Past projects 11
Bring Let's Find Out Magazine to My Inquisitive Kindergarteners!
Funded Nov 30, 2022Thank you, thank you for funding my project!! The Let's Find Out subscription is an amazing resource. Each student receives four magazines a month with topics including science, social studies and social emotional skills all while aligning and supporting the kindergarten curriculum. Age appropriate videos and songs support the topic featured in each magazine. I am so excited for our first editions to arrive soon thanks to you!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Sweeney
This classroom project was brought to life by an Anonymous Classroom Supporter and one other donor.Rug For the Block Area
Funded Mar 1, 2022The color rug which was purchased for my Reading Area is such a welcome addition to our classroom! My students love to look at books, but sitting on the cold floor was not enjoyable.
When the rug first arrived the students could not believe that we could keep it! They asked when we had to send it back and cheered when I told them it was ours to keep.
The students flock to the Reading Area and love looking at the letters and graphics on the rug as they enjoy books together. It is wonderful to see kindergarten students sharing a love for books in a joyful setting. This rug has added beauty and functionality to our classroom.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Sweeney
This classroom project was brought to life by Valhalla Foundation and 7 other donors.Let's Read Books Together!
Funded Nov 30, 2021Thank you for your generous donations to my project. The reading area in my room has received a total renovation thanks to you and my students love it! The colorful rug with the alphabet and animal graphics is inviting and super soft. The three bean bag chairs give students the option to get comfy and enjoy looking at books with their friends. The red plastic bins keep our books organized by theme and or author. Students can easily find the books they are looking for and can put the book away neatly with these book bins.
I have noticed a significant interest in the reading area during Centers Time. There are always students on the bean bag chairs or relaxing on the rug with a book during this time.
Thank you for helping me to create an inviting reading area in my classroom and consequently encouraging my students to spend some time enjoying a book together with their friends.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Sweeney
This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose Community and 6 other donors.Let's Find Out About the World Around Us
Funded Jun 25, 2021Thank you for your generous donation to my project, "Let's Find Out About the World Around Us". My kindergarten students literally cheer when I tell them we will be reading a Let's Find Out magazine. We have learned about expressing our feelings, being a friend to our classmates, apples, fire safety, pumpkins and more so far this year. The videos clips that accompany each issue are engaging and educational. Did you know that large pumpkins can be hollowed out and used as a boat?! We thought that was an amazing fact about pumpkins!
Included in our subscription is an online component that the students use with their families at home. The students are excited to share what they have learned with their families and are able to do so with this feature.
Thank you for helping us find out about the world around us. It is a pretty awesome place!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Sweeney
I See You Reading!
Funded Dec 17, 2020My students are loving their new books! I was able to order fiction and nonfiction books for beginner readers and am so pleased with the quality and variety of titles I was able to purchase. The nonfiction texts include engaging, full color photographs which the students enjoy. The fiction texts are beautifully illustrated.
Studies show that students are more apt to read a book which they have picked out themselves so I let the students choose 5 books to put in their book bags (which are fabulous by the way!). Students keep these book bags in their desk and are encouraged to read not only during independent reading time, but during snack break or when they have finished their work. At the end of each week students have the opportunity to change out their current books for 5 new titles.
I have had students ask if they can bring the books home so they can read to a family member. Of course I say yes and the book bags protect the books as they travel back. So many of my students do not have books at home so I am so pleased they now have these books to share with their families. Please be assured that you donation to my project has made a huge difference for my students!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Sweeney
This classroom project was brought to life by An Anonymous Funder and 9 other donors.Let's Find Out About Our World
Funded Oct 14, 2020Wow! What an amazing gift from you to my students! Having a Let's Find Out subscription has allowed me to introduce my students to important social emotional, science and social studies concepts in an engaging and age appropriate manner. My students are excited each time I tell them we are going to use our Let's Find Out magazines!
Having the paper and digital copies of Let's Find Out has been extremely helpful as I am teaching kindergarten remotely this school year. Every eight weeks families come to school and pick up all the materials their child will need for eight weeks of learning. I spend days preparing materials and include the Let's FInd Out magazines and copies of the Let's Find Out skill sheets to extend the learning in these packets. I use the digital copies of the magazines as the students follow along with their paper copies. They are so excited to keep each magazine and reread it with a family member!
The videos included in each lesson help build each students background knowledge and understanding of each concept taught. Yesterday we watched a video about the White House. The students learned about the Oval Office which coincides with our unit on 2D shapes, that there are three kitchens in the White House compared to one in their home, and they were amazed that there is a movie theater in the White House! Thank you for helping me keep the remote learning engaging and meaningful for my kindergarten students.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Sweeney
Summer Learning Through Play
Funded May 21, 2020Unlike past summers, our Summer Learning Program was taught remotely this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. How, you may ask does a teacher successfully engage kindergarteners and first graders remotely on a beautiful summer day? I did so by providing my students with materials, the materials that you so generously donated to, and opportunities to learn from creative unique experiences.
After assembling the materials, I drove to each of my students' homes to drop off their bag of supplies. Due to social distancing guidelines I placed the bag on the front step of their home or outside the door to their apartment, knocked/rang the doorbell and stepped back. The students were over the moon with excitement when they saw the bag of materials for the Summer Learning Program and myself waving with a cheery hello. It set the tone for what would be a wonderful summer of learning through play.
Over the next four weeks the students used the material to create pinch pots with the play-dough, practice their writing skills using the beautiful journals, crayons and pencils, and expressed their creativity with the sidewalk chalk. Gross motor skills were honed with jump ropes and smiles abounded as the students blew and popped bubbles virtually together.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Sweeney
This classroom project was brought to life by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and one other donor.Egg-ceptional Eggs-perience!
Funded Aug 29, 2017When my students entered our classroom and saw the incubator with the chicken eggs inside they were beyond excited! So many questions!! What was it, were those eggs inside, why were they there, what was going to happen, how long would it take? We started by learning the vocabulary word, incubator, and discussed why it was warm and how to read the temperature setting on the top of the machine. We discussed how the incubator keeps the eggs warm in the absence of a hen.
The Chick Life Cycle exploration set has been extremely helpful in showing the "inside" of the egg each day. The students are so curious about what is happening inside the eggs and this set allows them to "see" what is developing each day. They enjoy comparing the changes day to day and are amazed as the models show the developing parts of the chick. The egg models are easy to manipulate and the perfect size for their little hands.
Living in the inner city my students do not have the experiences students who live on or near a farm would have and have no prior knowledge of the life cycle of chickens. Hatching our own eggs and learning about chickens and their life cycle is a once in a lifetime opportunity for many of my students. Thank you for your generosity and for making this unforgettable educational experience a reality!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Sweeney
Calling All Mini Monets!
Funded Mar 27, 2017Thank you for the donation to my "Calling All Mini Monets" project! We are beginning the school year by first introducing the primary colors of blue, yellow and red. We then talked about how other colors are created by mixing two of the primary colors together! Students had the opportunity to mix their own colors to create purple, green and orange. We did this on their paper plate "palette".
We have been reading Abuela, by Arthur Dorros, a story about a young girl and her abuela who see many amazing sights as they imagine flying like birds over NYC . My students then took what they had learned about color mixing to the easel and created stunning paintings of what they imagine they would see if they were to fly like a bird over our city.
Our next unit of study is on trees and weather. We have beautiful foliage here in MA and an oak tree next to our playground which will soon be turning color. I can't wait to see what my students paint as they observe the change of seasons and learn the parts of a tree.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Sweeney
Let's Get Our Hands Wet and Dirty!
Funded Nov 8, 2016The excitement this sand and water table has brought to my class is amazing! Our custodian assembled it the day it arrived because he saw how happy the students were when the large box containing the sand and water table was delivered to my class.
The table is in our Discovery Center and is filled with sand at this time. We have been learning about communities, construction sites, trucks, and tools. I have small construction vehicles and tongue depressors in the sand table. The students use the tongue depressors as beams/wood and push the sand around with the vehicles simulating a construction site. The cooperative play and language skills I hear from my students is astonishing. Students who have limited language skills and may be hesitant to speak in a large group setting are speaking up and demonstrating knowledge of the language and vocabulary skill they have been taught when engaged in play at the sand and water table.
I am looking forward to a snow storm so that I can fill the table with fresh snow and let the students build igloos using books and photographs of actual igloos as inspiration. The design and engineering skills the students will use for this project will hopefully encourage them to keep building and imagining their entire life.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Sweeney