whats on the table- preschool in the winter

Here are a few things out on the tables for our morning table activities.  I've got a little something on the light box, but apparently have taken no photos.

I printed these out last year, from 1+1+1=1. I printed out the black and white and color version.  The kids seem to like both equally.

These little cupcake toppers were found on clearance somewhere last year. Instead of foam, we are using gingerbread playdough.  The kids have been making a lot of birthday cakes with it.

The idea for these snowflake counting cards came from Preschool Alphabet.  I just printed off a snowman clipart I found online and added a cut out paper number.

The snowflakes are noodles that I colored white with some paint and rubbing alcohol mix.  There's glitter in there too, but it really didn't have the result I was looking for.

This winter card with matching picture cards is just a little something I made up using clipart online.

We have set out several copies of this little snowman book.  I'll have to double check where I found this online.  Only a few students choose to color and work on these.

I added a little to the winter sensory bin from last year.  I'm pretty sure that's a puffin in the box, but no one seems to care.

Last year I said that the kids weren't that interested in this sensory tub.  This years classes seem to like it just fine.  Someone has even been biting the foam snowballs.  I wish I could catch my sneaky biter. 

This is my favorite snowflake table activity.  I like it more than any of the students do.  It's pictures of real snowflakes.  Kiddos can use a magnifying glass to help them match them.  I made this set, but stole the idea from My Montessori Journey.   All the photos are from this snowflake and snow crystal photo gallery website. 

I put the farm set out and the kids are practically fighting to play with it.  Thankfully, Lou, is alright with me taking his old toys into school.  Last year I had to beg and sometimes sneak them.  I even had to on occasion rent them for $1. 

scarecrows -preschool style

I've been sporadic with posting school plans from this year.  I'm really gathering and reusing things from they past two years as most of the themes are repeats.  It's been a real time saver.  Instead of spending 4+ hours on a lesson, I'm spending 30 -60 minutes.  Which is great since Bee and Lou's homework has tripled!

This scarecrow theme was new to me though, so there was a bit of planning involved.  Here's what I did.

First I introduced the friends to my scarecrow. I used a home decor sort of guy from my house.  The photo above is just one for the flannel board I had in my files.  I Didn't really do anything with him.  I had my real scarecrow sing this little song (which I might add that the parent helper for that day video taped my whole lesson.  I did more singing than normal-  great footage for them.  If you like that kind of singing.... the off key kind)

Scarecrow (I'm a little teapot)

I'm a little scarecrow

stuffed with hay

Standing watch in my field all day.

When I see a crow

I like to shout

Hey Mr. Crow, you'd better watch out. 

Then, we acted like scarecrows.  I sang (more great footage for my leader parent) this little song and we acted out the song while being scarecrows with stiff bodies. 

Scarecrow, scarecrow (twinkle, twinkle)

Scarecrow, Scarecrow turn around,

scarecrow, scarecrow touch the ground.

Stand up tall and blink your eyes,

Raise your hands up to the sky.

Clap your hands and tap your knees,

Turn around and tap your feet.

Scarecrow, Scarecrow touch your toes,

scarecrow, scarecrow tap your nose.

Swing your arms so very slow,

Now real fast to scare the crows.

Touch your head, jump up and down.

Now sit down without a sound.

 I read this fun book, which was new to me. It's The Scarecrow's Hat by Ken Brown.  It was perfect for this day.  It's a sweet chain of events type of story with the chicken facilitating some trading of much needed items for some other farm animals.

We used pieces from the story as I read it to keep track of the characters and props involved.  I gave each child a different piece or character.  I had planned on using them for retelling too, but we really got them all confused on the felt board as they brought them up through the story.  I just gathered the props- a hat, a stick, a ribbon, glasses, a blanket, some wool, and a feather and printed out pictures of the characters- chicken, donkey, owl, sheep, scarecrow, duck, badger, and crow and attached velcro to the back of everything.

We did this little counting rhyme next:

We used these little scarecrows.  Theses were found searching a google image of 'scarecrow black and white clipart.'  I printed them out and colored them before laminating.

I thought this would be my favorite part, but the kids went silly on me and couldn't really follow along.  I shouldn't say that; a few friends followed along. 

I gave them each a sheet of paper with a scarecrow on it.  There was plenty of white space for 5 black paper crows.   The little song went something like this: (to which the kids were supposed to remove a crow when prompted in the song.)

5  black crows  (5 green and speckled frogs)

5 black and shiny crows

Sat on the scarecrows back,

eating some most delicious corn.  Yum, Yum. 

Scarecrow winked and shouted "Boo".

Scared one crow and away he flew.  

Now there are 4 black shiny crows.

 So several of the kids seemed to be in their own world and were removing the crows at will and not following along with the song.  Anyway, we'll keep practicing projects like that. 

Now is when there was knock on the door and hubby was there with these:

It was our anniversary!  13 years.  Good grief, that makes me old!

My own kids sent along these with hubby:

Back to school.  I had this book as my extra.  It was cute too and might be something I work in more next time.   

 The craft we did was from Parents.   

Here's another cute craft we did the next day (corn day- my partners turn to teach).  The kids dipped a pencil eraser in colored inks to stamp Indian corn.

My teaching partner and I really have been wanting to take a nice nature walk, but the area where we've gone in the past got really overgrown over the summer and hasn't been cut for us.  We keep asking, but it seems low on the priority list.

May there always be sunshine

When I student taught, my supervising teacher told me that I needed to learn to beg, borrow, and steal.  So this idea comes from one of Lou's teachers and I stole it.  I think all the other girls have used it too.  It's well stolen now.  I'm just following some good advice.

It's based on Jim Gill's book and song, May There Always Be Sunshine.  After I read/sang the book, the kids sang/read it with me.  Then we talked about what they would like there to always be.  I wrote it down and sent them with their page to work around the room.  They spent several minutes working and then returned their page to me.  I just love how independent they are!

They came up with some good things! This was such a fun class book. 

I read/sang it to them and they joined me the second time.  

Throughout the day and rest of the week, they asked for us to all sing it again several more times.

Love this tiger!

It was a short day because we had a special group come in for a program.  I only needed a short circle time activity and a  game for later.  We played this "I Have, Who Had?" with capital letters.  It's from Teachers Pay Teachers, from Julia Powell.  It took the kids a few minutes to catch on, but they did get it and we've played it again since. 

I had to white-out some of the curly-ness on some of the letters so that the letters were recognizable. 

Ss spider day- preschool style

I used to have a tarantula.  It was a classroom pet.  He was neat to have, but I miss him so seldom.  I did miss him on spider day.  He would have been really fun to bring in.  The kids would have been floored!   I gave him to my old classroom assistant when I had Bee.  She came to me a few years later and told me to sit down, that she had some difficult news.  Ross (formerly known as Rosie) had died.  I was clearly not as torn up about it as she had been.  I'm unattached like that to spiders, even pet spiders.  

Anyway, we had fun on spider day.  Creepy creepy fun.  It's funny, some days I don't even get one story read to the class, most days I have time for one really good one, spider day I read four.  Here are the four I read, Spiders by Seymour Simon, The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle, Diary of a Spider by Doreen Corin, and Itsy Bitsy, The Smart Spider by Charise Mericle.

I started with The Very Busy Spider.  I had scanned the animals in the story and printed them out so we could talk about the 'characters' as we read the story.  I used the word 'characters' a lot as we were adding them to the flannel board.  At the end, we used the character pictures to do some simple retelling.  This is a simple book with some repetitive lines, but I could pass up the opportunity to use it for work on characters and the retelling.

I also made up a set of little pictures for the story sticks, but we just used those at home.  I didn't have time to make a class set. I picked up the book the day before at Kohls.  It was part of their $5 Kohls Cares books.  Unfortunately, the stuffed animal that went with it was the sheep and not the spider.

Then we referred to several non-fictions for the photograph pictures.  As I showed the photos, we talked about some spider facts, spider body info, etc and worked on labeling this drawing of a spider.  

Later, I read Itsy Bitsy, The Smart Spider.  This book was so funny.  It was one I'll keep my eyes out for at book sales.  Then we worked on some rhyming matching with these spiders and webs. 

The pictures on the spiders are the same ones I used in this ladybug lesson.  They are from an old Mailbox magazine, but I've seen some color sets on pinterest, like this small set from Lawteedah, and this set from A Teeny Tiny Teacher which you can get free on her Teachers Pay Teachers site.  

 

 I passed out the spiders to the kiddos and laid all of the webs on the rug.  The kids took turns and found the web for their spider.   I made the spiders from two different sized black circle and black yard legs.  It's all laminated to keep it nice.  I was too lazy to go dig up some clear tape or a glue stick, so the pieces are taped together with green painters tape.  It was handy. 

Here was the craft.  Small black paper plates were slit along the edges and the kids wove white yarn around it make a web.  About half way through the wrapping and weaving, they strung on a black spider ring and then completed the wrapping. 

At the end of the day I had time for one last activity.  I had quickly made this web out of a piece of black felt and some white thread.  I zig zagged the lines using my sewing machine. 

I passed out these lovely toy spiders.  I have seen similar ones at the dollar store.  These are from the teacher store and were part of a math story problem pack that I used to use at Halloween time when I taught 2nd and 3rd grade.  First, I had the kid locate all of the body parts we had discussed; the head, the abdomen, the 8 legs, the multiple (usually 8), the pedipalps, the jaws and the spinnerets.

Next, each spider was given a picture card.  The spider was to whisper the word in my little friend's ear.  The spider was hopefully able to whispers it like this... "house, /h/, /h/, /h/, house."   I called out letter separately, saying I wanted to see all of the spiders with Hh /h/, /h/, /h/ words.  They brought them up and placed them on the web.   I went through and said them all aloud with the beginning letter sound and then cleared them off and called another letter.

These picture cards are from The Polka Dot Patch.  She only had 7 beginning letters on this particular printable but I suspect if I dug around a little more on her blog, I bet there are others.

Next time, I'm going to find a spider to bring in!  I might have to pickle it like I did the octopus!

Ss stone soup- preschool style

I ended up teaching an extra day this week, sort of last minute. Thankfully there are so many great choices for the letter Ss. I was thinking sharks, but ended up going with stone soup and making a math sandwich. Mostly, because I had the book on hand and all the supplies I needed. Sometimes that trumps all. 

This is the book that we had at our house growing up. I always thought the old lady in the story looked like a witch, but she's just a nice old lady... in scary clothes. 

Any version of Stone Soup would work for this activity. It's simple, just a retelling. I'm trying to keep things a little more simple, as those days seem to be our more enjoyable days at preschool. 

I had most of the ingredients from the story already, but needed up make up the felt carrots, onions and beef bones.  I passed out one item to each child and as I read the story they listened for their item and added it to the pot.  You could have more stirrers or stones to have enough items for each child.   I had planned some additional retelling after we were done, but time-wise /attention-wise, we needed to move on.  That usually trumps all.

 Then, to go with our soup, we made a sandwich.  There were enough ingredients for each child to add one.  I passed out the pieces and we rolled the dice.  They had to watch for their number to know when to add it to the sandwich.   (oops, it got a little wet on the way home)  I specifically gave each child an ingredient for a number they needed to work on.  I love having the data from our assessments to work with.  I'll have to share more about that some time.

I laid out the bread and then when a 5 was rolled, the mustard was added. 

We kept rolling and adding ingredients. 

When we had all the  sandwich parts added, I topped it off with the top bread and each child took a pretend bite before going to their seats to do paperwork.   Except, one friend took a real bite.  There's always one.

Here was the craft for the day, star stickers on the letter S. 

Easy peasy, simple day.  Love it!