Dr. Seuss Week

I love Dr. Seuss! I love his whimsical characters and wacky designs! This week at school we are celebrating Read Across America and Dr. Seuss's birthday!
Here are some of the fun activities we did!

1. Cat in the Hat Name activity

We have been working with patterns as well as our names for a few months now. Most of the class can independently write their first and last names :D.
This was an easy activity to "test" them in their ability to put the letters in their names in the correct order as well as make a pattern with the colors. I think they turned out really well!

2. 10 Apples Up On Top
Number sense is a skill we diligently work on in our classroom in a variety of ways. We daily count to the day's date on our calendar, we count how many girls/boys and add them together, we play games, and sing songs. Applying these skills in a variety of ways, helps us to accurately assess their learning.
After reading the book 10 Apples Up On Top, the students got a chance to show us their ability at putting numbers #1-10 in order. Not that we didn't help them, but we only would verbally help them count...they had to glue the numbered apples in number order on their own. Our reason was to see what can they do independently. This activity is one we will set aside for our spring parent conferences too.

3. L is for Lorax

This week our letter is L so of course with it being Dr. Seuss week we have to include the Loras!!

This morning during what is normally our table centers, the students were invited to create their own truffela trees from Dr.Seuss's The Lorax.  We were not able to read the story during this activity due to a fire drill and then chapel (so we will tomorrow) but they were able to create a fun and colorful trees.

Each child was given a coffee filter and markers. After decorating the coffee filter, they chose two colors of big, fluffy pipe cleaners. We helped them twist them together and then taped them to the coffee filters. TADA!! Truffela trees!

4. Cat in the Hat Directed Drawings

I think one of my favorite read alouds to do is The Cat in the Hat!  I have read it so many times I barely have to look at the pages (and for the most part don't mess up the rhyming lol). Since our day was a little short, I chose to read the story to them while my class was eating lunch (we eat in our room). They were so captivated by this silly story that we kept the fun going with an art project= directed drawings.

I LOVE leading kids in directed drawings!! Most start out wary of their ability to draw something, but we do a simple confidence building activity beforehand to pump them up! 

I give out their paper and pencils and tell them to hold their pencil up in the air then to repeat after me  "I will try my best! I am an artist!".

We also talk quickly about how each person's drawing will look different and that is great!!!!

So, I normally use a light colored piece of construction paper taped to the wall or dry erase board so that everyone can see. I use the colored paper so that they can see how I fill the page and the direction of the page. 

We go step by step using simple lines or shapes  (great way to review shapes too!!). There are 2 students that struggle a bit with this whole group so I normally pull them aside and we do it in a small group setting (and they do awesome!) 

Here are our Cat in the Hats!

5. Thing 1 and Thing 2

Thing 1 and Thing 2 are always a big hit with kids---they are silly and wild and do things we know that should not (fly a kite in the house ?!).

I love finding new ways for kids to use paint---fingers, q-tips, toothbrushes, etc. So today we used straws! I put some watered down blue paint on a piece of paper with Thing 1/2's head on it. Then I showed them how I could carefully blow on the paint to spread it out. They LOVED it! Some blew it around and then used the straw to make it go exactly where they wanted. Here is a quick picture of one students in action ...I'll post the finished projects later once they are dried.

6. There's A Wocket in My Pocket

Earlier in the week, the kids were invited to bring a small "wocket" to keep in their pocket at school. We don't normally have a show and tell  at school so they were really excited about this! We listened to the story (I could not find my copy of the book) and then created our own class book about the silly creatures in our pockets. They had a blast creating a silly creature like the ones we see in Dr. Seuss's books!

Wacky Wednesday

Sadly I never got around to taking a picture of all my sweet students in their wacky outfits! They LOVED how silly I looked today hahaha! 

Tomorrow is Silly Sock day so more fun to follow!! We also will celebrate reading our 100th book!!!!

Alphabet Learning Centers

I love creating learning centers---as I was organizing them a few weeks ago, I realized that I have a lot of math games. So, this weekend I made it my goal to try to create a few alphabet learning centers.

1. Alphabet Marbles

These are a really simple activity. I went to the Dollar Tree and found large, flat marbles. I took a permanent marker and wrote the capital letters on the back side of each marble (you have to write it mirror image if you write on the back. I have found writing them on the back helps keep the marker on the marble rather than writing it on the round top side).

A few ways you can use these are:

1. Simply write/print out the alphabet on a sheet of paper and have students pull out a marble and match it on their sheet

2. have students put the marbles in ABC order

3. use the marbles to spell their names, sight words, spelling words, CVC words

4.work on beginning or ending sounds

I could keep thinking of different ways to use these but you get the idea!

2.Letter Dice

I found these foam counters at the Dollar Tree. I have used them before to create a class set of dice in a variety of ways and love how durable and quiet they are. 

I thought I could use these for a word work type centers as well. 

I wrote the vowels on the green pieces and the consonants on the red/blue/orange. Students can use these to build words, practice names, work on letter identification, etc.

3.Easter Egg Letter Match Up

Here is another quick and easy letter game for kids! Easter egg are already out (yes I know it is still February!).  I wrote the capital letter on the top and the lower case letter on the bottom. After breaking the eggs apart the students now can have the task of matching them back up!

The main goal or purpose of this center is letter matching, but like in any learning game, there are multiple skills they are working on in the background. Fine motor skills of grasping and clicking the eggs together, they are seeing print, matching shape/size and color....they can stack them and make patterns too!  To help students know and do the purpose of a learning center, the key is modeling! 

I always introduce the new center during our whole group time (right before I dismiss them to centers) and then my co-teacher and I walk around to the various groups and interact with the students in their play----this helps build trust and strong teacher-student relationships but it is also a way to see how they are playing/working. I can quickly assess if the activity is a good match for a student and be able to add assistance or even a challenge if needed. 

4.Banagrams

Not all of my centers are "teacher made". I love when I can find affordable activities to add to my classroom. I found and purchased these My First Banagrams for my daughter. I wanted to add a new way for her to practice her spelling words. 

They have been sitting in our game drawer for a little while now so I thought I should find a way to use them in my classroom!

I plan to use these like the previous  games but also as an assessment tool. Sometimes it feels like we get done with one assessment and then it is time for the next one. Assessing can take lots of time and kids get bored and tired and then they do not do as well. I want to keep them excited and engaged so I can get a better picture of where they are academically.

Well, that's all for now! Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel for new videos and to follow me here on Blogger :D

Building Letters Learning Center

Finding fun and engaging ways for students to be working on letter recognition can be hard sometimes. I stumbled across this idea when I read about the Mat Man activity through Handwriting Without Tears program. My school does not use this program but I knew this activity would be great for my students. Pinterest had the shape pieces template and I just copied them onto colored paper and laminated them (for durability). I made the templates by building the letters on the copy machine at work. The goal is for students to build the different letters but we all know that sometimes they find different ways to play :D. These pieces work the same as your block center (but quiet!) so students can build and create with them in many ways. This box would work well for a quiet small group time (maybe nap or rest time) where a group of students could be working and playing without disrupting others. I hope you enjoy it! Watch it in action here!

St. Patrick's Day counting game

Here is a fun math game as we  move from February into March! This game uses little plastic gold coins I found at the Dollar Tree. In this game you use number cards to show quantities, to work on addition or subtraction, even multiplication if you wanted---so many ways to play. You could even use dice instead of the number cards to help work on subitizing!

Check out the video here!!

First Youtube video: Bottle Cap Letter Match Up

My husband suggested I make videos to post on Youtube explaining some of the games and activities I do in my classroom.

After a few do-overs, here is my first youtube video!!!!!

It is explaining a  simple game: Bottle Cap Letter Match Up! Watch it here!

Black History/Famous Americans

This week our class's theme was Black History/Famous Americans. We started our week with learning about Louis Armstrong.
We started our topic by watching a quick biography video on Louis Armstrong. I introduced words like " musician" to the students as well as asked them what they remembered about the instrument families. They quickly recalled the brass section when they saw Louis playing his shiny trumpet. After the video, the students went back to their seats and they were given a trumpet coloring page. We looked back at the picture Louis' trumpet and talked about what color we might use to color our picture (yellow).  To extend the activity (and the fun) I introduced the class to jazz music. We got out watercolors and paper and I let them paint while listening to some jazz music.  A few said they had heard music like that at the coffee place (Starbucks)...one even said it made her think of Disney's Princess and the Frog! That particular conversation actually helped the class understand more about jazz and the time period since it was something familiar to many of them.
A few students kept asking what they needed to paint....my goal for them was to listen to the music and paint how that made them feel. They took a minute or two to get in the groove but soon they were painting away and tapping their toes to the jazz.

Since this week's letter was Aa, we also spent some of our time talking about America: its people, places, presidents, and symbols. We learned about our flag: the 50 stars for each of the 50 states and the 13 stripes for the 13 colonies.  We listened to an online read-aloud about  The American Flag and then each student got a chance to create their own American flag. I love giving students materials and letting them explore and create. We moved our class flag closer to our tables so they could see and recreate the flag. They are each so unique and all turned out so well.

 

With teaching young children, I am very cautious about introducing certain topics like racism or prejudice since children naturally do not see our differences (LOVE that about kids!).  Since I work at a church based center, I have the liberty to tie in my faith to our lessons. This week with our theme being Black History, I wanted to focus on how God sees us---how He loves us and made us different, unique, and special.  To help my students understand this, we did a fun art activity.

I traced my hand and made copies (only to save time). The next day, asthe students arrived, I had these pages on their tables instead of our morning centers. They had free reign to use markers and/or crayons to decorate this hand. I LOVE how they each are so different! We hung them on our door and I read the quote: "I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin but of the content of their character" from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

We discussed how each picture was a hand but each one looked different. Each one was unique and special, carefully created and loved---JUST like we are! 

It's been very rainy around here lately (like basically all month!). Our students have not been able to go outside for almost 2 weeks so I knew I needed to come up with something fun for them to do (to get all that energy an outlet!)

So, I got to thinking about famous African American athletes----Jesse Owens! I quickly looked up a kid-friendly biography video . After our weekly chapel, we went to the other kids worship room and watched the video clip and then participated in some track and field games. The kids did some sprints and even a mini marathon! They ran and ran and had a good time. I wish I had snapped a few pictures, but I was running with them! 

Tomorrow, to wrap up our week, we are planning on doing an egg experiment! The students will see a brown egg and we will record what it looks like on our recording sheet. Then I will show them a white egg.....we will talk about what is the same about the eggs and what is different. Then the fun stuff!!!! Will the eggs be the same or different on the inside???? 

We will then listen to Love Will See You Through.

My goal for this week is to show my students how special they each are---how our differences make us unique and special and how God loves each us so much!

Valentine's Learning Centers

Valentine's Day has come and gone but we are still having fun with our learning centers!

We do many versions of "Roll and Color" or "Roll and Cover" type game. It can be as simple as a ten frames with either dice or number cards.

For this first game we used a hearts worksheet with 48 blank hearts printed on it.Roll and Color Hearts page.
I found these cute red and pink plastic hearts at the Dollar Tree---I think they were for vase fillers or table scatter but they work so well for counters!

So, I have 2 ways to play this game....one for my kiddos who need a bit of a challenge, and another way that helps my kiddos still working on 1-6 subitizing.

For my younger students, they simple roll 1 die and identify that number, then add that many counters to onto their heart page. My students needing the challenge, they get two dice. We have started math conversations about comparing numbers (which is bigger/ more?). I have taught them to find the bigger number and stick it in their head (I point to my head) and then count on with the smaller number.
For example....say a student rolls a 6 and a 3; I ask them which is the bigger number (6), put 6 in your head and let's count up: 6...7, 8, 9! Then they add their 9 pieces.

So many of these four year olds are starting addition concepts and building their number sense ---all in a game! You gotta love that !💖

Most kids love a race, so they try to race to see who can fill their board first :)! This game can be played in small groups, teams, or individually.

This game is two fold--we are working on counting, subitizing, AND our fine motor skills! Those little hearts are a bit slippery and you have to use your pincher grip to pick them up and to place them where you want!

I had a few students who took the activity a little further and put their counters in a pattern as they worked to fill their page ;D.

Organizing

My first classroom was a portable building (trailer). It had a side-by-side built-in wooden bookcase in the back corner, I had a big metal cabinet, and a small coat-sized closet....storage was minimal. I asked around and raided  the give-away piles to try to create storage space for all the stuff you need and use during the school year. As a first year teacher it was a struggle---What do I need? How/where do I get it? How should I set up my desks/centers/storage? Endless questions and only a short amount of time to get to it before students come and your year begins.

I would love to tell you I conquered the clutter and was an organization wizard but that was NOT the case. I survived my first year and learned many lessons. I started to figure out what worked for me in my classroom and more of how I like to do things. 

As a teacher, I hope to never stop learning! I am on my 4th classroom in my teaching career (public and private) and still am learning!

While on this journey to organize my classrooms, I have been adding to my "stash" of learning activities and centers. One of my new years resolutions for 2020 is to really organize my learning centers. 

One of my favorite organizational tools are my rainbow drawer carts.

I have two of these in my preschool classroom. I LOVE THEM!!!! They have wheels to move them easily around the room if needed and each one comes with 10 drawers.

I use the first 3 drawers to hold our crayon containers and the 4th to hold the containers of pencils, scissors, and glue sticks.  For me, community supplies make life easier especially for smaller learners. 

The remaining 16 drawers I use for centers. Some hold morning center type centers like our legos, tangrams, geoboards, stencils, and other STEM type toys. Other drawers have the current learning games we use during our rotation learning stations/centers. I can easily pull out a drawer and put it anywhere in our room and POOF, you have a center. I like to have 2 -3 kids working in a center at time for noise control and just for overall space.

BUT what about all those learning games we are not currently playing with?

I decided to use those plastic shoe boxes to organize them.

I love these because they are sturdy and with the lid you don't have to worry about losing pieces when transporting them. I do have cubby space under my cabinets but not the kind of space that these need...so right now my solution is to store them at home until I need them. Not ideal, but seems to be working for now.

I also like that I can easily label each box and since they are clear I can see the materials inside.

30 boxes made so far---and that's just the ones not currently being used at school!!

Ya'll, I may have a bit of a problem----but I will just be positive and say creating fun learning games is a good problem to have :D! 

I'll share what's in each game in another post!

Transitions in the classroom

The beginning of  the school year is a super hectic time. You are trying to finish setting up your classroom, organize materials, label everything, and plan for those first crazy days.

As teachers, we all know setting good exceptions and demonstrating correct behaviors and actions are CRUCIAL to a successful classroom.

Our students will transition to and from many activities in a school day. How will they know what to do or how to react? We know how valuable our time is in the day and we don't want to waste it on crazy transitions.

One tool I used last year was call and response. I found this free on on Teachers Pay Teachers called Attention Grabbers. Basically, the teacher makes a call and the students respond. These take practice, practice, and more practice. We used "macaroni and cheese"---"everybody freeze". I taught my students to freeze with their hands on their heads. This helped them completely stop whatever they were doing and focus on me for directions. We added a new one later in the year where I would call "Shark Fins" and the students would freeze and put their hands up over their heads like shark fins. These were fun and worked great. The kids liked them too BUT if the room was nosey it might take me calling twice for everyone to hear.

Over the summer I was following the blog The Kindergarten Smorgasboard. Mr. Greg has TONS of wonderful ideas about just about anything to do with the classroom. Well, one day I happened upon his post about his wireless doorbell. I was hooked. I immediately went on Amazon and ordered me one. I went with the Anko Wireless Doorbell. It was a cheaper model than the one Mr. Greg used but it fit my budget so I went with it. 

Ya'll..... I LOVE this gadget sooo sooo much! Like seriously, stop what you are doing and go get you one!

I have used those little desk bells to signal students in class while in public school but this thing is so much better. 

You can pick from tons of tons and it has a good range of volume controls.
So....you may be asking....how do I use this in my room? Well, I'm so glad you asked! :D I use it all throughout the day. The first week of school I introduced it as my "Magic Button". I told the students that I have this very special, super cool Magic Button in our room. (cue- big eyes of wonder from 16 little faces!) I asked if they would like to hear it to which of course they all approved. I told them that my Magic Button was so very special....that when you hear it, you must stop what you are doing, put your finger on your button (mouth) and freeze! I was very dramatic in this as you can probably imagine---I mean, you have to sell it to them right? I asked them again if they would like to see how it worked and again they approved so I pressed it and we all "magically" stopped what we were doing, put our fingers on our lips, and froze! Now, as you can imagine...we had to practice this many times. We made it a game similar to freeze tag to get them use to it. As our class began to do learning centers, the magic button became their signal to clean up and get ready to move. Our magic button tells us when to clean up morning centers, learning centers, when the class volume gets too loud, or really any time I need to get their attention. This simple tool saves  my voice from having to yell out a call to response over the voices of 16 little people.

SO....wireless doorbells for the classroom....a MUST HAVE :D 

P.S. You may want to share this with your neighbor teachers ---they will come ask you about the weird bells or chimes they keep randomly hearing hahaha!

Target Dollar Spot

I don't know about you, but there is something about Target that is addictive 😂!  This addition has a name...The Dollar  Spot!!

Only the Lord knows how much time (and money)  has been spent there in the pursuit of teaching !
The treasures depend on the time of the year and which store you visit, but today I found some goodies!

 Activity Dice
I LOVE Dr. Seuss! Last year that was my classroom theme and I plan to use it again one day in the future :D
I found these two dice games that are super cute!
Math Dice---you roll 2 quantity dice (pictures) and one operations dice (+,-,x, divide>,<). Obviously, I won't be using the multiplication or division sides with preschoolers, but in a game format like this I can easily start introducing adding and subtracting quantities as well as which is is greater (more) or less than (less)! The dice being a soft foam means they should hold up well with kids too.

Action Dice-- this set also came with three dice: a character says dice, an action dice, and a number dice. These would be really good for those times in your day when you have a few minutes to kill or your class has some extra energy to get out. The best thing is that they can still be learning while playing (my FAVORITE thing about play-based learning!)


Building Words Blocks
These Dulpo- looking blocks have a dry erase sticker on them. It came with some directions or ideas of how to use them.
My class is starting to work on CVC words. The first two fact families we have covered are the "at" and "am" family.  These would be a great activity to help kids build words in a hands-on format! I plan to use these in a small group or center where I can give some directions and model the intended activity.
The only thing I do not like about these is that the dry erase sticker is VERY easy to erase...so it will be hard to write on them and let the kids manipulate them without rubbing the ink off. I have a similar item (dry erase dice ) from the Dollar Spot and from the Dollar Tree. Great idea but I have had to tweak it a bit.....I have used permanent markers to write on them. When I need to erase I have found using a new black dry erase marker works great on any laminated or dry erase type surface. You simply color over the writing with a new dry erase marker and then it will wipe clean. Pretty cool huh?! A Magic Eraser tends to work well too!

Sand Writing Trays

 I love letting kids practice their pencil grip and writing skills in different ways and sand trays are always a big hit! Last year I made some using plastic pencil boxes. They are great to snap closed but the lids tended to pop up instead of laying down to hold any letter cards; plus the sand still slid through the lids. I had some old Melissa and Doug wooden trays that worked well too (mine were from the wooden pizza pretend play kit and the lacing cards) but again, they didn't have a spot for the cards.

Thank you Dollar Spot for providing a cheap and good product for teachers!

Sand trays can be used for pre-writing skills like learning how to correctly hold a pencil; they can be used to practice writing letters, numbers, or shapes; they can even be used to help write names, sight works, or spelling words.

I have different colored sand( plain sand I added liquid water color to) and different types of cards to help change it up from time to time.

One time we used our fingers to write the letter and then used stones to trace back over it. Pinterest has TONS of ideas for writing trays.

Be prepared that sand will "escape" the tray! Some kiddos get a little too excited when using these types of materials and let's be honest.. we all know how sand just has a tendency to travel LOL !

I found two easy solutions for the mess that tends to follow:

1. place-mats: put some time of place-mat  or even old lunch tray under each sand tray. This will help catch any loose sand.

2. mini boom and dust pan--I have found super cute tiny brooms and dust pans from the Dollar Tree. As in everything, lead by example in how to correctly use this center and how to clean it up. Most kids love to help in this area---at least at school haha!

I can't wait to introduce these in centers next week.

Rainy Day Fun

This week our class has been learning about weather. In true Alabama fashion, our week started out beautiful, sunny, and warm and ended with cold rain (and even a flurry chance tomorrow!!).

After a night of storms and torrential rain, we had a delayed start for school. I wish I could say I got to catch up on some of the lost sleep from watching the live radar at 2 am but nope....schoolcast for my oldest daughter's school did not come through until 6 am...so I was already up and at it (with coffee in hand!!).

We did not let the rain dampen our fun in class! To wrap up the weather lessons we watched a quick video about the water cycle and then got our hands and minds moving with a fun rain experiment.

Like so many great ideas, I originally found this Rain Cloud in a Jar activity on Pinterest (funlearningforkids). This is the third time I've tried this and each time it works wonderfully!

The students have a cup of water. This represents any body of water like oceans or lakes. We then spray some shaving cream on top. This represents clouds (we also talked about What Clouds Are Made Of earlier in the week). Each student also had a pipette and a small bowl of blue liquid water color. The liquid watercolor was watered down a bit to make it go further. It represented water vapor that evaporates from the ocean or lakes.
Next came the fun part!! The students used the pipettes to draw up the "water vapor" and drop it on the cloud. As the cloud grew heavier it started dropping through the shaving cream on its way back to earth at rain. The kids loved it and had so much fun (and even a little messy ;)

Music in the Classroom

Do you love having music in your class?! I love it!
When I taught 1st grade at Chalkville Elementary, I used music as cues in our day. Our classroom was a portable classroom (trailer= loving called the tin can ). To make it more "homey" I would turn off the overly bright overhead lights and had lots of softer lamps to give us workable light.
When my students would come in from the bus I had soft instrumental music playing. This helped create a calm and comfortable atmosphere in our room. It also was a cue that if the music was playing, it was a quiet working time. They would start on their morning work and I would turn the music off when it was time to officially start our day. At that point we would warm up a bit---with some more lively music. We did head, shoulders, knees, and toes and shake your sillies out to get us up and awake and to help burn some energy before we hit the ground running with our daily activities.
Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes by Jack Hartman
Shake Your Sillies Out
If weather prevented us from going to the playground for recess, we would have dance parties to all sorts of silly songs!

Not only is music good to set the mood of your room or to burn some extra energy, but music is such a great tool to teach!
Anyone remember learning the names of the 50 states through song?!?! (I bet your are humming it in your head now!)
In preschool, I use lots of learning songs with my class. Here are some of my favorites!
Circle Time
 Months of the Year Macarena
Dr. Jean's Days of the Week (Adam's Family)

Alphabet/Letter Sounds
ABC Rocky by Greg and Steve
Workout to the Letter Sounds
Letter Sounds by Jack Hartman

Counting Songs
Let's Get Fit Count to 100
Count to 100 with Grandma and Grandpa by Jack Hartman

Silly Songs/Brain Breaks
Tooty Ta by Dr. Jean
Tony Chestnut by The Learning Station



I could go on and on! There are so many wonderful resources on YouTube that use songs to help teach!

Groundhog Day

Since Groundhog Day was on a Sunday, and our class is Monday through Thursday...our Groundhog Day festivities were spread out over a few days. This just helped add to the fun!

On Thursday, Jan. 30, we made our predictions. We talked about what predictions are (an educated or good guess) and we learned some groundhog facts (did you know groundhogs whistle when frightened?!).

Will the Groundhog See His Shadow?

We made graphed our choices (yes, sees shadow, 6 more weeks of winter or no, no shadow and early spring). Each student got to make a hat too!

Our class then ventured outside for an experiment with our shadows. We discussed what shadows were and how they are made. We used sidewalk chalk to trace our shadows on the sidewalks as well as the street light's shadow. We made predictions of what might happen to our shadows over the next few hours.

After lunch, about 2 hours later, we went back outside to see what happened.

Drumroll.........our shadows moved!!! Why we asked. The sun moved which made our shadows move! They were amazed and had a lot of fun! Anytime you can take the learning outside it just makes it even more fun!

Dinosaur Excavations

Dinosaurs are such a fun topic for kids! I love incorporating hands-on activities as much as possible so I knew this would be a perfect addition to our classroom.

I actually first used this activity at church with my kids group  (kids kindergarten thru 6th). We used plaster of Paris, sand, and water to bury shells and plastic dinosaurs. We were making such big batches that it became super messy. We let them dry for  a week and then excavated them the following Wednesday night---they were a bit too hard and became a fun struggle to crack them open.The kids had a blast so it was definitely a great activity.

Like in so many things, we live and learn...SO when I adapted this activity for preschool I added more sand to make the fossils easier to break apart.

Dino Dig Excavation Kits

This year I decided to do a bit more research on different types of DIY dino fossils.....I hit the easy jackpot with Baking Soda Dino Eggs  You basically make really thick ooobleck and add food coloring to it. 

This mixture worked wonderfully! Instead of using forks and spoons to "chisel" the fossils out, we use droppers and vinegar. This made it even more fun since the vinegar reacts with the baking soda. The fizzing fossils were a huge it! If you could have heard the "oohs" and "ahh" and squeals of  excitement in our room LOL!

Class Made Books

One of my personal goals this year was to create more class-made books! We have 16 students so I am shooting for 16 books so each child can keep one!

So why class made books? Especially for 4 year olds who can not "read"??? Well, a few reasons actually:
1. teaching author and illustrator--they get to activity be both!
2. teaching parts of a book (front cover, spine, pages, back cover)
3. teaching students how to care for and properly use our books---they tend to be extra careful with things they helped create!
4. familiar texts/topics---they may not be able to "read" yet but they can retell and they can start making connections to their friends picture and their names!
5. encourages creativity and individuality
6. encourages students to write--at any stage!

Here are a few we have created!

Our first book was "A Colorful Class Book". Each child had a pre-made page with their name and their letter ( I added the pictures later). I gave each child a sheet of stickers and had them add stickers in their letter....this is a great fine motor skill activity!

I love including environmental print into the classroom. Most children can easily identify McDonald's and Walmart well before they can formally read but identifying these forms of print are a first step in that process. Each week when we introduce a new letter, I try to have a few examples of environmental print. Last year I had our students bring in environmental print and we put it on a wall. This year I decided to make it a working class book, one that the children could touch and explore.

Colors Book:

During our "All About Me" unit, we asked the kids different questions like "what is your favorite movie?" and "What is your favorite color?". We decided to use the latter question to review our colors and to make....you guessed it...another class book.

5 Senses :  I wish I had been blogging when we did our 5 senses unit! There are so many great (and yummy) ideas out there about teaching the senses. We decided on popcorn! You can see it as kernels and as it pops, you can smell it cooking, you can hear it popping, you can touch it when you eat it, and the best...EAT it ! After exploring our senses, we made a book about it. We divided up the 5 senses between our 17 students. We asked each child what is something you can ____ (taste, touch, see, smell, hear)...to help them we asked them about something they did today at school. I love each child's response. Some responses were feeling the soap, or hearing a plane outside!

 Community Helpers: For this unit we had a "At Home" project. Each child was sent home a blank person printed on card stock. They were asked to decorate it as what they wanted to be when they grew up. When they brought them back to school a week later, the students got to share their project with the class. We then turned them into a class book!

Harold and the Purple Crayon: We got to enjoy this story on the computer while at specials. The kids really enjoyed it and it led to many different conversations about using our imagination. I wanted to follow my students' lead in this so we again made a class book. The kids really loved see what their classmates came up with.

Tom the Turkey: Holidays bring busy schedules but also fun traditions. When I taught first grade we did an At Home project for Tom the Turkey and it was so much fun that I keep doing it every year!

Each child is given a blank turkey template printed on heavy card stock. Their job is to create a disguise for Tom the Turkey--he doesn't want to be on the table for Thanksgiving! 

I kept their projects to put in their yearly portfolios but took a photo of each child holding their turkey to add to the book. Each page said the same thing and the students' wrote their name in the first blank. We helped fill in what they were disguised as :D