H is for Hat

Happy hat day!

For hat day we read the book The Hat by Jan Brett In this book the hedgehog gets stuck wearing an unusual hat, a woolen stocking. He encounters many of the animals on the farm who ask him about his unique headwear.  After the story, the kids colored and cut out pictures of the animals and glued them in order of apperance in the book.

D is for

. . . dump! The kids filled a bucket choosing only items that started with the letter d and when it was full, they got to dump it out. For a more detailed post on how to create your own dumping activity, see the post here.

. . . dotted diamonds! We used bingo markers to make dots on a diamond. I have seen the bingo markers in the pen or kids craft section of the dollar store.  We read the book Lots of Dots by Craig Fraizer. It shows how dots can be used to make fun pictures. . . . dinosaur feet! We used cracker boxes to create dinosaur feet. I spray painted each one green. The kids painted them and added claws using double sided tape that I put on th edge of each box. 

Then we had a lot of fun stomping around the classroom and being dinosaurs. (This is a picture I took of Brandon later in the day for our family blog. The pictures I took during class were too blurry to use.)

We even sang "We are the Dinosaurs" by the Laurie Berkner band.

Shapes

Every class that I have taught is different and has their own personalities. This class cracks me up because I cannot get them to look at the camera for the life of me. I try to be as quick as I can when taking pictures of the students during center time or class so I don't disrupt the class time. So sometimes we don't get the best shot and sometimes I can't get them to look at the camera, but we just move on. So I thought I'd throw that disclaimer out there because this class is the "looking dramatically into the distance" picture taking class. Maybe they all have great modeling careers ahead of them. :) Pipe cleaners and straws make an amazing opportunity for kids to be creative and learn about shapes or letters. We worked on making shapes and identifying them during centers time. For more instructions see this post here.

Every year we read this amazing book called Color Zoo by Lois Ehlert. We use her inspiration of making animal faces using simple shapes to create our own animal faces. Each child is given a picture of their favorite animal and we decide together what shapes should make the different features of the face. I provide them with precut shapes and they assemble the faces. I must say that this year is definitely our best batch of animal faces yet! We got to make some really fun faces like rhinos, giraffes, and elephants. Check our your child's amazing creations, you are about to be blown away!

E is for Emotions

When you work with children you aren't just teaching them academics. You are helping them learn how to be a human being that is part of a community. For my kids, our community is our classroom and hopefully the things they are learning in class will go with them out into the world.

     Talking about emotions is kind of a big deal with 3, 4, and 5 year olds. It's pretty obvious that controlling emotions isn't necessarily their strong suit and that's where we come in. When talking to little ones about emotions there are some important truths to help them understand.

1. Feeling emotions is totally normal. Everyone feels sad sometimes, everyone feels angry sometimes, it is normal.

2. Recognizing how you are feeling is a huge deal. As adults, we can teach our kids empathy when we help them see that we recognize how they are feeling and help them through it. My son Brandon was crying during carpet time. So we stopped to talk about it as a class. Why are you crying? "We put away his blocks when it was time to clean up and he wasn't done." Did you know we would clean up even if he wasn't done? "Yes" I asked the other kids, what are things you do when you are feeling sad to cheer yourself up? Madden sang a cute song about taking 4 deep breaths. Jaxon said he goes to his room to cry and then comes out to play when he's done. I said I like to get hugs or sometimes listen to music. Then we asked Brandon if he has a favorite song we could sing to cheer him up. So we rocked out to Dr. Jean's "Bear Hunt" and he felt better.

2. What we do when we are feeling those emotions is important. Yes we feel angry, but is hitting someone okay? Nope. Is there something you can do to help you calm down? Take deep breaths, run around outside, kick a soccer ball outside, talk to a friend . . . This is our job, to give them tools to keep in their tool belt that they can pull out when they are struggling.

      One of my kids especially struggles with keeping her emotions in check. So we have worked on putting tools her tool belt.  When she is upset I can use key words to talk to her about choosing a strategy to help her through those hard times. Here's what we talk about - balloon breaths (breath in deep, puff out your cheeks and blow the air out slowly like you are blowing up a balloon), belly breaths (breathing deeply and slowly so your belly goes in and out - in the nose and out the mouth), get a hug (it's usually a pretty long hug), lay in bed and snuggle your favorite stuffed animal, put on headphones and listen to music (we have a kid friendly mp3 player with a playlist on it of their favorite, appropriate songs. This one is HUGE for kids who can get out of control. On a side note, this also helps get them going on doing their chores too), are we being flexible, are we trusting mom that everything will be okay, or read a book. It's not perfect and we have been working on it for years, adding new strategies to fit her age, but it has helped improve the melt downs and stress.

  We spent some time in class talking about emotions. We discussed what emotions are. We listed different kinds of emotions. We read Today I Feel Silly by Jamie Lee Curtis.

Then we used my new favorite activity to explore emotions more deeply. I found this amazing make a face toy at Mr.Printables.com. We took turns making our face show different emotions. First I made a few faces and the kids talked about what emotion they are seeing. Then, we had two friends come up. One friend made a face and the other friend changed the paper face to match. It was really fun and a really great way to explore our emotions.

He couldn't quite do mad without smiling. 

You should definitely give it a try. It might just be so much fun that you find a single tear of joy rolling down your face. Have a great afternoon! 

Shape Zoo

Last week we read the book Color Zoo by Lois Ehlert. 

We used this mentor text to learn about shapes and how we can use shapes to make different pictures. Before the class, I asked the kids what their favorite animal was. I printed a picture of each of those animals and worked with the kids one on one to talk about what shapes might be used to make that animal. I had a variety of shapes precut in different sizes to help the kids talk more easily about what shapes might be used. We looked at ears, noses, and eyes to talk about what shape might be used. The kids did an amazing job. Here's what they came up with. 

First Weeks of School

We started preschool in September and have had so much fun for the first few weeks of school. I am so, so excited for this school year. This year's class is pretty amazing and I think we are going to learn a lot while having a lot of fun. The first couple of weeks we have been learning about class rules, working together, helping each other and classroom manners. Then we moved on to learning about colors. The neat thing is that these kids have already gotten their basic colors down so we were able to learn about colors like grey and tan and turquoise. Here are some pics of what we have been up to. 

We learned about having good "piggy" manners. We read the book,  This Little Piggy's Book of Manners and discussed what polite piggies do at school. The kids had fun practicing being polite piggies and then they had fun playing with the other animal noses. 

 We had a day of working together. After reading The Crayon Box that Talked, we talked about working together and how we each are good at different things. We worked on doing a puzzle together and had some fun playing with the parachute together. We were learning about listening and working as a team as we made the balls bounce, sang songs, and made a tent with the parachute.