Ringing in Spring

Back in early fall when I began this blog, I envisioned great things. The hope was to update each week or at least each month about the progress in my classroom. I started off on a good foot, but then winter happened...DUN, DUN, DUNNNN. Okay, really life hasn't been all that dramatic. The problem is my kiddos and I missed quite a bit of school this winter, so I really did not have too many new things to share. Some weeks my classes (I have 2 on alternating days) would only get one day of school a week. Therefore I reused many things until they got the concept being taught.
 Enough gloom and doom for now. Spring is here, and brand new things are in bloom! Here is a look at some spring time events going on in March. As of now they have a St. Patrick's Day focus. One fun tradition at our school is hunting for the leprechaun.  The week before the 17th, my director will play tricks on the kids while they are at recess. (i.e. steal our gold, mess the room up, leave foot prints, etc). The kids love it! They enjoyed hiding our gold and searching for it if it went missing. They walk through the hallways so quietly trying to find the sneaky little guy. What fun!

St. Paddy's Day also provides many learning opportunities. Lucky Charms has been a big deal of late. In fact we made Lucky Charm treats the other day to practice our measuring skills. They were a tasty treat! The kids also love playing with the cereal in the sand & water table. I always tell my kids that the food in our learning centers is full of yucky germs, so they do a great job of not eating the food set aside for play.

I used St. Patrick's Day as an opportunity to teach about the rainbow. As a literacy activity, I used Fruit Loops and a rainbow letter map to have the children match up the correct color on the correct spot. The print outs I used came from KidsSoup.

I left a felt board on the science table and did my best to cut out rainbow shapes of each color. Based on the material I had left, it didn't turn out great. However, the kids enjoyed using it, so it served its purpose. You can also see where that tricky leprechaun visited us.

While looking around for ideas on Pinterest one day, I came across a Pot'O Gold activity.I didn't have the materials on hand to put together the learning center, so I improvised. I also made mine a math center instead of the letter O idea it had been intended. Instead of giving each pot of gold (a black paper cup from the dollar store) it's own individual rainbow, I constructed a rainbow from party streamers and tape. I used pink in place of orange since that is what I had. I searched and searched and searched for candy or play gold coins, but I finally settled on gold Dove chocolates and Butterfinger chocolate egg candies as my gold. I took clothespins numbered 1-20 that the children could clip onto the cup and place that much gold under the rainbow. The rainbow really helped attract the kids to the table. This was also the pot of gold we would hide each day.

We reinforced our skills of rainbow colors with a craft for each class. Some projects did get out of order a little bit depending on how much space the children allowed as we worked, but they did know where it should go. ;-) Here is a leprechaun hat streamer rainbow and a paper plate collage.

Some other learning activities included graphing Lucky Charm marshmallows. You can find plenty of graphs online. I never did get a chance to let them color their findings, but the sorting and counting gave them plenty of practice. The classes also got a chance to practice writing their letters in leprechaun goo (hair gel and green food coloring in a plastic baggie). Be sure to tape your baggie on ALL 4 SIDES. I should have known better, but you live and learn. Thankfully it is fairly easy clean up if the worst should happen.

We also had some shamrock fun. I placed dots on the shamrocks and the children had to match a rainbow stick with the corresponding number to the correct shamrock. I also wrote the lowercase letters on one side and they matched it to the uppercase letter on our circle time carpet.

That's about it for now. Hopefully the snow is about gone, and I will have lots of new spring activities to share. We are also ready to get outdoors some more and have some fun!

Snow Much Fun!

I was determined to post much more over the month of January, but it is winter after all. I still feel like I am on Christmas break with the on and off snow days. I must say that despite the interruption to daily schedule, the snow has provided much fun. I began the month by introducing Arctic animals to the children such as penguins and polar bears. We practiced tracing, cutting, gluing and painting skills with some fun crafts found at KidsSoup.com. I love that site!

Potato Print Craft

The kids absorbed the information, but the most fun has come from our hands on snow experiences. Here is a look at the winter fun we experienced through out the past month!
        Back in December I discovered these adorable snowman cardboard buckets from the Dollar Bin at Target. I placed one at each seat at my math table along with different clippers and tweezers. I took my dice (available at the dollar store) and placed it in the middle with a bowl full of cotton balls. The children practiced one-to-one correspondence by feeding the corresponding amount of "snowballs" to the snowmen depending on what number they rolled on the dice. I will also add that I adapted the activity for my mom's kindergarten class. Instead of using the dice, I wrote the number words on homemade flashcards. Her kids were learning how the spell the numbers, so this fun activity provided fun practice for them.

 Another fun motor skills activity involving snowballs included some vocab practice. I came across this idea during a Pinterest search. I did not have white poms poms, but I did have different sizes in color. All you do is take 3 different sized containers with large, medium and small written on them. The kids use the tweezers to sort the correct sizes. My class loves these types of activities, and it aided in their vocab and sequencing abilities!

I also have begun working on the 10s family with kids. To introduce 11-20, I found this fun activity involving hot chocolate, and let me tell you that hot chocolate is being consumed in high quantities around here! Brrr, it's been chilly! Anyway, I cut out some mug cutout and glued them to white paper. I slipped them into page protectors and used dry erase markers to change the numbers. The kids found in challenging to pick up the marshmallows with the tweezers, but it was great pre-writing practice! We also practiced our graphing skills with a fun taste test you can find here.

I also updated our SWAT game to fit the season as well as our new alphabet letters we learned this month. My artistic ability is not the greatest, but hopefully you can tell what everything is. The teams for the month were the polar bears vs the penguins.

I also had a class practice tracing and cutting with mittens. My mother had given me a mitten for my bulletin board with this fun poem. Each child colored one mitten with the colors they chose, and the other we lined with cotton to keep our hands warm. It is a longer poem, but by the end of the month the kids knew it. All of them could do the hand motions we came up with as well.

Stripes or dots or sparkling white (jazz hands)

Mittens in winter fit just right (mime putting mittens on)

Wool or cotton, may leather (shrug shoulders)

Mittens warm us in cold weather (hug yourself)

In rainbow colors or darkest black (shield eyes)

Mittens fit in your pocket on in your pack (mime placing mittens in pocket & pack)

Thumbs alone, fingers together (shake each)

Mittens warm us in cold, cold weather (hug and warm yourself up!)

The rest of our snow fun included actually playing with snow from the comfort of our classroom. The first day I placed some snow in a bin on our new science table. The children built a snowman and snow castles. They had a lot of fun exploring with their hands. They liked using the spoons and other tools to keep their hands from freezing.

Even with a mat under the table, the activity was still a bit messy. The next day I put the snow right in our sand and water table. Originally I was using white rice and thinking about switching to Epsom salts, but the kids had so much fun with the real thing (and we have plenty of it!) that I decided to keep it there. They made lots of cool things with our buckets, measuring tools, water wheel and cups.

I've been finding that my class gets bored quickly with the same old same old. I ended up finding neat ideas to keep the snow exciting for the kids. We began with spray bottles full of water and food coloring, and I added water colors and paint brushes to color the snow. My director also found bottled water colors that I watered down and put in cups and watering cans. The kids used paint brushes in the cups and poured the watering cans into the snow. They loved seeing the rainbow colors in the snow. It also provided a nice introduction to mixing primary colors to make secondary colors.

We also had fun experimenting with melting snow. I placed some snow in a muffin tin and sprinkled hot water, cold water, sugar, salt, Creole spice and left one plain to see what melted the quickest. The kids also helped make snowballs that we placed on a magazine, plastic bag, plastic lid, metal pan, felt and a cardboard lid to see what melted the quickest. We also peeked outside to check out the foot prints in the yard. It looks as if the Easter Bunny has been scoping things out to get ready for our Easter Egg Hunt in the spring! Snow may keep us from school some days, but it sure does provide several fun teachable moments!

Halloween Happenings

I realize Halloween can be a bit of a controversial holiday, but I must say it does provide many excellent learning themes for the month. Over the past couple weeks, my pre-kindergarten class has learned about nocturnal animals (specifically bats and owls) and human bones. Here is a peek at some of the things that have happened at the end of October:

Spooky Loo Brew

I will have to say that most things on the blog this week are Pinterest inspired. I found this fun sensory table item while researching sensory table ideas. All you do is boil some spaghetti and mix it with a little olive oil and food coloring in a plastic bag. I actually used a bowl and plastic wrap since I did not have a bag avaiable at the time. It's been called witch's brew, but I changed the name to Spooky Loo Brew inspired by a fun song from the Wee Sing Halloween cd. This cd has some awesome dances and finger plays the children love to do. The Spooky Loo, 5 Little Pumpkins and Dem Bones are my favorite. The children also enjoyed doing freeze dance and listening to the cd during play and snack times. Anyway, the Spooky Loo Brew seemed to be a big hit. I dumped a lot of creepy crawly critters in the mix for the kids to count and sort. I found some fun Halloween themed cups at Wal Mart for less than a dollar which was fun too. Just a word to the wise - refrigerate between uses or throw away from the start. Don't ask me how I know.

Fun in the brew

The children really seemed to enjoy learning about nocturnal animals. We started out learning about bats. I worked quite a bit on rhyming words with the kids using bat themed activities from Kids Soup. Our classroom resembles a bat cave with their flying bats from KidsSoup hanging in the classroom.

Finally feeling like fall in here

We continued our study with owls. For a math themed learning center, I put together an owl with a next made from a paper bowl and tissue paper. I got together some Easter eggs with the letters we have learned. The children first had to match the upper and lower case letters on the egg. They rolled the dice then placed that many eggs in the nest. They loved it! We also enjoyed some cutting practice with a craft from KidsSoup.

Learning is a hoot!

I took advantage of our nocturnal animals to put a fun twist on the game SWAT.  I set up 2 teams - the bats vs the owls. I drew things that these creatures ate which matched up with the letters we learned so far - A for ant, N for nut, P for pumpkin, S for snake, F for fruit and M for mouse (B for bug was later added). When I would say the letter, they would race to be the first to swat it with the fly swatter.

We also learned about bones in the human body by taking a look at skeletons. I was really happy with the way our Q-tip skeletons turned out!

Dem Bones, Dem Bones,Dem Dry Bones

The split cracks me up

Adorable!

While learning about owls, I followed these instructions to make my own owl pellets out of newspaper. Because of this project, I had a lot of pieces of cut up skeleton. Using these pieces, the kids were able to play a fun math game. They rolled the dice and based on the number they rolled, they searched for the bone. Whoever completed their skeleton first was the winner.

The children have become great sorters this week with candy corn mix. I placed a 6 cup muffin tin out next to an assortment of candy corn treats. The children worked on separating them out. It took them a little bit to catch on, but they have been doing awesome. I plan on using the candy for patterning next.

An easy craft for them to do at the art table is ghost prints. The used their hand and some wiggly eyes to make their own ghost.

We used their thumb prints for these fun haunted houses. The idea and template for the house came from the Arts & Craft Mailbox magazine. The kids cut out the house, used their thumb prints for the ghost and practiced writing their name on the pumpkin which was glued on the house.

We ended Halloween with our Fall Fun Festival at school.  I was proud of my D-I-Y bee costume I found online. Just add yellow duct tape to a black shirt, pipe cleaner and pom pom to a head band, and tights to wing shaped wire hangers. This is what you have:

Not bad for a 4 yr old photographer

I was also in charge of the craft station this year. It ran smoothly for my first time. I was going to have the children cut out their own eyes and mouth for our paper plate ghosts, but I ended up cutting them out to save time and space. I just placed index cards with the directions at each step. The parents were able to see them and help their kids out. Having everything in it's own place made for easy set up and clean up. Not to mention it was a cute craft - thanks Pinterest, you're a lifesaver! 

Whew - Busy times and that felt like a lot, but there you have it. Some fun ideas for late October! 

Pumpkin Fun

Fall is hands down my favorite season. I love everything about fall, the smell, the colors, the fashion, the weather, etc, etc. Fall feels like holiday kick-off to me. One thing I spotted this year that let me know fall had arrived was the pumpkin. I pass about 3 pumpkin stands on my commute to work. These stands started popping up in September, so I began my itch for October. I love pumpkins, so pumpkin week is one of my favorite themes to teach in Pre-K. We had a lot of fun this year with it!
      The best thing we do it simply cutting open the pumpkin. I cut the top off beforehand, and the children reach in and pull out the "guts." They love it! A few were a bit shy about getting messy, but most of them asked for a second turn. When we came back inside, the kiddos made their own pumpkins. They got an orange double sided (folded) pumpkin with a stem. I used a stencil found online. I placed glue, pumpkin seeds and yellow yarn in front of them. The outside of their pumpkin read, "What's Inside?" This is based off a craft I found on Pinterest.

Final Products

The inside look

Close-Up

Much like the apple math center from No Time for Flashcards, I did a pumpkin seed count. The only variation I came up with was exchanging the tally mark cards for numbers. I recycled my magnetic numbers from the squirrel and nut count which worked great with the cookie sheets. The child chose a number card, attached it to the side, and placed the correct amount of pumpkin seeds on the pumpkin.

The center set up

Ready to go!

A fun idea I got from KidsSoup was pumpkin pie topping. My grandmother had given me tiny pie pans for cooking while I was student teaching. I never got to use them until now. All I did was cut out some brown circles, place them at the bottom and set out cotton balls. The children grabbed chip clips, clothespins, or tweezers and placed the topping (cotton balls) on the pie. This could easily be made into a counting activity as well. I chose to use it as a pre-writing activity for developing that pincer grasp.

Simple fun

Finally I found a pumpkin play dough recipe I really liked. The play dough smelled wonderful, and it was the perfect consistency for play. The recipe also explained how to dye noodles. I placed the green "stems," play dough, green pipe cleaner and a bag of fake flowers out on the table. I instructed the children to make a pumpkin patch after learning about the life cycle of a pumpkin. Knowing about vines, stems, yellow flowers and pumpkins, the children made a beautiful patch. I was really proud of their creations! The below is an example I put together for photo sake.

Of course to complete our study of pumpkins as well as apples from September, a field trip was in order. The children enjoyed picking their own apples from the orchard and taking home a pumpkin from the patch. The hay ride was a big hit too!. Fun times! I love October!

Apples Galore

A successful pumpkin picking

Hayride fun!

S is for Squirrel

I am a little behind in what's been going on in the classroom. So I must back up to last week. September was all about apples, and now October & November are about fall fun. I began our study of fall with squirrels. The letter S is next in the curriculum I use, so I thought squirrels would be a fun & fitting study.

I must admit I was a little discouraged about finding things for our furry friends, so this post may be a bit short. All week we worked on the "Gray Squirrel, Gray Squirrel" fingerplay. The kids loved swishing their bushing tails. We also learned that squirrels say hello with their noses. With this in mind and a few friendly suggestions from my director, I came up with this craft for the kiddos.

 The squirrel template came from a different school craft on KidsSoup. Instead of using it in a painting project, I traced the squirrels on gray paper. The children cut them out. They were instructed to pull apart cotton balls (for those fine motor building skills) and glue them to the tail. They also applied an eye and fuzzy nose. To keep the bushing tail matching, they squeezed glue onto the tail and my assistant and I helped them put glitter on the tail. They turned out really cute!

Here are 2 of our furry friends saying hello

This year at my school we are teaching the children the fruits of the spirit. October's theme in kindness, so I was able to come up with a math activity that led to kindness. Though we lack oak trees at the school, we have plenty of chestnut trees. At the beginning of the week, I took the children outside to collect lots of chestnuts. I had to pry them out of their prickly outer shell with a stick to prevent injury, but we still managed to come up with a lot. I had the KidsSoup squirrel and number activity printed out, and the kids enjoyed practicing number recognition and counting with the chestnuts.

At the end of the week I passed out the numbers. Together we named the numbers, and each child had a chance to count out their number of chestnuts. To practice kindness, each child took their chestnuts and placed them in Gatorade bottles for the Tot Time (1 yrs) class. Now their fun activity will be used as a sensory bottle for youngsters. They had lots of fun with this activity.

To end the week we played "Hide the Nut." One child would place the nut under their chair (nest) and I would instruct another child to steal it. I would then say, "Little Squirrel sitting on your nest, who took your nut, what is your guess?" The child would then guess until they got the right answer. It was good practice in following directions as many excited lips wanted to give away the answer.

  We had a fun squirrel week, but these were the highlights!