Creativity in the Classroom

 This barn was used in the hallway to feature pictures taken during our Farm/Barn month. I sketched out the dimensions for this barn on poster board while looking at a smaller template. I bordered the roof and the door design using black construction paper.

 These are two of the resources I have created for classroom use. We have almost completed the one on the left. It is a workbook focused on determining beginning consonant blends. It has a lot of fun pictures. The students circle the correct blend that goes with the pictures featured and then they use the same blends to complete the words at the bottom of each page. It took a page or two for my students to get the concept but once they understood it, they LOVE doing it!!! I'm almost sad the book is almost finished. :)

The book on the right is learning about Even and Odd Numbers. There are fun coloring pages for each number as well as a cute poem to learn. My students could not wait until we colored the next number. I let them be creative and color it however they wanted to. We have also traced the words in the poem they learned and today, we traced our numbers 0-4. Tomorrow, we will trace 5-9. We do have another section to do before we complete the book but the goal is to be finished before our Christmas break in 2.5 weeks. We will not work on it every day though. 

You can look at previews of each workbook/ resource in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

 Every month, I remove all the dates from my calendar so we have a blank slate for the new month. I base the number squares on our monthly theme. The one pictured was obviously from our Farm/ Barn Month. 

 In an effort to make everything a teachable element, I use a different pattern in the pictures each month. In September, we kept it simple with an AB pattern. October (the one pictured) had an ABC pattern. November has had an AABB pattern.

The students anticipate the next month's pattern with great excitement and it builds as the pattern develops. I have not decided what to do for December's pattern yet but I am leaning towards either an ABCD pattern or an ABB pattern. I will let you know what I end up doing! :)

Some other teachable elements of our calendar time:

1. learning how to count ordinal numbers

2. learning the order of digits when writing numbers 10-31

3. learning various patterns

4. learning how to properly say the date

5. learning how to add 1 to any number

6. learning sequencing in numbers, patterns, days, months and years

7. Learning days of the week & months of the year

8. Learning how to spell the days of the week & months of the year

and... I actually even started teaching the basic concept of multiplication to my class last year using the calendar patterns. :)

This year's class is a little younger though so I do not think they will be ready for it.