New Year, New Us

     As the second half of the year begins, I would like to let you know that the expectations of the Pre-K class have increased. We are now implementing some letter identification and letter activities. I wouldn't call them focus letters or the "Letter of the Week" but more of a brief exposure to letters. Teaching letter and letter sound identification varies from teacher to teacher. I have a strong passion for teaching about science and the scientific method so I have and will be choosing letters according to our focus in science.
     The first "unit" we have started is Lights and Shadows which will transfer to Phases of the Moon and eventually to Astronomy. This will happen of the next two weeks. During that time I plan to cover the letters, L, M, and S (Lights, Moon, and Stars).
     The structure of our day is a little bit different now too. We have certain songs that we will be doing everyday and some will change. We sang a movement song, Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, our weather song (See Lyrics below) and the Letter L Song check it out HERE. We also talk about many different letters when we write our daily message.

Weather Song (Oh my Darlin')
What's the Weather?
What's the Weather?
What's the weather everyone?
Is it rainy?
Is it cloudy?
Is there snow?
Or is there sun?

Winter Themed Door Decorations

This is our fully decorated door for the Winter Door Decorating Contest. It is Snoopy's dog house, Snoopy, Woodstock and friends. The students' names are written across each line of lights that were glittered by the students. There are 4 birds with each students face on them. The students also helped by adding the snowflakes using fingerprints. We may have splurged by adding the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree but it was a necessary splurge. 

Winter Board

The board in our classroom. It displays some winter animals and what tree looks like in the winter. Our walruses are slightly misplaced since they tend to live in icy cold water but were too cute to pass on. 

New winter look for our tree. 

Winter Bulletin Board

This is our hallway bulletin board. We made the hats and mittens after talking about what a person needs to wear to play outside. We used our calendar weather clothes and figured out what we could put on a snowman to decorate him. I didn't notice until the students were done decorating the mittens that they were both of left hands. The students used lots of fun decorations to make the gloves their "own". The did most of the cutting too. The snowmen are up because this is a common winter activity...when there is snow.

Rainy (Part 2) and Wind

 In terms of lesson planning, this day went terribly wrong on several different occasions. It was supposed to be about wind and two of the four wind activities did not work at all...
The day started by me drawing a kite on the board. I asked the boys about it. What is this? How does it work?
   They told me that they had to run with it then Jordan yelled out that it needed to be windy! I had put streamers on the fan and we watched how "wind" made the streamer move. That one worked!
      Next we tried to make pin wheels that looked really easy but the folding and cutting of them was too much and an adult needed to do it and they would even spin. We said we'd try a different one in the spring sometime.
     Next to show how air/wind made things move, I tied up a ribbon, put a two inch straw on it and taped a blown up balloon to it. The hope was that it was jet down the line across the room...it went no where! I ended up blowing balloons up for about 5 minutes and letting them chase them around the room.
     The last thing I had planned was to use the boats in the water table and blow air through a straw as if they were on the ocean. This worked! This turned into an unintended sink and float lesson because we had the balloon. I filled one with air. Will this sink or float? Everyone said float. We tested it and they were right. I filled one with water. Will this sink or float? Everyone said sink. We tested it and they were right. I filled one with green water then blew air into it. The kids were spilt. In fact, it doesn't do either. It bobs about the water and air meet. It was cool because they got to see it.

That was all the air stuff which I couldn't take pictures of because everyones hands were busy. The rain activity was a clear cup half full of water and shaving cream. We used food coloring as a water like liquid to fill up our cloud (shaving cream). The boys are adding their liquid to the cloud. It was really neat because the food coloring obviously changed the color of the water.

Then they were giving more shaving cream to play/practice writing their names. This turned into a mess too!  Kingston said, "Mrs. McCoy, if I clap my hand together really hard I can make snow!" Before I could say anything all three of them were "making snow"and it got everywhere. Faces, hair and floor. It was a fun day to be in Pre-K, a little crazy but they really liked it.

Rain and Rainbows

 To start the conversation about rain, I drew a cloud on the white board and rain drops coming from it. I asked the students if they knew what the picture was, they all knew it was rain. We talked about how rain is wet and can be cold rain or a warm rain depending on what time of year it happens. We did an experiment to represent rain going through a cloud the day after only because we ran out of time. These giant rain clouds are cottons balls glue to paper and stapled to a hanger with 6 raindrops hanging from it.
    After talking about rain, we had to talk about a rainbow. The fruit loop activity was a great review of colors and color sorting. It also helped the students work on their fine motor skills having to pick up and place each fruit loop in the right place.

Weather (Sunny and Partial Sunny/Cloudy)

    One December 3rd, we started weather week with sunny and cloudy. We have talked about the weather everyday during circle time when we do the calendar activities but temperature was getting confused with types of weather.
     The main focus of this week was to determine the type of weather we were noticing and the temperature outside. This was a funny week to study weather being that was almost 70 one day and snowing a day later.
    The picture one the upper left was just the sun, or sunny. The students hand painted a circle then make hand prints around the edge for the rays. The students added glitter to make it sparkle.
     The picture in the lower left is what a cloudy day may look like. The students cut out the yellow circle sun and two white ovals. Then they glued these all onto the blue paper and added a few cotton balls over the ovals. We helped them hot-glue yellow pipe cleaners on for the rays.
      We talked about how the sun makes things warms or hot and how the days were getting shorter because we are getting less sunlight than in the summer time.

Fall Unit (other activities)

The scarecrow keeps crows away from the corn or pumpkin fields.

The acorn that squirrels collet to prepare for winter. 

Our turkeys

Here are some of the activities we completed during the Fall unit. These activities focused on using scissors, glueing and following directions.

This was our Fall bulletin board.

Fall Unit (Just the trees)

These are a sample of our fall trees. I got the two trees to the left from Melanie's Blog, I get lots of cute ideas from her.
The fall tree to the upper right came from a website for pre-k teachers. I didn't find it so I cannot credit that. These three trees are made with different materials, paint, tissue paper, crayons, markers and glue.

The tree to the bottom right is also a fall tree. I did a one day lesson about conifers/evergreen trees. The students had good understanding of deciduous trees. I referred to a Christmas tree before reading a book about pine trees. The activity itself, I came up with. You will notice this tree is very similar to my sea urchin just not shape and size. I bought a sheet of Styrofoam and cut it into 1.5 inch rectangular block.
The students were given about 50 dark and light green pipe cleaners and pushed them in to the "trunk" of the tree.

iPads for Young Children

After perusing the folders for this week, I found this article/video that I thought was very helpful in using the iPad in younger classrooms.

http://tvnz.co.nz/close-up/techno-toddlers-video-4972341

The video is from New Zealand but it deals with the same concerns that I had in an overuse of technology at a young age.

A not-so-new pet

     When I started at the school I am currently employed (2+ years ago), there was a nameless goldfish who had survived the summer after being exposed to Kindergarten students that previous spring. He didn't do much, he was a goldfish. In that first year, he went from gold/orange to white, I did take care of him and changed his water when I could. He ended up in a plastic Mr. Potato Head box while I waited for his tank to return to room temperature.
     Well, he survived another summer (I was teaching summer school and would check in on him often) and I was back with him in K-room as a TA. I took care of him, changed his water, fed him. I had my son in April but was put on bed rest at the end of March so I didn't see him again until I was the Pre-K teacher and I passed him on the way to visit K-teacher.


     While on maternity leave no one loved his white-goldfish like I did and his tank got nasty! I mean unbearable for even a goldfish. I refused to take him, already having two Hermit Crabs whose bedding I was allergic to and could not do all the awesome stuff I had planned for with them. Somehow in the last two weeks, the goldfish a.k.a Mr. Potato Head ended up in my room. The almost 3 year old goldfish now as a clean tank and has been renamed to...NEMO. I know but it wasn't worth fighting after the time I spent cleaning the tank that morning. So to the top right is Nemo in his much cleaner tank, I know it still looks gross.

To the right and bottom are Lobster and Angie in their new coconut shreds bedding that I am not allergic to, next to their new neighbor Nemo. They seem to be a little more active with this new bedding. It could be that I'm not afraid of getting hives if I pick them up, so I handle them more with the kids around. I'm serious when I saw my hands were blistered and red after even cleaning the water bowl or picking up one of the crabs. The bottom picture has three shells in it. L to R: Lobster, empty and Angie. Hopefully, one of them will move into that bigger shell this year sometime. There is another shell in other corner of aquarium.

Someone tried to offer me guinea pigs two days later...really?

Black and White Week; End of Color Unit

Our finished color hunt board! Thanks to iPads...

Another big accomplishment this week (Halloween week, 3 days of school M, T, F, parent-teacher conferences). The students finished up the color board and I think it looks awesome! They love looking that the pictures and it a great look at just our room from a kid's eye view. I love the pictures and have posted some of them in the previous weeks but they are great. 

 I really only had one day to work on black and white. I started with the color white and talking about teeth. You'll notice our lovely set of marshmallow dentures to the left (cameo appearances from eggplant and cotton candy, purple and pink week). In light of Halloween, I briefly talked about dental health and brushing our little teeth and keeping candy off of the teeth. The students really loved making these fake mouths which was great because I literally tossed out a ghost activity 15 minutes before they got there.
     The next picture is a half finished spider, which was something I started and they took a picture of for our color hunt. The ones that the students did I had traced out circles that they painted with a brush after I had painted their fingers that they pressed on the paper for the legs. Once it was dry, I randomly hole punched around the spider and the students threaded white yarn through each hole. We put 8 eyes on our spider and counted all 8 legs. They wouldn't even let me hang them up they all shoved them in their bags to take home. (Sorry I do not have a finished picture of this, it was really cute).

Brown and Gray Week

 This week we focused on the colors brown and gray. This was the last week (Pre-Halloween Week) of activities for our House for Hermit Crab board. This week we simple added 7 gray pebbles (7 was the focus number this week) and brown crusty coral. To make the gray pebbles, we first need to make gray paint. We talked about how gray was a shade of black or white depending on your view of colors. When researching things/facts about the color gray. Someone (not remembering the person or site) claimed that gray was not a color because it could not be made with light. I thought that was interesting. Well, we just mixed black and white paint to make gray The students needed to independently create ovals (focus shape) to represent the pebbles. They were very good at this but we need to help them cut them out to make them smooth.
     For the brown crusty coral we actually used the tube of wrapping paper cut up into 4-5 inch chunks. We had pre-cut strips of brown paper that the students folder or tried to in a back and forth fashion to create that rippled effect. We had seven strips of paper that we stapled to the paper tube to create the coral. We tried to scotch tape it but the tape wouldn't stick well and one of the students suggested using the stapler. So that's how we did it.

 

This is our finished board! We did other activities this week but this was a big accomplishment for all of us. Here is a quick review of the board.

Green - Seaweed

Red - Hermit Crab

Yellow - Starfish

Blue - Lanternfish

Purple - Sea Urchin

Orange - Sea Anemone 

Pink - Snail 

Brown - Coral

Gray - Pebbles 

We will most likely revisit this book at the end of the year when I say see you next year as they go onto Kindergarten. 

Online Activities

Our online class title, New Literacies and Technologies has been a great way to explore new things to bring into the classroom, it is also a little frustrating here's why...

I teach pre-k. Don't get me wrong, I love technology but I spend time working on social skills, hand strength (writing, cutting activities) and teach my students how school work. The only thing I really think I could do with them that we have been exposed through in this class is digital storytelling.

This is my son at 2 1/2 with my new iPad. 

I have three iPads for my classroom and a personal one (4). My students can have their own iPad for instruction purposes. It's great but they aren't interacting with each other one they are on them (which is a big part of Pre-k). I'd like to find out how to better use these iPads. I have the capability of downloading free Apps or purchasing them. Any ideas would be great!

I have had the students use the camera App to take pictures on our color hunts. We made a huge wall of colored pictures. They take 15-20 pictures of something red, for example. Those pictures get printed then glued onto a red 11 x 18 construction paper. We go over all of the pictures then up on the wall it goes.

There are other Apps that are letter ID but I really only put them on the StarFall ABC's App. I want to do a digital storytelling for the unit we are working on now but to get them to record a voice over is what may be hard about that.

Any ideas?

Purple and Pink Week

I'm a few weeks behind but three weeks ago we studied two colors, Purple and Pink. We were starting to run out of time and had cancelled days due to parent teacher conferences and staff professional development.

This week we added two colored creatures to our Hermit Crab shells, a purple sea urchin and a pink snail. The purple sea urchin is made out of a Styrofoam ball that we painted. Then the student pushed pipe cleaners into once they were dry. The pink snails were tricky. They ended up being a barely air-filled balloon and one section of an egg carton. The balloons were a nice fit into the cartons then the students made the swirl of the shell with a permanent marker. The way the snail came out was awesome, at least I thought so because we were going to use pink cotton balls and white construction paper. After some snooping around the craft supplies I found the other materials.

We did our usual color hunts for both colors. Each week, we are wowed at how many things the students find of each color in the room. We were almost certain that there wouldn't be enough of either color but the student continue to amaze, finding more than enough pictures for the 11 x 18 coordinating color construction paper (unintended tongue twister).

We also did some cut and paste activities with an eggplant, using construction paper and cotton candy using the pink cotton balls I found, glue and construction paper. These are hanging over their cubbies and the students love seeing their work around the room.

We also conducted a 5 senses activity with purple grapes and pink grapefruit. It was a unanimous vote for loving grapes and hating grapefruit. I have some great shots of little sour faces.

We learned how crayons were made from a How It's made Video and a Scholastic Reader. The student have the 8 pack of crayons which doesn't include pink so this was a great time to use those two activities. We also read a book about how crayons are made.

We touch on how to make the color pink during the crayon making process but for our lava lamp activity. I showed them that red and white could make pink but I didn't have a white food coloring to make the water pink and that I was going to use Kool-aid mix.  I was in the process of making purple which we learned during our color mixing experiment (orange week) when I had put the tiniest drop of red into the vile. It turned out to look pinker than I could have make with the lemonade mix. I did explain to my students that pink was a lighter shade of red and to make red lighter we could add white (like we had done with the paint before we started) or we could just add less red food coloring. I love teachable moments when I learn something too! The third picture are all of our lava lamps that we made with colored water and vegetable oil. The kids can play with them tilting the container from side to side and the colored water will stay separated (unless the container is shaken the container a little too much)

We did an activity with jellybeans and the colors orange, pink and purple. The students had a pre made graph where they placed all of their jellybeans. Once they were done the colored every box that had a jellybean in it. We also use purple and pink play-dough which I made from the same recipe as I had before and this time they turned out awesome. For a special snack we had purple and orange jello. It turned out just as cool as the blue and yellow Jello from blue week.

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.