little illuminations

THE HEART PROJECT

2012-02-01T05:00:00.000-05:00

Drumroll, please!!!!! I'm am thrilled to announce that I am participating in a very exciting venture---The Heart Project. The Heart Project is a collaborative fundraiser headed up by Jamie, from hands on: as we grow. Jamie collected over 100 heart themed craft projects from 70+ bloggers to create a beautiful e-book! This e-book will be available for a $5 donation to the American Heart Association throughout the month of February.

I'm thrilled to share 2 of my projects from little illuminations!

Love Bugs Heart Magnets

From now until Valentine's Day, there will be a giveaway each day (some days there will be multiple giveaways) leading up to the the final giveaway on Valentine's Day of a soft bound "hard" copy of the e-book.You are not required to donate in order to enter any of the giveaways. We're just trying to raise awareness for The American Heart Association.
Here's a little sneak peek of a few pages:

I'll be hosting a giveaway for a Melissa and Doug Trunki here on little illuminations on February 8th and a giveaway for the e-book on February 13!!!!!! Don't miss it!!!!

Donate $5 to the American Heart Association and receive the e-book as a thank you gift!

Bonus! For each e-book gift, Craftprojectideas.com will donate $1 on your behalf! Please be sure to stop by and *like* the Craftprojectideas.com Facebook page and say THANK YOU! We are thrilled they are so generously supporting this project!

A full color, soft bound "hard" copy of the e-book may be purchased online here for $20:

US $20.00

Order the Printed Version

If you'd simply like to make a donation to the American Heart Association,without getting the e-book gift you may click below. No donation is too big or too small---every little bit helps!

Look for these great giveaways from my bloggy buddies!

1. February 01: Dilly-Dali Art [ends 2/8]
2. February 01: Ready. Set. Read!
3. February 01: The Preschool Toolbox
4. February 01: Toddler Approved
5. February 02: Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas
6. February 03: Putti Prapancha [ends 2/9]
7. February 03: The Golden Gleam [ends 2/9]
8. February 04: Share & Remember [ends 2/10]
9. February 05: FUDOO BOARDS GIVEAWAY! at hands on : as we grow, Heart Journey [ends 2/12]
10. February 06: Broken Treasures
11. February 07: Sense of Wonder
12. February 07: The Craft Barn
13. February 08: MELISSA & DOUG GIVEAWAY! at hands on : as we grow, The SEEDS Network, Little Illuminations, Toddler Approved, Putti Prapancha, Share & Remember [ends 2/15]
14. February 09: Teach Preschool
15. February 10: Among Many Blessings
16. February 11: CRAFTPROJECTIDEAS. COM GIVEAWAY @ hands on : as we grow [ends 2/18]
17. February 11: Kreative Resources
18. February 12: Carrie Saindons Photo Journey
19. February 13: Little Illuminations
20. February 14: GRAND PRIZE GIVEAWAY: Printed "The Heart Book" at hands on : as we grow, The SEEDS Network[ends 2/21]

February 01: Dilly-Dali Art [ends 2/8]

February 01: Ready. Set. Read!

February 01: The Preschool Toolbox

February 01: Toddler Approved

February 02: Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas

February 03: Putti Prapancha [ends 2/9]

February 03: The Golden Gleam [ends 2/9]

February 04: Share & Remember [ends 2/10]

February 05: FUDOO BOARDS GIVEAWAY! at hands on : as we grow, Heart Journey [ends 2/12]

10.

February 06: Broken Treasures

11.

February 07: Sense of Wonder

12.

February 07: The Craft Barn

13.

February 08: MELISSA & DOUG GIVEAWAY! at hands on : as we grow, The SEEDS Network, Little Illuminations, Toddler Approved, Putti Prapancha, Share & Remember [ends 2/15]

14.

February 09: Teach Preschool

15.

February 10: Among Many Blessings

16.

February 11: CRAFTPROJECTIDEAS. COM GIVEAWAY @ hands on : as we grow [ends 2/18]

17.

February 11: Kreative Resources

18.

February 12: Carrie Saindons Photo Journey

19.

February 13: Little Illuminations

20.

February 14: GRAND PRIZE GIVEAWAY: Printed "The Heart Book" at hands on : as we grow, The SEEDS Network[ends 2/21]

We'll also be hosting several auctions of Melissa and Doug and Fudoo Boards products:

Fundraiser Auctions:

♥ All proceeds of each auction will go to the AHA ♥

Melissa & Doug - 4 Trunki with Teddy Bear Auctions!

Fudoo Boards - 3 Fudoo Board Kits for Auction!

Fudoo Board Kit, ends Feb 10
Fudoo Board Kit, ends Feb 10
Fudoo Board Kit, ends Feb 10

The wonderful bloggers participating in The Heart Project are:

hands on : as we grow	♥	A Little Learning for Two	♥	Among Many Blessings
Angelique Felix	♥	At Home with Ali	♥	Broken Treasures
Busy at Home	♥	Busy Kids Happy Mom	♥	Carrie Saindon's Photo Journey
Child Central Station	♥	Classified: Mom	♥	Classroom Magic
Creative with Kids	♥	Creativity My Passion	♥	Critters and Crayons
De Tout et de Rien	♥	Dilly-Dali Art	♥	Dinosaurs & Octopuses
Excited 2 Learn	♥	Hand Over the Cookies	♥	Handprint & Footprint Art
Happy Hooligans	♥	Heart Journey	♥	Imagination Soup
Jamie's Jumble	♥	Kitchen Counter Chronicles	♥	Kreative Resources
Let Kids Create	♥	Little Illuminationss	♥	Living Montessori Now
Loudness of the Lambs	♥	Love and Lollipops	♥	Mama, hocemo nesto da pravimo
Mama Pea Pod	♥	Mama Smiles	♥	MemeTales
Messy Kids	♥	Mindful Meanderings	♥	Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas
Mommy Labs	♥	Mommy Perks	♥	Mum Paints Lives
Mummy Mummy Mum	♥	My Creative Family	♥	NurtureStore
One Artsy Mama	♥	Peace Love & Rainbows	♥	Play Dr Mom
Putti Prapancha	♥	Rainbows within Reach	♥	Reading Confetti
Ready. Set. Read!	♥	Red Ted Art	♥	Sense of Wonder
Share & Remember	♥	Stacy Molter	♥	Sun Hats & Wellie Boots
Teach Preschool	♥	The Artful Child	♥	The Chocolate Muffin Tree
The Craft Barn	♥	The Educators' Spin on It	♥	The Golden Gleam
The Imagination Tree	♥	The Iowa Farmer's Wife	♥	The Joy of My Life
The Kids Fun Review	♥	The Outlaw Mom Blog	♥	The Preschool Toolbox
The Seeds Network	♥	Toddler Approved

Be sure not to miss any of the fun! Visit these blogs regularly to see all the fun crafts and ideas that are featured in the e-book!

Thank you, Jamie, for putting this all together!

Baby Hawks

2012-01-30T21:08:00.001-05:00

A lot of what I generally post here are the planned activities that we do. Those activities are just a small part of our day. The children have quite a bit of unstructured free time to pretend, explore, create and play. I love to watch as some of these play scenarios unfold. Sometimes they're funny, sometimes enlightening, but usually entertaining, and often mesmerizing and, as in this scenario, simply beautiful. My friends concocted a scenario of being mother hawks teaching their little hawks to fly.

They used a little depression in the ground formed by our storm water erosion as their nest. Mama Hawk told the babies to "get down and stay down" so they don't get eaten. When I asked who was going to eat them, my friend, Hannah replied, "Um, the predators, of course!"

Watching the kids "fly" around the playground, wings outstretched, wind in their "feathers", I was taken by this moment of purity of imagination. If just for the moment, they were completely free!

Thanks for visiting! Leave a little "comment love"~I'd love for you to share your thoughts!

Special Visitors for Pet Week in Pre-K

2012-01-28T18:31:00.001-05:00

We've had some very special visitors in our class for Pet Week. We've been learning about pets and how to take care of them.

We had Alex the Yorkie visit...

And a Yellow Lab, Berkley...

We learned about the tack (or horse supplies) used to take care of a pony...

and got to see and smell the various types of feed that ponies enjoy.

We also met the pony who the tack and feed belonged to! Meet Midknight, the Pony!

Hannah demonstrated how to brush her pony and pick his hooves.

The children each got a turn to come up and pet the pony!

We love our pets! I am so thankful to have wonderful families that took the time to come and share their pets, especially the Marshall family, the Oldham family and the Pace family!

If you's like to read more about our Pet Week activities, check out "Pet Art" and "Pet Week Play in Pre-K"

Thanks for visiting! Leave a little "comment love"~I'd love for you to share your thoughts!

Pet Art in Pre-K

2012-01-27T21:04:00.000-05:00

We made little puppy heads out of triangles this week.

In art center, some of the friends have been drawing their favorite pets.

Some friends have been very creative drawing pets they MIGHT have one day!

I don't know about you, but I've never met anybody who has a stingray as a pet!

One of the "Afterschool kids" that use my classroom left this little owl for me.

This is a pet store. The bottle cap "wall" is "glass, because people want to see the fish, but you don't want the water to get out or they would get all wet"! Makes perfect sense to me!

If you's like to see more of our exciting pet activities, check out yesterday's post: Pet Week in Pre-K. We also had a special pet "Show and Tell"---look for that post later this week!

Thanks for visiting! Leave a little "comment love"~I'd love for you to share your thoughts!

Pet Week Play in Pre-K

2012-01-26T19:59:00.001-05:00

Since we've been learning about pets in our class, we decided to set up a pet shop in our dramatic play center and a veterinarian's office in our science center.

We've had some great play going on in both centers!

The "doctors" are in!

Some of us like to play pretend on a smaller scale.

We have also had a lot of fun with our movement activities, moving like various pets---we even played a partner game in which each partner set was an animal trainer and animal! Seeing these kids doing pet tricks was definitely one of the highlights of my week!

We love the Hap Palmer song, "Sammy", Greg and Steve's "Animal Action" and The Learning Station's "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?"!
(Sorry, a link to The Leaning Station's "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?" was not available on YouTube. I highly recommend checking it out--it includes a variety of pets!)

Thanks for visiting! Leave a little "comment love"~I'd love for you to share your thoughts!

Learning about Penguins in Pre-K

2012-01-25T19:06:00.000-05:00

As part of our "Polar Pal" unit, we did a mini unit on penguins. We learned all about the various types of penguins and the lands they inhabit.

We measured out and colored a life sized Emperor Penguin ...

and then measured ourselves against it.

Of course, we had to include "waddling" as part of our movement activities!

We learned quite a bit about penguin rookeries and how the daddy penguins care for the eggs. We practiced having the mommy penguins pass off the penguin egg to the daddy penguins. We had to remember to only use our feet since penguins don't have "hands". We also had to be careful not to let the egg drop to the freezing snow on the ground so the egg wouldn't freeze. This was much trickier than the children expected!

After the mommy penguins slipped off to find food and swim in the sea,

the daddy penguins had to learn how to stay warm, rotating themselves from the outside to the inside of the huddle. We also practiced waddling as a group, so everyone stayed warm. It was quite a challenge to get everyone moving in the same direction!

Our friend Ms. Christie game us this fabulous cardboard penguin cutout from the movie "Happy Feet". It's been a fun decoration and also helped illustrate how different baby penguins look from fully grown penguins!

(It's hard to tell from this, but it's actually about 2 1/2 feet tall!)

Our "Perky Penguins" have been a bit hit in our school lobby. Be sure to check out "Perky Penguins in Pre-K" to read more about them!

Thanks for visiting! Leave a little "comment love" ~ I'd love for you to share your thoughts! :)

Making Heart Magnets for Valentines Day

2012-01-25T17:47:00.000-05:00

These cute little heart magnets are so easy and fun to make, even for the smallest of hands. They make wonderful little gifts!

We used Crayola® Model Magic® to form the hearts. This dough is so much fun to play with. The best way I can describe the consistency is to liken it to one of those orange circus peanuts--only a little more pliable. It does dry out, but again, like a dried circus peanut. Not like the flour doughs many of us create with.

We rolled some out and cut shapes with cookie cutters.

The great thing about working with Model Magic® is that you don't have to wait for the project to dry to paint it. We used watercolor panit sets, but really, just about any paint will work.

After the shapes have dried, we added simple magnets with sticky backing to the back of each shape. They always turn out quite nicely.

When giving these as a gift, I like to let the kids dip the cookie cutters in tempra paint and decorate a paper lunch bag for wrapping paper. It adds a really nice touch!

Celebrating Chinese New Year in Pre-K

2012-01-24T19:43:00.003-05:00

GUNG HAY FAY CHOY!!! Yesterday was the start of the Chinese New Year. It's the Year of the Dragon! We celebrated the occasion by reading a story and making paper lanterns to decorate our classroom. The children chose either yellow or red construction paper and decorated it however they wished.

They folded the paper in half and traced lines with a ruler. The next step was to cut on the line, without cutting all the way through. This year's group has really struggled with cutting skills, so this was great practice.

We stapled them together to make a cylinder shape.

They turned out pretty cute! Later, we punched holes in the top and ran string through the top so we could hang them up in our classroom.

I discovered this wonderful little lift -the- flap book, "Dragon's Dance" by Joan Holub. It has great illustrations, easy to understand text and is quite informative, giving the reader a nice glimpse of families celebrating Chinese New Year. It was a great way to introduce the holiday traditions some children celebrate!

Gung Fat Hay Choy! Happy Year of the Dragon!

Baby, It's Cold Outside!

2012-01-22T21:15:00.001-05:00

Here in Georgia, we occasionally have cool weather in January, but rarely is it cold enough for snow or ice. That doesn't stop us from really enjoying our winter unit and all the fun that that entails. You may have read about our "Faux Snow Day" on Prek and K Sharing. To help get us in the spirit, we decorated a playtent to make it an igloo, and later made a cute paper plate walrus to adorn it (above). We also made igloos with cotton....

and with marshmallows.

We also used cotton balls and our polar animals for sensory play...

We did a little ice fishing (and worked in some letter recognition)!

We made snowman windsocks....

We graphed our favorite polar animal: polar bear, walrus or penguin. What's your favorite?

We served up "hot cocoa" in our Hot Cocoa Stand....

And made wonderful "Snowman Snacks" from Donettes to snack on.... YUM!!!

Love Bugs

2012-01-22T10:45:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite activities to do around Valentine's Day is to make these cute little "Love Bugs". I love this activity because it's open ended and I love seeing what the kids end up creating with a few left over craft materials and some die cut hearts. I've used fun foam and construction paper--either one works well. I add a tray on the table filled with loose scraps like smaller heart shapes, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, yarn, sequins, buttons, feathers and pom poms. Really, anything goes!

I never know exactly what they will come up with, but the creations are always fun!

"Every Day Dramatic Play" Linky Party

2012-01-15T11:13:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday, we'll begin our pet unit. We'll transform our dramatic play area into a pet shop. Part of our Science center will be transformed into a mini Veterinarian's office. After that, we'll have a post office.

I'm always looking for new ideas and cute ways to implement change in our centers. Teach Preschool is hosting a fabulous linky filled with loads of ideas called "Every Day Dramatic Play!".

Pop on over to Teach Preschool join in the "Every Day Dramatic Play!" linky fun, or to check out all the other exciting dramatic play ideas!

Perky Penguins in Pre-K

2012-01-11T19:58:00.001-05:00

Last year during our "Polar Pal" unit, we made these "Marvelous Macaroni Penguins".

This year we decided to make our penguins from our shoe prints. Each child traced their partner's shoe, and cut out the shape.

They glued a white oval to the shoeprint and added a few colored triangles and some googly eyes...

Some of these guys really have personality...

"Mrs. Ayn! These guys are like twins or something--- they have MOHAWKS!!!"

Our Pre-K rookery is filled with wonderfully unique "Perky Penguins"!

Children's Books ~ One A Day for 365 Days!

2012-01-08T15:26:00.000-05:00

My friend, Donna, over at Irresistible Ideas for Play Based Learning has been making a wonderful photo journal, posting one picture per day for 365 days. She set out a challenge for folks to join her. Several other bloggers/educators have joined in, including Lesley over at Takoma Park Cooperative Nursery School and Greg over at Males In Early Childhood Education.

I'm not a photographer, so I initially didn't consider participating in the challenge. After giving this intriguing challenge some thought, I've decided to share one children's book a day for 365 days. I am a fanatical collector of children's books, so what better way for me to participate, than to share a beloved book each day. Look for the Children's Books ~ One A Day for 365 Days! photo album on the little illuminations facebook page to see which book I feature each day. I promise to share some popular favorites, plus a few you may have never heard of before.

Today's pick:

Mama Do You Love Me? by Barbara M. Joose

This is a beautifully illustrated story of a young Inuit girl who continually questions the limits of her mother's love, but learns a mother's love has no boundaries.

FAUX SNOW DAY: My January Pre-K and K Sharing Post

2012-01-06T23:56:00.003-05:00

We had a "FAUX SNOW DAY!" Stop on by Pre-K and K Sharing to read my January post! While you're there, be sure to check some of the other wonderful posts on all things Early Childhood!

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T13:01:00.000-05:00

Wishing everyone a fabulous holiday season, no matter which holidays you celebrate!

Happy Holiday Animations provided by MySpaceAnimations.com

When I was little......My Favorite Gift

2011-12-22T22:24:00.000-05:00

My husband and I have had several big discussions this year about what we're getting our kids for Christmas. It's made me really think about the gifts I got as a child and the ones I both enjoyed and remember the most. I was a fortunate child, and while I may not have gotten every item I wished for, Santa worked hard to make sure I wasn't disappointed.

One of my favorite and most memorable gifts came from one of my aunts. She and her husband were fairly newly married, and we had a really big family. (There were 9 nieces and nephews, just on our side.) She was always so creative and gave the most wonderful gifts. That year, she collected Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets, one for each kid. She recovered the outside, and filled them with crayons (loose), scissors and a variety of papers. Looking back, it was the most fabulous present and kept each of us busy and entertained many hours that following year.

I don't specifically remember any of the other gifts that year, but this one has stayed with me. It's a reminder to myself to make sure I don't get too caught up in the commercial side and really think about what brings enjoyment. It's good to remind myself that it's not always about how much you spend on a gift, but more about the thought you put into it.

Did you have gift that you remember fondly? Leave a comment and share it!

Happy holidays!

Pre-K Field Trip: A Visit to the Christmas Tree Farm

2011-12-21T13:42:00.001-05:00

We took a very interesting field trip last week to Gay's Christmas Tree Farm. We had some fresh popcorn....

and hot cocoa....

beside a 20 foot snowman!

(photo from Gays Christmas Tree Farm website)

We took a hayride to see all the trees growing on the farm.

After the hayride, we had a little science lesson about how the trees grow.

Thanks, Mr.Gay, for letting us visit! We had a lot of fun learning about growing Christmas trees!

Christmas in Pre-K

2011-12-21T13:41:00.000-05:00

We celebrate all the winter holidays in my Pre-K class. I believe it's a great time to promote multiculturalism. Be sure to hop on over to Pre-K and K Sharing for more on what we do for other holidays and to read my post: "Using Holiday Celebrations to Promote Multiculturalism in Early Childhood Settings."

Christmas is such a magical time, and I definitely take advantage of it! We had so much fun making giant gingerbread people, that we made a few giant candy cane decorations for the classroom.

We made a couple of ornaments for presents for the parents. We made cute snowflakes from foam die cuts and added a picture of each child on one side and let the kids decorate with winter foam stickers, glitter and sequins on the other side. They turned out beautifully, but somehow managed to miss getting photographed before being wrapped.(Had the kids not wrapped the gifts themselves, I would have definitely unwrapped for a few shots and rewrapped! ) We also made these cute snowman handprint ornaments for the tree in our preschool lobby. On the last day of school, parents were invited to take their ornament with them to use at home.

I put seasonal items in our centers to make things fun.

And added a few props to change our scenery.

I saw this CUTE snowball toss game on Teaching Heart Blog in the post: Winter Party Planning Printables. It took me about 15 minutes to make and about $2 in supplies. I simply cut a few simple shapes from construction paper and stuck them onto clear contact paper and applied the whole thing to the front of the pop-up hamper. I ended up stapling the contact paper to the front of my hamper, as it didn't stick well to the fabric for long. We played this all week and will probably use it in January for our winter/snow and polar pal units, as well!

We made Santa Claus decorations from paper plates, cotton and a little red construction paper.

And these reindeer handprint puppets from paper bags and brown paper:

We did a lot of singing and dancing. Our favorite songs were The Tractors': "Santa Claus Is Coming On a Boogie Woogie Choo Choo Train" and Raffi's: "Must Be Santa".

The morning of our party, we made these reindeer cupcakes from chocolate frosted cupcakes, pretzels and a few candies. We saved them for our party later that day.

My absolute FAVORITE holiday idea this year came from The SEEDS Network. I found these adorable (and very yummy) melted snowman s'mores over there and immediately knew they would be perfect to include in my gifts to my students this year. I have shared this idea with every teacher I know! I am also making a batch to take to all of my nieces and nephews on Christmas Eve.

I never know exactly what to get my little friends. I usually try to get them a coloring book, because we don't do any coloring "inside the lines" in Pre-K (to find out why, read here). These are the goodies I finally decided upon.

Our final day before the holiday was celebrated in true Pre-K style! We wore our jammies and had a Polar Express movie party while drinking very cool hot cocoa. A nice way to end a very hectic season!

My holiday wish for you, whatever holiday you celebrate, is that your days are Merry and Bright!

Having Fun With Gingerbread in Pre-K

2011-12-10T21:47:00.001-05:00

This week, we've been reading lots of stories about gingerbread. Of course, one of our favorites is the Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett!

We started by making some child sized gingerbread people with craft materials. After the kids painted the paper cutout, they sprinkled with cinnamon on the wet paint. Smells really yummy!

The kids used fancy scissors to make paper ric rac for trim with a few simple shape cut outs. One friend colored the eyes so they would be "more prettier". There was a great discussion about adding eyelashes, but the discussion went by the wayside by the time they'd finished with the other features.

On Friday, we invited parents to come in and help us make some gingerbread houses in small groups. It was a lot of fun, a fabulous creative, sensory experience! I am so thankful for such wonderful parents that came to help. (And they are all working parents, but still managed to find time to help us out!)

It turns out that the parents had the most important job of all--hold the house together!! (I promise, next time we'll read the directions well beforehand, and we'll know to let the houses set up for a bit before decorating! ;)

While the parents held the houses in place, the kids decorated like crazy!

I'll try to come back and post a pic on Monday of the one that collapsed before setting while we were outside at recess. By the time we returned, it finally had set--in collapse mode!

Using Holiday Celebrations to Promote Multiculturalism in Early Childhood Settings

2011-12-07T21:44:00.001-05:00

Be sure to check out my latest post on our new collective blog, PreK and K Sharing, "Using Holiday Celebrations to Promote Multiculturalism in Early Childhood Settings"! We've got a great group of early childhood professionals offering a variety of ideas, tips, suggestions and insights on all aspects of early childhood development. Come on over!

Once Upon A Time In Pre-K

2011-12-04T17:44:00.001-05:00

We just completed our fairy tale unit this week. We studied a variety of fairy tales and fractured fairy tales and learned quite a lot about the story structure of fairy tales.

By far, our two favorite stories are "The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs by A. Wolf" by Jon Scieszka and "The Three Little Wolves and the Big, Bad Pig" by Eugene Trivizas. The kids asked every day to hear them again.

I love to introduce the "Paper Bag Princess" by Robert Munsch. It is such a wonderful story and has an underlying message about the strength and empowerment of women. I dress as Princess Elizabeth to share the story.

After reading a variety of stories and discussing the story elements, we decided to write our own fairy tale using what we'd learned. Here's the finished tale:

A Frog and The Princess: A Story of Friendship
Once upon a time, a beautiful princess lived in a castle far away. The princess was named Ariel. One day, a frog came to visit the castle. The frog and the princess were special friends. Princess Ariel made the frog a promise. The king told Ariel to keep her promise to the frog. Cinderella came to visit in the wagon with a bunch of stuff like: a pumpkin, a bookbag, and a napkin. They had a big party. The frog ate cake. All the friends lived happily ever after in the castle.
The End

I found these fun little fairy tale shapes that expand in the water. I get these often (other brands) and the kids usually have a lot of fun predicting how big they will get and playing with them once they have swelled.

This particular type was a bust and turned to thin paper-like mush in the water within a few minutes. There was no discernible shape.

Our culminating activity was a storybook parade. We dressed as our favorite storybook characters and paraded around the school.

....And we all lived in Pre-K, happily ever after!

Sharing the Love

2011-11-30T20:12:00.001-05:00

This week, our little blogger community has been all a-buzz with the Edublog Award Nominations. It's really great that we have the opportunity to recognize those that inspire early childhood educators to bring the very best ideas, activities, and pedagogy into the classroom each day. It was inevitable that with only a select number of categories that I would not be able to nominate some of the bloggers I felt really deserved recognition. My nominees are: Click here for the full nomination post.

I was wonderfully surprised to be nominated for 2 categories in the 2011 Edublog Awards, or the "2011 Eddies" this year. I consider myself a fairly novice blogger and never really saw this coming! I am humbled and honored beyond measure especially since the nominations come from blogging educators that I highly respect and admire!

Karen, over at PreKinders, nominated me for the "Best Individual Blog" category. Thank you, Karen!

Laura, over at The Seeds Network, nominated me for the "Best Teacher Blog". Thank you, Laura!

As if that were not enough to make my week, I got the Sunshine Award from Vanessa, over at Pre-K Pages! This was a wonderful surprise for two reasons: one, because it came from someone I truly consider the ultimate in sharing early childhood teacher ideas online (Can you believe it? She said I brought cyber-sunshine into her life????? Wowers! :) and two, because this gives me an opportunity to share with and thank some of the other bloggers that inspire me on a daily basis.

The Rules:
1. Thank the person who gave the award and write a blog post.
Thank you, Vanessa! I am honored and humbled to have you share this with me. I've been a fan forever (far longer than I've been in the blogging community)!

2. Answer the following questions:
Favorite Color: lime green, hot pink and cobalt blue

Favorite Animal: dog, currently Max, our "Jackaranian"

Favorite drink: Southern Sweet Ice Tea

Facebook or Twitter?: Facebook!

Favorite flower: Sunflower

Favorite number: 8!

Favorite day: Saturday!

3. Pass the award on to 10-12 fabulous bloggers, link to their blogs, and let them know they've been nominated.

I am listing a few more than the number suggested, because each of these are blogs I really felt worthy of recognition for all they share. If you haven't visited any of these, I HIGHLY Recommend heading on over and hitting your "Follow" button! These are the blogs that bring sunshine into MY life:

Child Central Station How Long Is This Hall?

Casa Maria Learning For Life

Flights of Whimsy Learning Is Child's Play


Child Art Retrospective Males in Early Childhood

Preschool Daze Getting Messy With Ms. Jessi

I'm a teacher, get me OUTSIDE here!

Rainbows Within Reach hands on: as we grow

Centers 'n Circles

Let The Children Play

Childhood 101

Quirky Mama

Thank you for bringing sunshine my way!

2011 Edublogs Award Nominations

2011-11-27T11:04:00.001-05:00

It's nomination time for the annual Edublog Awards! There are so many wonderful education blogs I follow, that it was really tough to narrow some of the categories down to just one name. In several categories, I would have liked to acknowledge more than one blog or blogger. I am blessed to have found wonderful online communities that promote sharing ideas and fellowship with other early childhood bloggers around the world. Thank you to all who share in the early childhood blogging community--because of you I am more reflective and continually inspired!

Words (or mere nominations) cannot express my gratitude for all that these bloggers share. My nominations for 2011 are:

Best Individual Blog and Best Individual Tweeter: Deborah Stewart at Teach Preschool. I could nominate Deborah for almost every category in these awards. Her sharing and support to everyone in the online preschool community is, in a word, phenomenal!

Best Group Blog: Irresistible Ideas For Play Based Learning. Sherry and Donna over at Irresistible Ideas share ideas from play based preschools from all over Australia. Their ideas are always innovative, inviting and irresistible!

Best New Blog: Kreative Resources. Leeanne has only been blogging for a couple of months, but has managed to already share a wealth of information and ideas.

Best Ed Tech/ Resource Sharing Blog: Teaching Heart. Teaching Heart shares a variety of ideas and lovely printables for games, activities and teacher resources.

Most Influential Blog Post: Brick by Brick: Teachers and Kids at the Art Table. Scott has an amazing way of reminding me to slow down, listen and learn from my kids. This post in particular, is one of several he has written that prompted me to be a more reflective practitioner.

Best Teacher Blog: PreKinders. PreKinders shares ideas, printables and games. Definitely one of my "go to sites" when I need ideas for a particular theme or unit of study.

Best Free Webtool: The SEEDS Network Idea Search. The SEEDS Network has a wonderful search tool that helps you find ideas. Ideas and activities are presented in a printable format that also denotes the age ranges, supply list and activity description.

Lifetime Achievement: Vanessa Levin of PreK Pages. Without a doubt. Long before I was a blogger (or ever dreamed I'd be one), I was a surfer. I surfed the web for ideas to implement in my teaching. PreK Pages was one of my "go to" sites for all things preschool. Back in my "surfing" days, I would have never thought I'd have the opportunity to "meet" such an esteemed colleague, but through the online preschool community, I've found Vanessa to be even more of a resource that I could have ever imagined. Vanessa shares in various online communities and is supportive of other bloggers and educators. She is tirelessly and enthusiastically presents Best Practices to the preschool community.

I'd like to personally thank the bloggers listed above for his or her contribution to the online preschool community. Each of these bloggers are fabulous and I encourage to to vote for them when the nominations are tallied and the voting begins.

I'd also like to thank all the wonderful bloggers who are not listed. I just couldn't list you all. Whether you realize it or not, I value your input and expertise. I feel I'm a far better teacher having met and shared with you all.

Pre-K Turkey Cooking Tips 2011

2011-11-18T16:35:00.001-05:00

How To Cook A Turkey: Thanksgiving Tips from Pre-K

Kelan: We eat chicken—my daddy gets it at the farm and he cooks it. There’s an old farm in the woods and it has chicks. He takes a long, long, long time for him to cook it on the grill. We grill outside together when it’s late. You have to put the fire on it. The fire will be burning down like a house. Sometimes you have to put water on it.

Anna: Mama helps me make a turkey. She gets it at the hospital. She cooks it with the animals and the dinosaurs.

Shelby: We don’t ever have turkey. My parents don’t like turkey. Sometimes it’s pork chops or boston butt and in the morning we have bacon. Usually, it’s boston butt!

Hannah: There is something stinky in the bottom to make the turkey----peeeee uuuuuuu! Then it cooks and mommy puts on the frosting. Don’t forget the cinnamon!

Katie: My mom doesn’t cook turkey. I don’t know why she cooks ham. She get is from Food Lion and cooks it for 5. Then she cuts it and bakes the cuts.

Kennedi: Mom cooks it with a spatula and puts it in the stove. Dad cooks it with a spoon then a fork for 30 minutes. He eats it and puts the bones in the trash can.

Maddy: She gets it from the grocery store and puts ham in it. She cooks it at home in the kitchen for 3 hours. Then we take it out and eat it!

Christian: Mommy gets it from the store. We walk there. She fills it with turkey and gets a pumpkin. She cooks it on the kitchen and I sleep. I wake up and Mama says, “It’s done!”

Kate: I get mine from the store and my daddy cooks it. He puts it in a pot for like 5 minutes then my brother and me eat it.

Will: Mommy shoots the turkey and puts it in the oven as hot as it’s supposed to be for 9 minutes. It’s a really long time! She leaves it like it is. That’s it---we just eat it up!

Aadam: We eat chicken. Mommy buys it and makes it. She puts a little bit of sugar on it. She puts it in the pot on the stove for 5 minutes until it gets warm. Then we eat it.

Drew: I buy it from the grocery store. My daddy and mommy cook it. They have a stove to cook on for stuff like that. They have to put meat on it---it’s sorta like hamburger meat. They cook it just like they are supposed to for like, 5 minutes, or something. We bring it to Granny’s and eat it on Thanksgiving Day.

Merry Martha: You get one at the turkey store and Mom and Dad cook it. They cook it in the pan and put salt in the pan. They cook it for 5 minutes in the oven for this many (shows an inch with fingers) hots! Then we eat it at Aunt Lynn’s.

Grace: We didn’t eat turkey for Thanksgiving. We eat regular food from our house. Mommy and Daddy cook it.

Lucas: Mommy and Daddy both cook it. They get stuff like salt and squirt it in there. Put it in the oven for 30 minutes on 45 heat. Then you put hot sauce on it and flatten it out. You can blow on it and eat it. If you eat it all, you will get ice cream and go to sleep. After the rest, you can go to the birthday party at Jump City.

Max: My dad cooks the turkey. He buys it at the store—it’s Food Lion, I think. It gets so, so hot!!! You have to cook it for 37 minutes. We don’t put spices on it because my mom’s on a diet and she wants to eat it, too!

Conner: We don’t have Thanksgiving---we just eat our dinner!

Vaughan: We eat turkey from the store. She cooks it on the stove for 30 minutes.

Halloween Hangover

2011-11-07T18:36:00.001-05:00

Yes, I know Halloween was so last week, but we've been so busy that I've not had time to post the fun we've had. In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that Halloween is not my favorite holiday or time of the year, but I do try to make it enjoyable for the kids.

Our dairy farm/pumpkin patch field trip earlier in the month was postponed due to weather and was rescheduled for Oct. 31. Our Halloween Happenings all took place the week before the actual holiday, so we would be free for two major field trips. I thought I would share some of the "Best of" Halloween at our school. Maybe it will help me be more in the spirit next year when I come back to see what we did.

Our class dressed up in costumes for the morning.

We watched as the younger kids paraded through our room to show off their costumes.

My co-worker's husband designed this awesome robot costume for their son, using common household items. Definitely the best handmade costume I saw this year.....

Here's some of the best treats I saw....

Our favorite party game...."Wrap the Mummy!".

We divided the class into teams, with each team wrapping one member, but it was so much fun, eventually the rest decided to wrap themselves, too!

Since our field trip to pick pumpkins to fill our pumpkin patch in dramatic play had been postponed, we made our own pumpkins to fill our pumpkin patch out of brown paper lunch sacks and paint.

Many of our classrooms went all out decorating their rooms, but this decoration was my favorite!

And my favorite bulletin board was done by some of our infants. We've had a major baby boom with our staff recently, so this was an especially special "Bumkin Patch"!

I'll post soon about our wonderful trips to the dairy farm/ pumpkin patch and to the fire station!

Ghost Dough: A Sensational Sensory Experience

2011-11-06T10:33:00.001-05:00

My friend Karen, over at Flights of Whimsy posted about her "Cloud Dough" recently, and I knew we just had to try it. We used some store bought "Moon Sand" about a month ago. It was very expensive and came in a very small container.

Karen's recipe is very easy:

8 cups of flour
I cup of baby oil
Mix well

The kids decided since it was fairly close to Halloween that we should rename our concoction from "Cloud Dough" to "Ghost Dough". They've had a lot of fun with it, but it is very messy. We have a carpeted classroom and the flour mixture can really make a mess on our dark colored carpet. We've been putting a tarp down, but of course, children seem to have a knack of getting the dough just outside the boundaries of the tarp. All in al, the sensory experience far outweighs the mess. The children delight in running their fingers through it and molding it with playdough or sand molds as their hands. I guess we'll have to rename it again now that the Halloween season has ended. Hmmmm...maybe "Snow Dough" ?!! :)

Be sure to check out all the other great sensory ideas on Teach Preschool's "Every Day Sensory Play" linky:

Monster Mash 2011

2011-11-05T17:17:00.000-04:00

We celebrated our imaginations and talked about monsters a couple of weeks ago. We made these "Marvelous Monsters" using some basic shapes of green and black construction paper and a few art materials.

One of my friends made this cute Frankenstein Monster puppet with odd materials from our "Make A Puppet" box and our "scrap box". The skeleton head was left over from the q-tip skeletons a few friends made a week or two before.

We sang "5 Little Monsters" with our monster puppet glove....

and sang along with the great little song, "Monster Spray" from Debbie Clement over at Rainbows Within Reach. Click here to visit the original post on my page to view all the wonderful monster links from the "FREE Monster Linkie Party" hosted by Debbie Clement over at Rainbows Within Reach!

Dem Bones and a little Skeleton Dance

2011-10-27T18:16:00.001-04:00

There are so many great ideas out there, it's hard to pick and choose sometimes. Little Wonders Preschool posted a picture on Facebook of the skeletons they made recently. It reminded me that I did this several years ago with my class and they really enjoyed it. I thought I'd make one today and put in my files so next year I would remember to put in into my lesson plans.

While I was finishing mine up, some of the friends came over and asked me if they could make one, too. I gave them a little skull and a pelvis like I had used from white paper and a handful of q-tips. I wasn't sure exactly what they would come up with, but I was curious to see what they would do with all the "loose parts"

I think they did a pretty good job!

We've also been singing along to to this fun song!

Learning About Fire Safety in Pre-K

2011-10-24T20:08:00.003-04:00

Fire Safety is one of those units that I feel like we need to teach, but I think sometimes, because it's a "have to" unit, I feel like it gets a little stale. I tried to "heat things up" this year to put a little more excitement into my fire safety unit.

Teach Preschool posted recently about making construction paper fire trucks in "We Made Shapely Fire Trucks in Preschool". I remember years ago making a little paper fire truck craft, but I hadn't thought about it in a few years. Deborah's post made me want to try this cute activity again. We gave the kids some very basic shapes and let them see what they could come with. I think they did a wonderful job!

We practiced how to dial "9-1-1" in an emergency, "Stop, Drop, Cover and Roll" if our clothes are on fire and to "Get Low and Go" if there is smoke in the house. We have monthly fire drills, so we discussed the importance of doing a good job on the drills so that we will be fully prepared if ever there were a real emergency. We also talked about smoke detectors and creating a home evacuation plan with our families.

Even the teachers got into the act and had a little retraining on the use of fire extinguishers.

Yep! That's Me!

We explored with red, orange and yellow paint in art center. We tried blow painting, but I think the paint was a little thick. Smear art painting was a lot of fun and produced some beautiful masterpieces.

We got out a few of our favorite fire safety themed toys and puzzles.

The kids love dressing up as community helpers. And our little fire station proved to be pretty popular, too! Many, many traditional (and non-traditional ;) firehouse meals were prepared and served at our fire station.

I love this fire truck one of my little guys drew at the art table. "It's a fire truck going to put out the fire. These lines mean the light is too noisy!"

One of our favorite fire books is now on YouTube with the accompanying song. We listened to this many times on cd, but I also heard the kids singing as they worked in centers, "Fire truck! Fire truck! I want to ride on a fire truck!"

Hands down, I think the favorite was making our fire truck cookies as our culminating activity. They were just as fun to make as they were yummy to eat!

Apparently, due to the Sept. 11 anniversary, our fire station is busier than usual with school tours, so we were unable to visit during Fire Safety Week. A few weeks late, but we are finally scheduled to go next week, so we're pretty excited! I'm sure there will be an upcoming post about that adventure! :)

The Leaf Man and Fall Fun

2011-10-14T18:30:00.002-04:00

Living in the south, it never fails that temperatures and seasonal themes often are askew. We had a cold snap (from the 90's to the 60's / 70's) for a couple of days. Sure enough, the morning we started our fall unit, temps were back in the 90's and it is sunny! Go figure! We are experiencing a few of the seasonal changes, but they are just beginning, so we have to really look hard to observe the onset of autumn.

Two of my favorite fall books are Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf and The Leaf Man both by Lois Ehlert. We took a nature walk and collected leaves and acorns.

We took some of our leaves and put them in our science center. My friend Addi used prisms to observe the leaves, then compared how the leaves looked in our microscope. I think I've got a little scientist on my hands!

After reading The Leaf Man, we made a few of our own.

We used this booklet from Little Giraffes for our leaf explorations. In the first few pages, we made leaf rubbings, measured our leaves with unifix cubes and dropped our leaves and counted how long it took for them to fall from to the ground. We measured the area of our leaves in pennies, and see how many pennies it takes to sink our leaf.

We used leaves in our play outside to make wonderful creations!

And painted a fall mural.

And finally, one of my favorite fall activities is to have the children trace and cut out their arm and hand on construction paper, then glue tissue paper leaves. No matter what the skill level, these always turn out so nice.

Happy Fall, Y'all!

Add your linky here and join the Autumn-4-Mommy blog hop from Rainbows Within Reach!

Just helping a friend

2011-10-10T16:28:00.000-04:00

I often get the opportunity to observe children at play and learning to cooperate with each other. Today, one of our girls was playing in dollhouse and some of the boys in block center wanted to use the family vehicle from the dollhouse. A small disagreement began. I hesitated to step in, I just watched for a moment letting the group sort it out themselves. They managed to come to some sort of bargain, so I wandered away.

When I came back to see how they were doing, the boys had all the dollhouse furniture loaded on all the trucks and big cars they could find. They also managed to have most of the dolls from the dollhouse. Grace was busily gathering extra furniture that had been missed and generally giving direction to the boys.

"We're helping Grace move. She wants to move closer to her grandma, so we're using all our cars to move all her stuff!"

"You have to have a big truck to move the kitchen."

"I'm being really careful. You have to be really careful when you move stuff so stuff doesn't get broken."

This was such a great moment to watch.

Creating a Literacy Rich Environment in Pre-K Learning Centers

2011-10-08T13:56:00.000-04:00

We have a big variety of writing and reading materials in our language/literacy center and our writing center. But I also provide a literacy rich environment in all our other learning centers, as well. All around our room are chart stories and language experience charts that we've made, like this for our apple week.

In every center, you will find a small plastic pencil case with a few notepads, scratch paper and pencils/pens, as well as notebooks or logs. The children may use these however they wish, to record thoughts and ideas.

In our Math center, there are books about math....

a small wall calendar and a large dry erase calendar.

We also have a dry erase writing chart available.

In our Science Center, in addition to books, we have animal fact cards/notebook pages, chalkboards and leaf rubbing materials and life cycle growth cards.

We also have log notebooks for science experiments and observation forms that we use for various experiments. Here's a few available in our centers right now for sensory bottles, sink or float and doctor's exam, including a sheet from Laura at The SEEDS Network

In our art center, a variety of books and magazines are available, along with all the varieties of papers and drawing/writing implements (many of the same materials are pictured below in "Writing Center").

In our dramatic play and home living center, you'll find print rich real and found items,

a food pyramid display on the fridge,

hotel registration cards,

guest check restaurant order pads/ dry erase cards and medical forms (pictured in "Science Center"),

menus and cookbooks, phonebooks,

and magazines and books, in a variety of languages.

Our writing center has the usual writing accessories such as a large variety of pencils, pens, markers, gel pens, chalk stencils and stamps.

There are picture dictionaries available and books about writing.

There are notepads, stationary and envelopes, journals There are also a variety of papers: notebook paper, story paper, as well as whiteboards, chalkboards and MagnaDoodles.

There is even a "Make Your Own Book" box filled with ready to use materials.

And a mailbox to mail important letters.

We have name cards and letter games to make our names and practice literacy skills.

Our block center has a writing box, notepads and pencils, and a large variety of picture books, informational books, car brochures and even notebooks filled with pictures.

There are maps and blueprints

And storybook character blocks to re-enact familiar stories.

We even provide materials for use during our outdoor play time.

Last month, in the post, "Our Pre-K Community" I wrote in more detail about our outdoor sidewalk cafe. Creating outdoor centers has been a really fun addition to our playground time.

My kids love to read, write, paint and create outdoors.

There are so many ways for teachers to promote and support literacy throughout the classroom. Please note that my language and literacy center and writing center have much, much more than I have included here. This is just an overview of what I do to incorporate literacy in other learning centers. I'm always on the look out for freebies and new materials to add to centers. Often, community stores and businesses are willing to share if you ask and tell them you are a teacher.

If you have other ways of promoting literacy in your centers, I'd love for you to share it in the comments!

Creating a Pre-K Color Wheel

2011-10-06T19:02:00.000-04:00

I saw this colorwheel (below) on Preschool Daze, and just knew I HAD to try it!

"C is for Color Wheel" on Preschool Daze

We started 2 weeks ago by painting the background for our color wheel. First, we taped off the sections.

Then, we began to paint. For a couple of days after painting, a few of the kids would want us to "draw the triangles" so they could paint their own individual colorwheels.

We asked each student to bring in a small, recycled item for each color to be added to our color wheel. The kids took turns putting their items on.

As the children took turns gluing their items on, a small crowd gathered and discussed some of the items that were put on. "This is 'T' for Tennessee. They're the cool team, 'cause they like orange!"

"This eraser is really cool. It's like the one that my brother uses at big kid school." "Yeah, my blue thing is kind of a hook that holds on to things."

"This is a good place to put things we don't need anymore. And besides, whoever heard of a purple egg, anyways?"

I could just listen to them forever! They say the funniest things!

We put it on a black background to help it stand out. The kids are still trickling in with things, and we're still adding to it here and there.

I think we might keep this up all year!

The Versatile Blogger Award

2011-10-03T18:28:00.000-04:00

Vanessa over at http://www.pre-kpages.comPre-K Pages nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award. I have to say that I was truly honored, especially since I have been visiting Vanessa's blog/website, Pre-K Pages since long before I was involved in blogging.

Guidelines for passing on the award:

1. Thank the person who nominated you. Thanks again Vanessa!
2. Share 7 things about yourself
3. Pass the award on to 10 other bloggers.
4. Contact the other bloggers to let them know they have been nominated.

7 things about me:

1. I was born in Alaska, but was raised a Southerner in Georgia.

2. I come from a really big, complicated, blended family. It makes for interesting, but wonderful get-togethers and family gatherings.
3. I have two beautiful redheaded daughters.
4. I am a big children's book lover/collector.
5. I am addicted to southern style sweet iced tea.
6. I have a child with autism.
7. I'm known as the music lady at school, although I can't carry a tune, sing a note or play an instrument. I'm also know as the bug lady, although I'm really not fond of most bugs!

Vanessa already nominated many of the wonderful bloggers that inspire me, but there are so many inspirational Early Childhood blogs, so I'll list a 10 more:

1. Sherry and Donna at Irresistible Ideas for Play Based Learning

2. Pam at How Long Is This Hall?

3. Colleen at Teaching Heart Mom

4. Laura at The SEEDS Network

5. Jessi at Getting Messy With Mrs. Jessi

6. Amy at Child Central Station

7. Greg at Males in Early Childhood

8. Maria at Casa Maria's Creative Learning Zone

9. Lisa at K is for Kindergarten
10. Juliet at I'm A Teacher, Get Me OUTSIDE Here!

I'd also like to acknowledge all the other wonderful early education bloggers not listed. I gather inspiration from so many of you, and I really appreciate all you share!

During the rush of the first week of school, I also received the "One Lovely Blog Award" from Monika at Ponad Siebie (translated from Polish: Than Myself). Because we were so busy with our classroom move, I wasn't able to write an appropriate post. I thought I would add it here, before too much time had passed. Thanks, Monika! I'm honored!

Thanks again to ALL the wonderful bloggers I've connected and shared with!

A"peeling" Fun With Apples

2011-10-02T16:02:00.000-04:00

Last week, we learned all about apples. We managed to work in lessons that met standards in all our domains.

I told the story of "Little Bear's Star", and cut the apple to demonstrate the "star" inside. (See pics of the flannelboard pieces here.) We let the cut apples dry out a bit, then used them in our art center for apple printing.

We used watercolors to paint apple outlines and used collage materials to decorate apple shapes.

On another day, cookie cutters and paint were laid out to make treetops for apple trees in art center.

Our life cycle booklet helped us understand the stages in the apple life cycle. We glued an apple seed to a little dirt for the first square. The next two life cycle squares gave us lots of fine motor practice, by cutting tree shapes from green and brown construction paper. We added crumpled pink tissue for apple blossoms and and finally, for the last square, an apple die cut shape for the "apple".

We wondered if apples would sink or float, then tested to see if apples of different colors had the same floating properties. For a little added fun, each student picked a small classroom item to test to see if it, too, "floated like an apple".

There were several fun games available in our math center. In one game, children rolled the dice or drew cards (depending on the focus skill needed) to place the correct number of red pom pom apples on the apple tree.

In another game, they placed the correct number of chenille stem worms on the apple.

For this version of the game, they matched the worms to the number on the apple. Also, instead of chenille stem worms, these little lure worms from the bait & tackle section of our local store provided extra sensory sensations. They are wiggly and fun!

I found these little apple wreath decorations that were perfect for sorting and one-to-one correspondence in our ice trays.

We measured ourselves and our friends in apple units to see "how many apples tall" we were.

After reading "10 Apples Up on Top", we made our own version of the book for counting practice and then practiced balancing apples on our heads.

We taste tested a variety of apples, had apple slices with caramel for snack and made applesauce in the crockpot.

In our language and literacy, we talked about our apple observations and mad a Venn diagram of our findings. We also made several chart stories, including writing a recipe about how we made our applesauce.

On Friday, Johnny Appleseed visited our class to read to us at circle. I can't believe the kids weren't fooled--they knew it was me the entire time, but they played along anyway! (And I thought I was so convincing!)

The Fruit Stand we set up dramatic play was a big hit. The kids loved playing there and pretending to sell fruit!

AN APPLE A DAY KEEPS THE TEACHER AT PLAY!

Monsters Under My Bed

2011-09-28T18:08:00.003-04:00

At 4, many of our little preschoolers are a little wary of Halloween. I found this cute little fingerplay in a Mailbox magazine years ago and made these little monsters out of pom poms to go on my storytelling mitt/glove. Before I do this, we have a discussion about how monsters are not really "real". I tell them the monsters in this story are imaginary, and actually, it's a silly story about how the child doesn't want to go to bed, so he tries to tell his mom that there are monsters under the bed. My "talk" usually always works, and often the kids tell me they are not afraid of monsters anymore!

5 Little Monsters
5 Little Monsters under my bed,
1 crawled out from under my spread
I screamed for Mama, and Mama said,
"Get those monsters out from under your bed!"

4 Little Monsters under my bed,
1 crawled out from under my spread
I screamed for Mama, and Mama said,
"Get those monsters out from under your bed!"

3 Little Monsters under my bed,
1 crawled out from under my spread
I screamed for Mama, and Mama said,
"Get those monsters out from under your bed!"

2 Little Monsters under my bed,
1 crawled out from under my spread
I screamed for Mama, and Mama said,
"Get those monsters out from under your bed!"

1 Little Monster under my bed,
He crawled out from under my spread
I screamed for Mama, and Mama said,
"Get those monsters out from under your bed!"

No Little Monsters under my bed,
None crawled out from under my spread
I screamed for Mama, and Mama said,
"Go to SLEEP!"

These are our three favorite monster books:

Be sure to stop by the "FREE Monster Linkie Party" hosted by Debbie Clement over at Rainbows Within Reach!

Mrs.Ayn's Pre-K had a Farm, E-I-E-I-O!

2011-09-23T20:43:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite units to teach (yes, I know, I say that about all the units) is the farm. I realized that I've never written here about that, although we usually do some really fun things. Due to our shortened school year this year, our unit was really cut short. I thought I would share some of the things we did this year, as well as in years past.

Over the years, I've gotten many of my great ideas and activities from other great teachers who have very generously shared their ideas on their websites and blogs. Pre-K Pages is a great website and I've gotten several wonderful farm themed ideas there. I make the "OINK! Game" with cards for literacy and for math.

I loved the Folded Barn on Pre-K Pages, and use that with a mini daily activity that I do. Each day, I post a simple "how to draw a ..." farm animal with 3 or 4 easy steps using basic shapes. It's mostly about the fine motor practice and following directions. The barn is a cute way to collectively display the "mini activities".
This barn displays a horse, pig, cow and duck (just in case you needed a little interpretation).

We are really working on fine motor skills at this point in the year, and need lots of practice tracing and cutting. The pigs on the bulletin board at the beginning of this post were a great way to help the kids practice those skills without realizing it.( I could have simply traced the shapes, and photocopied it on color paper for the kids to cut out, but they would miss out on the tracing skills.) They traced coffee can lids to make the shapes for the pigs.

After they cut out the circles, it's fun to see how they put them together.

They really come out cute, however they are assembled.

We made the chicks on that bulletin board out of loops of yellow paper.

We try to change the learning environment often, and add theme materials whenever possible. In our dramatic play area, we converted our "box" to a barn to house our stick ponies. I made stick ponies for years out of small mop handles and paper and they would always be destroyed within a couple of days. I finally found these cute stick ponies at the Dollar Tree.

I pulled out every farm animal toy I could find for the children to explore and play with.

In our flannelboard center, I have pieces available for The Little Red Hen, Old MacDonald, as well as this wonderful set with 100+ pieces of farm felts.

I added a small set of farm stencils to our writing and art centers, and smiled to myself when the kids discovered this farm themed stencil in our alphabet stencils.

Last year, this was a longer unit and near the end of the year, our writing skills were coming along nicely. We wrote this lovely class story about the farm. Looking at this story now, many months later, I can tell which stories we'd recently read (Click, Clack Moo, Duck On a Bike, Mrs. Wishy Washy) just by the details they'd written in the story. I am beaming with pride as I look back and see how this groups writing skills developed and progressed. I am so excited to see what this new group envisions when we become more skilled at writing stories.

Once Upon a Farm
by Mrs. Ayn's Pre-K 2
Once day on the farm, there was a pig, a horsey, a cow, and a goat. They were all in a big corral. The duck was on a bike. The animals tried to ride a skateboard. Then, they wanted to ride on the tractor. The farmer came and told them to come inside to take a bath. After the bath, they ate cookies, pizza and milk and crawled under their electric blankets. The End

We of course read lots of great farm themed books, act like farm animals with visors and puppets, and act out familiar stories like Mrs. Wishy Washy. We sing lots of fun farm songs. One of our favorites is "Down On The Farm" on the Simple Songs For Preschool cd from Deborah Stewart of Teach Preschool. It's a great cd with easy to learn and easy to sing songs. Get your copy by clicking the links above.

"Mrs. Ayn's Pre-K

had a farm...

E-I-E-I- O!

And on that farm

They had some fun,

E-I-E-I- O! "

I'm having difficulty with the Amazon widget again, but hope to come back and post some of our favorite farm reads soon!