Past projects 6
You Can Be Anything You Dream! Just Play & Pretend!
Funded Jun 6, 2024Thank you so much for all the wonderful supplies to help spark my students imagination and creativity! Our district this year is shifting our vision and focusing on a Portrait of a Graduate with the emphasis on Learn, Thrive, Navigate & Impact. With this shift, students are expected to have tools to navigate real world experiences and have ideas for their future (careers and/or college). These new resources allow our youngest learners to explore, pretend and engage in building and creating like an engineer, organizing and running a restaurant like a baker, barista or deli owner, and taking care of sick animals and people like a vet or a doctor.
The students are so excited to start using all of our new material during collaborative playtime. We are slowly introducing and learning how to treat our materials responsibly so we can maximize the longevity of the items for the future kindergartners to come. They can not wait to explore and pretend with all the fun, engaging materials to help envision a bright and wonderful future.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Starke
This classroom project was brought to life by An Anonymous Supporter and 6 other donors.Comfy Flex Spaces to Promote Choice, Comfort & Accessibility
Funded Sep 7, 2023Thank you all so much and we appreciate your generosity! Flexible seating has been a great asset to my classroom and has completely changed my students way of learning. Flexible seating allows students to work independently and creates positive engagement. A lot of my students work better when they're not sitting on a desk all day and being able to work all around the classroom has helped them tremendously. We use flexible seating during independent work, group work, and throughout most of the day.
In my classroom, I encourage choice and my students appreciate the variety of spaces. We have slowly introduced the new material and are learning how to use the stools, couch and table with respect. We started with the stools and when the others arrived my students were so happy and excited to use them.
We love using the table for small group and enjoy the fact that we can write right on it. We never need to look for whiteboards again! Thank you so much for helping us get more wonderful options to help us learn and be comfortable when learning!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Starke
This classroom project was brought to life by Panda Cares and 13 other donors.Full STEAM ahead... Innovators & Engineers of a Brighter Future
Funded Sep 22, 2022We can not thank you enough for providing us with thought provoking STEAM activities. Not only are these materials used outside, they are also being used as supplemental tools for our current science unit, forces and motion. These activities allow the kindergarteners to create, engineer and problem solve ways to get things to drop, move, and slide to reach the goals or buckets at the bottom of their mazes. The kids are working collaboratively through experimentation and design. They are analyzing and redesigning their ideas to improve their original plans and are amazed by all the successful mazes and projects they have created. They have also enjoyed building with their new legos.
Each week, we have been gradually introducing new activities and learning about ways to respectfully use our new tools. The kids are so excited to see what they can explore with, create, and build each week. The best part will be introducing the water play activities this spring! They are going to love the water materials that you wonderful donors have provided them.
It is because of caring people like you that our students will get to explore and learn with these materials for the remainder of the year and years to come. We look forward to continuing to enrich our STEAM learning and to explore other opportunities to provide our students with engaging STEAM materials.
Thank you all so much again and we appreciate your continued support with our projects in the future. You make these fun things happen for students with your generous donations. We appreciate you.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Starke
This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose Community and 37 other donors.Read with Me
Funded Mar 9, 2016My students are extremely grateful for your generosity and have been listening to all the wonderful books on CD. They happily opened up the big box, enjoyed looking through all the new books and have been listening to them with their friends ever since. Not only are they having a fun time working cooperatively with their classmates, they are also learning concepts about print, practicing literacy skills and understanding story elements.
Hearing a book on tape allows students to see the words on a page come to life in a fluid, expressive way. Students can focus on the sounds of words and it provides a model of fluent reading. Books on CD also have fun sound effects, changes in voice tone and music that is entertaining, motivating, and fun for young readers. The narrators emphasize reading as something fun and exciting rather than a skill, and young children want to imitate them and have an eagerness to learn to read. When listening to the stories, students realize that words convey meaning and are exposed to a variety of new vocabulary.
This project has given my students the opportunity to have a variety of books at the listening center. Students can sit together with their own book and enjoy the story with three of their friends. They get to listen and enjoy their favorite books again and again or explore a new character, fairy tale, or author. They have started retelling the books to their friends and acting out the stories as if they were the characters. My students have written about their favorite parts of the books, created story maps of the characters, setting, and plot, sequenced the story with picture cards, and compared and contrasted the similarity and differences between the text.
Thank you again for making our listening center a reality and getting my students excited about reading.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Starke
Diggin' for ABCs & Fishin' for 123s: Interactive Centers
Funded Nov 7, 2014My students are extremely grateful for your generosity and have been loving learning with all their new center games, activities, and resources. They happily opened up all the big boxes, enjoyed learning the games and have been playing them with their friends ever since. Not only are they having a fun time working cooperatively with their classmates but they are practicing literacy skills and math concepts.
We have been using the material to practice letter recognition and beginning sounds by fishing and digging for letters, building trains with pictures that have the same sound, matching puzzles with letters and sounds, playing match games with picture cards and letters, and using letter tiles to build words and fill in the missing sound. In addition to all the great literacy centers, we have been able to use the math manipulative to practice number recognition, addition, and place value with the use of the magnetic ten-frames. They have been using the magnet numbers, base ten magnets, and pattern shape magnets to create shape pictures, show and count numbers, build numbers with tens and ones, and do addition and subtraction problems.
This project has given my students an opportunity to learn with more hands-on, engaging learning material as a class, small group, and independently. It is great to be able to teach the same concept in multiple ways so the students have many chances to master the skill being taught. It has been a great experience watching them choose to play these learning games on their own. They are genuinely excited and working together to master literacy and math concepts using these materials. Thank you again.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Starke
This classroom project was brought to life by Genentech and 13 other donors.Be Fit, Be Active, Live Healthy, Let's Move!
Funded Sep 21, 2014We can not thank you enough for all the wonderful Physical Education equipment. My students had the largest smiles on their faces when we opened the multitude of boxes stacked high on the rug and they were so anxious to get outside and be active.The majority of them had not seen or used a parachute, played bean bag games or jumped rope before and the excitement was not hidden from their faces when they got to play and learn with it.
The equipment is being used daily, not only at P.E. but also at recess and during class game time with their Playworks coach. They hula hoop, play soccer, football and basketball, and just dribble, bounce, and kick the balls around the yard. They have gotten creative with some of the items by making obstacle courses where they have to jump through the hula hoops, bounce the balls to one side and hop back to the finish line. We have used the parachute at P.E. and they were given the opportunity to maneuver a ball with the chute, walk across it when it was being shook, lay under it and have it rise and fall on them, and sit with it tucked under them like a big circus tent. They absolutely love this teaching tool! We have also used some of the equipment inside the classroom to teach numbers and letter recognition by tossing the bean bags on my ABC and 123 rug and call out the letter or number the bag landed on or near.
With the P.E. equipment, students have been able to practice motor skills, coordination, balance, team building, social skills, and leadership and are excited to participate and learn new skills and games. We have had a lot less social issues on the play yard because the kids are engaged and entertained with all the items to play with. Groups of students from all 4 of the kindergarten classrooms are coming together, creating, sharing, and playing games and activities taught at P.E. They are enjoying getting active, look forward to P.E., excited about what new piece of equipment we will use and learn this week and every child is actively participating and trying their best to master the skill being taught!
Thank you for your support on my project and bringing such joy to my kids. They deserve to have the opportunity to have engaging, fun P.E.lessons and you have made that possible for them and for that I am wholeheartedly grateful!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Starke