End of the year gift... Thank you Pinterest!

It is no great secret that good teachers beg, steal, and borrow their great ideas from anyone and anywhere they can. In case you didn't know... Pinterest is a teacher's best friend! I saw a picture similar to the ones posted below that a mother had done for the years of her daughter's life. I can hardly stand how simple, meaningful, and memorable a gift this made for my student's their parents on the last day of school.

The above image was taken using my digital camera. If you try this, take care to have a simple background that the writing will show up easily ( I made this mistake the first time and had to go back and retake the pictures). I used Photoshop, picture editing software that I personally own, to manipulate the color and contrast of the photo as well as add the text.
Location and school are blurred on purpose for this blog post.

I created the above image in Microsoft Power Point, a program that most teachers have on their school computers... Yay for free! I added the image to a blank slide and then inserted a text box to add the text. For time saving purposes, I used one text box for the entire text for this example. If this were the image that I were to give as gifts, I would have used separate text boxes for each line of text and played with the font a little bit more. But, you get the idea. Once satisfied with your image, click Save As and then choose 'JPEG' from the drop down format menu. Name your image and browse the folders drop down menu to ensure that you save your image to the correct place.

Happy Birthday Fanny Frog!

We celebrated Fanny Frog's birthday in style this year in Pre-K! All school year long, we worked hard at learning our letters with the help of all of Fanny's friends on Frog Street. We threw a party for Fanny in honor of her 20th birthday, and for the kids in honor of them learning all of their letters.
I spread the news to parents via email (all of my parent contacts are saved in one distribution folder... making it SUPER easy to get classroom news to them in a hurry). Parents were quick to ask what supplies were needed for the celebration and even offered up a few fabulous suggestions of their own.

Here we are using the letters we have learned to sign Fanny's birthday banner.

We proudly displayed the banner for all to see.

Fanny was lookin' good!

A parent offered to bring in alphabet balloons for an alphabet guessing game. The kids had SO MUCH FUN! They had to choose a letter, tell us the name of the letter, and what sound it makes. It's amazing to see how much they have learned during this school year!

Thanks to Elizabeth for making the balloons and providing Fanny's cake for the afternoon class. You rock!
Liam's letter L (red, or course).

Fanny and her FABULOUS cake.

Happy Birthday Fanny. Here's to 20 more!