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!