Why Re-Invent the Wheel: Word Clips

I forgot that I scheduled this to publish last week on Wednesday!  Oops.  Basically, I love this idea for my classroom for teaching name recognition, and spelling.  I love it for home too, but my son already knows how to spell and write his name (not to toot my own horn!) and my daughter is not even kind of ready.  If she would sit still that would be a start.   In my program we do a lot of work with names.  Recognizing you name, your friends names, etc.  I plan to take the kids pics when they arrive in September and glue them to a sentence strip on the left like above.  Then I will simply follow the same idea for writing their first name and putting the letters on clothespins.  Love it!  Find more ideas by clicking Word Clips.

**As always and as promised, this idea can be used in the school and home setting. **

New Uses for Old Things: #5 Paint Swatches

A while back, I read about this great idea in a parenting magazine.  At the time when I tried it out, my son who was probably about 12-15 months, was not ready for this type of game AT ALL (even though I went to Home Depot, collected the color samples and brought them home anticipating engaging in a lively game of Memory!).  Um, FAIL.  But now that my son is 4, he would love it.  Disney has a great collection of Behr paints at Home Depot.  I have found all sorts of colors and shapes online but can't be sure if they are available in the stores.  I found stars, jolly rogers, clouds, butterflies and even tiaras.  All you have to do is hit up your local store, grab a few matching sets of colors and voila! You have a fun, FREE memory game!  Another great idea I stumbled upon while writing this post, is gathering a one of each of the cards (in basic colors) and writing the color name across Mickey's outline like here.  This would encourage you child to learn basic color words along with identifying them.  You could do this with any leftover paint swatches, but these are super fun!  TTFN!
**As always and as promised, this is a tip that can be used in the home or school setting**

Why Re-Invent the Wheel: Butterfly

Spring is a wonderful time to do a lot of Science in a classroom.  We have a lot of great things going on right now including studying the life cycles of Butterflies and Frogs.  We have live tadpoles and caterpillars that we will watch go through their metamorphosis before our very eyes.  The children are ecstatic!  And, quite frankly, so am I.  Being that this is preschool age, finger paint is a MUST.  So we dipped their hands in the stuff and made two marks on one side of the paper.  Then we simply folded the papers in half, pressed firmly, and Voila!  Butterflies.  We also are going to allow the children to do a second layer in a different color once these dry.  Aren't they adorable?!  We use Lakeshore Washable Fingerpaint and  Lakeshore Fingerpaint Paper which does a wonderful job.  Regular construction paper sometimes gets too soggy.  Also, you can't teach about butterflies without reading Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  

Here is a list of Mr. Carle's other works as well.  He is a most wonderful author.  As promised, these ideas can be implemented in the home or school setting.  Also, don't forget to read with your child for 20 minutes a day for ages 3-5 to build a better reader.  This can be all at once or split into chunks of time.  

TTFN!

Heigh Ho Heigh Ho

It's off to work THEY go. BTW, who knew it was 'heigh' and not 'hi'?  Weekends are great times to catch up on chores, especially when evenings are the only time you have to do them, and that is not an option b/c you are dead tired and really need to be spending time with your children and/or significant other.  Also, let's be real, chores suck and I have waited 4 years to delegate.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE the fact that I can ask my son to go and feed the cat nowadays.  As I am learning, my son loves to "help" me with everything!  I welcome the help for some things and definitely not others.  Here is a list of chores I find appropriate for a 4 year old:
1.  Feeding animals (if you have a dog is not protective over his/her food)
2.  Putting dirty clothes in the hamper (that word is really old-fashioned don't you think?)
3.  Sorting laundry
4.  Dustbusting
5.  'Washing' dishes in the sink (of course you have to re-wash but they think its great fun)
6.  Cleaning up toys
7.  Neighborhood litter clean up (Mine has this 'Grabber' to use so he does not have to get his hands dirty)
8.  Putting items in the recycling bin
9.  Putting sippy cups in the refrigerator
10. Help put groceries away

There are many things I DO NOT  want help with(i.e. anything that involves open liquid containers or permanent ink), but I am trying to keep this positive, so use your own judgement in order to preserve your sanity.

Lakeshore Learning

Looking for something to do tomorrow morning?  I totally forgot about this amazing program held at a Lakeshore store near you.  If you don't have one nearby, sorry :(  But feel free to visit me and I'll take you!  A friend reminded me a few weeks ago and I haven't been able to go yet, but I look forward to it.  My son is the perfect age for this.  The Lakeshore Free Crafts for Kids are weekly (or weekendly) and really adorable.  My mommy friend went for Valentine's Day and enjoyed herself thoroughly.  The store is also uber amazing. Their products, while a bit pricey, are good quality and oh so much fun. I know there are a few of you who loved to play teacher as a kid, so go to Lakeshore and play to your heart's delight!

Why Re-Invent the Wheel

For Wednesday posts, I will tap into my bag of teaching ideas.  These ideas can be used in the school setting or at home.  Some I have thought of myself and some I have borrowed from others.  I have used them in my classroom and am sharing them with you to use, hence the title, Why Re-Invent the Wheel.  Over my past 11 years of teaching (ouch!) I have perfected being an underachiever and I am not ashamed.

This week we are talking about Fairy Tales.  Everyone loves a good Fairy Tale and almost everyone knows the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  This is the version I read today.  There are MANY versions!  We did a simple sort/size activity following the read aloud as follows:
Biggest to Smallest

Draw pictures of three bears using a stencil, going from biggest to smallest. Copy the pictures so that there are enough for each of the students in your group. If you don't have a stencil, simply draw different size bears.  Let them decorate each bear, and discuss the differences between them.Cut out the bears and place one set of bears on a surface everyone can see and label them “Small,” “Bigger,” and “Biggest.” Take three similar toys of different sizes, such as blocks or cars, and have students sort them beneath the picture appropriately.
You can take this one step further (to keep in a portfolio) and glue the bears on a large piece of construction paper in order from biggest to smallest.  Label the picture, "The Three Bears" and call it a day :).  

I like this activity because it uses other items to help children generalize the skill of sorting and awareness of size.  I also like the artistic element that children can create their own interpretations of Mama Bear, Papa Bear and Baby Bear.    

*If you plan to complete this activity in one sitting allot at least 30 minutes, including reading the story.  

Silly Willies

Get your mind out of the gutter! Or am I the only one who thinks of inappropriate things when I hear the word willy?  How can I not after actually going to see the Puppetry of the Penis show back in Fall of 2004 (?) at the Rosslyn Spectrum Theatre.  I can't remember the exactly, but I DO remember the show.
Getting back to the subject, today in school we had a few moments before lunch where I had nothing planned (shocking) so we explored this CD, which has one of our favorite movement songs, The Mack Chicken Dance is awesome (song list and music samples). It's a medley of the Chicken Dance, Its Bitsy Spider (not eensy weensy, which I don't understand why people say that and find it infuriating) and Head Shoulders Knees and Toes.  We found that we also now love Silly Willies!  Great beat and fun moves for the littles.

Is it me or are these guys (or at least their pose) a little reminiscent of the Ambiguously Gay Duo on SNL??

*Remember children ages 2-5 benefit from 1.5-2 hours of DAILY physical activity!  If you would like more information and/or ideas for implementing structured physical activities into your daily routine, feel free to contact me via email.