Earth Day and Dollar Store Finds!

This past week we finished up our Earth Day project!  It looks time consuming, but it really is a fun and quick project to do with your kids!  I cut out circles for each student to use for their painting.  As I'm typing this new post up, I am thinking that I should have taken pictures of the step-by-step process of how each first grader made his/her marble Earths. I set out four cookie trays (to work with four students at a time) and sprayed a small amount of shaving cream onto each tray.  Then, I added some blue and green paint to each tray.  The kids used a paintbrush to swirl the colors together in the shaving cream.  We put a white circle cut-out on top of the colors and patted around to push the paint and shaving cream onto the paper.  After the painting was dried, I shook off the dried shaving cream and beautiful marbleized painting were uncovered!  I absolutely love how each one turned out and with such unique patterns!

Now, onto a teacher's dream!  If you're anything like me, you are about organization or know that organization is important when having many games, papers, and STUFF for your kiddos!  I have become obsessed more than ever with going to the dollar store!  Granted, you get what you pay for, but I have found some great things to add and hope that I can keep better track of everything in my classroom!  This weekend I was pleasantly surprised to see the re-stock of containers, buckets, and more!  I FINALLY found the small containers I've been looking for!  I have wanted these small containers for so long to add dice!  My firsties are like any other group of energetic lovies who enjoy tossing the dice up in the air and at times across the room when playing different games.  Hopefully, these containers will help keep the dice in one place!  In addition to this little cups, I also bought more boxes for card games and other buckets for indoor recess games and puzzles!  If you're a new teacher, student teacher, or a teacher needing a re-do, go check out your local Dollar Tree and pick up some of the colorful containers!