You're a Mean One...Mr. Grinch!

Since Chirstimas is soon we read Dr. Seuss's How The Grinch Stole Christmas.  I read it in two parts today.  We talked about how we can use describing words to talk about someone. I started by having my special helper of the day stand up and we used different words to describe her.  Pre-K students are only 4 and 5 but they are pretty smart... We talked about what color her clothes are, how old she is, she is a girl, she is smiling, she is happy, ect.  I presented a blank chart that we would be filling in to desribe The Grinch.  Throughout my frist reading I made sure to draw attention to key words or phrases or actions he did to plant ideas in the students' heads to add to the chart.  This was a great way to introduce new vocabulary to them. After I read the first part, we brainstormed together some words:

The we went about our day and during center time we made Grinch faces. Here is my sample (at least I tried ahhah)

Here are some of theirs.  Notice only one is the "mean Grinch"; most of them made theirs the "Kind Grinch".  I had cut out the shapes so they had to glue them on then make a face.

Then we continued our reading.  We reviewed the Grinch at the beginning of the story.  After I read it all we then made a new chart about how he was at the end of the story.  I got this idea from someone on Pinterest (Loveee that site) but it was for a first grade class.  It was easy to adapt to my little ones.  Surely they are not reading what I write but I'm modeling writing and we're working together to use our knowledge to complete a task.  I was pretty impressed with the words they were able to use.  I threw in a few of my own and gave them the meaning but most of them had heard those words used before.

Next week, before we go on break I am planning on making "Grinch Punch".  it is green sorbet and Sprite.

Gingerbread Boy/ Girl craft

We made our own Gingerbread Friends.  I cut out a template to trace on cardstock then I traced the outline on white construction paper.  During centers each student painted theirs in (practicing staying inside the lines).  When they were dry My T.A. and I cut them out.  The next day we used foam shapes to add 2 eyes and 3 buttons.  I encouraged student to macth their eyes and make a pattern with their buttons (after the 3 were glued down, I would ask them what button would come next).
We decided he also needed icing but we couldn't use real icing so I made the mixture I used with "It looked like Spilt Milk". Equal parts glue and shaving cream.  I added red paint to one and green paint to another.  I put the "icing" into zip-lock bags and cut one of the bottom corners very slightly.  I then used it like a real baker's icing piping bag to "decorate the cookie".  I was able to have a few students do their own but it got pretty messy so I did the rest.  it dries puffy and looks like real icing!

Have you seen our Gingerbread Friend?

December is already here! We have been reading various versions of "The Gingerbread Man" in our classroom.  We compared and contrasted the different versions and we practiced retelling the story.  We made our own Gingerbread "friend" together as a class.  I had cut out the "cookie" then invited each student to decorate him. He needed eyes, a nose, a mouth then buttons and "icing". Here he is:

We put him on a cookie sheet and into our dramatic play kitchen's oven.  We shut the oven door then went about our morning.  We took a walk to see if the playground had any puddles- to see if we would have recess or not that day (really just a reason to get out of the classroom so my T.A. could hide him). When we came back in we noticed he was gone!

We gathered on our carpet and i introduced this poem, which has been hanging up all week.

Where is my gingerbread man?
Oh where, oh where is my Gingerbread Man?
Oh where, oh where can he be?
He popped out the oven and ran out the door.
Oh where, oh where can he be?

We then made our Plan of Action!  We made a list of places he could have gone to.  I directed this more to places in our school.  Some suggestions were the zoo and a sudent's house.  I listed them on chart paper for some shared writing.  We decided to put either a happy face if he was there or a sad face if he wasn't.  As you can see, some students had a hard time doing these.  I had 3 students "draw pictures" of what he looked like so we could show people in our school. We put them on clipboards and they carried them around with them.  I also gave 3 students a magnifying glass to use on our walk. 

We went out on our walk and I brought the chart paper.  After we "looked" in each place I had a different student make the sad face until we finally found him in the cafeteria!  An email was sent around that PreK wouldbe "looking for their gingerbread man" so other teachers volunteered to let us look in their room.  This was a great collaboration activity.  As we walked by different classes or teachers they asked my students if we had found him yet and realy helped play it up. It was such a great activity. We are now building him a Gingerbread House to trap him in that we will keep in our room all month. (in referenece to Jan Brett's Gingerbread Baby).

Shape turkeys

With Thanksgiving just around the corner we have been talking about Turkeys and the letter T.  To review shapes we made "Shape Turkeys".  Here are some I hung outside our room in the hall.  The students chose to make a turkey made out of either circles, triangles or rectangles which I cut out before hand.  I had them draw legs and add eyes, a beak and a heart for the wattle. I think they came out great!  This was a great idea I found off of my favorite site "Pinterest!"

Chicka Chick Boom Boom...

"Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Will There be Enough Room... For Letter ___?"

Each week we say this chant when we talk about our letter of the week.  I made colorful "coconuts" with the capital and lower case letter on it using the Century Gothic font in Word.  When we are done learning the letter at the end of the week, we all say "Bye Letter __" and then add the coconut to the tree.  It is a great visual to use for review also.

Using our Journals

Good afternoon... The week is flying by, Firday is finally here!
Each week we learn a letter and on Friday during our "Letter time" we sing our song from the AlphaFriends and use our "journals".  I have the Letter song typed up and everytime the focus letter is used in the song I put it in bold.  The students sit on the rug and have their journals with them.  I pass out colored pencils and tell them to circle the Letter everytime they see it.  When they are done they need to practice the letter on the bottom of the page.  We preset this by doing it as a whole class usually the day before on the song that I write on chart paper and laminate.
Here are some examples of the journals

Here is the song on chart paper.  For this I have each student take a turn to come up and circle the letter.  As the year moves on I have the students trace over the letter.



Sometimes it looked like Spilt Milk

We are learning about our Five Senses!  We read the story It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw.  We got our hands messy and made our own clouds!  I made a mixture of equal parts shaving cream and glue and the kiddos used their hands to make their own clouds. We talked about how it felt.  We also talked about how they all looked different and how we use our eyes to see.  After they were done I had them fill in the sentence for thir cloud, " Sometimes it looked like ______ said _____". After I made a bulletin board with our clouds.  They are so neat, they dry puffy.

S is for Snake

We learn a new letter each week.  So far we have learned the letters A, F, L and P.  This week we are learning about the letter S.  Each week we have a craft to go along with that letter.  here is the Snake.  I also have them fill in the letter for the sentence, "___ is for ___nake".

The teacher samples for the rest of the letters are next.  I had already sent them home before taking pictures. I used the sentences on some and others were just crafts.

A is for Alligator and acorn.

F is for fire truck, perfect for fire safety.

L is for Leaves

P is for Pizza

I will post other pictures of letters as we learn them :)

Fall and leaves!

I brought in a bunch of leaves from my yard. We sorted the leaves by color then I put them in a pile and introduced the graph. I called each student up to pick a leaf then they had to tell me the color then place it on the graph. This was a great whole group activity. I teach in an inner city school so there is a limited access for these children to nature so they thought it was so neat I had all these leaves... Little do they know I have a yard full of them times a million! ( I live in a suburb 20 min away)

Happy Fall!

Apple fun

I printed 3 of these mats off from www.childcarelearning.com then colored them in to make a red apple tree,yellow apple tree and a green apple tree to go along with our taste test. The students have been working hard to roll the play dough into small "apples".
I also have a math apple tree where they count the apples to match the number on the trunk of the tree. The apples are Pom poms. (will post picture later)

Which apple do you LIKE best?

We are learning the sight word "like" and about apples. We did a taste test of a red apple, a yellow apple and a green apple then each student chose which on they liked best. We made a graph and talked about which one we liked MOST and LEAST. Each student then decorated an apple with tissue paper corresponding to the color apple they liked best. Each student also did an "apple print" with that color as well. I put them together onto the large bulletin board in our room.

We would help the Little Red Hen

In Our class we read several versions of The Little Red Hen and retold the story each time we read one. We talked about how each version was similar and how they were different. Each time we would talk about helping others. We watched a video on YouTube of a cartoon version as well. We finished up with a cute craft activity which was about gluing different shapes together to make a little red hen.

Classroom is almost ready!

School starts on Tuesday and I have been hard at work preparing for the kiddos. I put in a lot of hard work, developing a new behavior plan for my students because my frogs on the lily pad (similar to the stop light) wasn't that helpful last year. I wanted to be able to recognize those students who were always doing the right thing or going above and beyond. I did a lot of research and found a few clip charts I liked so I adapted one to fit with my ocean theme classroom. I wrote a letter home explaining it and formatted a behavior tracking calendar to send home each night also.
I also have a whole class incentive to work on getting compliments daily when we are walking in the halls of the school.

I like to match!

Last school year I had a different color caddy for each table that would hold enough pencils,crayons and colored pencils for those at that table. It made it easy to refer to that table, "blue table please line up". I was out shopping with Ms.K (check out her blog!) and found these matching shovel and pails at Michaels! They were a steal on clearance for $1 but with your teacher discount you save an additional 15% off of that! I love a great bargain!
I plan on using these pails as "scrap buckets" for each table to make cleaning up a whole lot easier when we're cutting things. I got that idea from a pin I came across on www.pinterest.com

www.michaels.com

Shopping!

I ventured out shopping this week with a couple good friends and made stops at The Dollar Tree, Target, Wal-Mart and Office Max and Party City. I was so excited to find some really cute items for my OCEAN themed classroom. I created a new behavior plan based off of one I found on a great blog (will post later) so I had to come up with cute names for it. last year I had 2 lily pads and a puddle of mud and each student had their own "frog" and it acted very similar to the stop light that many other teachers use. This year I will have all my students start out on "Right on Rainbow Fish" and to go along with that, I found a cute TY Beanie buddy (slightly larger than a beanie baby)in a picture below.
I also found cute borders for my bulletin boards at The Dollar Tree and Wal-Mart.
At Party City, I found cute shovel and pale decorations that I will use to keep track of my centers. I found the cute purple whales that will have each student's name on it and a dot of velcro on the back to put on the shovel and pale that corresponds to the center they choose (I have a limit of 3 students per center) I will need to create new center logos to fit but that's no big deal.
The last good find was from Target and it's a bulletin board backdrop that looks like the ocean. I love it! Not sure what to use it as yet...suggestions are welcome!

*As I have mentioned before, this is my first blog hence the pictures are out of order, not sure how to fix that yet

Jumping right in!

This is my first blog and I am very excited. I am a teacher and with my first real summer off I have decided to make the most of it and "get the ball rolling" on next year. I was offered this job 10 days before school started last year so I did not have much prep time needless to say.
Last year I just "dove" right in and went along with the curriculum and the calendar and planned as I went. This year I have much more time and know what works well and what needs to be changed. I have decided to go with an OCEAN theme. I have already gone out shopping and got some cute things...pictures will follow! I have been busy looking on Pinterest and have found many other blogs from other teachers with similar themes. The one thing I love about being a teacher is I get to be as creative as I want to be along with finding other great ideas from other teachers online because one of my professors in college used to always say, "Why Re-invent the wheel?".