Welcome to the New School Year

Well we survived the first six days of school!  Yay!!  Tomorrow night is Back-to-School Night and I'm certainly looking forward to the weekend.  I've stayed at school until just before seven the past two evenings, and I'm getting behind here at home.

I love my new kiddos.  They're a darling group.  We added a Transitional Kindergarten at our site and it seems so funny that every child in that class was born in November!  They will celebrate all of their birthdays in one month, and it's a short month at that.

We started a painting techniques book this week.  Each day, after the new color is introduced, the children get to experience a new painting technique.  We introduce the colors in the order in which they appear in Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?  So the first painting was brown.

We started with bubble painting because I think it's the most fun.  If you haven't done this with your class, I highly recommend you try.  To create the medium, combine dishwashing liquid, a few drops of glycerine, tempra and water.  Mix it well.  Then pour it into a shallow container.  One at a time, have the children use a straw to blow into the mixture.  Bubbles will well up quickly.  After they have a good froth going, they hold their paper over the bubbles and lower it until it touches the container.

This creates a lovely effect.  Unfortunately, I didn't take a photo of the finished product.  I'll have to post one at a later date.

We've been having a great time with the Brown Bear unit I put together over the summer.  If you haven't seen it you can check it out right here.  Below are photos of some of the goodies included in the unit.

This is a coloring sheet.  There is one for each animal in the story, and I've borrowed the flamingo from Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? so that we would have something to go along with pink.  The children love having their own pictures of the critters that hang on our wall next to the calendar board.

These, of course, are the color wall cards.  I included number wall cards as well.  I haven't taken a photo of them yet.  (Actually, you can see the number one card peeking through the tree at the bottom of the picture.)

And here is my favorite component.  The "Count Along With Brown Bear" book I created for the unit.  First the children rainbow write the number.  Next they cut out the corresponding number of animals for that page.  Then they trace the numbers at the bottom of the page.  Last, they read the book.  I love the scaffold of placing dots under each word.  It makes it so much easier for the children to follow along.


I hope all of you are off to a great start.  We have the best job!

Karen