To Cutesy or Not To Cutesy- That Is the Question

I was reading an article a few weeks ago called, "I Teach Kindergarten and I Don't Like Teachers Pay Teachers." I tried to find it again but the link is down.

I couldn't imagine anyone not liking TPT. I love it. So I had to read it. It turns out he doesn't really hate TPT or anything. He just talks about how we're trying to make everything cute but is it necessary?

It got me to thinking. And I do like cute. He has a point. We did these science activities. Normally, I would have tried to find something cute to do. But I decided to use what I already had or could find.

This is our Animal Groups big poster. I found these cut outs for free from learningpage.com . This website is really good. It has a lot of cool stuff. I let everyone cut out something. I really wanted to find cute pictures and do it myself but I knew they wanted to make it.

                  I think it turned out really good. :)

They also sorted pictures and made a poster. I was tempted to make a chart for them with the title in a cute font but I didn't. I already had the big pieces of paper.They made the titles out of post it notes.

 I really should have fixed the word mammals. I didn't notice until I had already put them out in the hall. 

Later we did plants. They made these out of notecards that I already had. I bought some flower girl petals and tore the plastic leaves off a few vines from Dollar Tree. The stems are pipe cleaners. The roots were also Dollar Tree- the shredded paper you put in baskets, Some used real seeds and some used construction paper seeds. They used real glue which I usually try to avoid at all times but they had fun. They did a really good job.

Well, I still like cute. But I am going to be more aware of what I buy and make. The content has to be there and if it's cute that's just a bonus not a necessity.

Happy Teaching! (In the spirit of NOT trying to cutesy everything up, I am going to leave this in Times New Roman font even though it almost pains me to do so.)