Dollar Tree Treasures and Lots of Ideas!

Hi! I'm Carolyn Kisloski from Kindergarten: Holding Hands and Sticking Together.  I wanted to call this "Dollar Tree Finds and Million Dollar Ideas" but that sounded like a little much.  But, here are some great finds and some fun ideas I like to do with them and wanted to share with you.  How is that?!

My list said "leaf stickers."  I left the store many, many dollars later with many, many treasures- and no leaf stickers. These are some of the bags I hauled into school after my trip.
                                      

That is the beauty of the Dollar Tree.  Have you ever gone in, and for some bizarre reason not gotten a cart?  I KNOW-  what?!  I've done that, and then when my arms are overflowing, I sheepishly make my way back to get one, reminding myself never to do that again.

Tip of the day:  ALWAYS get a cart at Dollar Tree.  EVEN if your list has one item on it.  It's like eating Pringles.  You can't eat just one, and you won't get just one thing.  I think it's almost impossible.  Just skip right over those baskets, too.  They fill up wayyyy too fast.

Let's get started!

Instead of  leaf stickers, which I couldn't find, I got these beautiful leaves.
                                            

We made fall trees with the leaves, and practiced writing a sentence correctly. They stuck onto construction paper really well with Elmer's glue. If one was thinking about falling off, I just stapled it on to be sure it would stay.  I had the kids tear brown paper for the trunk.

I thought the leaves would also be fun for a Sight Word Write, so I wrote a sight word on each leaf, put a magnet on back, and made a tree on my white board.  The children have to write the words on the leaves that have fallen from the tree. They  do this after they finish their morning work.  They can just write the words on the back of their paper, or use this recording sheet.  I just change the fallen leaves each morning.   

If you would like a copy of the recording sheet, just click the picture below. 

Wouldn't this activity be precious with these leaves?  I found this picture on Pinterest, with no link back to anything- so if it is yours, I am sorry I'm not giving you credit. I love it!

This bulletin board from Boards Galore would be fun to make with these leaves, too.  You could hide children's faces, sight words, letters, or numbers in the leaf pile!

Don't you just LOVE these leaves from TypeInspire?  They would be so much fun for making names or sight words in fall!  I'm not sure what I want to do with them, but here they are if you can think of something fun. I just loved them.

Next, I found this packet of Halloween characters. There are 6 characters in a packet, and a sheet of stickers to go with each character.  My kids LOVED making them!

I had each of my children write "I am a ____________" and try to hear the sounds for the character they chose.  This was one of the first sentences they tried to write.  It was a great chance to have them practice leaving a space between words and put a period at the end of the sentence because it was where the reader would stop. 

I bought 5 of each of these animals last year to use for my reading buddies during independent reading time. I have 4 or 5 children in each group.  Each group has 15 minutes of reading time on the rug each day. They can have a reading buddy to read the books to, so these worked great to go along with some of our reading strategies. 

Stretchy Snake to stretch out the words

Lips the Fish to get your mouth ready for that first sound

Chunky Monkey to look for the chunks in words

I also bought 5 of each of these great camo helmets,vests, and binoculars.  

I am going to have 2 different camo centers for the kids.   The first one is going to be this mat that the children have to use to match the army guy's word to the word on the mat, and then record 10 of the words after they match them.  I just painted the fabulous landscape on a piece of cardboard from the back of one of my chart paper packs.  Of course the children will have to wear their uniforms when they accept this mission!

The next center is going to be a Camo Write the Room. I am going to put the camo sight words all over the room. They can wear their vest and helmet, and use the binoculars to find the words.  I also bought a camo tablecloth (for $. 97 at Walmart).  I was thinking I may put that up on a wall and put the sight words on that another time just to switch it up.   If you would like a copy of the recording sheets, just click on the picture below. 

 

If you would like a copy of the camo sight words, just click this picture.

You can also find camo pencils that  would be so much fun to use for these centers. 

These great dinosaurs would also work well on my mat (since it is so simple  versitile...). You could write sight words or letters on these guys!

I got these awesome mustaches for "Mm" day.  We all need a good mustache day.  After they wear them for a class picture, I am going to have them draw a big picture of themselves on paper and add the mustache to that to get the mustaches home safe and sound.  That way, the mustache will have another purpose, won't get lost somewhere, and the kids won't be wearing it all day- only until they use it for the picture they draw.

I am always on the look out for prizes to keep in my prize bin, too.  For Christmas and the end of the year, we play Bingo.  As each child wins, he/she gets to go to the prize table to choose a prize.  The kids LOVE this.  It's so easy for me, too.   I  always have a good variety of prizes on hand.

I find this is also handy in case a child is home sick for quite a while or breaks a bone or something and needs a little "pick-me-up" treat bag.

These are my latest additions.  I have lots of cars, trucks, balls, wands, coloring projects already.  I loved this glitter dough.  The glow in the dark snakes would also be good separated and given as "stretchy snake" reading and writing reminders.

I LOVED these wings.   The little skirts were too precious, too.  I bought wings for each of my girls. I only have eight girls. I'm not sure when I'm going to give these to the girls, but I do know I want a picture of each little girl wearing her wings.

I saw this sweet saying, and I am thinking that I may make something with each girl's picture and this saying for a gift for the parents. 

I also got some tiaras for my girls for sometime special, because who can resist a tiara?

I am going to go back and get something special for my boys next.  They had cowboy hats and vests, so I may get those for my little guys.

 Maybe I'll add this little saying to their cowboy pictures.

I'll probably just get EVERYONE a cowboy hat, and maybe we will make paperbag vests to go with them, because they have some pretty colored hats!

I also got a few of these finger lights just in case some of my readers need a little extra reminder to point to each word as they read.  These are so much fun!

I hope you found some fun ideas to use for this time of year.  Have fun shopping! I'd love you to stop over to my blog Kindergarten: Holding Hands and Sticking Together and follow me on Facebook.

Thank you for stopping by!