When I say "go"

Recently for my graduate class, I needed to check out a great teacher website by Brent Coley. Mr. Coley is no longer a teacher but an assistant principal. Which I thought was sad because it would appear, from his website that he was a student invested teacher.

From his website, I was linked to his blog about teaching and educational technology. On his blog, I found a post about classroom management. Before he gave directions, Brent Coley would say, "When I say 'Go'" then proceed to give his directions. He said that when he used this phrase in front of a class direction that he drastically reduced waste time in his classroom.

I tried it with my Pre-k students and it was great! They have the hang of it just after a week! I am able to give them several steps of directions instead of one step at a time.

This may be very beneficial for teachers of older students who have to keep track of student attendance from period to period for APPR purposes.

I know that time isn't something that we can just make more of as teachers but there are ways to decrease wasted time, repeating directions, that can prove to be beneficial for everyone.

Orange Week

This week we focused on the color orange. We did lots of fun things this week too! The first thing we did was add orange to our Hermit Crab shells in the orange form. The sea anemones were orange and we made these with green and orange pipe cleaners. We counted out 5 orange pipe cleaners and tied them with 1 green one. Once those were secure we twisted the orange halves with our little fingers. This was really good practice following instructions and improving listening skills.

This picture of the number two was from our orange color hunt. It was my favorite of this weeks kids pics.

At my school we don't "teach" Halloween specifically but we do talk about pumpkins because they are orange. This week we did several pumpkin activities and once was carving a pumpkin and describing the different textures of the pumpkin. After we were done examining the pumpkin we filled it with dirt and some of the seeds to see if we could start a new pumpkin plant, a great activity I found from another blog called Growing in Pre-K.

I did some more research on pumpkin activities and saw a counting book, The 5 Little Pumpkins. It was great but it did talk about Halloween so I changed it into a pumpkin counting activity. Students were given sheets that had pumpkins grouped from 1-5. They had to cut, count and glue these onto a paper. Then write the number next to the group of pumpkins. The other picture is of our life cycle of a pumpkin. We sequenced the the stages after reading the book, Pumpkin, Pumpkin. 

This week for our 5 senses activity we examined an orange, how it looked, tasted, smelled, felt and sounded. Lots of our 5 senses activities don't make noise thankfully. We always save tasting for last and this time we all made faces with our orange slices.

Another activity we did was mixing colors! Finally, I had waited for this day for weeks. I wanted students to see that in a food coloring box we only have green, blue, red and yellow. Well this week when we made our "lava lamp" (colored water and oil mixture, an experiment we did during green week) that we didn't have an orange food coloring. They suggested I go buy orange food coloring but I told them I couldn't get it from grocery store but I may be able to find it from cake making store. I told them we could mix the colors, so we used Mrs. McCoy's magic color mixing machine which was two funnels, 1/2 inch pvc pipes, joints and plastic cups.

They loved it and were great little scientist.

Blue Week

The fourth color (and final primary color!) was blue. This week was another easy addition for the shell because there were two blue things in the story. We decided to keep the lanternfish blue and made him out of construction paper and foil. I had the students draw the details on him since cutting out a fish would have frustrated them too easily at this point in the year.

We only had a four day week but we managed to pack a lot in. I read a story about cookie monster, who blue so we created him out of construction paper and hung those up on our cabinets. We also focused on the number three and a triangle because a triangle has three sides. (In hindsight I should have saved circle for this week) We also made cookies that we tried to only put three blue m&m's on but it was hard not to load up one cookie full of blue.

We read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and recreated the cover of the book with swedish fish and blue sharks. When I planned this activity, I could have sworn that they made blue swedish fish. The people I asked didn't know and I searched three stores and the bulk section at Wegman's.





We did make blue and yellow Jell-o. This was tricky. I had forgot to make the Jell-o for yellow week (another cheap weekly activity). So we made the yellow Jell-o Tuesday and put it in the fridge to set. I made the blue Jell-o Wednesday and let it get to room temperature before putting it on top of the yellow or it would have melted it back into a liquid. The picture is hard to see but it is a week old at this point.

And we read Mixed Up Chameleon then created our own chameleons to hang in the door. We traced the cover of the book onto a blank transparency and had the students use tempera paints to color him in. They make lovely window decorations.

Yellow Week

The third week of our color unit was center around the color yellow. This was another tricky one for the shell because nothing was yellow. We did notice that two things were blue and that it would be okay if we changed the color for our project. I did do some research and yellow starfish do exist. For this addition to our shell, we precut felt star fish and the students used liquid Elmer's glue to make a design on it. Once that was done, the students pinched and sprinkled glitter over the glue. That took a lot longer than I thought it would but it was good fine motor work for them.

We started introducing shapes with the color red the week before. During red week we worked on circles because I picked it up about half way through the week and I knew the students all had an understanding of a circle. During yellow week, we focused on the star shape and the number 5 because a star has 5 points.

We read/watched a reading of The Sneetches (because I lost my voice during the reading) and talked about what it was like to excluded people that were different. We also noticed the yellow sneetches and the stars on their bellies.

We did a 5 senses compare and contrast activity with a green, red and yellow apple (I will add a picture tomorrow). For this activity I drew an apple on 18x11 colored construction paper, respectively. We examined all apples with our eyes and described what we saw. We did the same thing for the last 4 senses and the students came up with some amazing responses. The students really liked this activity.

The last thing we did was really the first yellow/color activity we do after adding to our shells, the color hunt. I had let the kids have the camera to take their own pictures own this piece of work. It is easily the best thing we do each week. The is only one of the pictures that was taken but I loved it.

Red Week

The second week in the color unit, we focused on the color red. Red was an easy addition to our shells because the Hermit Crab is red in the story. We did note that the hermit crabs we have in the classroom are purple, orange and red. They are called purple pinchers because their larger claw is a purplish color.
For this activity, we painted one hand of each students and pressed it onto a paper. I saw many different of how to make a crab and this one made the most sense. For the creation of these crab shells, I am trying to expose the students to many different types of textures and materials.

This week we also read The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle and made a set of ladybugs wings for each student. We had a fire drill this day that took away the time that they would have had to do some dramatic play, pairing up and acting out the first and last scene of this story. I would have kept them to do that activity the next day but they all really wanted to take the wings home. We did have a chance to talk about the symmetry of ladybug wings and they all did a great job make the wings look "the same" on both sides.

Our big math sorting activity this week was with m&m's. Instead of making a bar graph like the goldfish activity. I drew out colored circles for each m&m color and the students sorted them accordingly. Once they were sorted, they had to count each group of m&m's. I would write them on the paper then the students would have use their finger tips to make a dot for each m&m. This was the tricky part for them. They really had to follow directions or they would have mixed colors accidentally. They did a really good job. I am fortunate that I have a small number of students and a teaching assistant so my students get a lot of one on one attention.

Green Week

The first unit we are working on in Pre-K is color and we started with the color green. I run a very structured schedule for my students. We do similar activities each week but we will always change the color and how we do them. The first week of school was very short. We did many get to know you activities and read A House for Hermit Crab. After reading the story, we all made our own shells. Each week we read the story on Monday and add something of our focus color to our shell.

The first week was tricky because Hermit Crab does not have anything green that he picks up and puts on his shell. There is green sea weed in the story so we added that to our board. 

From there we made play dough with cool aid with a recipe that I get from a recipe. I have made it four different times now and each time it comes out different. I used all of the same ingredients (small bag of flour, etc...) but I found that there is too much water! Just use one cup if you use this one. I also use two packets of kool-aid to make it smell better.

We go on a color hunt in the room where I give the camera over to the students. Then I print all of the pictures and put them on like-colored construction paper which we hang to decorate our room. Each week we had lots of things to our room to make it our own and this activity really helps them to do just that.

For one math center this week we sorted the multicolored goldfishes. Each student counted their fish, counted out the same number of colored paper squares and added them to a graph. After it was finished we talked about which color fish had more, which had less and if any of them had the same number. They really enjoyed this activity, the only difficult part was to not eat the fish until they were counted.

Lobster and Angie

Angie

Lobster

The first thing we needed to do for our Hermit Crabs was name them. We talked about how the main Hermit Crab in the story didn't have a name and it how we got mixed up when another little hermit crab entered the story. It was a slightly collaborative effort. 

One of my students said, "He looks like a lobster. That will be his name!" I couldn't really argue with that. Another student said, "Let's call this guy Monkey!" I had to step in on this one. I very nicely suggested that we think of a different name because he doesn't really look like a monkey (I also know that they could live for 10+ years and I didn't want to call one Monkey for that long). I told them it was likely calling a dog, Cat. They understood and came up with Angie. Whether Angie is a boy or a girl, I do not know. They decided at some point that Lobster was a boy. I did learn from the associate at the pet store that they are very hard to identify the sex for and that they have not been bred in captivity so I am lucky to not have to worry about baby crabs running about.