Our Family Tree

I will admit it, I am addicted to Pinterest, and I especially love it when I come across a jewel like the one from  christywallace84.blogspot.com This is my take on the family tree she made. My wonderful associate was a big help in making this happen. She cut a tree trunk out of brown construction paper and then cut circles of various sizes out of scrapbook paper. She then made little branches, which I think is really cute. I have since added pictures of my students' families to the tree, and it is looking wonderful! I've been kind of layering the pictures and overlapping them and it's really coming along as I get more family pictures in! My students love to find their families in the pictures and point themselves out to their classmates. It is a great addition to my classroom and helps bring a homey feeling into the classroom. 

Duct Tape Borders

I told you I was in love with fun duct tape! Here's another use I found for this wonderful invention! Duct tape makes a Wonderful border! It comes in lots of different colors and designs and makes for a nice straight border. In the picture below you can see that I used it around my whiteboards in the back of the classroom where I plan to have circle time. As you can see on the top picture, it is on top of the old chalkboard and I didn't like that I could see the raw edges, so I decided to cover them up. This is where the duct tape comes in. It didn't take me very long to put up, and I was very happy with the results!

A look at my completed board all ready for circle time! It's hard to tell from the pictures, but those are actually mustaches on the right side of the board! A look at my finished classroom will be going up within the next few days!

Dry Erase Markers

My preschoolers love to write on the whiteboards and I love to let them. Anytime they want to write, is fine by me! My problem was always making sure that they were using my "special" markers (aka the dry erase markers) on the board. Part of my problem is that some of the new ones look just like the regular markers they use to color with. So, what to do? I have fallen in love with fun colored duct tape this year, as I'm sure you'll see as we go along. I took some of the fun duct tape and wrapped it around the bottom of all my dry erase markers. Problem solved! Now I just have to keep reinforcing that the only markers they can use on the board are the ones with the green duct tape on them!