Open House

For Open House this year we went on a zoo safari. Since I don't have a classroom of my own, I help a friend of mine in her first grade class. We have so much fun coming up with a theme and all the little things we can do to make it happen. This year we had Pinterest to help with our inspiration. The room was so popular we had kids and parents from all grade levels come look at everything the kids had done, we were the talk of the night! Here are some pictures of how the room turned out.

To start, each student made a jeep to wear around their neck and a pair of binoculars (made for toilet paper rolls). The teacher also got each student a safari hat to wear. Their job was to take their family on a "safari" ride around the room, pointing out all of the animals. All of the kids had so much fun with this, you could hear some of them saying, "now on your left are the zebras, and when you look up you can see some monkeys." They took their job as tour guide very seriously!

As families walked down the hallway they were greeted by a jeep big enough for 2 kids to sit in and a ticket booth/hut. The jeep was made from a furniture box and had 2 chairs inside with a dashboard, steering wheel and dashboard gauges. Parents were able to take pictures of their students "driving" the jeep. This jeep was the inspiration of Buzzing About Second Grade.


We had a drawing in class to see who got to be the ticket seller. We traced, painted and stuffed a life size body of the lucky student whose name was drawn.

The jeep and ticket booth/hut was surrounded by parrots and student writing about their parrots. The parrot pattern was taken from DLTK.
Also in the hall were some chalk paintings of tigers and a zebra craft with student writing. The zebras were inspired from Tippytoe Crafts and the tigers were inspired by by this link.

Upon entering the classroom you were immediately emerged in the wild. There was a huge Acacia tree in the middle of the room with vines, monkeys and snakes hanging, and swinging from the vines.





We created two rocks out of tables and chairs and covered them with paper. We used these rocks to put the students lions on. Their homework was to create a lion, and boy they were all so cute and creative. You can tell the students that had lots of parent involvement and those that did it completely on their own, either way they were so proud of their creations!




The lions were made out of clay, paper, cardboard, yarn, felt, toilet paper rolls, foil, Popsicle sticks, foam, paper bags, sticks and acorns.

The kids did an anteater directed drawing, ant fingerprints, and watercolor Meerkats.

The rest of the room was filled with "life size" zebras, tigers, giraffes, a crocodile and elephant. We traced the animals and had the kids paint everything. We then stuffed everything with paper and either suspended it from the ceiling or used PVC pipe to stand it up.




















Now, the question is, what should we do next year?
Happy creating!

7 comments

  1. Oh my word! How stinkin' cute!!
    Blessings,

    Jessica Stanford
    Mrs. Stanford's Class Blog

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    1. Thanks Jessica, it was so much fun to do and the kids LOVED it!
      Shawna

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  2. Those safari jeeps are beyond adorable!!! Love it!!

    Lisa
    Learning Is Something to Treasure

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Lisa! The kids had so much fun with those jeeps and many of the parents pretended with the kids. They pretended to get into the jeep and follow their child around as if they were really being driven around...it was so great to see!
      Shawna

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  3. This is awesome!!! It's my new theme for next year! I love it! Thank you!!!!!!! I'm your newest follower, by the way. Come visit when you have a chance!
    Ann
    The Caffeinated Classroom

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    1. Thanks Ann for coming to visit and becoming a friend. I just got back from visiting you...super cute blog!
      Shawna

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  4. WOW!! That is amazing. Quite the creativity and hard work. I can only imagine how much prep it took to bring this alive. I am sure the kids were so proud and the parents quite impressed! What an excellent job!

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Thoughts and comments are always welcome!