Past projects 5
We Love Math Centers!
Funded Oct 31, 2024Thank you so much for your donation to my project, "We Love Math Centers"! I have been using the resources you helped me get from the day I received them! My autistic students loves using the sensory bean bags of letters and numbers! Having the opportunity to get learning materials in her hands that help keep her regulated while learning has been invaluable. I have been using the Numberblocks Memory Match game over and over! They love flipping over two cards to see if they made a match! This morning my students were playing Go Fish with the Numberblocks playing cards! So fun!
This week we were learning how to compare numbers 6-10. We learned about greater than and less than symbols and having the Blockeeze scale from the Numberblocks TV series made teaching those concepts so much more concrete!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Balicki
Let's Be Kinetic With Phonetics
Funded Aug 14, 2024Here in my kindergarten class we have gotten off to a great start! We are learning many letter sounds. Eventually we will use their knowledge of letter sounds to build words and sentences and eventually even read and write their own illustrated stories!
The original resource I chose for this project was not available in the quantity I needed for my whole class. I needed to choose a different product that was close to what I had originally ordered. I ended up getting a set of 6 great magnetic trays and word building magnetic tile sets that can be manipulated on the trays to build words, and they can also be written on with a wipe off marker. I can keep the tiles right on the tray and add new sounds as we learn them.
Because we are still only learning the letter sounds at this point in our school year, I haven't yet used this resource with my students yet, but we will soon! They are going to love them!
Thanks again for your support!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Balicki
This classroom project was brought to life by The Gates Foundation and 3 other donors.How Can We Manage Our Emotions?
Funded Oct 8, 2023Thank you again for contributing to my project. It has been invaluable to have this resource in my classroom as a tool to help guide my students through their emotions; both positive ones and negative ones.
Just the other day we read "Focused Ninja". We had been talking earlier about how some of my students constantly are able to complete their school work. We asked them what their trick was for getting their work done on time. Although they did not know the word to call it, we were able to identify that it is called "focus". This was the perfect time to pull out this particular Ninja book from the classroom set and continue to explain how being able to focus can help them not only get their work done, but can also help make them feel better about themselves and what they were able to accomplish!
This was just one example of how we use these books in our classroom. All of the topics these books in the Ninja set are about every emotion under the sun! When issues arise, because of your generosity, I am fully armed with an amazing child friendly tool that the kids love to help them navigate their emotions and grow from it too!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Balicki
What the Hand Does, the Mind Remembers!
Funded Mar 19, 2023Thank you again for funding my project! Having the actual number blocks to show my students has made all the difference. They love watching the number blocks videos about numbers as we learn them, but it is an added excitement when they get to manipulate the actual number blocks that look just like the blocks in the videos. So far, in this school year, we have used the 1-5 number blocks. We have done activities with them like mix up the order, and then, have a student come up to put them back in correct counting order.
They have also enjoyed sorting and counting the number blobs! I will send pictures of my students enjoying both the number blobs, and the number blocks! Anytime students can get their hands on learning tools that are also fun, that is when learning can blossom! Thank you!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Balicki
Now Is The Time For Technology!
Funded May 6, 2020This year has truly been a challenge in so many different ways. If teaching kindergarten isn't challenging enough, let's all imagine adding a pandemic, learning new technology platforms, using this new technology, teaching students, parents and grandparents how to use it all while keeping track of student's work and progress from each of the different cohorts.
It is approaching the end of March, and I feel like I can finally take a breath from all of the challenges to fill you in on how incredibly appreciative I am for how generous you were to me and my class. Originally I had planned to use the iPads in a "center" where students in a small group could take turns using the iPads for math, science, or ELA activities. With the pandemic, rules were placed on us as teachers to not share items in the classroom for safety sake, so I needed to put them to a different use this year. Students were issued their own Chromebook through a Covid relief grant, but didn't know how to use them. It was our job to make it easy enough for them to learn how to use it at school, and at home on their remote days. Having the use of an iPad in the classroom helped make this process go so much more Smoothly!
Having to maneuver between laptop, projectors, and classroom computers through the day can take many steps and valuable time away from learning. I decided to utilize the iPads in a way that I could streamline my teaching and access the online activities much quicker. By doing so, my students are never bored waiting around for me to switch from one screen to the next or one wire adjustment to another. I simply have the iPad open and ready to use. During our morning meetings I show engaging morning exercise videos. During handwriting I use it to model letter formations. During non-fiction writing time I show videos about animals we are learning about. During math I am able to share math songs that help to build the math skills that we are working on. At the beginning of the year, or if a new student enrolled late in the year, it was also great to use them to help students navigate the new learning platforms they were expected to use at school, and at home more independently. I could easily walk around the room and use the iPad to show them what to "click" next.
Next year I am hoping things get back to normal. Then I will be able to use the iPads as I originally intended. But for this year, they were a huge help ! Thank you again so much for your generosity! It will never ever be forgotten!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Balicki
This classroom project was brought to life by SONIC Drive-In and 9 other donors.