Winter

It's amazing how quickly that post-holiday energy wanes, especially during the gloomy, below-zero days of mid-January. I have been so busy and am starting to get sick, I hardly took any photos this week. It can be so hard to get yourself pumped up and happy for school when the weather is gray and your sinuses start to hurt! Well, I will try harder next week.

A few things we did this week ...

This ice skate activity was done by the other PreK4 teacher (we work together Tuesday and Thursday afternoons). I LOVE it and she said I could put it online. She made two ice skate templates (figure skate and hockey skate) for kids to choose from. The skates were laminated with holes punched in them, so the kids could lace them up and practice tying them. I especially love it, because they can take it home to practice tying! They can also draw on them with dry-erase markers and decorate them again and again :)

Winter Fun Book!

I just put together a Winter Fun book including 7 winter activities (skiing, sledding, making snowmen, making snow angels, ice skating, playing ice hockey, and throwing snowballs). I made the clipart on my ipad, as always, but this time I put the whole thing together on there. It was a lot easier in some ways than using Word and converting it to pdf. I always got my edges chopped off in that process. We'll see how it prints tomorrow, but I am feeling very good about it.

Check it out!

Winter Fun Book Activity

Reflections

If there is one big thing I learned from my TeacherReady (alternative pathway to teaching license) program, it's the need to REFLECT. I am sure I am not the only one struggling with this. Am I? Maybe my school is more hectic than most... I have often envisioned myself sitting down to write a few reflections at the end of each school day, but it has yet to happen. The school is in such a crazy state of kids rushing to clubs, parents picking kids up (and chatting with me about their child's day), and after-school clubs of my own. I am incredibly lucky that my boss has arranged a yoga teacher (FREE for teachers!), who comes to our school for a lesson every Tuesday. I would be lost without it!

Anyway, I suppose I am making a big effort right now to take a moment each day to think about what went well in my class today. Does anyone know if there is an online journal system or something like that for teachers? I am afraid I am addicted to typing and being online. Though I could try using Word or something to keep my reflections. Hmmmm....

In other news, we recently added a Relaxation component to our school day. It's only 5-10 minutes of relaxing (alone, in a comfortable place, where you won't be bothered by anyone - stuffed animals allowed!). It's our new vegging out time! I love it, and I think it's good for the kids, too. I would love some suggestions for music. Right now I just find "deep sleep" or "meditation" songs on youtube, but our computer is so ancient, that its motor starts humming more loudly than the music at times. I need to get a CD of sounds.

The Letter Oo

I have to say, I am really enjoying the letter art each week.

We did letter Oo octopuses this time. SO cute!

Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of our Friday Oo art. We used toilet paper tubes to make orange "o"s on the paper. We had one tray of red paint and one try of yellow. The kids enjoyed dipping the rolls into both trays and creating orange prints. 

*I do have a picture of the finished O art :)

Arctic Life and Inuksuks

Here are a couple of activities I included in our study of People of the Arctic.

We watched this great video from Sesame Street first of all :)

On Tuesday we played an Inuksuk matching game I found online here.

Then, I prepared a few scraps of paper (brown, light brown, black) on which I hand-drew some stone-like shapes. Older kids might be able to draw their own. I am sure my kids could, too, but I didn't want them to have perfect shapes to work with. I thought having a few giving irregular shapes to work with would be more ... realistic.

Thursday we used the inuksuk idea again for measuring practice. I created a handout with three inuksuks, which the children measured using (play) pennies. That's always fun :) 

Find my inuksuk worksheets and other ideas here.

Blubber!

Wednesday we did the classic blubber experiment. I did it a couple of years ago and ended up using vegetable oil. This year I tried vegetable fat (basically margarine - I bought the one with the highest percentage fat, which was 75%). Children put their hand into a plastic glove and then I tried molding the softened margarine around the glove and then covering that in a small plastic baggie. It was kind of tricky and messier than oil, but I think it gets the idea of a layer of fat (blubber) across a bit better. After the first child went, it was kind of molded into a blubber mitten of sorts and was not too terribly difficult to deal with.

Check out the worksheets and instructions I created for this experiment here.

Igloo Building

This week in my class, we continued to learn about Arctic animals. Technically, we have a different topic each week, but I often find we've barely scratched the surface in one week. This week the theme was people in the Arctic, so we talked a bit about that, but also continued with the animals.

I feel like I am finally doing some of the not-so-easy, kinda-messy activities this year, which I have always thought about in the past but never gotten to. I think it helps that I am working in a very strong team with my assistant and the neighboring class teacher and her assistant. It was her idea to do sugar cube igloos. I wasn't sure how it would work out, but it was great! I don't think every child had a chance to try it, so I'd like to have the cubes out and available during centers. Our problem: almost never any time for self-selected centers! Also, this week our theme has changed, but I think we'll continue to talk about the Arctic for the whole month. I really dislike changing the theme every WEEK! Not enough time to get into the topic.

So, we did this project Thursday afternoon when both 4-5 classes are together, and we had the kids work in pairs or teams of three. It was great to see how they worked together, and how they tried on their own and then sometimes asked for tips or help. I tried not to get too involved.

First we watched this BBC video about an Inuit boy learning to build an igloo.

Next, the children had opportunities to make sugar cube igloos as well as a bigger igloo. We had been collecting empty tissue boxes (the rectangular ones we use in school) and realized they'd be great for building! We were thinking about covering them to make them look nicer, but the kids really could care less, I think! Also, we realized that we need a lot more in order to make some structures the children can really get inside. Unfortunately I only got photos of the sugar igloos.

Hopefully we'll find more ways to incorporate this kind of creativity in our classrooms this year!

Clip Art!!!

I am so proud of myself for creating the colored version of my clipart. I think other people may be using less complicated programs (or know what they are doing?) but this stuff takes me forever! Still, I love it and I am amazed at the final product. I made that??

I want to sell these for more later, but right now I am keeping prices low, hoping a few people will try them out and send me feedback!

Thanks!

Check it out here!

Five for Friday

Five for Friday!

This is a couple of days late, but I love the idea :) What about doing it every week?

1. Monday was our first day back to school, and, with the help of my insane cat, I was up and out of bed at 6:00am! I actually liked that extra get-ready-for-school time so much that I decided to set my alarm clock for 6 or 6:15 latest every day! Fun! Now, I can't wait until spring when there's actually light outside at that hour...

2. The kids were SO happy to be back to school! I had just one crier, but she was easily placated and we decided to make a picture for mommy. One of my (very dramatic) girls greeted me with SUCH enthusiasm (and a BIG hug), it really made my week.

3. My kids cannot keep their hands out of their mouths!!! So my assistant and I decided to take one of the bottles of "special soap" (hand sanitizer) and keep it in our classroom. Now instead of sending kids down the hall to the bathroom to wash their hands each time, we can just disinfect them quickly in the classroom. When I introduced it, one of my kids immediately raised his hands and said, I had my hands in my mouth. Oh dear. We'll see how this works.

4. I have decided to blog a lot more! I took loads of pictures this week, and I hope I can keep it up all year!

5. Thursday we had a visitor in our morning circle. He is a quite large Danish man, observing our school to help us grow in a positive direction. We went around the circle to introduce ourselves and when he introduced himself and said his age (as all of the children did), my little drama queen said, "I want to be able to pick you up."

Hmm, maybe I should start a funniest quote of the week blog?

Arctic Animals Unit

Well, it would be embarrassing to tell you that this has taken at least two hours to do, but I finally have a good little Arctic Animals Unit up for sale at my TPT shop. Half of it was already done and I used with the kids last week, but the facts cards are new, and I'd like to use them this coming week as we continue to talk about the Arctic.

I hope someone has a look! Any advice would be great!

I am also wondering how these great teachers and mothers find time to blog AND create some wonderful products on TPT. I suppose it gets easier?

Polar Animals and Insane Teacher Ideas

Our theme last week, which I will continue to talk about next week, was Polar Animals. I, however, stuck to the Arctic, only realizing later that my assistant's favorite animal, the penguin, would be left out.

Well, I didn't get a chance to take pictures, but the children made a book of Arctic Animals. Again, we had three teachers and three groups of 5-6 children. I was using the larger example book to practice sight reading with the children. There are simple "I see" sentences, such as "I see an Arctic fox." One of the kids had a great question, "Why is there 'an'?" And these are preschoolers! I love it!  Another group was cutting and assembling the book. They cut out the sentence strips and glued them to the appropriate picture. The last group was in the next room practicing letter sounds. I love these mini-group rotations, but I sure am exhausted in the end AND I have no chance to take pictures!

On Friday afternoons at our (small) school, all of the children from the preschool and kindergarten classes (3-6 years old) get together and have a cooking class. The number of children, who stay Friday afternoons has grown a lot, so now we divide the children into two groups. One group cooks, another has an activity (chosen by the teacher in charge that Friday), and then they switch. Well, I had sent this penguin craft from education.com to my assistant, because he loves penguins, and he decided to do it as his Friday afternoon activity. Are we insane?? We had 32 kids, so two groups of 16. We had four adults in the room with the penguin craft. It was quite an assembly line, but the results were amazing! I have always wondered about some of the activities I see online, which seem more feasible to be done at home with one or two children, but we made this work! I am not sure how well it would work without so many adult helpers, though!

In our assembly line, we had one to two children taking off one sock (or tights) at a time, once a child had a bare foot (or feet), they waited in a chair with a tub of dried beans. This was a sensory experience. A lot of the kids found it weird and were hesitant to try it! Next, the child had his/her foot painted in black and white. They then hopped to the adjacent chair, where their foot was washed in a tub of soapy water with the help of the second teacher.

Once they had clean feet, children put their socks/tights and shoes back on, and came to a table to make wings with their thumbs. This was quick, but they then had to wash their hands before continuing.

With clean hands, the children could either choose a pre-cut beak or cut one out themselves. They then glued the beak and googly eyes onto their penguin, and it was done! They dried pretty quickly on the heaters, so they all went home with the kids that day. So fun!

The Letter Nn

Every week, we do a letter of the week. I usually introduce the letter with a few of my favorite alphabet books, including The Hidden Alphabet by Laura Vaccaro Seeger, Animalia by Graeme Base, and a picture dictionary from our school library. We usually search through our alphabet flash cards first, to find out letter of the week. Then, we talk about what it sounds like and what words or names we know that start with that letter. Next, we look into some of our alphabet books. I usually save Animalia for the second day of the week, just because it's very detailed and it's good to have time to really look into the picture and see what we can find. One of my favorite new things is the Animalia app, which we have on the school ipads. It includes the same illustrations as the book, but there are various games for finding certain things in each picture, searching for Grame, and more. I LOVE it!

This week was the letter Nn. This year I am trying to do more hands-on activities with letters and stay away from boring old worksheets. Every week, I do one craft activity on Monday, which hangs in our room all week, and one painting/art activity on Friday.

This week, we used dry noodles to decorate the letter Nn.

First, I printed out and copied the Nn template from DLTK. I don't know how I forgot about this website! All year, I have been messing with font size and bubble letters to create my own letter templates, when there are great ones right there online! Silly me.

The children cut out the letters.

Next, they chose a colored paper and glued the letters down. Then, they used white glue to stick noodles onto the paper. I had bought three different shapes of noodles, and I was surprised that most of them were making patterns or interesting designs! I guess I thought they would just stick them on wantonly. I really am amazed by my little learners :)

We worked in three small groups. One group worked on the N is for noodles craft, one group worked on a letter Nn worksheet (tracing and recognizing Nn), and the last group worked with me on a letter sound game. I wrote the word "noodles" on the board, so that children could write it on their art if they wished. I don't want to push my children into reading and writing at this age, but the ones who are ready and interested usually take these opportunities and are eager to do and learn more.

Our end-of-the-week Nn art this week was painting with nuts! I love that I am doing Alphabet Art this year, because it is pushing me to be creative with painting. I have made lists in the past of all the interesting things kids could paint with, but I have never actually done it until this year! I would have liked to get nuts in a shell, but I waited a little too long (and didn't want to spend too much money), so we used shelled walnuts. It was still fun, as always!

Stay tuned for Letter Oo next week...

Happy New Year!

Yesterday was our first day back at school after a long two-and-a-half-week break. Wow! I was actually really ready to be back to work and SO glad to see the kids. It's amazing how much some of them have grown over the holidays!

I guess I am making a New Year's resolution to write more in this blog! And, if I realize I have nothing good to post, then I'm not doing my best as a teacher, right? So, I did start off the new year with a burst of energy and happiness, which I hope can last...

New Year Craft

I decided to do my usual New Year craft. I have been doing it so many years now that I can't exactly remember, but I think it was my idea. Well, anyway, here's the one I made last year:

First, I gave the children a template of 2013. I showed them the one I made last year to inspire more creative coloring rather than just solid colors. You can see how they colored here:

Next, the kids cut out the numbers. Some kids did need some help, but I was actually quite impressed with them, as these are difficult shapes to cut. Most of them could do it when I prompted them, and I even taught them how to cut out the circle inside the zero by folding it in half. 

Next, the kids glued the 2013 onto black paper. I had written the number on our blackboard, so that they could use it as a reference. I had a couple of backwards 3's, which we fixed, but mostly they did great!

The last part was more my work than the kids: Fireworks! I did let them sprinkle their own glitter on the glue, but I did the glue design myself. One girl wanted to try it, but it's a hard glue bottle to even squeeze the glue out, so I did it for her. The kids showed me where they wanted the fireworks, and then they did the glitter. And, voila! A great decoration for our room. Glitter always makes me happy :)

Happy New Year!!!

Arctic Animals

We will do a unit on Arctic animals in January. I made some of my own clipart/flash cards to use for the unit.

Check them out for FREE here, and let me know if there are more animals I should add or if you have other hints. I love making the pictures and I'd like to start doing it more.


I have also made a couple versions of a reader for my pre-K kids along with a word wall. You can find them at my TPT store here.