Book Love: My Heart is Like a Zoo

My Heart is Like a Zoo by Michael Hall is a simple book that can be used in many different ways. The adorable and creative illustrations are made out of hearts, which can make it a fun read for Valentine's Day. But the story can also lend itself as a book to talk about different animals, or different ways that we feel or see ourselves.

Read-Aloud Tips: We read this book two times together as a class. The first time, we focused on the hearts in each illustration. Sometimes we counted them, sometimes we just talked about what shapes or parts of the animal they formed. The second time we read it, we focused more on the story itself and the feelings involved. For example, we discussed feeling vocabulary words like what it means to be "eager as a beaver."  Or we made connections to feelings, like thinking about times we've felt "angry as a bear." It's a great book for sparking discussions about feelings.

Extension Activity: I fell in love with this book back in my Kindergarten teaching days, and I've always wanted to use it as inspiration for some animal art. This year was finally the year that I made it happen! I just cut out a bunch of hearts in different shapes and sizes, and let the kids use the book as a guide for ideas. It was fun to see what they created!

I encouraged the kids to label their picture with the name of the animal they created, and I was pleased to observe some great sound spelling. I then used their animals to create a zoo art display.

Playing Post Office

First, you need to write some letters and put them on an envelope with a stamp.

Don't forget to write the name of the person you are sending it to on the envelope.

Then you stick them in the mailbox.

When it's pick-up time, you bring the letters to the post office for sorting.

Then deliver them to the correct individual mailboxes.

This dramatic play has been so great for:
*Writing practice
*Fine motor skills like putting paper in envelopes and using stickers
*Working together with others while sorting and delivering the mail
*Thinking about others in a caring way

I especially loved watching some great friendship skills in action during this play, like asking someone what their favorite color is so they could use it on their letter or drawing a picture of something they knew their friend liked.

Cooperative Games: Hoot Owl Hoot!

As part of our overall theme of friendship and community this month, I've been inviting the kids to join me in playing different kinds of games. Games are not only a fun way to reinforce many kinds of academic skills, but they provide a great context for practicing social skills like turn taking, self-regulation, and problem solving. This cooperative board game, Hoot Owl Hoot!, has become one of our favorites. Here is what I love about using this game in the classroom.

1. It's accessible, yet provides some challenge
The pieces of the game move according to a visual color cue/picture on the cards, so students of different reading/math levels can play together easily. However, there are different strategies that can be used to be more successful as a group, and it has been interesting to watch how my students have adapted and changed their strategies over time.

2. Players can join at any time
The cooperative nature of this game means that although everyone takes a turn to move, the pieces are shared by everyone. No one owns or controls a certain piece. So, the number of players in the game can easily vary, even while you are playing. This makes it so great for a choice during center time, because students can join in the game in the middle if they are suddenly interested in it, or if they decide to try a new activity they can leave and it doesn't change or stop the game at all.

3. Supports colors, counting, number sense, and more
Like many board games for young children, this game can be used to practice many different learning topics. But my favorite part of this game is the reinforcement of one-to-one correspondence and directional movement, skills that are important in both math and literacy. The sun moves along a line, one space at a time and the owls follow the spiral line, one color at a time. Following a certain direction and moving only one space at a time is great practice for those skills.

Of course, kids always find ways to use materials according to their interests. One time when we played, it turned into a pattern making session using the colored cards. :)

4. Kids are working together
While I do think it is still important for kids to develop the coping skills that come with playing games where there is a loser/winner, cooperative games provide a wonderful opportunity for kids to feel some camaraderie as they work together to achieve a common goal in the game. Everyone wins and loses together, like a team, and that is a great way to strengthen a feeling of community in the classroom.

Growing Crystal Hearts

I've been trying to do more science process activities with the class lately, which has pushed me to try some classic experiments that I've never actually done as a teacher before. I always get a little nervous about how things are going to turn out, but growing these crystal hearts turned out to be so simple with awesome results. I followed the instructions found here to try this out, although there are a lot of different versions of this activity online.

First, we prepared the hearts and other materials.
I made the hearts by cutting a pipe cleaner in half, bending it for the bottom of the heart, forming the two curves at the top, and twisting the middle together. I also tried some smaller hearts, but those ones didn't turn out as well once the crystals formed.

Instead of using separate glass jars for each heart, I used a cheap plastic bin that would fit all of our hearts at once.

We could see some changes happening withing about an hour or so after setting them up, but let them sit until the next preschool day.

I might have saturated the water a little too much, because a very thick layer of crystals formed on the bottom of the bin as well. A few hearts ended up sticking to that a little, but came off with some careful pulling. We were all impressed with the beautiful crystals that formed- very hard, white, and sparkly!

The bottom layer of crystals came out of the bin pretty easily, and I saved the pieces for some further exploring later. We ended up using it for painting...

Valentine's Activities.

We had a fun week celebrating Valentine's Day! 

Valentine Envelopes

We make these using two paper plates. First we painted them, then put them together by punching holes and threading with string. Lots of great fine motor work!

Valentine's Playdough

Painting Hearts

Glitter Slime

Not everyone was excited about touching this at first. But the texture gets a little less wet and gooey over time, so some found it a bit more enjoyable as the week went on. Recipe found here.

3-D Heart Structures

We also did a really awesome crystal growing experiment. Read more about that here.  :) 

Groundhogs and Weather

I personally don't love to focus on the topic of Groundhog's Day, but since it fell on a preschool day this year, we used it as a backdrop for thinking about seasons and weather.

In addition to a nonfiction book about groundhogs and the holiday, we read a (very) silly story called Who Will See Their Shadow This Year? The animals in the story all want spring to come early, but when they see their shadows all sorts of crazy weather comes instead.

My students always laugh at this book when I pull it out, and the fact that it is so silly actually turns out to be a good way to address the idea of whether or not a groundhog can actually predict/create the weather.

We made two different prediction graphs throughout the day. The first one  was for whether or not the groundhog saw his shadow this year, and then we looked up the news to see what happened. Since Phil did NOT see his shadow this year, the superstition goes that it will be an early spring. So we made another graph to predict whether or not Phil's prediction would be correct. Time will tell on that one, but so far, winter is still in full force around here! :)

Here's the beginnings of a groundhog that one student drew in his writing journal. Later he added a shadow.

It's Melting!

Here are some of the ways we've been exploring and experimenting with things that change from a solid state to a liquid state.  

Ice Magnets

Foaming Melting Snow Dough

This recipe includes baking soda and dish soap, so when you add a little vinegar it creates a cool bubbly, foaming effect as it melts. First we rolled the dough to make little snowmen. 

Then we added the vinegar using pipettes and watched the snowmen bubble. 

In the end, our snowmen completely melted into a foamy liquid.

The kids loved this process so much that I set out the same materials in a different center the next day. It was still fun the second time around. :) 

Ice Cube Painting

I first put a little bit of tempera paint, water, and then upside-down golf tees for handles into an ice cube tray to create this fun art process. 

Another Melting Snow Dough

We used the snow dough from our polar sensory bin for some additional melting exploration. This dough is made from corn starch, so we just added water to see what would happen. 

Cornstarch and water create such an interesting sensory experience. It feels solid when you try to grab it, but then liquefies again. 

After it was all melted, the kids wanted to see what would happen if we put the ice cube paints in the liquid.

It created a beautiful mixture of winter colors. One student said it looked like a fairy book. 

Original Melting Snowman...

I randomly pulled out this silly melting snowman kit that my son received as a gift at Christmas time. This also proved to be a popular material to explore, both to watch melt and to use as a building/molding tool. One student enjoyed stretching it out to make stringy spider webs.