Career Week

The kids love career week, it gives them a chance to explore the possibilities, to tell stories about themselves or people that they know, and at the end of it all, to dress up! So we did lots of fun activities, including one where they drew a picture of what they wanted to be and then said why they wanted to be that; but the pictured activity on the right, is a graph we made of each of the students' parents professions, which was a lot of fun. I already knew all the parent's technical titles and then I reduced those to an easier level of understanding for the children. Then they went through and were able to put a star on the proper group, one for their father and one for their mother. It really got the students to talk about jobs and to explore their friends, especially after hanging it up on the fridge for another week or so where they could always come back to it. You can find my activity packet here.

Sticker Charts are Overrated

So many teachers do sticker charts and they're just SO overrated....sure the concept works and the students love it. But there is so much waste in this style of a reward program....so what did I decide to do? Make something a little more re-usable that sparked a little more creative process. Instead of a sticker, the students earn a "step" from the village toward the castle and when they reach the castle they earn a prize and then they start all over at the village again. The kids love it and the fun images that appear along the way (wishing well, unicorn, dragon, and mermaid [not pictured]). I just googled images online for the moving characters (2 styles of princesses [one more feminine and one more ranger style] and 2 styles of princes). The kids love it and I'm not wasting paper and stickers. 

These are the guidelines I use:

find it on my TPT site here