Thankful for Fun

Wow! November has flown by. The holiday season is truly upon us. Pre-Kindergarten proved to be a lot of fun as we studied more about fall and Thanksgiving. The month began with learning about leaves. The children began the week with a nature walk. Each child was given a bag to collect leaves. These leaves were used for sorting, patterns, art crafts and leaf rubbings.
One day I gave  each child half a sheet of construction paper with 2 pre-cut leaves from the die cut machine taped on the page. Each child painted over the whole paper, and the leaves were removed once the paint was dry. Here is a look at the final result:

Another way of practicing patterning was reusing the candy corn mix from Halloween. This time instead a sorting the candy in muffin tins, I place painted egg cartons on the table. The children came up with many creative patterns using these manipulatives.

We have begun talking about the 5 senses. This month for the sensory tabled, colored and scented rice was a big hit. All I did was place rice in different ziploc bags. In each bag I added a little water, different food coloring and a fall scent (cinnamon, cloves, ginger, pumpkin pie spice, nutmeg, etc). The colors did not stay separated for long, but the children love playing in it. Many parents inquired about how to make it, so it truly was a big hit all the way around.

I also made a tree trunk for the art work bulletin board. My students practiced tracing and cutting out leaves, as well as leaf rubbings. I also added turkeys and such to the board as we went through the month.

Next we moved into the study of the first Thanksgiving. The children learned that Squanto aided the Pilgrims in finding food. Since he taught them to make popcorn, we practiced our number recognition and counting skills. The children identified the number in the cupcake liner and placed the corresponding number of popcorn into the liner.

Many of the girls in my class love making necklaces. I knew I had to set out my noodle station. All you have to do is place your dry pasta in a plastic baggie and squish it together with a few drops of food coloring. Place some yarn out on the table, and let the fun begin!

The Pre-K also learned a lot about turkeys this month. Not only did we learn the difference between a tom turkey and a hen, we continued to learn the alphabet. I put this learning center together based off a Pinterest idea. The children really loved finding the feathers for the turkey. Since I laminated the turkeys, I only made four. Once the children found the feathers for the 4 letters I put in front of them, I would erase them and write 4 different letters with a dry erase marker.

Another literacy center idea that came from Pinterest was salt writing. I placed some salt on the cookie sheet and laid turkey feathers around it. The kids had a blast practicing writing their name. It was all fun and games until they started using the salt with the kitchen set and salt got everywhere. You can't take your eyes off them for a second!

The other Pinterest idea that inspired a learning center was for math. I loved the idea of clothespin feathers for building fine motor skills, but I wanted to make it more complicated for my Pre-K kiddos. 1-to-1 correspondence is something my students need to work on. With this in mind, I painted the clothespins different colors, and I colored corresponding colors on the turkeys. The children had to place the feathers in the correct spot.

Every year our school has a Feast of Favorites where the children bring in their favorite side dish. The parents are invited to the feast to share the food, and our school provides hot dogs as the main course. Each class makes a center piece for the tables. This year I put together a craft based off of several internet ideas I saw. First I set up a feather making station where the children had to trace 5 feathers and cut them out. They could choose any color they wanted.

Together as class, everyone painted a small Styrofoam cup brown (which thank goodness the Crayola paint did not fall off of), and they glued their eyes, beak and waddle (cut from red yarn) to their pre-cut face. I glued the finished feather tailed and face to the correct cup. Here is the finished product:

This was the test run I made to make sure it would work

The most exciting day we had this month was the Great Turkey Race. I was reading this book to the class when I thought, "We could do this!" In the story, the turkeys compete for the most medals to see who will be the special Thanksgiving turkey. Little do they realize this turkey will be eaten. The first thing I did to prepare for the event was make up some turkey medals. I used yellow, gray and brown paper, a turkey die cut and gold, silver & orange glitter. I also wrote events and places on the back before laminating them and tying them up with yarn.

 In the book the order of events go as follows:

• Turkey Trot - My kids were instructed to run like a turkey from the start to finish line. I did it in 3 heats, and took the winner of 3 in a final race to determine the medal winners.
• Dance Competition - My kids love Freeze Dancing, so I did a Freeze Dance for this event. Normally they just freeze and start dancing again when the music begins, but for this event I called them to sit out if they were still moving when the music stopped.
• Bucket Throw - I place a sand bucket in the middle of the carpet, and the children had to throw the turkey feathers we used for the salt writing. 
• Obstacle Course - This was a big hit with the kids. I had to laugh when one of them told me the "popsicle" was their favorite part of the day. It took me a minute to figure out what she was talking about. Anyway, instead of running through the pig's mud, they ran through hula hoops. Next, they ran up and down 2 balancing see saw type things instead of jumping over a hay stack. Since I didn't have a clothesline for them to run through, they ran through a play hut, crossed over a balance beam and crawled through a play tunnel. The children finished the race by riding a play tractor to the finish line just like the turkeys drove the tractor to their finish line. I timed them to determine the winners.

Another event this month was picture day. Since I had children coming and going, I decided to play a game. Each child was given a turkey I made out of hand prints with a letter on it. I told them they were going on a turkey hunt. Each child had a chance to hide their turkey. They were instructed to sit back on the carpet. I would then send 1 or 2 children to go find the turkey that said (sound of the letter I wanted them to find). They did a great job with looking until they found the correct turkey.

Lots of fun this month! Now to enjoy the break and prepare for Christmas fun!

Apple Theme Fun

Fall is a wonderful time of year! I love the weather this time of year and the beautiful colors. As a teacher, I love it even more for the many, many themes fall offers. This year to kick off the start of a new school year, we chose an apple theme for September. Here are just a few ideas I came across over the past couple weeks:

My personal favorite was teaching the children the parts of the apple. I wanted to do more than just a poster printed off the computer. When researching teaching ideas, I saw an adorable "Parts of the Apple" display on a Google images search using a pocket chart. It was then I remembered my brother had fixed my flannel graph board. This inspired me to use felt to teach the parts of the apple. As suggested by my director, I printed off labels and used Velcro so they would stick. The children had so much fun helping me stick up the pieces and labels each day. They picked up the scientific names very quickly!

I used a worksheet from KidSoup to reinforce the apple parts. I could not find one with the names already on the paper, so I just made my own dotted words for the children to trace. Not only were they practicing the parts of the apple, but we were honing in on those writing skills.

We went right from parts of the apple to the life cycle of an apple tree. Many may be familiar with the finger play "Eat an apple, save the core, plant the seeds and grow some more." Thanks to Pinterest, one of my classes made these. I had extra black beans left over that the children glued, and I reinforced with packing tape.

The reason I had so many black beans on hand was thanks to an idea I was led to on No Time for Flashcards' facebook page. The idea led to some great one-to-one correspondence as well as pre-writing skills with that pincer grasp. The cookie sheets came from Wal-Mart, a 97 cent find!

Another Pinterest inspired idea was an apple taste test. The first letter I introduced my students to was the letter M, so I called it the Apple Mmm Test. I provided each child a plate with an applesauce MUFFIN(that they helped me MIX & MEASURE the class day before), apple jelly & apple cinnamon cheerios with a cup of apple juice. I provided each child with a stack of pre-cut colored apples. They followed my instructions about what to eat. As they tasted the food they brought the proper color to put on the graph if they liked the treat. After everything was finished, we compared the results.

I decided to celebrate Johnny Appleseed Day with the class as a bit of a special event. I wanted to go outside and play a group game for something different. When I looked up ideas online, I was not finding anything fitted with what I wanted to accomplish. Finally I settled on planning my own relay. I took 2 pans from the children's play kitchen set and got 2 fake apples. The children were instructed to place a hand behind their back, and hold the pan with the apple in it in the other. We reviewed how Johnny Appleseed wore a pot on his head and planted apple trees. It took a while for them to figure out how a relay race works, but they had a lot of fun trying.

Another idea I found one a random web search was using paper bags as your basket which turned into a fun letter sorting activity for the children:

I also enjoyed this idea from Teach Preschool. The kids really loved scrunching up their paper for their paint brush. I wanted to see how their imaginations worked, so some of these trees looked quite interesting. Some of the children really did a good idea of dabbing their ball into the paint and stamping it onto the paper, and some of the children rubbed their paint ball all over the place. I enjoyed seeing all of their trees.

To leave off, I haven't needed my whiteboard for anything yet, so here's what I came up with to keep the room looking exciting:

Another big hit was making these little guys. The sad thing was when it came time to eat the pie, many of the kids said they did not like pie. However, they had so much fun mixing the ingredients together and helping with the measurements. I also now have an awesome recipe for Thanksgiving!

That's what I have to share about my first Apple Theme. Looking forward to many fall fun themes in the weeks to come!