Do You Know How Donor's Choose Can Help You?

Have you ever tried Donor's Choose? I've watched others use it, but never tried it. . . . .

 until this past fall. 

I work in a puny room no bigger than many bathrooms. So I needed a way to consolidate

 space and help kids with their needs. 

So I signed up for Donor's Choose and 

asked for 4 Wobble Stools. It was a stretch, 

because I just didn't think anyone would help me out. 

But they did! 

And boy did they! 

I had a few who donated anonymously and a few who had their donations doubled. 

All of a sudden it was complete. 

That feeling is a great one. To think that strangers believed in me and even wanted to purchase something to help my students was heartwarming. 

One of my donors was Krista from Creative Clips. I'm a huge fan of hers and when she said she was making a donation she really filled my bucket!

My stools were delivered right after the Christmas break. Here are some pictures of the day they arrived. 

So, if you are thinking about doing a Donor's Choose project, do it! It's easy to do if you just follow the steps on their website. 

Good Luck!

#weholdthesetruths

Today is a very important historical day for the citizens of United States. 

Inauguration Day signifies the day we officially start the new presidency.

There is a lot of controversy this year over the choice that our people picked for president.  Like it or not, we need to put on our big girl panties and move along with it. 

We have choices. We can choose to be angry and complain. Or we can choose to be nice and try to spread goodness everywhere. I choose the latter. 

In honor of that I want to share a forever freebie with you today. 

Click the picture to get this activity.

I'm going to use a book by Maria Dismondy to help your students also see how niceness is far better than being ugly. 

Maria's book called Chocolate Milk, Por Favor helps to teach your students about empathy and diversity. 

I read it to a group of kindergarteners last year. You can click HERE to read about that. I was truly amazed at how well even those littles could feel sad for Gabe in the story. They got it! They understood his pain. That's empathy! It's not hard to teach about it, and this book helps reinforce it!

I have created a packet of things that you can do with this book to help your students understand the importance of being kind to others. You can click the picture above to go to the freebie. 

Or Click this picture to go to my store.

You can also search in TPT for more freebies. Just use these in the search bar:

#weholdthesetruths

#Kindnessnation

I hope you will use many of these freebies to teach your students right from wrong and how to hold their country together with kindness. 

Transportation Day is Hands ON!

Every spring the kindergarteners get to see, feel, and hear about many kinds of transportation that they may or may not have ever seen up close. Trucks, tractors, police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, electric service trucks, motorcycles, Amish horses and buggies, bicycles, buses, combines, and mail trucks are just a few of the vehicles that gather together.

We have a large parking lot that is empty during the day. All of the vehicles can gather here and give everyone plenty of room to see everything. The kindergarteners from three buildings are bussed here for about an hour-and-a-half to see everything.

The students get to talk to the people who drive those vehicles and often get to climb right inside, too.

Their imaginations run wild thinking about how fun it would be to actually drive one of these. (Don’t worry: No keys were left in any of the vehicles!)

They may have seen a combine in a field working, but to actually climb up in this huge machine was so worth it!

We share the roads with the Amish in our community. So, to see what’s it’s like inside a buggy was very exciting. 

 

They are amazed at the size of some of the larger machines.

They got to see how long the bed of the semi truck is! Running through it and screeching is louder than they thought!

 

This little lady got to see what it’s like to ride in an ambulance, before she ever needs to.

It’s pretty cool to see a car that’s shorter than a kindergartener!

They get to actually practice safely getting out of the back of the bus, in case they ever need to do so.

 

 

Besides having fun on this day, they learn a lot about many different kinds of vehicles, and many children form ideas about what they want to be when they grow up.

If this is something that you would like to do for your students, then you might want to start planning it now!