with large yellow leaves for the display. Eventually each child’s name will be written on one of the flower petals. Then, either on the display or close to it, post “Meet Our Sun-Sational Class!” or “We are going to have a Sun-Sational time in Kindergarten!”

I used to post this with die-cut letters from the Ellison machine, but then I saw my friend glue the die-cut letters onto colored squares and then laminate the squares. She then would hot glue the letters where she needed them (such as on the hallway wall) and then they would just peel off when she changed the display and she could save them – it was great! As a plus, I just really liked the way they looked as well. It is a sun-sational idea!

The Kissing Hand

While in Virginia I had the privilege of working with an amazing team of Kindergarten teachers. They had Kindergarten down to a science and it was a great place to learn while not having to get lost in planning and coming up with new ideas all the time. They really were a PLC before ‘Professional Learning Communities’ were in style.

At the start of the year, the very first book they read was The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn. The Kissing Hand is a story about Chester Raccoon who is getting ready to go to school for the first time – and is really unsure about this idea. His mom tells him about all the fun things he will do, but then shares a special secret with him that will keep him warm and cozy at school.

The secret is the Kissing Hand, which is a special kiss from Chester’s mom onto the palm of his hand. Whenever Chester is lonely, he can press his hand to his cheek for a kiss from his mom and remember that he is loved. It is a wonderful book for the first day of school and after reading the book we all make “Kissing Hands” to take home from school for our families. 

Since it was the first day of school, my assistant and I would trace the shapes onto the felt and paper so the students only had to cut them out. Felt can be a little tricky, but with the Fiskar scissors it usually went pretty well. It was always nice to have something to take home at the end of the first day and a story to share. I will say I usually waited until the mid-afternoon for this project since it gave any friends who might be having a hard time on the first day of school a chance to calm down and realize school was fun before hearing the story.

Since The Kissing Hand I believe Audrey Penn has written two sequels that include stories about Chester’s brother called A Pocket Full of Kisses and A Kiss Goodbye.   

Kindergarten Rocks!

If you met me now you’d never know that I hated art in school. One of my absolute favorite parts of the year is decorating the hallway outside my room to welcome my new class. OK, crazy I know. Over the past few years I’ve created, borrowed, begged, and probably stolen ideas for to decorate my room for the start of the year.

One of my favorite displays actually wasn’t mine, but my good friend next door. She was an amazing artist and created a huge picture of a juke box (probably about four feet tall and 2-3 feet wide) and several kids who looked like they were rockin’ and dancin’. (Seriously, she should go work for Carson-Dellosa.) Starting in the hallway outside her room (maybe about 10 feet or so from her door) she started placing the kids so they looked like they were dancing towards her door. Then right before her door she put up the juke box with the words “Rock on in to Kindergarten!” On different types of music notes and records, she wrote each child’s name and placed them around the display. It really looked amazing.

Although I’ve never tried this one on my own (yet!), I did find a black and white coloring book juke box image on edupics.com. Since I do not draw well (ask my kids), I would make this into a transparency and use an overhead projector onto white poster paper to draw the lines of the juke box and then color or paint the inside once the lines were drawn. My friend laminated all her pieces as well and now stores them in one of the chart paper storage boxes so she can just whip them out again in a few years and blow away another group of families!