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.