KindergartenWorks: paint chips

My mom is responsible for helping create much of the inspiration for seeing things not as they are, but how they can be! As teachers, we can see paint stirrers as name tags (like Mrs. Guntorius), popsicles as pointers (like Miss Samson) and students who appear as "challenges" are seen as "an adventure in teaching."

Here are a few things that we use in my classroom that have taken on a new purpose!

Paint chips are now our color cards to help us keep track of our behavior choices. I simply hole punched them and added clasp rings to hold them together. *free*

Paint chips with pre-cut squares are now word windows that we use to find "bits" we know to figure out words during guided reading. *free*

I use the smallest ones for use during guided reading and the big ones for use at my big book center. I used a plethora of stickers to create themed word windows.

"Water blasters" from the Dollar Tree are now great entending pointers for reading the room - and reading waaaaay up high - allowing me to maximize wall space. I have them velcroed onto a shelf and don't introduce them until late fall when we can handle seeing these as pointers and not light sabers.

Flashlight carabiner clips are great pointers to focus my typically hard to focus readers.

Pens make great pointers when they encourage 1:1. I found these pens at Dollar Tree. They are used by my readers the 2nd and 3rd time they go through a book to allow me enough time to hear everyone.

The stick magnifiers (black handles) are always the first choice. They lay them right on top a line of text and love the magnified print...also a score from the Dollar Tree.

Cutlery storage caddies make great smaller marker or supply caddies.

Chip and dip trays are wonderful art supply holders (paint, tissue, whatever!) for projects and they wipe/rinse so clean! I love being able to use the middle section to hold water cups, brushes, etc. They hold up long enough (over multiple years) to be worth having two per table from the Dollar Tree.