Thursday, September 16, 2010

Boots

This was kind of random, but I am working at a preschool that is in an Elementary school right now, and when I was walking down the hall today I saw this outside of one of the rooms and thought it was amazing. We have a lot of days when kids need to bring boots to school for either rain or snow. Most teachers have their students put their boots in the hall along the walls, and it can sometimes get really messy, with boots everywhere and all mixed up. This teacher has small numbered stickers along the bottom of the wall, where student can put their boots in their own spot. Great way to keep the halls looking neat and organized!

Chester the Raccoon

Since it was the first week and a half of school, we read The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn in class. The students talked about Chester Raccoons fears and how he felt better when he had his mother's kiss in his hand. We then had the students use simple shapes to create their own Chester the Raccoon in the art center. They used crayons, glue sticks, and construction paper.



After they were finished I displayed them in the hall with a Chester's kissing hand in the center.


Thursday, August 19, 2010

This is a bulletin board display that we put together to showcase the language and reading skills we had been working on. It contains the repetitive poem that we choral read at circle time. We added pictures to the sentence strips to help the student's make a connection between the words and the meaning. We also spent a few days focusing on the words that rhymed in the poem.


After we had practiced the poem for a few weeks we had the children draw an illustration of one of the lines of the poem. They got to choose their favorite line, and used crayons and markers to create the illustration.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

My Bookshelf

Well, I recently moved back to my hometown. I have been working on unpacking and all of the fun things that go along with that. Today I finally got to finish my bookshelf. Our new apartment has these really great built in shelves in the guest bedroom, and they worked nicely for both my personal books and my children's books.


The bottom two shelves are a mix of picture books, children's series such as Harry Potter and A Series of Unfortunate Events, poetry books, and the cardboard magazine holders from IKEA that I bought last year. I have wanted to organize my childrens books for a long time. My cooperating teacher during student teaching used magazine holders like these to organize her books by genre, topic, and author, and I wanted to do the same. Anything non-fiction, or curriculum based is on another bookshelf that I am almost finished with.

These three are collections of books by certain authors. It's a little fuzzy because I took these with my phone, but they are Kevin Henkes, David Shannon, Leo Lionni, Tomie de Paolo, Ezra Jack Keats, Pat Hutchins, Patricia Pollaco, Audrey Penn, Eric Carle, Margeret Wise Brown (my favorite) Jan Brett and Mo Williams. Basically any authors that I have been trying to collect and who I really admire and enjoy.


The rest are sorted by topic. Counting books, alphabet books, color books, days and months books, Underground Railroad books from a unit I created in college, Job and Emergency books, senses, emotions and health books, seasons and holiday books, and finally sign language books.


Whats nice about organizing the books like this is that when I need books about a certain topic, or by a specific author, I won't have to sort through the whole pile of books. I also want to work on a card catalog for the rest of the books so that eventually I can have an easy way of seeing what books I have about certain topics.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Family Trees


During the first week of school we spent time learning about our students. One of the activities that we did was creating a family tree. The students named the people in their families, drew pictures of each person, and then put the tree together.



Monday, July 5, 2010

Elephant Ears


For the letter E week we learned about elephants.

The kids practiced mixing colors to make gray and pink paint. They painted elephant ears and named their elephants. Once they dried we took pictures of our little elephants with their ears and a paper trunk.









At circle we learned facts about elephants that were on shapes. When the shapes were put together they formed an elephant.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Playing with the Baby Chicks

This spring our school had chicken eggs. I don't have any pictures of the process, but we got to watch them go from eggs to chicks. It was really cool for both the kids and the teachers. After the chicks hatched they were in an incubator in the hallway for a few weeks where we could watch them. Once they were big enough we set up a pen in the yard. The kids got to sit in the pen and watch and play with the chicks. It was a really great experience for them.



They loved getting to pet the chicks! My co-teacher in the 3's class, Ms. B, was making sure that chicks knew she meant business. :-)

We took the pictures of the kids with the chicks and hung them along the door frame to make sure the parents saw them. I added a sign with the date. The chicks have now gone to live on a farm. Hopefully they won't end up as my dinner someday.

Bubble Prints

These are the bubble prints that we made for letter B week. We put water, soap, and blue paint in a pan. The kids took turns using a straw to blow bubbles in the pan. We then took a piece of white paper and set it on top of the bubbles to make the print. Some turned out better than others, and we had to keep the kids from sucking up the straw. I recently learned that we should have cut a slit in the middle of the straws to keep them from sucking up the straw.

This is the overall display.

And this is the sign for the display. We read a Tomie dePaula book about bubbles at circle time before we did the activity.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Halloween Ghosts


This is a Halloween display that we put together for letter G week, Ghosts and Goblins. You'll notice quickly in this blog that I really like displaying the kids work and creating signs that go along with the work. Hence the Whoooooo's Hiding? ghost. Parents were supposed to find their "little ghost."

For the activity we cut out 2 ghosts shapes for each child. On one of the ghosts they drew a picture of themselves. They used yarn for their hair. We then attached the other ghost shape so that it appeared that they were wearing a costume. We also cut out the eyes so that their eyes could show through. We traced circles on the back piece so they knew where to draw their eyes.

Fall Bulletin Board


This is the bulletin board that we made for the fall. We cut leaf shapes out of brown grocery bags. The kids colored on them with fall leaf color crayons, then painted over the crayon with watered down brown paint. Then we had them scrunch them up so they were all wrinkly like the leaves on the ground. We used a tree trunk, other fall colored construction paper leaves and a fence to make the background scene, along with a scarecrow we printed from the internet. The whole thing went along with the letter F week, for fall.

Finger Puppets



These are the awesome finger puppets that I got at Ikea recently. 10 in a pack, one pack of animals, one pack of people. They were only 5 bucks for each set. My favorite is the ghost. The kids have been loving them. Next up we need to figure out how to make a stage or something for them to play with.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Shining Stars Bulletin Board


This is the bulletin board that we had up at the beginning of the school year. Each of the stars had the name of one our students. We have a LOT of students between our 2 part-time classes.

Mother's Day Gift



For Mother's Day this year we found this cute poem online. We then bought small kitchen towels at Target and used fabric paint to paint the kids hands and put handprints on each side of the towel, along with the date. We put both parts into a paper bag that the kids had decorated.

Hello!

This blog is meant to be a collection of ideas and projects that I have created or borrowed from others and used in my classroom. I am a preschool teacher in a preschool in Maryland. I currently teach in a 3 year olds classroom. I have also taught in a preschool in Michigan with 4 year olds. I received my teaching certificate in Michigan in elementary education. I hope you enjoy the pictures and ideas in this blog. For the privacy of my students I will be blurring or cutting the pictures to keep faces out of them.