Summer time catch -up

It is hot outside, and while I am trying to organize for a new teaching year, I am remembering all the ideas I never had time to sit down and post last year. This may take me several days and the ideas will definitely be in no specific order, but here goes. One of my favorite units that we did last year was Fairy tales and other Children Literature. I love children's literature and the different illustrators. During this special week we had Princess day, Bear story Day, Dr. Seuss day, and then sharing our own favorites day. Really this could all take a whole month, but we just touched on some highlights. Of course. Princess day had all stories about Princess'. I focused on the Princess and the pea and did many fun activities in class, like having all the children bring their old nap mats and we stacked them and did experiments to see what we could feel under all the mattresses. We decided we were all Prince and Princesses, and could feel even the smallest thing we placed under the mattress. I have done this unit before and had created a math center involving pea pods. I made foam pea pods and got pea sized pom poms for counting. We counted by 5's having 5 peas in each pod and we added peas and pods by rolling dice to see how many pods we had and then rolling dice to see how many peas we had in our pods.
On our Bear day, of course we learned about The 3 Bears, Winnie the Pooh, Teddy Bears picnic, Corduroy and several other bears, since I have a collection of old Children's literature. We made Bear puppets, went on a Bear hunt and brought our favorite snugly bear for the day. I love how every ones is so different.





We also had to follow my directions and make bears. I drew on the board and they had to copy along with each step to draw a bear. The exercise was strictly for direction following. These turned out cute as well. We talked about how many circles we used to make our bears.

I include Childrens literature throughout all my teaching units but this one just has everything totally focused on the literature of the day. I will definitely do it again. The children had a blast and I did too.

Little house on the Prairie -pioneer times unit.

It's been a busy month and my computer time has been limited. I used alot of fun activities this month but the one I am doing now, I want to share as I go. I will catch up on the others later. We are doing a pioneer times unit using My First Little House on the Prairie Series of books. A friend of mine shared the idea of doing this unit several years ago and this is the second year my teaching team is doing this unit. It is alot of fun helping children see what children were like in the past. The first day we explored the way the children were like todays children and the ways they were different. It is neat to see the children realize, there were no TVs or Wii's etc. One of the books Winter time in the Big Woods talked about how Mom would let the girls use her sewing thimble to draw on the frosty windows. We used the thimbles in our classroom with finger paint and drew on paper. Great for fine motor because they have to hold the thimble, since their fingers are to small to hold the thimble on. This book also talks about how when it was baking day Mom would give the girls a piece of bread dough to play with and then cook. This week we will be using the frozen bread dough thawed and roll it out into a snake to make our first initial of our name. last year we actually made 4 squares of a 9 patch quilt by precutting the fabric and letting the children place it. It was neat but this year I wanted to talk more about the activity and how Laura's sister Mary got to make the pattern bear claw since she was older. I used scrapbooking paper and let them decide which one to make after a couple of days of playing with the paper and using 9 squares. I will be sharing more about this tomorrow, I will take a picture of their work it is very clever. It was just like playing with tanagrams and I love to see their face when they figure the patterns out, or even while they are puzzling over it and thinking it through. More on this later........

another week down.

We can build it...... yes, we can! Preschool children in general love to use pretend tools. We had a great week, playing with pretend construction tools, building hotels, house, machines and many other things out of our blocks. The joy of teaching Pre k is their fresh little imaginations. Nothing is too great or small when you are in preschool.
All year long I have the children make a page for different class made books. Got the idea years ago from someone at a conference. There is all sorts of info out there for class made books and if you haven't done one with your class, try it. You will be glad if you do.
Since our theme was building, I had the children create a building out of blocks and have me take a picture of them. They had to tell me what their building was. I published the pages to their words "______can build a_______", "yes, he/she can!"
Monday we will laminate the pages and put them in a 1" binder with the title page and the rest of the year the children will enjoy that book, along with the 5 or 6 others we have already made. Most of our books are pictures drawn by the children, but every now and then I throw in an actual photograph book.
Another favorite during the builder week is to let them use painters tape and tape all over a large piece of white construction paper. We talk about painters, and drywallers (which is another fun activity). I let them paint all over their paper and after the paint drys we peal off the painters tape. The children are suprised to see the white designs left by their tape.
Now on to the drywall. another experiment in art is to use putty knifes and pre mixed wall texture. We add tempra and let the chidren work at the easle. I discovered the poster board works better than paper, because the paper absorbs the water and kinda melts. They use the putty knife to smear it on, and this year I could not find my tools to make designs, so they scrapped on their texture art with plastic knifes and forks. Really cool when it drys.
Well, headed off to watch the super bowl.

Around the world in 6 days

Well what a whirl wind trip we had. We visited Africa, India, China, England, Slovakia, and Brazil before heading back home for Texas. Preschool 5 year olds don't always get the world being so big, but my little friends this year got it. We had a great time. I used a beach ball globe to show them our (pretend) flight path.

After I showed them the country or continent, I would toss the ball out and see if they could point at it for me. They did so good. As I shared in my last blog we traced all our contries/ continents and tried to write their name on them after we cut them out. We decided to not make a mobil, so I am adding a picture of what we did.

Oh go back to the description of the queens crown for England I have taken a picture to show you what we did.

A new unit coming up. I have done it before but I have not collected enough fun things for my own satisfaction. I am teaching around the world in 6 days. Each day we will visit a different country, or continenent. Today while trying to decide on a few last minutes I traced Africa and India on file folders and cut them out. Each day we will trace and cut the shape of our country out. Those that can will copy the name of the country, or continenent on the shape. At the end we will string them all up on a big picture of the world. A mobil will be created. Just for my added "Bible touch to this" I will put God created the whole world and everything in it. ( this is a future Bible vs. for my class). They can enjoy sharing their work with their families. We will practice tracing, cutting and printing, all great learning tools for my Pre K friends. I will let you know how it turns out, because as of now it is just an idea.



Update from this original blog--- we have traced 4 continents or countries so far. It has worked out great. What a great and easy tracing and cutting practice it has been. I guess we could call this a geography lesson as well as multi cultural. I am just excited that it has turned out good.
*****Today we made crowns because we learned about the queen of England. The children used glitter glue and sequins for their jewels. Teacher assembly was required but the children were very proud of them.
Supplies: Tag board strips for the base and cross part on top. glitter glue and sequins for the jewels. purple tissue for the fabric part.
Instructions: Took 2 strips about 12"x 2" and stapled in center making a cross or plus symbol. took the base which was 24"x3" and stapled end to end making the base. Let the children decorate the pieces with the glitter glue and sequins. Stapled the cross to the base at the 4 ends and underneath tucked the purple tissue and taped down. The children were excited to be kings and queens. Picture coming tomorrow. I barrowed a crown to show you a finished product

Random stuff

Don't you love it when you have something sitting on your counter, you want to use it, but how can you make it a learning experience? The last week and 1/2 I have had snowflake oriental trading little stampers sitting in a bowl waiting for a brainstorm. I wanted to use them but wasn't sure how. Today it hit me! The children can roll dice and they can stamp that many snow flakes on their page. A teacher friend came in, she thought it would be good to fold the paper in 1/4's and then they could roll 4 times and stamp 4 times. It was awesome! I had the children write the number in each square as well. Such a simple thing, why does it take a brain storm or searching all over to come up with these simple things. so thats the random thought for today........... just a footnote, you would not have to use stamps, you could use colored daubers and have them stamp a different color each time they roll. You could also use stickers. So many simple things out there, it's just hard on the spot to know quite what to do. LEARNING CAN BE FUN AND EASY.

snowman picture goal for the day

Alright, today is the day I will figure out how to post that snowman on this blog. TaDa, a grocery bag snowman from Texas.

Winter still and more on yesterdays snowman post

Well I thought about what I blogged and I decided to share what we learned by building our grocery bag snowman.

We were in 4 teams and everyone got a different amount of recycle paper. We learned to work as a team to make our ball.

We were learning the concept biggest to smallest so we had 4 balls and had to decide which was biggest, medium, small and smallest.

We heard the story about Frosty before we started any of the snowman building. We talked about what the boys and girls used in the book for eyes nose mouth etc. I had our items all set out. They had to choose from what was available.

What a fun learning experience it was, and since I am still learning, I have not posted the picture yet.
OK teaching team I challenged you via email to find me. Monica found me and shared with me the link. Pretty sad when I don't even know how to tell people to get here. More winter stuff later.

Winter fun in my preschool classroom

Well this is my first attempt at a blog and sharing my love and ideas(nuggets) for Pre-K teaching. We built a snowman out of trashbags (actually grocery bags turned inside out) 4 teams raced to fill their bag with wadded up recycle paper and we taped and tied the 4 balls together. I let them choose sorting buttons for eyes, nose, mouth and of course we had buttons as well. Next I let them use my teaching pointers for arms and my gloves and scarf. I forgot a hat but we found a sombrero in our resource room. He was a special snowman we were so proud of. The kids loved him. If I knew how I would share a picture. I will try to figure it out and share later.
Tomorrow I will share the rest of our snowman day activities. Did we have snow? No, we live in the DFW area, never much snow, but it was definitely cold enough this week.