Celebrate Birthdays in Black and White

Today I spent a little time exploring

the new B/W Birthday Bulletin Board Set.

This is how it looks when it is displayed. 

There are lots of extra pieces that 

tease your imagination.

How could you use them???

 The resource guide included in the kit 

suggests making a class book for the

birthday child.

I chose one of the pieces from the kit 

and added Rachel's picture

for the cover .

There is a reproducible page 

in the resource guide.

Each child can write a

birthday message to the special person.

Just bind the pages together with ring-its

and you have a class book that makes

a great birthday present.

What's Black and White and fun all over!!!

The Black and White Designer Collection

D is for Designer

Each year the creative folks in Product Development

at CTP come up with a "designer" look for the classroom.

The colors for the designer look are chosen

after much research into what colors

are popular in the marketplace. 

This year our Designer Classroom look

is Black and White with a splash of color. 

I went to Target and Hobby Lobby

to do my own market research.

Look at all the Black and White!

B/W boxes

B/W with a splash of purple

B/W gift wrapping supplies

B/W kitchen stuff

B/W for the bath

B/W bowls of every size

B/W plates and napkins


CTP took B/W to the limit!
I made a sampler of some of the new products
from the new B/W Designer Classroom Collection.

Featured in the sampler are 4 different borders
including one of the new pennant borders,
6" picture frame cut-outs,
two name plates and two name tags.

There are lots more B/W products.
Check the CTP website to see them all.
http://www.creativeteaching.com/

If you choose to have a Black and White Designer Classroom
you will have plenty of other pieces help spice up your classroom.
Just check out Target or Hobby Lobby
or any other shopping spot close to you. 



All the B/W patterns look great with a splash of color.

This year CTP is Black and White
and fun all over!!!



ABC Book

THE ALPHABET...
one of CTP's versatile new mini bulletin boards

You could use The Alphabet to create a word wall,
or to reinforce letter/sound correspondence,
or like we did to simply display the letters.

A few weeks ago I went to Premier Academy with
Jennifer from Teach Mart, a local educational store,
to do some decorating. 

She had furnished the entire center with their
furniture and educational toys and supplies.

We decorated some of the rooms

 to thank them for their business.

Of course, all the rooms were decorated
with the new CTP products.

In this room for three-year olds,
we used the letters to surround the windows.




Later, I decided the letters with the cute art would make a great alphabet book.

The 10" Jumbo Poppin' Pattern
cut-outs were perfect for the pages of the book.

I used the pictures to construct the text....A is for alligator, B is for bear.

I just looked at the pictures and made the text match the picture shown with the letter.




I added a few of the
1"mini star cut-outs to each page.



Ring-its hold the book together.

See how versatile The Alphabet can be!!

The Keeping Quilt

Challenge of the Week!

      



The challenge was to take these two products
and build a lesson around them. 

At the top is one of the new 10" quilt squares.

The second  product is a new mini bulletin board kit
Literacy Elements
which contains teaching ideas for several lessons
including characters, characterization, setting,
theme, mood, symbols, and more.

I spent today with a fifth grade class.
We made a quilt based on Patricia Polacco's
The Keeping Quilt.



From the mini bulletin board kit I chose

three elements to discuss....

characters, characterization, and symbols. 

I gave each person in the class some post-it notes.

As I read the story we identified each character. 

Someone would write the name of the person on a post-it note

and attach it to the character piece of the bulletin board.
The quilt passed through 5 generations so there were several characters.

Anna is one of the main characters of the story so we did the "post-it note thing" to identify the character qualities of Anna.  She was brave, smart, poor, happy, hard-working, loving, and more.

Then we talked about the symbolism of the quilt....again with the post-it notes! We decided that the quilt symbolized many things including faith, love, comfort, joy, family...... 

We had a great time

Here are our pictures. 


In each of the four corners we wrote
something that the quilt symbolized.



In the center square we wrote
The Keeping Quilt
and the names of some of the characters.

Each person added details to the square.

I "quilted" the pieces by attaching them together
with "mavalus" tape (the world's greatest tape!).

We had so much fun!!!

We challenge you to make your own quilt!

The kids offered to write testimonials

 about how much fun they had.