Thursday, November 12, 2015

Book Love: Bones

This year multiple kids have expressed an interest in learning a little more about bones, so I included that topic as we've been discussing how to take care of our bodies.

One of my favorite non-fiction authors/illustrators is Steve Jenkins, and his book Bones is a fun and fascinating way to look at different kinds of skeletons.
This is not a book that I read word-for-word outloud to a class of this age group, but the fantastic illustrations are great for exploring what different parts of the body look like as a skeleton. The kids get also get really caught up in guessing and comparing the different animal bones as well.

Read-Aloud Tip: As you move through the pages, invite the kids to try to find and explore the different bones in their body. This works especially well with all the different bones in your hand. This time around I had some kids get really excited when they discovered the bones in their head and face.

Bones Art Extension Activity:  We created our own bones art using glue and q-tips. Some kids also turned their name into bones.



Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Brush Your Teeth

We've been talking about things that we do with our families, and this week's focus has been learning to take care of our bodies. Here are some of the ways we've been exploring our teeth.

Toothbrush Painting
This art activity is always a hit. We brushed white paint onto yellow paper to make happy smiles.
Although I drew the outline for their first mouth to paint, one student wanted to create his own for a second go around. He kept count of how many teeth he had brushed and cleaned as he painted, which was a fun process to observe. 

Brushing and Flossing Dramatic Play
I painted plastic egg cartons and the bottoms of clear soda bottles to create "teeth" for us to work with this year. The kids could make cavities using play dough or dry erase markers, and then floss and brush the teeth.

Counting and Adding with "The Mouth Game"
I use this activity as both a free play game and a "teacher time" game- meaning I directed the play with small groups or individuals. I played this with individual students, and varied the objectives depending on their level and understanding. The simplest way to play is to roll the dice and add that number of teeth to the mouth. It's a great way to build number sense, and practice counting and creating sets with one-to-one correspondence

I added additional challenges for my pre-K students, such as determining the partners of 10 (each mouth has 10 spaces) or adding their previous number with their new number to determine the new total.

If you play this game like a race, where you take turns and see who can fill up their mouth first, then it lends itself to some great math talk about who has the most, who has the least, how many spaces are left, etc.

Felt Board Singing and Play
I also have some felt board pieces of a mouth and teeth that I use for songs and other activities. I often use this mouth with small black pieces to talk about cavities, and involve the kids in brushing them away as we talk about how to keep our teeth strong and healthy. 

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Scissor Skills with Paper Strips

Snipping strips of paper is one way for kids to practice using scissors that is less frustrating or overwhelming than working with a whole piece of paper. Today we made a paper leaf pile by snipping colored strips of paper.
I use colored pom-poms on the top of my scissors to remind kids where to put their thumbs, and to keep their thumb up as they cut. Every time they snip, they are developing the fine motor skills that will enable them to eventually cut more challenging projects with ease and confidence. As their muscle strength and coordination increases, using scissors will become an automatic skill.

We used our snippings to create simple fall tree collages. Picking up the small pieces of paper, pressing them into the glue sponge, and placing them on the collage also requires the use of fine motor skills.
When I plan projects like this, I always try to think beyond my adult-like tendency to focus on the final product. Sure, I want my students to create something that they are proud of. But my learning objectives almost always have to do more with the process than the product. In this case, I saw an opportunity to encourage different kinds of fine motor development with the creation of what some might see as just a simple fall tree.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Halloween Popcorn Party

As a little girl, I loved this Halloween book called Popcorn by Frank Asch. When I went to look for it as a teacher, I couldn't even find it at the library because it had been out of print for a long time. I found out recently that it has been published again and bought my own copy- mostly out of nostalgia.
I'll be honest, after reading the story again with my adult eyes, I can't say it impressed me as much as it did when I was a little girl. But I do still think it's fun to imagine popping so much popcorn that it fills up a whole house. And the story can lend itself to some great discussions about choices, consequences, and problem solving- if you are looking for a way to make the read more meaningful. Sometimes though, I think it's also great to read silly stories that are just for fun. After we read it, we made popcorn for our own Halloween snack.
Popping popcorn is one of my favorite ways to introduce the five senses, and reading this book gave us a good excuse to do just that. So we focused on using our five senses as the popcorn cooked in the air popper. First we could hear it and smell it, and then we could see it popping out of the top. After it was finished, we touched it and tasted it as we ate it.
It was our own little Halloween popcorn party...but luckily we made just the right amount so that we didn't have to eat a whole house-full like in the book. :)

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Spiders and Webs

Along with some Halloween activities this week, we've also been learning a little bit about spiders.

"Spider Eyes" Sensory Bin and Counting
The first part of this activity is scooping up the googly spider eyes from the bin.
Some students were engaged with that process alone, and spent their time just exploring the bin. 
Some students took it a step further, and brought their eyes to the spider building table. 

Earlier in class we talked a little bit about the number of legs and eyes that spiders can have. Many spiders have 8 eyes, but that number can vary depending on the species. It was fun to see the different ways that the students made their spiders.

Spider Web Marble Art
This is one of my favorite art processes. Just dip the marble in paint, and roll it around to create a unique web.

Later we added some spiders. 

Spider Web Lines
Spider webs have been another fun way to think about lines. We explored the straight and curvy lines in spider webs on the chalkboard table. I drew the outline of the web, and the students filled in the rest. 

This inspired one student to try making his own web with the chalk outside. 

Spider Web Yarn 
I had planned to make several different spider webs out of yarn in the classroom to use for a spider hunting/counting/sorting activity, but it was hard to find places that would work.

So I changed my mind, emptied out this shelf, and set out several different strings for the kids to explore on their own. They worked hard to create their own spider webs. 


Book: The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle
This is a simple and fun book that shows the process a spider might go through to spin their web. I love that the lines of the web are raised, so that students can explore the lines in a tactile way.

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Field Trip to the Fire Station

As part of our fire safety week, we went on a field trip to our local fire station. It was such a great learning experience!

The firefighters did such a great job showing us around the station and talking to us about fire safety.
The kids were especially excited to see the fire trucks. They were even able to sit inside!
They also showed us all the equipment and tools that they keep inside the trucks to use in emergencies. It's amazing how much they carry! Then one of the firefighters showed us how fast they have to get dressed in all their gear before a fire.
He also showed us how they breathe with oxygen masks when they go into a burning building. I thought it was so great for the kids to see that so these helpers would hopefully appear less scary in an emergency situation.

Thanks to the fire station for a fun morning- and for all the work they do for our community!

Fire Safety in Preschool

This week we learned about fire safety and firefighters.

Sensory Bin: Spraying Fire
Our sensory bin was filled with spray bottles and foam "fires" to spray.

Building and Dramatic Play
We also had "fire blocks" in the block center, that led to some dramatic play with putting out the fire in a building like a firefighter.

(He's using a cardboard tube like a hose to put out the fire)

Fire Art
We mixed yellow and red finger paint to create orange fire art.

Fire Safety
We also talked about fire safety in the preschool and at home. We located our smoke detector and fire extinguisher, and practiced the things to do in case of a fire. One simple motto that we practiced was:
"Don't Hide, Go Outside!"

To top it all off, we took a field trip to the local fire station to learn more about the firefighters in our community.

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Book Love: Lines that Wiggle

I am always looking for good literature to support the topics that we are exploring in our classroom. More often than not, I find myself adapting books slightly to meet the needs of my age group or to fit the specific focus that I am trying to emphasize. But every once in awhile, I find a book that is EXACTLY what I'm looking for.
Title: Lines that Wiggle
Author: Candace Whitman
Illustrator: Steve Wilson

Why I Love this Book: I came across Lines that Wiggle as I was searching for some new ways to teach about working with lines as an early literacy skill. The text in this book is simple, which allows the creative and whimsical illustrations to shine. The lines in the book are raised, offering an additional tactile experience for the reader. Some of the lines are a part of pictures that are more imaginative, while some point out lines on real-life objects, such as leaves, sprouts, and animals. I loved that this book drew attention to different kinds of lines in fun and yet meaningful ways. For my teaching purposes, it is a perfect book to introduce lines to my students and get them excited about noticing them before we focus more exclusively on how lines make up letters, numbers, and shapes.

Read-Aloud Tip: This book lends easily lends itself to incorporating movement as you read. I encouraged my students to try to make different lines with their hands, arms, and bodies throughout the book. I used prompts like "Show me a line that wiggles!" or "Use three fingers to make a line in threes." 

Connection Activities: After we read the book, we did a quick "line hunt" to find lines in the classroom. It only lasted a few minutes, but there was a lot of enthusiasm and excitement about realizing that lines are everywhere!

There are a lot of different ways you could turn lines into art, but we chose to do a line page in our writing journals. The students used lines to draw anything they wanted, and then told me about what they created.

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Pumpkins, Pumpkins

Since we harvested our pumpkins last month, we've been using them in our classroom in many different ways- along with other fun pumpkin activities! These were some of our favorites:

Sensory Play: Pumpkin Washing

Sensory Bin: Pumpkin Patch
This sensory bin contained pumpkin seeds, small pumpkin jewels, pipe cleaners and pom-poms. I included the boxy container as an extra material, and the kids decided on their own to use it as a sorting tool to separate the seeds from the pumpkin jewels. 

Pumpkin Math Dice Games
We've used these mats for simple dice games, such as rolling the dice and adding/taking away seeds from the pumpkin or pumpkins from the patch. A great careful counting activity that also uses fine motor skills. 

Pumpkin Painting
Classic fun. :)

Pumpkin Seed Exploration and Counting
Inspired by this book, we opened up one of the Jack-Be-Littles, cleaned it out, and counted the seeds inside.  We counted the seeds together using ten frames, so everyone worked on their one-to-one correspondence while filling up ten or twenty squares at a time. We were amazed to discover that our small little pumpkin had 168 seeds!

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Pumpkin Lines

I learned something new about pumpkins this year, from a book that I checked out from the library for our pumpkin study this month. How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? follows a school class that tries to determine which pumpkin (of 3 different sizes) has the most seeds inside. The class is surprised to find out that the smallest pumpkin had the most seeds, and discovered that that same pumpkin also had the most lines on the outside. Did you know the number of lines on the outside of a pumpkin is correlated to the number of seeds inside? Apparently the longer a pumpkin stays on a vine, the more lines it develops along with the seed strings inside. I never knew!
I was excited to draw attention to the lines on the pumpkins because recognizing lines is an early literacy skill that I especially focus on during the first half of the school year. After I read the story with the class, we counted lines on lots of our pumpkins and made guesses about which ones would have more or less seeds. We discovered that many of our pumpkins had the exact same amount of lines- which makes sense considering we harvested all of the pumpkins at the same time, so many of them had been growing for the same amount of time.

Last week we did some crayon resist, watercolor art and used lines to learn to draw the shape of a pumpkin. First we used a round line to draw a circle, and then we put curved lines inside of it.

After drawing the outline with crayon, we filled in the pumpkin with watercolors. 
Every pumpkin turned out differently- some with lots of lines and some with lots of colors!
I loved how this simple process was another way to think about the lines on a pumpkin.

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Dot Art

It was our 10th day of preschool today, and so we read the book Ten Black Dots, by Donald Crews, as part of our morning counting routine.

I put out dot markers and other utensils at the art table during center time to see if it might inspire any counting or dot art. For me, preschool art is more about letting the students experience the process of making art, rather than being worried about the finished product. So while the book models using dots as part of a larger picture, most of the students just seemed to just enjoy putting dots on the page.


Although, if you asked them to tell you about their pictures, many were able to identify some sort of meaning behind what they created.
One student moved onto using regular markers, and discovered she could make dots using those as well.



Monday, October 5, 2015

Exploring Sunflower Seeds

One of my sunflower plants finally dried out enough for the seeds to come through the heads. I was excited to put them out for the students to explore.
The students used their fine motor skills to pull the seeds from the plants.
They also spent time looking carefully at how the seeds fit into the head, and what the seeds looked like.
These heads were small, but we still ended up with A LOT of sunflower seeds.

We read several different sunflower books about how seeds grow, but I love how the illustrations in Ten Seeds show the roots and the sprouts coming from the sunflower seeds. This is also a great book for counting and taking away from a set, so we used ten of our sunflower seeds to engage in that process during the story.

Since we had used all the heads on one sunflower plant, we pulled it out of the ground so we could see how the roots grew. One student asked, "Where's the seed?" because he remembered that the roots grew out of the seed. We couldn't find it, and now we want to learn more about what happens to the seed after it grows.

We are still waiting for the bigger sunflower plant to have seeds ready to harvest!

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