Past projects 32
Start The Day Right
Funded Apr 6, 2025Thanks so much for funding our healthy snacks and breakfast food. Kids will appreciate being able to focus on learning and play when their bellies are full. Our class also really appreciates these opportunities to chat while we eat and build community. Thank you for supporting our growth in first grade.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Anna
Fun Time Refresh
Funded Mar 9, 2025Thanks so much for supporting our favorite time of day: choice time! Students will be so excited to play with these new materials, to get creative with building materials and artistic with new art supplies. We will really appreciate a solid speaker when it's time to play outside and of course some disinfecting wipes at clean up time. Thanks for making learning fun!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Anna
States of Matter = States of Mind
Funded Dec 6, 2024Thank you so much for supporting our sensory explorations in first grade. Students were thrilled to unpack their new playdough sets. This remains the most popular activity during our free choice time when kids use their tools to craft pizza, spaghetti, animals, monsters, shapes, and the letters that spell out their names. We also use sensory tools to calm down and refocus after recess so that kids can be calm and ready to learn. We are looking forward to experimenting with states of matter as part of our science standards in the spring.
Thanks for your support and your generosity.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Anna
This classroom project was brought to life by The Campbell Foundation.From Our Heads to Our Toes
Funded Oct 3, 2024We have been learning all about bodily autonomy and consent. The students have really enjoyed these relatable and high quality pictures books which teach them to celebrate their unique bodies and to respect other's personal space. In the spring we will also use books which challenge gender stereotypes to talk about the way we define our own identities, and books about birds to explore the native wildlife in our parks and neighborhoods. We are even planning a collaboration with a high school class where our first graders will design a bird and their big buddies will create it for them out of clay!
Thank you for supporting literacy and content learning in our first grade classroom.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Anna
This classroom project was brought to life by SONIC Foundation and 6 other donors.Afternoon Snacks Help Us Learn!
Funded Sep 18, 2024Snack time is our favorite time of day! Thanks to your generosity I have been able to provide a healthy daily snack to my first grade students and I hope to be able to for the rest of the school year. We have a long day for little people and by mid-afternoon my first graders are always hungry and tired with another two hours to go before dismissal time. A quick snack of graham crackers or goldfish is just what they need to get a little energy (and a little break) so that they can keep going with their learning.
The sweetest part of snack time is how it helps to build community in our class. For a few minutes students are able to relax and chat with their friends while they eat. They are silly and kind and share stories about their lives. This time helps them re-set and be ready to go on with their days.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Anna
This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose Community & an Anonymous Partner and 3 other donors.Building Bridges Between Home and School
Funded Sep 2, 2024This has been a wonderful project which has helped support students' literacy skills and build connections between home and school through reading. In the classroom students have been practicing their handwriting every day and are feeling more confident about forming their letters and writing words in dependently. Our individual magnet tile boards are a great tool to practice phonics patters. Students can manipulate the letters to create new words and each person can focus on sounding out the words they have made.
The most exciting part of this project was when students decorated their bags and brought them home full of books along with a plush gnome friend who they will read to every night. This has really increased students' motivation around reading and is helping them to read more independently when they know the gnome is "listening." With our Thanksgiving and Winter Breaks coming up, I hope that this extra dose of literacy will hope students to maintain their progress in reading even when they are not at school.
Thanks for helping this magic come alive.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Anna
This classroom project was brought to life by The Gates Foundation and 11 other donors.Getting Organized to Start the New Year!
Funded Jun 6, 2024It's the Friday before the first day of school and we are all busy setting up our classrooms and making everything ready for the students when they arrive. Thanks to your generosity, our first grade classroom now has a stable set of mailboxes for classroom work, plastic folders to display self-portraits, a storage system for all of our work, and a beautiful new prize box. This morning our school volunteers helped me to clean out all of our old cubbies and re-paper them so that they will be clean and fresh and ready for children's backpacks on Monday. I can't wait to meet my new students and we all send our thanks to you for helping us get set up to start the year off right!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Anna
This classroom project was brought to life by Visa Foundation and 2 other donors.Text Sets to Support English Learners
Funded Feb 27, 2024We have been reading these books during our English Language Development time every day. Students have really enjoyed exploring new series, learning more about particular authors, and talking about the characters that they meet in different books. We've had great conversations about how to describe characters using adjectives and opposite words and also how characters change over the course of a book. Students have learned about problems and solutions and have become familiar with their first early chapter books.
Of course, Frog and Toad are everyone's favorite series! We laughed together about how funny Toad looked in his bathing suit and how they just couldn't stop eating cookies. After introducing these series to my whole class, many of my more advanced readers have continued reading the books in the different series independently. They love learning more about the adventures of Mr. Putter and Tabby, and seeing themselves reflected in the stories about Sofia and Pedro.
Thanks for supporting our growing library of series books for first graders!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Anna
This classroom project was brought to life by A Northern California Family and one other donor.Art for Everyone!
Funded Mar 27, 2024My first graders were so excited to put together their own pencil bags including: markers, crayons, colored pencils, and a fun pencil with an eraser. They are ready to take responsibility for their own materials and have been carefully looking after their pencil bags, passing them out to their classmates, and storing their materials when they are done.
Over the past few weeks they have used their supplies to draw pictures of spring, create self portraits for April, and carefully diagram three dimensional shapes in math class. Before the year is over they will use their supplies to document the life cycle of a butterfly and record the changes in a seed they plant as they watch it sprout, grow, and flower.
Thank you for supporting our colorful exploration of spring!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Anna
This classroom project was brought to life by LOFT and 3 other donors.Sensory Materials for Calm + Focus
Funded Jan 24, 2024Our classroom is feeling organized and calm! We have introduced the sensory toys like pop-its, play-doh, squeeze balls, and finger puzzles, and talked about how holding something or squeezing something can help us feel focused and ready to learn. Students have practiced using different materials and identified which ones help them when they are feeling stressed or anxious. I organized the materials into colorful bins which students now have access to and can use whenever they need them.
They are also easily able to access the whiteboards, erasers and markers that we use for daily phonics practice. When students have agency in accessing their materials it helps them feel independent and in control of their emotions and their learning.
Thank you for supporting us with these sensory materials so that everyone can be calm, focused, and ready to learn!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Anna