Educational Goodies!

Autumn is here and the back to school madness has settled down.  My students are getting the routines of the classroom down and we are chugging along in our day to day kindergarten adventure. I wanted to add in some extra educational goodies in our kindergarten day and so I was thrilled when my box from Oriental Trading arrived to my classroom!  

One of the things that came in my box was this adorable Fall Apple Magnet Craft project.  This project was all ready to go with each apple in its own little bag.  The foam pieces had a sticky back and so all the children had to do was peel and stick!  They were able to choose their own color and design.  They could also do this independently, with the exception of poking out the seeds.  The seeds were little and so that was challenging for some of my kiddos, but it was great fine motor skills practice.  These had magnets and so to finish the project, a magnet was stuck on the back and the children had a great project to bring home.  This project fit in so nicely around Johnny Appleseed day and our apple unit.  They did complete this project one:one with my wonderful Instructional Assistant, but they could have been completed whole group because of the ease of this cute craft.  She basically guided them in their craft, and helped out when needed.

If you are like me, then you love cute and colorful supply holders.  These Classroom Small Round Storage Baskets are perfect for holding small supplies.  They are not huge (hence the word small) but they fit my needs perfectly.  Sometimes I need a little basket to throw in a math manipulative for an activity, or a craft supply, and these are so handy and sturdy that I will continue to get a lot of use out of these.  I also love the Roll and Color page from The Kindergarten Connection (see green basket).  These baskets were the perfect size to hold the dice at our table and keep them in one central place for the table to access.

This is my first year teaching full-day kindergarten and I am loving it!  I feel like we have so much more time in our day and I am enjoying the extra learning taking place.  I thought these Fun Shape Word & Number Swatters would be a perfect way to get my students up and moving and exploring our classroom for words and numbers.  They loved walking around the room swatting different words and I was impressed at some of the places they found print.  I know we will continue to get a lot of use out of these and they are already asking about the next time they can walk around the room looking for words and numbers!

We use Reading Street for our reading program and the children are already starting to practice reading decodable books from our program.  Currently we are working on the high-frequency words we have learned and practicing concepts of print.  We are reading left to right, word by word, and only what is written on the page.  These are big skills for kindergarten children!  These Bookworm Word Spacers are actually meant for writing to help the children space out their words.  While we will use it for our writing, currently, I am having them use them for reading so they can move the bookworm along the sentence and isolate each word as they read.

Wwwhhhhooooooo doesn't love talking about owls in the autumns?  Ha!  We have been reading owl stories and learning about nocturnal animals.  This Fall Color Owl Ornament Craft Kit owl craft is so adorable!  This was another craft that was easy to put together.  It came with sticky backs and so the children were able to complete this project on their own.  They did get help from my IA with tying the ribbon through the hole at the top.  While this came with everything peel and stick and ready to go, I did need to reinforce the wings with glue dots.  The sticky portion was small and so it needed a little something extra to help the wings stick on the side. But, they currently look great hanging on my cabinets and bulletin board next to an autumn addition project (and freebie you will find below!).

This Turkey Craft Kit is probably the cutest thing I have seen!  It is a sturdy material with colorful pieces.  Each kit was individually wrapped and all of our pieces were accounted for.  This project needed to be glued so we did this project whole group.  I modeled how to do it, and then the children copied mine.  It became a directed art project and yet each child still had their own personal touch.  This is such a cute craft!!!!  I hung these on my bulletin board at the end of the day on Friday and I got so many compliments from fellow teachers.  They look great filling in our bulletin board out in the hall.  They are sharing the board with a 10 Little Turkeys FREEBIE by Teacher's Breathing Space which is also adorable and educational.  Be sure to check out both of these projects!

I happened to have pumpkin (so old I can't find them on the website anymore!) and leaf foam pieces from Oriental Trading Company from a few years ago and decided to create a little addition project to go along with them.  I had a parent helper come in and had the children roll big dice in dice.  

The children used the big number on the dice for the leaves, and the small inside number for the pumpkins.  The children colored their project and then added the correct amount of leaves and pumpkins to their paper.  After the foam pieces were added (the pumpkins had to be glued down and the leaves had a peeling foam back) they recorded their numbers and added them together to find out how many in all.

                             

While I can't offer you foam pieces through cyber space (as much as I'd like to do so!), I did create this freebie for you to use.  If you have foam pieces, use them!  But if not, you can copy the leaves and pumpkins and enjoy this fun autumn addition freebie with your kiddos!

You can get the freebie here, or by clicking the picture below!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

**The reviews of any products in this post are based strictly on my own opinion. Others may have a different experience or opinion about the products listed above. I was provided the products free of charge by Oriental Trading Company, and after using the products, I provided my honest opinion. No other type of compensation was received for this review.