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.

Paper Scraps Art

It's been WAY too long since I posted. I will try to get back into it in 2013! At any rate, there were many times we did cute things and I took pictures, but often with the school camera, so they never made it home and online.

Before the holidays, I was trying to clean up my messy desk and piles of things I always save just in case I might use them for a project. Well, we had a ton of colored paper scraps, and while I have often tried to encourage the children to use them during free coloring/art time in the mornings, it seems I had to make something myself in order to inspire them. I actually love the way the paper looks when you simply tear it into shapes - this can also make the paper curl a bit like hair, so that's even better! 

Below are some examples of our creative recycled color paper art (the top left is my own):

Back to School Already!

Well, I did do a pretty good job "turning off" for the last month before school :) I am very excited about the new school year, but even after the teacher prep week, I am already exhausted and realizing that all those things I planned to start in September are going to be really hard to fit in (yoga classes, Czech classes, social events...). I did do an amazing thing (inspired by two teachers at my school who run marathons) and went running TWICE in the last three days. It was actually fun, and it is much cheaper and less time-consuming than going to the gym or fitness classes. Also, it's nice to have alone time while running. We'll see how long it lasts!

In other news, the weather has appropriately become UNsummer. It is cold and gray and rainy and it has been like this all weekend. It makes my head hurt, makes me feel lazy, and is really not helping me pump myself up for the FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL tomorrow!

At least I am VERY happy with my new assistant, and all of the new teachers at our school. It's going to be a great community and I know I will learn a lot from the new blood :)

I have put some cute posters I made for my class on TeachersPayTeachers. They are FREE, so check them out!

Classroom Management Posters

I will post some pictures of my cute bulletin boards soon!