I’m so excited about this blog post! It brings together two of my favourite educators who have combined forces to inspire these “When I Grow Up” free printable sign posters.
Julia Dweck is an elementary school teacher and children’s book author. We first became acquainted at this time last year through the Kid Lit Blog Hop. We’ve reviewed several of her books since then. One of these books is called “Faux Paw”. It’s about a young child who wants to be a bear – but his teacher says it’s impossible. However, Waldon’s mom encourages him and tells him he can be anything he wants to be. To see our complete review, click on the picture below.
Carolyn Wilhelm is also an educator with many years of experiece and wisdom. She’s been writing educational printables and sharing them online at Wise Owl Factory ,TpT and BuySellTeach since 2000. The vast majority of Carolyn’s resources are completely free as well! I first “met” Carolyn over a year ago on-line and she’s become a great friend and mentor to me.
Carolyn has created 4 wonderful poster sets to go along with Faux Paw. The first set, which comprise of 48 professions is done with a chalkboard background and the heading, “When I grow up I want to be a ….” and include the kindergarten grade and the year 2014.
The second set is identical, but does not include the grade or the year. This means the posters can be used for any grade or in the future. You could fill in this area yourself, or glue a photo of the child in this area.
Carolyn has just created a new set of “When I grow up I want to be…” posters in a black and white ink-saver format! These posters are great for the children to have fun and colour while they dream of what they would like to become. OK, I’ll admit it- my children looked like they were having so much fun with them that I coloured one in, too! The ink-saver version also includes lined pages so that children can write a little about their choice of future career.
After several days of pretend play using the “When I grow up I want to be…” posters, and all of the children’s costumes were back in their trunk, I was putting Kallista to bed and she said “I want to be a princess!” and I replied, “There’s a sign for that!” Kallista didn’t let me forget, and yesterday she dressed up as a princess for her birthday and pretended to be Cinderella; one of her favourite characters.
This set is for pretend play with the heading, “I wish I could play with a ….” And who says boys can’t have fun with fairytales? Tristan himself wanted to transform into a prince for the morning. He has a great eye and set the stage, complete with props and positions to recreate the scene from Cinderella when the Prince is helping Cinderella try on the glass slipper.
These posters would be a fantastic end of the school year scrapbook item for children to have to look back on in the future. They would also be perfect for an end-of-year class photo, with each student holding up their own ambition. If you’re a homeschooler, day care or nursery employee, these fun posters also fit the bill!
My children have been having oodles of fun dressing up in their costumes and using these resources! Please fly over to Wise Owl Factory and have a look at these, as well as the 100s of other resources that Carolyn has developed. Keep an eye on Julia Dweck as well; I hear she has new projects in the pipeline.
