"Smartie Pants" Behavior Rewards

We began our last positive classroom behavior activity with our students this past week.  The pants you see are filled with Smarties and are decorated.  Each time a student is caught doing something good, we stop, ring a bell, and announce the exciting great behavior.  Then the classroom of students breaks out into cheering for the student.  The student is then invited to sign the wall of fame with other classmates who are also "smarties" like them.  This is a fun way to celebrate mastering behaviors and academics.  So far I love this and am happy to have the pants filled with plenty of smarties.  It is very popular!  I highly recommend trying this idea.  The class has really responded and loves the clapping and cheering for each other.  This makes it all the more exciting.

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.

Crayon Melt Art

We had to try this Pinterest crayon melt idea.  It was one of the first things I saw as I signed up to Pinterest.  What a fun project!  Everyone had so much fun getting to use the hairdryer.  I heard so  many stories about how they had seen blow dryers at home but that they did not get to use them!  We are not yet done.  The picture on the right will be up next week after we melt it.  We plan to do each pair of crayons on the black board and then turn the canvas.  All you need to try this is a canvas, a hot glue gun, plenty of crayons and some kids who like to hold their arm in the air a while to watch the solid crayon turn to liquid.  We plan to use this in our school lobby.  The kids are really proud of it.

Sensory table with tongs and bottles

This sensory activity has been a huge favorite in our classroom this week.  The scissors tongs are from Lakeshore and come in a 6 pack.  They can be used in water or with dry sensory items or to pick up bugs!  The kids have had challenges to see if they can fill the bottle.  We challenged them to just put one color int he bottle.  This was great for the older 4 year olds!  The glass bottles are heavy and work the best.  We used Snapple tea bottles.  We were pleasantly surprised at how much fun they had.

Dental Health-Gums

Today we taught the class the importance of gums.  We discussed what gums do, and how they hold in your teeth.  We went around the small group circle and inspected each other's gums and what color they were.  Then at our project table, the students created their own mouth and we photographed them with it.  It was fun!  The eye balls were not glued down so that the child could move them around the face and pick the placement.   Supplies we used: Play dough, Lima Beans, Brown Construction Paper, and Googly eyes!

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!

CIRCLES, CIRCLES, CIRCLES!

Today we worked on drawing circles.  We are starting a new art unit about circles.  We challenged the children to draw as many circles in their big circle as they could.  Then we asked them to count them all up and write the number they drew.  They were so different and each drawing was unique!  This was a fun way to do some pre-writing and get some one to one counting in at the same time.  Many of my students can count much higher than I thought too which was great!