new tooth activity

My post about my dental health activities at preschool is my most popular post.  I even see my photos every once in awhile on pinterest from people I follow who pinned it from someone else.  It's kinda cool like that.  So this year for dentist day, I used my old lessons and pretty much did the same thing.  The craft was new though so I thought I share that.

My little friends were given a colored copy of this mouth.  They could have colored the lips, but ours were already colored.  They used real toothpaste to brush the teeth.  Some were sloppy and glopped it around, others were so carefully to brush each bit.   It smelled minty fresh in the craft room!

Again, here's my previous post on dentist day.

D journal page

D week wasn't anything new (dinosaurs), but here's the D journal page. 

______'s dog is __________.  I had intended to make it dinosaurs, but couldn't find any dinosaur stickers.

Some kids had me write what their dog was doing,

others described their dog or named it.

In other news, the lightbox is back.  it was sadly broken a week after school started.  I might have shed a tear.  A little friend in the class after mine shattered it.  Thankfully she wasn't hurt.  I had Lou sit on it to test it out and nothing happened.  She must have leaned in just the right spot.  I will be keeping it in the cabinet when our class is over!

Chinese New Year Dragon puppets

I saw these cute Chinese new years dragon puppets coming out of Bee's school this week.  It wasn't Bee's class, but I got a few pictures of a friend's. 

The kids were all asked to bring in a tall ladies sock, the more colorful the better.  The puppets are then made with folded paper plates. It looks like the kids colored them with crayons and then the socks were hot glued onto the plates.  

It appears that there were different option for eyes, nose, and teeth.  I like the pink eyed one the best.   I thought they were super cute and plan to keep this idea in mind when I teach a lower grade again. 

Dd dinosaur day- preschool style

Dinosaur day may be my favorite.  I think I said that about apples.  I mean it this time.  I love dinosaurs. Here's the letter D craft.  This one is Lous. D is for dinosaur.

We had so much to do today that I didn't even read any of the many many dino books that I brought in.  We looked at some pictures from nonfiction books, I'm going to let that count for reading a book

.   During arrival time and at a few other points in the day, I pulled a few kids aside and had them complete a page with a sticker to go in a little book.  The page reads, "_______'s dinosaur is ________."  They wrote things like that their dinosaur was 'eating grass'  or 'racing up a hill' or 'standing by hot lava.'  I've had the stickers for years (surprisingly they are still sticky) but think they came from one of those large sticker books that Aldis sometimes carries.

It was Dd week, so we added stickers to our Dd page to add to our alphabet book.

Wednesday is math day, so we try to included mostly math related activities.   We talked briefly how dinosaurs were egg layers.  For this activity each child had a sheet with 20 labeled dinosaur eggs.  Each child had a little baggie with more than enough little dinosaurs.  We rolled the dice together and then pretended that those eggs had hatched.  We rolled 6, six eggs had hatched, so we added little dinosaurs onto of the eggs. We continued until all the eggs hatched.  I've had those little green dinos for years as well.  The sheets were ones I made up in Word.  The dice is new- it's from the teachers store. The sides are clear and changeable.  I'm in love with it.

Then we made a graph.  Each kiddo got to roll the dice and pick the card showing what they rolled.  We used those to make a graph.  I asked lots of questions about the graph we made.  How many purples did we roll? What dinosaur did we roll the least times?  How many yellow and green did we roll together?   Did we roll more blue or more purple?  Are there any that we rolled the same number?   The dinosaurs for the graph are available here at KS1 Math.

I had these numbered dinosaurs for an ordering activity but instead used them to help guide us through the next activity. 

Each child was given a blank dinosaur and a baggie of clothes pins.  The pins were numbered 1-10.  The kids added them to their dino in numerical order.  I told them today that they could work ahead if they thought they could.  I noticed a few kids did it super fast and accurately.  I'm going to have to think about ways to extend my math for those kids.  A few got stuck in the 7-9 area.  That tricky 9 looks like 6 a lot.  Of course there were a few also who did get past 3 without help. After the fast ones were done, they disassembled their dino and went to the tables for paperwork.

Here are some other dinosaur things:  

Making dinosaur track art and plaster or paris fossils

dental health

I'm pretty sure that Dental health month is in February, but we are just getting to it as part of a larger community helpers unit.  Today's theme was technically dentist.  There are lots of pictures from today.  It feels like we did a ton.  (new addition at the bottom- 5/2013)

Here are the books I read.  Max Goes to the Dentist by  Adria F. Klein  and Clarabella's Teeth by An Vrombaut.  The Max book was a good follow up to our special guest today and the Clarabella book was just a short cute book about an crocodile who spends all day brushing since she has a tiny brush.

Our craft was a gluing activity.   The kids glued paper squares for teeth onto a printed mouth sheet.  I don't get to choose the crafts, we all do the same thing.  I do miss planning the crafts but I don't miss preparing all the pieces.

I didn't prepare this, so I'm not sure where he image of the mouth came from, but you could probably google image something and find a similar mouth. 

We had a guest speaker today.  It was actually the first thing we did for the day.  My dentist came in to speak. He's very good with the kids and was happy to come in.  He's younger than I am, but it's cool.

We did a sorting activity.  I found all these pictures in just a small stack of magazines I borrowed from the paper recycling center. The little sad tooth says, "Sad tooth, sad tooth, full of tooth decay.  Sweets and soda pop made me this way."   The happy tooth says, "Happy tooth, happy tooth shiny and bright, brushing keeps me healthy and white."

Bee gave it a test run at home.  I laminated all the cutouts and they worked pretty well. 

We talked about cavities.  This apple showed how a little hole in your teeth can get pretty yucky inside.  I only left this out 1 night, I probably should have cut it out two or more days before so it would be super gross.

Here was our snack, which we recreated for a snack at home.  It's two apple slices with a layer of peanut butter in between.  Mini marshmallows make the teeth. 

I boiled an egg in tea and stained it brown.  I showed the kids a white egg and the brown egg.   We took turns brushing the dirty egg (like a dirty tooth) with real toothpaste.  During each friends turn, we sang:

Brush, brush, brush your teeth

at least 2 times a day

cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, 

fighting tooth decay.

This picture is us trying it at home in advance.  It really does come clean.  mostly anyway.  When we did it in class, I put the egg in a small bowl and place it on a tray.  I also had a damp rag on the tray so the kids could wipe off their fingers. 

We also talked about flossing.  I saw this activity somewhere years ago when I taught 2nd grade.  The play dough represents food and gunk that gets in between your teeth.  The yarn is the floss.  You use the yarn just like floss and easily get out the food.  The kids asked for this to be out after snack time and they took turns flossing and resetting.

 I'm sure I saw this counting activity somewhere online or I adapted it from another idea.  I made up a paper mouth with marks for the teeth.  We rolled the dice and added that many teeth.  First I just made up one set, then I decided to make one for everybody.

For the circle marks, I stamped a marker lid in some black ink.  The teeth are mini marshmallows.  These are the same marshmallows from a snow project so we had a good talk about not eating them.

The last four pictures are activities from Musings of me.   They are activities that I set out after snack.   We aren't into the tooth fairy, so I downplayed that part and worked around it.

We have another guest next week for firefighter week.  Should be another fun one. 

addition 5/2013
Here's this years dental craft:

I am linking up to some of these fine kiddo related parties:

Wednesday's A story + art = A Great stART  @ A Mommy's adventures,   Wednesday's Kids Get Crafty @ Red Teg Art's Blog, Tuesday's Show and Tell blog hop ad ABC and 123,  Tot Tuesdays at Delicious Ambiguity,  For the Kids Fridays @ Sun Scholars

dog math

Here's another math lesson from this week. This one was for Lou (preschool). I could have used it with the two young girls, but they showed little interest in dog math. First, I read him this poem.

Dog Tales

Two dogs at the park bench
Three more dogs came by
They sniff and they yip
but they act rather shy.

Four dogs by the oak tree
two dogs came along
A few quiet growls
but nothing goes wrong.

Three dogs on a leash
Four dogs on their own
They're playing and nipping
and sharing a bone.

Two dogs greet two dogs
with a high happy bark
a treat for a dog is a walk in the park.

Then I showed him these colored dog pictures. We read the poem again and used the little dogs to 'act' out the little stories. He liked to chose one color or size of dogs for the first part and a different color for the second part.

I had some blank dog paper, so wrote out the number sentences as we acted them out. This was of course, a very basic introduction to number sentences. I also had Lou sort the dogs according to size and color. You could easily make a set up using clip art.

Here are some other papers I had in the dog math file folder. I am thinking I used this with kindergartners. I taught one semester of kindergarten when I graduated, right before I got my job with second and third graders.


If I had used this with the two older girls (kindergarten and first grade) I would have made up some additional problem solving featuring dogs and encouraged them to create some of their own. We certainly could have taken this over to language arts working on the -og word family and reading a story about dogs.

Some other ideas to go with the whole dog theme:
Act out opposites with the little dog pictures, "the dog is on the table, the dog is off the table."
Make a graph showing several peoples favorite kind of dog
Make a list of things you need for a dog (practicing brainstorming)
Put that list of things in ABC order
Read to the therapy dog at the library (how cool is that!)
Play the dog game, 'Walk the Dog" We love this game, it's from Simply Fun.
Make a matching game with the same dog pictures
Read dog books, like Clifford or Biscuit
Make dog bone pretzels

domino math

This is one of my favorite math activities. It's a really good one for working on number sentences. Bee is really coming along with her math work, but while working on this, I realized that she was really missing some number sentence basics.

So at some point, I made all these large dominoes. We also used pages I had made up years ago to record our number sentences. They drew their domino dots in the boxes and then wrote out a number sentence to show the addition of the two sides.

The oldest friend used the double 16 set for her sentences.

The two younger girls used the paper set I had made. Lou just drew on the dots on his page and counted the dots. He says he is very good at drawing circles.

Immediately following our math lesson, we had a pretty good domino run on the kitchen floor. Maybe sometime we'll learn the game Mexican Train. My grandma taught me that one.

When I used this in the classroom, I've had students make up a math games using dominoes and let them work in partners. They have come up with some really creative games. You could also make some problem solving stories using dominoes. I suppose you could use them to help make multiplication number sentences too, although it lends itself best to addition.

speaking of bones

Mr. Bones two days ago reminded me that we had another bone thing to share. When Bee was the leader for preschool recently and the letter of the week was Dd, we made and brought in dinosaur bones. The kids called them dog bones, but either way it started with Dd. We used our soft pretzel recipe and just made them in the shape of bones. We served them up with some dddd dip too. I just mixed up some sour cream and cream cheese and shredded cheddar with a splash of Worcestershire sauce. It wasn't bad, but a few kids didn't want to eat it. One kid even swore he was allergy to such dip and might get rashes. I've heard of that before... at my own home... it usually involves spinach.

The bath makes them look pretty sloppy, but is necessary. I tried it once without and they were not nearly as pretzel like.



Pretzels
Dissolve:
2 ¼ t yeast
1 ½ c warm water
add:
2 T brown sugar
1 1/8 t salt
1 c bread flour
3 c flour
Knead well. Let rise 1 hour.
knead again. Divide and shape 12 large pretzels. Before placing on baking sheet, dip in bath.
Bath:
2 c warm water
2 T bkg soda
Rise 20 min. Bake 450° @8 min.
Butter and salt (kosher) tops if desired 

When it's the kids leader day, the parent stays and brings snack. I was surprised when the director said we could bring homemade treats, I think most places ask for store bought goodies now. The kids made a cute Dd doughnut paintings and wore hats from krispy kream. Nice and healthy. Here's Bee's doughnut, already safely inside a clear page protector and in her binder. The sprinkles don't stay on well and the kids kept eating them off the floor.


Lou got to stay and he just went along and did everything the big kids did. I was pleasantly surprised since he is so shy. Next month Bee is leader on Hh day. She wants to make hands. I have an idea.

Dinosaur Art for Lou's room

Lou wanted a dinosaur bedroom. I used to teach an awesome unit on dinosaurs so I had lots of posters, books, toys, models, etc. I thought it would be fun to incorporate these into his room. One of the cool things I had in a model of a t-rex tooth and one of a claw. I found a cool way to display them on the wall. I also used the same method to display the dinosaur fossils that we made during our dinosaur day a few months ago.



























First, I dug through the box of frames that haven't found their new home yet. Then I went to the stand by, modge podge and gave the cardboard a thin layer.

















I laid some fabric (an old cloth shower curtain) right on top and smoothed it out.




Then I trimmed it up and slid it into the frame. I didn't even wait for it to dry.


I think the wet spot from the modge podge should dry out fine.




I used the other old stand by, hot glue, and attached the models and two little labels.