Wednesday's Witticism

As I mentioned last Wednesday, I have decided to add a Wednesday's Wisdom or Witticism feature to the blog. This week's post is one of those viral forwarded emails that was just too funny. This one tickles me for a variety of reasons. I always have kids tell me "interesting" things about their home life, often things that I know to be less than accurate (notice I didn't say "lie"), and I know it goes both ways.

At open house, I stated that I would love for parents to come in to share their occupations with the class, especially when we study community helpers. On the first day of school, one of my students told me her mom worked at Home Depot and would love to visit us on community helper day. (I had just recieved the returned parent information packets and had not had time to read through them yet.) I told her I thought that would be great! I later mentioned this to another teacher, who had previously taught the child. She laughed and said, "Oh that's a good one! L.'s mom is a doctor~she doesn't work at Home Depot!"

When I asked the student about her mother's occupation, she was insistent that her mother was a doctor, but also worked at Home Depot.  For several days, she stuck with this story, each time more insistent than the last. Many days later, I finally had the opportunity to speak with the mom and, after the shock passed, she laughed so hard she had tears coming down her cheek. She didn't know how her daughter could have come up with something like this, but they had done some home renovation a year or two earlier and was spending quite a bit of time there!


So here it is~ hope this gets you through the rest of the week. I'm hoping it will help me get through mine!

ALWAYS CHECK YOUR CHILD'S HOMEWORK!



Dear Mrs. Jones,

I wish to clarify that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an exotic dancer. 
I work at Home Depot and I told my daughter how hectic it was last week before the blizzard hit.  I told her we sold out every single shovel we had, and then I found one more in the back room, and that several people were fighting over who would get it.    Her picture doesn't show me dancing around a pole.  It's supposed to depict me selling the last snow shovel we had at Home Depot. From now on I will remember to check her homework more thoroughly before she turns it in.
Sincerely,
Mrs.  Smith

Have you ever had to "decipher" the truth? I'd love to hear all about it! (And Happy Wednesday!)

Bright Ideas!

I wanted to share some of the great ideas I've seen recently and tried out. They may seem random, but these were things I got so excited about that I worked into our already jam packed days. I'm so glad I tried each of these~ each was well worth the effort!

I found this cute alligator puppet made form a toilet paper tube. We've been using this as a prop in our songs and fingerplays. I wish I could remember who posted this so I could give them credit! (Please let me know if I saw this on your blog!)

 

Brick by Brick posted this awesome zoo idea using wooden unit blocks and zoo animals. We did this as an independent group and the friends really enjoyed it. Some of the groups got really creative! This week we are studying bugs and will do a similar group as a "bug zoo"!

Horse Stable

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One group had a bridge for the animals to be free!

One group even put zookeepers into play!

I saw this on Not Just Cute and went immediately out to Home Depot and bought rain gutters! The $4 investment has been well worth the pennies out of pocket. They have been an extraordinary addition to our center. We were really able to explore forces and motion and I have gotten some great assessment data from their play. The friends just think they are downright fun! 

The exploration began by building with the gutters.

The friends tried rolling balls on the gutters.

They tried the spouts out in different positions.

Finally, they got out the cars and tried rolling them down the ramps.

It was no surprise that they would race cars after trying them solo!

 Eventually, the ramp building became quite elaborate!

Thanks to all you wonderful bloggers, who inspire me everyday with your amazing creativity!

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom or Witticism

After looking through my files recently, I found all kinds of stories poems, inspirations and internet forwarded funnies. I thought I would share one each week just to lighten the mood and help us all push through the rest of the week.

Each Wednesday, I plan to post Words of Wisdom or Words of Witticism. Today's Words of Wisdom are reminders to us all to find the gold in every child!

Searching for Gold
by Jean Warren

Look beneath the freckles
Look beneath the grin
Look for that which sparkles
Buried deep within.

Look beyond the whining
Look beyond the tears
Look beyond the runny nose
The frowns, the mess, the fears.

Search for that which glitters
Treasures to unfold
Search beneath the surface
Search and find the gold!

Frog Fun

Our class has really been enjoying Deborah Stewart's song "One Green Frog Went Hop, Hop, Hop". We've been singing the song for a couple of weeks now and the friends just love it!

Notice my friend, Lexi in the pink in the back...boy she is really jumping high!

Here is Deborah's awesome song:

Preschool: One Green Frog Went Hop, Hop, Hop

View more presentations from Deborah Stewart.

You can buy her new cd here:
Simple Songs For Preschool

And a few links to some great frog activities:


Ramblings Of A Crazy Woman just posted this cute frog puppet in her post "The Frog" using recycled materials:

Don't miss this wonderful blogpost by teach mama: "frog or toad? it's an eastern toad! ( we think...)"

Handprint and Footprint Art has a cute Handprint Frog Craft.

Step By Step Childcare has a fantastic pond unit.

The Virtual Vine has some fantastic frog ideas and links, too!

Here are some of my favorite Frog related books:

 

I think I'm going to have to plan my frog unit soon, so I will post any new activities we do.

Can of Worms Measuring Activity with songs and links

Can Of Worms Measuring Fun!

I made these a few years ago and went to use them this year and couldn't find them. I've meant to make more all year so we could use them to do some fun measurement activities. I was very happily surprised to find them tucked away with my St. Patrick's Day stuff. I was so happy I found them that I wanted to share them.

Materials:
Green Ric Rac
Wiggle Eyes
Ruler
Cans for worms (frosting cans, baby food containers work great!)

Prepare 3 worms for each group. Cut Ric Rac into 3 lengths: 2 inches, 4 inches and 6 inches. Hot glue a wiggle eye on one side at the end of each worm. Make a set of three for each group or set of partners.


Divide the students into groups of four or sets of partners. Give each group a "can of worms", objects/manipulatives (pencils, crayons, books, Popsicle sticks, paper, etc.) to measure, record sheet for each student and a ruler. (I have a record sheet I've made for these activities, but can't figure out how to post it. Sorry:(


Shortest to Longest

Have students lay the worms out and arrange them in ascending order of shortest to longest. Now compare the worms to each other. How many short worms does it take to make a long worm? How many medium worms? Have students talk with their group about how the worms compare in length. Ask them to arrange all the items in ascending order of shortest to longest. (Example, pencil, pencils, crayons, books, Popsicle sticks, paper, unifix cubes, etc.).





Measuring with worms (Non-Standard unit of measurement)

Let students practice measuring items with worms and help them record their data on the record sheet. Students will start by using the shortest worm. They will determine the number of worms it takes to measure the length of a pencil, pencils, crayons, books, Popsicle sticks, paper, unifix cubes, etc.




After measuring each item with the short worm, measure each item with the medium worm. Continue until all items are measured and recorded and repeat with the longest worm.

Measuring in Inches

Help students begin by measuring each worm in inches. Record the measurements on the record
sheet. Students will measure the same items measured with the worms with a ruler to determine the items length in inches.

After the activities:

Discuss the measurements the students came up with using worms and rulers. Have each group pick a worm of their choosing. Have them measure a Popsicle stick with the worm. Have each group share their measurements with the class.

Ask each group to measure the Popsicle stick with the ruler. Point out that when each group chose their own nonstandard measurement tool the measures varied, but when measuring with a ruler, measures were consistent. Discuss why standard units of measurement are needed.

Ask the students about difficulties in measuring large objects with small forms of measurement. Brainstorm measuring tools that would make it easier to measure large objects.





Check out this great song from Deborah Stewart at
Little Fingers That Play:

The Inchworm

View more presentations from Deborah Stewart.

And here are a couple of links to other worm activities from:


Preschool Daze   "i is for inch"
  A great measuring activity!

And this from:
Quirky Momma  "Learning to Measure with Gummy Worms"

Hoppy Spring!

We did a variety of Spring activities last week. Since we have several families that don't celebrate Easter, I focused more on Spring this year. We did have an egg hunt and my wonderfully supportive families allowed everyone to participate.

Since we were noticing the signs of Spring all around us, I put a few twigs in our playdough center so friends could make Spring Trees.

We made these cute chicks I posted in Baby Chicks In A Nest. Originally, we were going to put pom poms as eggs in the nest, but the friends wanted to use googly eyes, so the idea turned into something better than I had planned! This was an important reminder for me to allow for the creativity of my students~~ their ideas are pretty great!

Excellence In Early Childhood posted a cute caterpillar activity using Press N Seal wrap. I thought I would try it for the window clings we usually make with contact paper. Our director found these cute egg, chick and bunny foamies, so the friends were not as interested in using the colored tissue. On some of the last eggs, we experimented with adding glue to see how that would work.

On Thursday, we dyed eggs and experimented with mixing colors. Friday morning,  our arrival activity was graphing jellybeans. For breakfast, we had the jellybeans we counted and the eggs we'd dyed, with our cereal. Peeling the eggs was great fine motor practice. I was very surprised at the number of friends who liked the hard boiled eggs!

Later, we had some of the parents come and hide eggs on our playground. We had a great egg hunt. When we finished, we put all the eggs in one basket and counted them and divided them up. (Some of the friends had parent helpers and were really good hunters and others spent a lot of time, but only found a few eggs. I felt dividing them was the fair way to go, plus it added a math component to the activity.) The friends got to pick which eggs they wanted to take home.

I decided to have several smaller activities over the course of a couple of days, rather than having a big party. We have so many parties that sometimes, I like to mix it up and do things a little differently. Our final activity on Friday was to decorate cupcakes with chick peeps like a nest. I bought Chow Mein Noodles to use for the nesting material, but forgot to take them to school, so we just made them without the noodles.

I sent my friends home on Friday, all sugared up and ready for their Easter weekend. I am thankful that we are now on Spring Break, so they will have a full week to get all that sugar out of their systems before I see them again!

Baby Chicks in a Nest

I made one of these this morning to put out at center time, and before I knew it, the kids all wanted to make one. They turned out really cute, and were a great sensory activity.  They got to shape the straw in a circular shape before gluing it into a rolled paper bag. I had a bunch of these bags already with the tops cut off, so we used those and just folded them down a little. They popped a pom pom in the middle and added googly eyes and a scrap of construction paper for a beak! Easy peasy! The friends had a lot of fun making these.

This would go great with Deborah Stewart's "Three Little Birds" song. We'll definitely be singing it tomorrow!

Three Little Birds

View more presentations from Deborah Stewart.

You should definitely check out more of Deborah's songs at Little Fingers That Play!

Paper Lunch Sack Lift the Flap Book

I was telling a friend how to make one of these and realized it was easier to make it and post it than it was to describe how.

Take several paper lunch sack and stack sideways with the flaps all facing up on the same side. Staple or bind the open ends of the sacks together.Write whatever text you'd like and be sure to use the flap!

 Add text and illustrations to the rest of the lunch sacks. My book stops at 7 because the foam stickers I was using had guns as the other three shapes and I didn't want to put them in the book.