Sneak Peek at my New Photo Find Games!

I am so excited to unveil my new preschool/kindergarten activities for science that I am working on.  I can't get them done fast enough!  They are write the room science hunts and they are going to be so cute!  I have awesome graphics from Erin Bradley Designs and after huge searches for wild animal photos that don't come with HUGE price tags I have almost finished my first one.  I have to print it out in the morning and add photos to the directions and it is a go!

Just to give you an idea of how these science "Photo Finds" will work...I have created cameras with animal photos under them.  The activity will be a little like hide and seek.  You will hide the paper cameras around the room with animal photos underneath them and your students will hunt, and record what they find on a cute clipboard you will provide them.  There are 3 levels of writing this will cover too.  My recording/hunting sheets include just making an "X" by the animal photo, tracing the name of the animal, and independently writing the name of the animal next to the photo on the clipboard.  I know my students are going to love this.  They are always jumping in to be in pictures.  I  also know that write the room is one of their favorite choices during our "centers time."

I am heading to bed but this will be up on Teachers Pay Teachers tomorrow so check it out and let me know what you think!

Apples, Apples, Apples!

This month we focus a lot of science and things that tie into anything having to do with FALL!!!  Last week we finished up our apple unit and we had tons of fun!  We began by cutting up apples and talking about our observations.  We had fun looking at the seeds and the "star" in the center of the apple.

We used these apples and added some popsicle sticks to them and went straight into apple printing.  Unfortunately I did not get a photo of this because painting is something we all get really into and we needed all hands on deck!  It was busy!  While apple printing was going on at the art table, I was in charge of the great APPLE VOTE!  Three students at a time came to taste green, red, and red and yellow apples.  Then they took a voting ballot and colored the apple they liked the best.  They folded up their ballot and waiting to see what apple was the winner.

 At circle time we unfolded the votes one at a time and my students took turns tallying the votes.  

 At the end, we counted them up and the GALA apple won!

Around the room we had apples everywhere!  My awesome student teacher set up the writing table.  Everyone enjoyed making apple books and reading Ten Apples Up On Top!

We had a math game for one to one correspondence and pom pom for apples!  These were loved and even thrown around the room!

 At the writing spot we found these great letter hunt pages on TpT!  We set it up with bingo markers.  When done if all the A's are found, the green markers form the letter "A."  I actually did not even know this was going to happen!  It was a cool surprise even for me!  You can find this great product by clicking here:  Teaching Products

In the end it looks like this...  I did this one of course for you to see!

We also did a very cool sensory bin that was just for two people to use at a time.  I wish it could have been in the sensory table, but the beans were pricey!  I got them in the international isle at our grocery.   These beans were everywhere but they are getting some serious play time!  Next week there will be spiders and rocks and some fake flowers and webs!

Our apple pie play dough was also a hot station.  Our play dough trays had traditional cooked play dough with cinnamon, all spice, and cloves blended in.  It smelled good enough to eat and I know some did get gobbled!  Each day we had a little less on our tray when we began our day!  Unfortunately I took the photo without the play dough in the container but I am sure you get the idea!

We had an apple farm in our dramatic play and we finished off the week measuring our bodies with apples.  It was a great unit!  We covered many of our Ohio Early Learning and Development Standards and we had fun doing it!

My kids loved wearing the apple aprons and bandanas!  They were $.99 at Hobby Lobby!  Just a simple bandana and they were off to being apple farmers!

Apple measurement with our student teacher was very exciting  We set up in our extended learning area and they could not wait to head out and do the counting with her!

Our last math game was inspired by Ten Apples Up On Top.  My pictures of the kids were not cropped like I would have liked but all of my kids loved putting the "apples"(beads) up on top of their photo in the frames!

I think this could be one of my longest posts on my blog yet!  Hope that you get inspired to do apples too!  We had a great time!  Now off to plan for our skeleton unit!  I will add that post soon!

Pumpkin Fun for Class

I am always trying to find new things to do each year.  This year it was pumpkins.  What could I do that I had not yet tried?!  I decided upon painting a pumpkin with chalkboard paint.  I think I did not buy the best chalkboard paint.  However, I went for it.  I loved how into the pumpkin they got.  Each day last week tons of kids were into drawing on this black pumpkin.  It turned out to be lots of fun and it was an activity the class waited in line for!  So I say try it if you just need one more fun thing with pumpkins like I did.   

My old stand by favorite activity with pumpkins is to hammer gold tees into it.  I love watching how excited the kids get with this.  We had 2 different types of hammers.  I had some made of dowels that my husband made, and then I had the yellow plastic ones from Lakeshore.  The youngest kids in my class began singing the tune from Bob the builder and it was adorable!  One little guy would say, "Can we fix it?"   And the whole class sang back, "YES... We can!"  It was cute.  I  hope the pumpkins last through the week.  They were very into this and it kept 4 kids very busy.  If you have never tried this before...head out and get a few golf tees from the sporting isle at Target and get this station going.  Kids love this!  It is great fine motor!

Water Beads

Okay everyone!  I have searched and found these three types of water beads!  The Xploderz are sold in the boys toy section with a gun.  But these are the refiles and this is the pack to get.   These were $4.99.   The packet in the middle is the best value.  I got them at Michael's.  They have the most in the packet and were only $2.99.  They come in tons of colors.  Michael's also had them in a jar already hydrated.  I think seeing the beads grow though was half the fun for my class!  The last packet is called OrBeez and they are sold in the girls department.  They are about $4.00 and come in little packets all in a box.  They too come in lots of colors.  A friend mentioned to me the ones at the Gardening section, like the water gems say keep out of the reach of children-however that is because they could be a chocking hazard   You would have to have a pretty large eater to chock on one.  They are so small.  If you have kids who mouth thinks I would not recommend these.  My class is past the oral stage so we love them!  Next week we are adding shaving cream to them!!!  Stay tuned!

Body Awareness

We were so excited this week to teach and talk about the body and bones in our body!  Skeletons have always fascinated my classes and this year was no different.  As soon as our full sized plastic skeleton was hung the chatter began.  "Is it Halloween?"  They were so curious!  We did this great lesson where we touched and talked about what bones we could feel. Then we connected and created our own skeleton.  They loved this and had fun while they were practicing their bone knowledge.  We gave them cups of glue so that they could dip the cotton part of the cotton swab.  They look great all displayed in the hallway.   Try it with your class.  I am trying out writing all of the new "soon to be out" Common Core for preschool and we did it a little deeper than point to your nose.  The inside of the body is more fun than that, right!!!

School Tools

Recently my husband created this station for his classroom and I wanted to share it.  At first glace, I loved it just for the pure colorful beauty of it.  Any kid would love coming over to it!  He put out things that he felt a preschooler would need to use in school and it would cover the standard that addresses use of school tools.    The picture on the wall is of him with students.  I think this makes it personal and since most students love pictures, one of their teacher is the perfect addition to this station in his classroom.   I think it will be very popular.  I myself plan to get organized and try this soon! 

Create your own baby animal matching game

We made this animal matching game to help practice the indicators for science this quarter.  We have plenty of cartoon animals and their mothers, but this one is realistic and liked a lot better by the students.  After matching them, we ask questions to probe their thinking skills like, "What do you think Elephants eat?" "Where do you think the Hippo lives?"  These kinds of questions make a simple activity more rigorous for the students and extend their learning.

Bubble Art

We all had fun today using our breath to make art!  Each child blew bubbles in a dish of water, tempera paint and dish soap to make bubbles.  Everyone enjoyed watching as the bubbles rose out of the bowl above the bowls.  They put a piece of white paper over the top and made beautiful bubble prints!  It was easy and very entertaining!

WORM WEEK Begins!

 Worm week has begun and we began by tweezing pretend pipe cleaner worms and rubber fishing worms.  They are gaining great fine motor by using the tweezers.  Most of the students were acting out scenes with their friends like they were on a nature hunt!  The pipe cleaners were our pretend "worms!"

 The rubber fishing worms looked real when they wiggled.  All of our student love these in any activity!  More photos to come when we bring in the earth worms later this week!

Dr. Seuss' Birthday Week Fun!

This week we are creating and reading all the Dr. Seuss books we can get our hands on. We began with The Cat In the Hat!  We talked about safety and what would be okay to do if your mother is out.  We got some great answers!
We then took a picture walk through Green Eggs and Ham before diving into the book to practice rhyming!  They came up with some great made up rhymes!  We graphed if we liked the book and practiced vocabulary terms like more and less.

Today was One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and we created the below Seuss creatures!  We hung these up in an art gallery photo album in the hallway for all to enjoy. Everyone enjoyed creating creatures.  Each child was asked to make up a name for their Seuss creature, a place it lived and a food that it ate.  We are going to extend this into science next week when we talk about habitats for animals!

Here are some of the comments about their creatures:  

                           "This is a Horsey.  He lives in a cave.  He eats chicken."

                        

                          "This is Ternisha.  She lives in the world.  She likes to eat pizza."

Pete The Cat!

Our favorite classroom book by far this year is Pete The Cat,  I love My White Shoes, and Rockin' in my School Shoes, by Eric Litwin.  These books have captivated my entire class.  No matter how exciting other books in our class are, they keep going back to read Pete!  We had the listening center open with the free download from the Harper Collins web site.  We burned this onto a CD so that the students could continually listen to the story being read/sang by the author.  They all now sing it all by themselves daily at morning reading time.
We did many activities during the initial introduction to this book.  We began by matching colors of the shoes to our shoes, graphed our favorite colored shoes and matched the colors of food to the shoes.  we made easy matching games and laminated them to have out for the children to match.  We then had Pete The Cat SNACK day.  The students came up with this idea.  We ate raspberries for red, blueberries for blue, chocolate pudding for brown mud, and water for clear/wet water!  The class loved it and there was not a morsel left of their plates!  They still talk about it 5 months later and we probably need to do it again!  They love to talk about how we ate "mud" like Pete stepped in!  There was also time to make our own Pete.  I have the pattern below.  It was a great cutting exercise and it stands up if you use card stock or good construction paper.  Just fold paper and draw the pattern on for them to cut.  You will end up with an extra tail and head.  We use these for students who are not that great at cutting yet.

 We also made a huge display of our author study in the hallway.  Other classes were asking about it and borrowed our ideas and our CD to go with the book!  You have to try this book with your students.  There is a YouTube video of the author that our students enjoyed viewing as well.  You must have the song from the website!  Reading this book really engages every student!  Try it today!  There is a new book coming out on May 1st, 2012, Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons.  We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of this from Amazon!