Guess what I got?!

Today was a wonderful day.  My kids were good - that always makes it a good day.  But something else made it truly great.... My Donor's Choose materials arrived!  When I was walking my students out to the bus, one of our janitors was pushing a giant box and a few smaller boxes towards my room.  He told me they were for me, and I knew exactly what they were!  My kids were all asking what it could be, but I told them they would have to come back tomorrow morning to find out.  They are all now super pumped to come back to school tomorrow.  :D

Anyway, I will tell you what was in the boxes:  DRAMATIC PLAY MATERIALS!  Yes!  I do not currently have anything in my room that encourages imaginative play.  In fact, none of the kindergarten teachers do.  A few years ago, the principal at the time made every teacher get rid of any play materials.  This year, I had been doing a lot of reading and research about the importance of dramatic play to young, developing minds and how easily it can be linked to writing.  I took my facts and ideas to our new principal, and he was on board!  I created a project on Donor's Choose, and it got funded right around the holidays by some very generous and kind people.  I am so appreciative to them.  Many of my kids (I teach at a very high poverty school) haven't been able to have the same play experiences as many other children have had growing up.  I truly think that this will help them to develop better critical thinking, imaginative skills, problem solving, and social skills - areas that are all usually lacking in high poverty schools.  I am really excited to get started with this.

Now comes the hard part.  (Okay, rearranging my room was a hard part, too.) Now I have to figure out how to integrate this play center into my already jam packed school day.  I do my 90 minute reading block in the morning.  It is mandatory to use Daily 5 during that time in my district, so I do and that will not change.  After lunch, we have TIGER time.  This is our RtI time.  During this time I have centers.  Each group goes to one center a day (there are 5 centers, so they rotate to a different one each day).  I think that my writing center will now become integrated with my dramatic play station.  I found a great pack of writing materials for dramatic play  that I purchased and downloaded on TpT.  Kelly Findsen is the creator, and the pack is wonderful.  Here is the cover of the pack:

Click here to check it out!

Tomorrow I will figure out a few more logistics as to how I will exactly implement my new center.
I do know that  I am going to use it during indoor recess!! I am going to let the kids use it during indoor recess!! Perfect timing for that with all of the cold and snow.  :)  I am not going to get everything out at once though.  I will start with the kitchen/grocery store materials first, and then rotate as time goes on.  Once I figure things out a little bit and see how it all goes, I will update you all on my dramatic play center.

I seriously cannot wait for the kids to play with the materials.