It's all about Plan B

What do you do when what you want to do and create with your Kinders doesn't work out?  Do you just say "Oh Skip It!"  I just won't do that...even though it would be really fun and you could relate it to common core and to the things a Kinder needs to know.  NOPE!!  You go old school and find a way to make it work.

I want my kiddos to make a calendar the first school day of each month.  It helps them understand time (stuff they need to know), write their numbers (common core), and parents get a calendar that looks like their kids are learning and they can hang it on the fridge (good PR...parent relations).

First I can't find a calendar with dotted numbers for this year.  The one I used last year was WONDERFUL!  It was from Mrs. Solis' website.  I loved it!  It was already created for me and I just printed it off each month.  She didn't have one with the dotted numbers for 2012-2013. {sigh}.  I am not smart enough to make my own digitally, soooo I went the cut and paste route.  Yup...I printed a blank calendar and one with numbers, cut out each number, glued it to the blank, did the same for the year.  Copied it, then used a ruler to re-line any I covered up and tried to pull it together and look like I might have made it on my computer (which I just got back from my friend who fixes these things when they get sick...different story).

Voila.....Looks pretty good.

Next, I want to glue it on a large blue piece of paper so we can put a picture on top.  Check.   No problem there.


The picture I want to put on top is a school and bus.  We have the die cuts, so it should be a piece of cake.  Wrong....can't find the school.  I could have sworn we had a school.  Bus....yes, school....no.

What can I do?  At this point I am committed, so it is back to plan B.  Let's make a school from a square and a triangle.  Yay!  Even better, more common core...now I can talk about squares and triangles.  But can you tell it's a school?  I found some flag stickers, so we practiced drawing a nice straight line starting at the top.  Each little red schoolhouse has a flagpole and a flag sticker.

I think they turned out pretty cute!  Even better than what I wanted to do first.  Plan B is often like that.

Terri