Beachy Ideas!

For once I have actually put together my own classroom ideas! Woot Woot! Well..It's not like I didn't get any help whatsoever from the beloved Internet, but at least the conceptualization was mine and then I found what I needed....

I sketched out what I am picturing for an attendance board.

I will make two large beach pails out of construction paper on a background of blue paper, bulletin board trim from Oriental Trading that looks like waves, and yellow/brown paper for sand. Each class will have its own pail and one class will have their names on shells to put in their pail and the other class will have their names on starfish to put in their pail. I usually use little dot magnets on the backs of things like that, but I don't think I will have a large enough magnetic space, so I may use velcro. The buckets will have velcro dots on them and so will the shells and stars. Then the same side of velcro that is on the buckets will also be scattered on the bottom where I drew dots. At the beginning of the day, all of the shells/stars will be along the bottom and when the children arrive they will find the one with their name and put it in their bucket. Magnets would be preferable since then I only need the magnet on the back of the shells/stars, so here's hoping for a good space to do that.

I did some searching on the web for beach themed cutouts (particularly shells and starfish) and I came across these...

Much to my excitement, I was able to just print them out in color! The set came with snails too, but I want each class to have only one image, so I cut those out before I copied the colored images. I will write the kids' names on these cuties, laminate them, and adhere either magnets or velcro to the backs of them.

I also decided to use Popsicles for my word wall.

I realize after I printed this that the first image on the page is larger than the others, so I fixed it for when I print all of them out. I am currently out of pink ink so the printer is not allowing me to print in color anymore, but thanks to my father-in-law, I have a new HP color printer on its way that will be just for my classroom! He worked for HP for 30 years, so he helped me out with a discount. I never had access to a color printer at my old school in OR, but I did this past year and I used it a lot. I know it still costs money but somehow printing in color seems better and more convenient than paying $1.00 per page for color copies...maybe that's just me! Hopefully I have a good space where I can put up a word wall!

I am excited about these ideas and I am SO tempted to walk over to my old school (which is right down the street) and try to gain access in order to laminate! I won't do it, of course, but I am tempted! The laminating machines we had there used the laminating pouches and I found that the end product was thicker and more sturdy than the big roller laminating machines which is what my district in OR has. Too bad my friend who is still an elementary teacher there is out of town or else I might be able to convince her to do me this favor... In any event I can always pay to laminate these at Lakeshore instead of at school if I really want them to be thicker.

2 more days in Germany.... I am getting SO sad about leaving Mr. Sneaker 

::sniff::

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