Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Random projects!

Lots to share tonight! Pretty random sharing, with no real theme, just lots of fun pictures!
                                            We have been studying big beautiful bats! 
The kids looked at lots of books and then drew a picture of a bat and then painted it. 
                                    Each bat painting was totally unique and amazing!
I also had the children measure their bats wings with unifix cubes! Gotta get in a little academics with their art! LOL! 


We also read the story "Where's my Mummy?" by Carolyn Crimi and then we retold the story and made our own little mummies! They turned out so adorable! 


Captain Capital! 
Today the children met their new superhero! Captain Capital! He is a pencil with an eraser head and a cape! He loves to help the children with their printing and he always looks for capital letters! The children loved him and they each took one home. 


Sunday, October 27, 2013

Little Fuzzy Bats!

On Friday, my little "bats" created their own little bats! They were created with sparkle pompoms and fun foam wings and wiggle eyes! They are adorable! As an added bonus, while the children were gluing the pieces they had to count to 30 for each wing, so the glue would hold. It was great practice in counting out loud orally. It was also an exercise in patience and building up stamina! This project showed who was able to persevere and who gave up very quickly and who needed more encouragement to keep going. All in all a very good project! 

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Cornstarch GOOP!

Science Thursday was a lot of messy fun today! We made cornstarch GOOP! It is always fascinating to watch my kids little faces, when they make a new discovery! Unfortunately, I can't show you their faces! Which is too bad because the faces of discovery are awesome! They LOVED playing with this stuff! It can be both a solid and a liquid! It can even make a snapping sound when you try to bend it! Super fun! Super amazing! I was surprised that the experiment time lasted an entire hour! That just shows how engaged they were! 


A, E, I, O, U, Vowel Bat!

I love Vowel Bat! It is hands down the best song to learn the vowel sounds! Shari Sloane from Kids Count 123 has a great Youtube video with the song. This year I had my kids make their own vowel bat! I provided a cardboard cut out and the children wrote the vowels on the bat inside circles. Then we outlined the bats with our favourite colour of smelly marker. Then we added details, like a smile and fangs and of course wiggle eyes! The children LOVED it! Once we completed making our Vowel Bats, we just HAD to sing the song and fly our bats around!



Saturday, October 19, 2013

We are learning about Bats!

We are learning about Bats in our classroom. The children are so excited about it and super motivated! Last Thursday we made little stuffed bats to hang from the ceiling in our classroom. They are adorable! We made them from black children's socks that I purchased from the Dollar Tree. The children stuffed the little black socks and then glued on felt wings and ears and wiggly eyes. Some children made cute little paper fangs! Our classroom now has a whole colony of little black bats hanging from the ceiling. 


We will continue our Bat study until Halloween! Then the children will get to take their little bats home to roost! I love to do bats in the month of October! It is a great study and an awesome replacement for Halloween activities. I tend to save Halloween activities for the actual day of Halloween. 

Pattern Party!

To celebrate the end of our first Math unit, the teacher next door to me and I,  planned a Pattern Party for our kids. We had some wonderful parents who came to help out or sent in food. Fun was had by everyone! Below are some of the photos of the fun we had and the various centres we had at the party! 
The children could visit: 1. Pattern snakes, which was made with Crayola Model Magic air dry clay, wiggle eyes and chenille stems cut into small pieces. They turned out so cute! 
2. Make a Slap bracelet with stickers!
                                     3. Make a crown with stickers and bulletin trimmers
                                          4. Edible fruit patterns!
                                          5. Necklace patterns
                                          6. Draw a paper pattern flag
                                          7. Fruit Loop Necklaces
We also did pattern picture frames or door hangers with fun foam and markers. We also painted pattern fish and Pompom caterpillars! There was 10 centres in all to choose from. 
The children really enjoyed themselves! 


Monday, October 14, 2013

Mom guess what? I have a job!

In our school/classroom family each child is given a job to do each and everyday! This has taken some getting used to even for me! I used to just pull a child's name from my choosing bucket and that would be the helper for whatever needed doing (calendar, weather, paper passer etc). Not this year!
For the last few years I have been studying Conscious Discipline and I really love the philosophy and ideas behind it. Every year I have been adding to my classroom to reflect the Conscious Discipline way. So this year I added in a number of things. Classroom jobs is one thing I have added. I have had jobs in the past, but never a job for each and every child. Every child in the classroom has a job to do and they do the same job for the entire week. Then they get a new job the following week. I had no idea the impact that this little thing has! One day a little person in my class "missed" doing her daily job because we had to go to a school wide assembly, so her job was "skipped" for that day. Well, for the entire day, that child reminded me that she did not get to do her job. I learned that we can not "skip" anyone's job, it is just far too meaningful for the children! So now I try to make sure everyone gets to do their job, no matter what comes up in our day! Below is a picture of our job board. I move the children's names every Monday, so they start a new job at the beginning of the week. If I forget, the children certainly do not and I get a reminder from my little friends! I made the job board on a foam core board and plastic sticky backed pockets. It is portable and easy! I found the clipart online for free! 
There are 20 jobs and I left 4 blank pockets incase one year I have a larger class (hope not!). Some of the jobs came right from the kids and some are reflective of my practise of Conscious Discipline.
 

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

A New Friend!

A few days ago I introduced a new friend to my classroom. He is very funny! Everywhere he goes in the classroom he likes to make the music from JAWS! 
Yes, he is a shark and his name is Clark, but the kids like to call him "Sharky". 
Clark has decided he's okay with the nickname. 


He is the most motivating puppet I have in the classroom right now! The kids have suddenly become much more interested in making their printing a priority! It is much neater and they are trying harder to remember to start their letters at the top!

When he sees someone who had made a great effort, he tells them and then asks them to "Gimme some fin!" and the child gives him a high five on his fin. He also notices pencil grip, printing posture, letter formation, spaces and more! He is the best "off the cuff" puppet I have pulled out in a long time! The children are HOOKED! They ask for him everyday and I have to remind them he only comes out at printing time.

The kids often stick their fingers out and want "Sharky" to bite them. I solved that problem by having "Sharky" tell the kids, "Pleck! I do not eat fingers! Gross! Too dirty!" He tells them that he learned from his uncle that people taste terrible! He only eats vegetables! His favourite is kohlrabi! 

This made me think, hmmm, I bet lots of kids have not tasted kohlrabi! We could have that as a "treat" from "Sharky"! This puppet is so much FUN! Best 25 bucks I have ever spent on my classroom! 

Monday, October 7, 2013

We are reading on our MACbook Laptops!

We have been learning how to log in to the school MACbook Laptops. 
Each child has a large log in card with their log in codes. They are learning the steps to log on and then reading on RAZ-Kids. The kids really enjoy it and are getting better at logging in. 
It is a really hard lesson for them to learn that the computers need their names to be spelled EXACTLY right, no invented spelling and no forgetting letters! 
It is quite funny when a child says "My computer won't work"
When I go over the first thing I check is how they spelled their name and that's usually what the problem is! They have left out a letter or two! 
Computers can be so fun and so frustrating too! LOL!


Groovy Rainbows!

Honestly, who doesn't LOVE a rainbow? 

In our class we have been learning all about Colours, so it seemed natural to paint rainbows! 
I came up with this little art project! It took two art classes to complete.
I had each child paint a rainbow of colours in wiggly stripes on watercolour paper. Then I had the kids draw circles on another paper and colour them with crayons. 

We then used cut up sponges glued to the circles to make them pop off the page! 
The results look really cool! 
The bonus is most of my kids can name all the colours of the rainbow!