Category Archives: Ponds2012
iSpy bags
I’m hooked! On Pinetrest that is! I found this idea a few days ago and had the materials (mostly) laying around.
I found this great tutorial here and l decided that because I had most of the materials already laying around, I could make some of these. I went to Jo-Ann’s and looked for things that were small: beads, rhinestones, buttons, etc., that would fit inside one of these bags. I also purchased two 32 oz. bags of plastic pellets, used to fill up dolls/children’s toys. I have made 13 so far (they are not all pictured). I also purchased some bags of trinkets from a store on etsy. (LOVE etsy!)
The items you see laying on the white paper will eventually be printed off, laminated, and attached with grommets so that the children can use a dry erase marker to circle the items that they have found.
Wouldn’t these be great with magnetic items inside as well? 🙂 For the bag with the numbers, I was thinking it would be great addition and subtraction practice for the children to find a number, then roll a die to see if they would add or subtract the next number they find! You could do all kinds of things with these! Use them in Work Stations, make them easy or difficult…how about putting sight words in them and letting the children write them as they find them? How about printing the words in tiny font and using a magnifying glass to read them and then say them out loud? The alphabet bags could be used to spell words…the ideas are endless…do you have any other ideas? Leave them in a comment here! 🙂
I am thinking of making some to sell. I made mine so that they correlate to units or themes we are working on in our IB units. So far, I’ve got one for ponds, letters, numbers, recycling, gingerbread men/women, animals, pets, and a few just for fun ones!
Let me know if you might be interested in purchasing one or two…I’m thinking $10 for each one, with laminated tag included and attached. 🙂
Kristen 🙂
The Pond
Our classroom pond is up and running! As part of our current IB unit, we are learning about how people, animals, and plants interact with each other. We wanted to show the children this using something they can easily see in Indiana, so we chose to learn about how the people, plants, and animals around and in a pond can interact with each other. We are lucky to have a pond on our school grounds, but we wanted to also have a pond that the children helped to create. We collected rocks from our playground and cleaned them off really well. We then placed them along with 6 gallons of spring water into a big plastic tub we got at the Container Store. We also added some aquatic plants and a few koi fish (along with 20 comets that are no longer living). We also have a submersible pump that is circulating the water and keeping things semi-clean.
We would like to include some more plants and animals that are more native to this area–does anyone have any ideas?
Kristen 🙂
Kristen's Kindergarten 