Telling Time

My class is currently working on telling time to the hour, half hour, fifteen minute interval and five minute interval in math.  We always need lots of different ways to practice a skill.  Below are a few of the resources we're using in addition to the materials that came with the unit in our district's math series:

Touch Math Time  (I looked for this on google.  It used to be part of the Upper Grades set, but I can't find it anymore.  I really like it because it's visuals are clean and simple with a lot of white space.  It also integrates time before and time after within each interval.)

Clocks from two paper plates from E Is for Explore

Simple morning work worksheets from Math Fact Cafe.  This site has a worksheet generator that shuffles the problems and you can also set the parameters for what skills you want on the worksheet.  Love that!  Again, the visuals are clean and there's a lot of white space so it's not really busy and overwhelming.

I also have quite a few file folder games that I have made and collected over the years.  Those are coming out too.

Dog's Colorful Day

My niece is expecting her first baby! Yay! So what's an aunt to do? Of course, I am cyber-stalking her "future mommy" page on Pinterest. I was so excited to see her pin and re-pin many felt board and felt play activities. So when it was decided that instead of giving a card at her baby shower, we would give her a children's book; I had to start thinking about which felt board books I loved so I could send her some felt play along with my book. One of my favorites is "Dog's Colorful Day" by Emma Dodd.

Dog has some very exciting, messy and colorful adventures throughout the day. The readers are encouraged to count and describe the spots that start to appear on dog's fur as the evidence of his adventures. For example, dog starts off with one black spot on his left ear, but after passing the painted door he now has two spots. One black spot on his left ear and one blue spot from the paint. The adventures continue throughout Dog's day.

My preschoolers loved interacting with this book with a felt board activity I made. As we read the book, the children would sequence the item that caused the spot on Dog at the top of my felt board in left to right progression. We would also add the appropriate spot to dog. At the end of the story, we put dog in the bath to get clean and then finally in his bed. This is a lesson the kids wanted repeated time and time again. They loved playing with the colors and the sequence of the story through the felt pieces.


Consequently, I got to have lots of conversations about colors, numbers and retelling stories through play. Isn't that the best?


 Photo credit:http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://heightslibrary.org/wordpress/explorastory/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/dogs-colorful-day.jpg&imgrefurl=http://heightslibrary.org/wordpress/explorastory/?attachment_id%3D887&h=648&w=520&sz=47&tbnid=FZAWTeo3zYglYM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=72&zoom=1&usg=__hMqMXyP36XSG5ETzjcMhWGHbaYo=&docid=xxOX9rSEuAhdaM&sa=X&ei=c1toUuvDIoq-kQeb2IGgAQ&ved=0CDsQ9QEwAQ

Interactive Worm Sites

Last week and this week we are reading the chapter book "How to Eat Fried Worms" by Thomas Rockwell.

Here are two interactive sites that students can navigate through independently for more information about worms.

Vermi the Worm

Herman the Worm

Sight Word Strategy

I love strategies that are "quick and dirty" and cheap!  This is a simple strategy to have children practice one or two sight words that are giving them trouble.

Simply get a washable marker and write the word on the child's hand.  Make sure to write it so that the word faces the child when the child looks down at her hand. Now remind the child that every time she looks at her hand, she needs to read the word. 

This simple strategy gives the child numerous opportunities to target that word throughout the day.  She can practice it on her own.  She can read it in line to specials, she can read it in line from specials, she can read it in line to lunch, etc., etc., etc.  The beauty of it is that it not only prompts the child to remember her sight word, but it also quickly prompts staff to ask her to read the word.   It offers lots and lots of repetition within just one day!

And I have to tell you, it works.  For the life of me, I could not remember my PIN to check out books from the library and our school librarian forever had to look up my number.  The little girl whose hands are pictured here heard us go through it one day and she told me "If you can't remember it, you need to write it on your hand!"  Since I do it for my students, I figured, I'd better be willing to do it for myself, especially since she called me out and it was a situation that mirrored when I use the strategy for them!  Do you know, since then, I have remembered that crazy PIN?

If you are going to use this strategy, you will want to check with parents first to make sure they are okay with you writing on their child's hand.  You also want to make sure to ask the child's permission.  After all, you are writing on THEIR body and it IS pretty blatant. I would never want to use a  strategy that embarrasses a child.  Most of my students this year are okay with it, however, I have 2 students who tell me "no" they don't want me to write on their hands and I respect that.  For those students we don't use this strategy.

Rube Goldberg Machine

My husband found this video on You Tube and sent it along to me.  It shows a 7 year old boy, Audri, and the Rube Goldberg Machine he created.

I think this is awesome!  It shows so much planning, creativity and problem solving.

My class (self contained third graders) have been participating in science lessons all year with a general education third grade class.  I would love to organize our classes into cooperative groups and have them create their own Rube Goldberg Machines.  We have 3 more science units that we have to complete for our instructional focus calendar, but perhaps we could do this at the end of the year during the last week.

States of Matter: Interactive Games and Videos

My class has started a science unit focuses on the states of matter and the physical properties of matter.  After searching online for some resources to support our classroom materials, I've found quite a bit.  Have fun exploring!

Interactive Sites for Students:

Solids Liquids and Gases

Changing States of Matter 

Material Properties 

Changes in Materials

The Mixtures Lab

Short Video Clips on States of Matter

States of Matter and Physical Properties


Resources for Teachers:

Standards by grade level with links to appropriate activities.

States of Matter Unit Packet

States of Matter Article and Questions

What's the Matter: Sorting into matter categories

States of Matter Worksheets

Valentine's Activity: Hearts Everywhere

If you are in any way similar to me in how you plan lessons for activities you've seen online, you need some time to read about the idea, think about how you would use it with your group, prepare your materials and then implement it.  One of the teacher's on my team this year says he likes to let concepts have a chance to "marinate."  We've all adopted his lingo.  We like to let kids have the chance to have repeated exposure to concepts, but sometimes we also need some marinating time for ourselves. 

In an effort to give everyone some time to "marinate" the following ideas, I'm sending them out early (or really late considering I took the pictures last February!)

For my pre-schoolers that I've had in the past, this lesson focused on the positional concept "on" as well as identification of common objects.

I started with the interactive book, "Hearts Everywhere",  from the Jefferson Parish AAC link.  I would read the book to my class using the felt board and laminated hearts.  On each page, the students would take turns placing the heart "on" the object identified in the book.

After introducing the book and the vocabulary, the next day before the children came in the classroom, my assistant and I placed construction paper hearts all over the classroom.  During circle time, I would call a few students at a time to go "look for a red heart" and bring it back to the carpet.  When they brought their heart back, I would ask them where they found their heart.  Once they answered the question, we would place it on our chart and I would call the next group of children to go look. 

TIP:  If you are working with pre-school age children, be sure to write on the heart the location that you placed it.  For example, "on the fish tank."  When you have several children looking at the same time, it's easy to miss who picked one up from specific locations.  If you don't have several children looking at the same time, the waiting period gets to be too long for little ones.  And if you have students at levels similar to the students I have taught, when you ask the question, "Where was your heart?" you will inevitable get the answer "over there" a few times.  You want to be sure you can accurately prompt them to answer the question using the positional word "on" and the correct common object where it was.

I love activities that get students actively engaged.  These types of scavenger hunts always produce smiles, laughter and excitement.

Because of that I'm trying to think of a way I can adapt the activity to be appropriate for my current third graders.

I think I will connect it to our writer's workshop lessons.  We have been working on using more descriptive phrases in our paragraphs.  I am going to  place many hearts all over the room with their labels.  Have the students put their heads down with their eyes closed and give each student 10 or 15 seconds (one at a time) to go get a heart from somewhere in the room.  After they collect their hearts, they will describe where they found the heart, but they are not allowed to name the object.  Then they will read their paragraphs to their classmates who will need to guess where the heart was originally.

I'll have to let you know how it goes!  I'd love to see other ideas on how to use a scavenger hunt type activity to support academic goals for older students.  Please post your ideas in the comments section.

Math Facts: Free Interactive Game Online

I found a new-to-me website for practicing math facts. It's a basic "drill and kill" type of game, but it is simple and clearly presented. It also gives the user options of using different operations and different sum/difference totals. Check it out:

Harcourt Basic Facts

More Sea Life Resources

Since I live in South West Florida, a unit on sea life is particularly meaningful to my students and there are many opportunities to extend with real life experiences.

We have a field trip to Mote Marine Aquarium planned in March. I took my class on this particular field trip about 4 or 5 years ago. This year we are going to participate in the lesson about sea turtles and will actually get to make squid "popsicles" and then feed the turtles in the aquarium.

Of course, we also support this unit with many classroom experiences. I have found a few new resources to share:

Fern Goes for a Dive (free, animated read aloud story)

Fern Goes to Hawaii (free, animated read aloud story)

Mermaid Lullaby

Seashore Tap and Type

You can find other Sea life resources that I have gathered at this post, this post, this post and this post.

Free Interactive Holiday Sites

I found this site a few years ago. It was challenging to navigate and then go back and find the activities you wanted repeatedly. They have re-organized and uploaded many free interactive boards and activities. They have many that are appropriate for December holidays. They've done a great job! It's so much easier to navigate and find activities appropriate to skill or grade level.

TES iboard player

Here's a link to a post from a few years ago too. My students still enjoy these links!

Interactive Holiday Sites

Free Dinosaur Interactive Games

Dinosaur Train

Diego Dinosaur Adventure

Dino Dig Fossil

Counting Backwards and Subtraction

I'm working with a little girl who is learning how to subtract.

The touch math strategies were very successful in helping her learn to add, so we are continuing with those materials and cues. However, when she was learning to add, she
had already mastered the skill of counting up. She has not yet learned how to consistently and accurately count backwards from 20. So while she is learning the concept of subtraction with differences from 5 and manipulatives, we are also working on counting backwards from 20.

I created a simple power point that she likes to "play" when we practice. I have her manually click to forward the slides. You can download the manual click power point here. I also added an automatic slide transition for those of you who may want to use this in the classroom. You can download the automatic transition power point here.

In addition to using the power points during our tutoring session, her mom is also helping her count backwards during the many opportunities to wait during the day. They count backwards in the grocery store line, while waiting for her brothers at baseball practice, while the microwave is heating something, while a DVD is loading, etc. She has found lots of times during the day to practice with her!

Spray Bottles

It's summer time, blistering hot in Florida and we are in the second week of summer school with a group of pre-schoolers with special needs.

I love spray bottles! We have had them out on the playground at least 4 out of the 6 days we've been in summer school. But, how are spray bottles educationally relevant and why would I use them in my class?

Using spray bottles addresses the following skills:

• pre-writing skills (Look at the motions your fingers and hands use for squeezing a spray bottle. Now look at the motions needed for cutting and writing. Playing with spray bottles increases hand ad finger strength that supports writing skills.)
• peer interaction skills (Our spray bottle rules are: 1) You have to ask the person before you spray them; 2) You have to spray only on their arms, legs or body, not in the face; 3) If the person asks you to stop, you have to stop. They spray bottles and play help and encourage children to initiate play and to respond to the words and actions of their peers.)
• communication skills (Playing with the spray bottles naturally encourages conversation, especially if there is an adult supporting the play. We have had conversations about body parts, facial expressions, colors changing, opposites...wet/dry, high/low, hot/cold, playground equipment, actions...squeeze, spray, laugh, run, jump, etc. The active play generates many topics of conversation.)

All in all, playing with the spray bottles is just good summer fun! Actually, as I think about that, I'd challenge you to think about other activities that are just good fun! I bet you could find some educational relevance for pre-schoolers for those, too!

Fall Festival

In two weeks, our pre-k classes will be holding our "Fall Festival." This activity is a student, family, and teacher favorite!

The Fall Festival structure uses the same rules and procedures that the children are already familiar with from our rotations in the classroom. (We used a the same lesson structure for our Rodeo Day lessons outlined in another post.)

Fall Festival is organized on a center rotation with a teacher, assistant or parent volunteer assisting at each center. Each center rotation will last 8-10 minutes. Sometimes we have centers last up to 15 minutes, but this year we have a lot of 3 year olds, so we wanted to plan for all children to be successful.

There will be three or four children in a group. (If we add another class or more students, we will increase the centers accordingly. I want a maximum of five children at a center, three or four would be best.) Activities are designed to encourage oral language development, social/emotional development, gross motor development and fine motor development.

Key component: You want to have as many children as possible actively participating in centers at any given time. It is important to practice waiting for your turn, but more active participation at any given time equals less discipline problems. Makes sense...the students are involved in the task rather than getting in trouble.

TIP to spend less money!!!!!!! We hold our fall festival AFTER Halloween. This way the pumpkin patches and grocery stores are very willing to donate pumpkins and hay bales and cornstalks.

Morning Circle:
1) Safety comes first! (hands and feet to self...this includes hula hoops and plastic bowling balls)
2) Stay in your center until the whistle blows
3) Listen to the staff and volunteers

Centers:

Pumpkin Toss
Set up:
~Gather 6 hula hoops
~Place up to 10 or 12 pumpkins spaced apart so that a hula hoop could go around it.
~Get four carpet squares. Each child sits/stands on a carpet square. We place two in one "line" behind a set of three hula hoops and two carpet squares in another "line" behind a set of three hula hoops. It visually cues the children on where they need to be. (Every child in a group should should have a carpet square to stand on while they are playing or waiting.)

Play:
~The child sitting on the carpet square closest to the pumpkin patch tries to throw the hula hoop around the a pumpkin.
~After the turn is completed, the child who was on the "waiting square" moves up to the "throwing square" for his/her turn. The child who was throwing moves to the "waiting square" to wait for another turn. This step is important because it teaches children how to wait, but they don't have to wait for very long. When you have two lines at each center like this you have at least 50% of the class actively participating at any given time. Remember: more children actively participating in the lesson equals less discipline problems.
~Repeat until the whistle blows. The first whistle blow is the cue to "clean up". After the clean up whistle, we have children point to their next center. The second repetetive whistle blow is "move to the next center". Since today is Fall Festival Day, we will "fly like crows" to our new centers.

Benefits:
Practice social/emotional skill of taking turns. We also encourage the children to cheer for their friends while they are waiting. This helps the give compliments and recognize achievements of others. Throwing movement naturally requires students to cross their midline. Great opportunities for oral langauge. 50% of the children are actively engaged at any time.


Fall Sensory Table:
Setup:
~We have two sensory tables we are using. One is based on the "fall sensory tub" video (scroll down and look for the title) from www.Childcareland.com. The other is filled with rice and vegetables from our housekeeping center.
~If you don't have a water table, Home Depot or Lowes have mixing tubs in the concrete/masonry area that would work. They look similar to this, but I have seen others for $6 or $8.
~Gather 4 or more scooping tools or tongs tools. (Our favorite tool for the fall flowers is the popcorn fork.)

Play:
~Let students scoop and explore.
~Move flowers and pumpkins or vegetables to a "safe spot" with tongs, the popcorn fork or "cheater chopsticks."
~Repeat until the whistle bows. Clean up and get ready to "fly like a crow" to a new center.

Benefits:
Great sensory activity. The practice with the tongs and cheater chopsticks exercise the muscles needed for writing and cutting. Lots of opportunities for oral language. 100% of the children are actively engaged the whole time.


Pumpkin Dip
Setup:
~Gather mix items: Cool Whip, pumpkin pie mix, vanilla pudding, gingersnaps or apple slices. (We use this recipe from cooks.com). Also get juice boxes so students can have a drink.
~Create a picture recipe.
~Gather a bowl, a spoon, small cups or bowls and a box of baby wipes.

Play:
~Have students clean their hands with baby wipes since soap and water won't be available. ~Have students "read" the recipe with you.
~Have students add ingredients and stir the mix.
~Eat the pumpkin dip with gingersnaps or apple slices and drink a juice box.
~Enjoy until the whistle blows.

Benefits:
Students practice early literacy skills when reading the recipe. Students follow a sequence of directions. Students get a chance to cool off and have a less active center. 100% of the children are actively engaged the whole time.

Build a Scarecrow:
Setup:
~Gather enough materials so that each group can make a complete scarecrow. We use: old newspaper for stuffing, jeans/overalls, button-down long-sleeved shirts, boots, gloves, hats, large brown grocery bags previously colored orange with a face drawn on it and stuffed with newspaper to create a head, string.
~Before Fall Festival use the string to tie the ends of the sleeves and bottom of the shirt, and the ends of the pant legs so your newspaper stuffing won't fall out.
~Sort all of the materials into piles of pants, shirts, hats, etc. Let students take turns picking each part of their scarecrow.
~This year since we are reducing our time to 8-10 minutes, I will have the shirts already stuffed and have the students stuff the pants and put the scarecrow together.

Play: ~Children build scarecrow with help.
~Children crumple newspaper and stuff the pants and shirts. They choose the materials to create their scarecrow as a group.
~Because this center has a task that needs to have a clear start and finish, we use this center to time the rest of the centers. The person who is leading this center gives the one minute warning for the other centers and blows the whistle when it is time to move.

Benefits: Gross motor and fine motor skills in crumpling the newspaper for pre-writing. Many, many opportunities to develop oral language skills (colors, body parts, clothing items, choices).



Corn Bowling:

Setup:
~Before Fall Festival Day, have students color a coloring page that has an ear of corn, cut out and laminate if possible.
~Gather 2 plastic bowling sets. (We use old ones from a garage sale. The Oriental Trading is the least expensive one I've found.)
~Tape the coloring sheets of the corn to the bowling pins.
~Use painters tape to mark the spots where your bowling pins will stand. This will make set up over and over much, much easier.
~If possible use hay bales as a back stop for the pins and bowling balls.
~Gather 4 carpet squares.
~We make two bowling lanes.

Play:
~Children stand on the "bowling" carpet square or the "waiting" carpet square.
~The child whose turn it is to bowl, rolls the ball towards the pins to knock them down. (We usually give 2 turns.)
~When his/her turn is over he/she moves to the waiting square and the next child gets a turn.

Benefits:
Gross motor skills and oral language skills. Social skills and turn taking. At this center we really encourage the children to cheer for their friends and give compliments or high fives.




photo courtesy of Tigerlily 09 at Flickr Creative Commons.

Pumpkin Template

Disney has a free, interactive pumpkin template.

We use this on our ActiveBoard to work on choice making, turn taking and language skills.

The vocabulary we work on using this lesson is: pumpkin, jack-o-lantern, eyes, nose, mouth, change, arrow, same, different, shape.

After each child completes a template we print them and save them for a coloring task later.


Photo courtesy Tigerlily 09 at Flickr Creative Commons

Reading Activities for the Summer

The Florida Center for Reading Research has a ton of information about teaching reading skills.

As summer is approaching, many parents ask what they can do to help their child with their literacy skills over the summer.

This is one of my favorite activity packets from the website. It includes many easy and printable activities to work on letter recognition.

Letter Recognition Resources

Earth Day Games

The following is a list of free interactive games that focus on Earth Day concepts of taking care of the environment, cleaning up litter or recycling.

Clean Up Your World

Every Day is Earth Day

Clean Up the Park

Free the Beach

Dora's Mermaid Adventure

Interactive Holiday Sites

It's the holiday time of year! We are busy learning traditions and celebrations from around the world. With this comes many natural opportunities to build language through stories, crafts and games. Since my pre-k classroom is equipped with an ActiveBoard and we have fourth grade students who earn to come down on Thursday afternoons to be our "computer buddies," my students especially love many of the interactive games that can be found for free on the internet.

Here are a few of our class favorites:

Make Rudolph: Visual Spatial Activity

Make a Snowman: Visual Spatial Activity

Decorate a Christmas Tree

Spin the Dreidel

Shake the Snowglobe

Design a Snowflake

Kwanzaa Puzzle

Create Fireworks for Diwali

I'd love to find a child friendly Diwali, Festival of Ligths game and a Las Posadas game. If anyone knows of a link will you post it in the comments section?

Hot Pumpkin

Shelley Lovett at Childcareland has started posting YouTube videos about the lessons she teaches with the materials she creates and gathers.

This month she posted a lesson about playing a game "Hot Pumpkin" (similar to hot potato) during her large group time.


Here are the features that I think Shelley does exceptionally well with her site and her pumpkin video:

• She provides and models the materials.
• She gives suggestions for alternative materials.
• When she purchases materials, she tells where they are purchased and the cost.
• She identifies potential problems and provides cautions against them.
• She creates a lesson that can be naturally differentiated!
• She demonstrates how she differentiates with different skill levels.
• She explains how she makes her teacher decisions.
• She tells where she gets her music and offers alternatives.

Check out more of the videos of Shelley's Lessons and explore all of the creations on her site.

Teaching Rhyming

One of my listservs has been pretty active lately on the topic of teaching rhyme. It has been an interesting topic, because the person interested in ideas has already tried many strategies to help her particular student master the concept.

So it made me think...how many different strategies and different materials would help teach the concept of rhyming.


Ideas for parents and teachers about how to teach rhyming:

Rhyming at Succeed to Read

Rhyming Ball Game

Rhyme Time

You Tube: Teaching Rhyme with Songs

You Tube: Teaching Rhyme


Free Downloads for teaching rhyming:

Using Nursery Rhymes: Free Printables

Raffi: Down by the Bay Song

Kelly's Kindergarten Rhyming Pictures

Erase A Rhymes

More Erase A Rhymes (scroll down 2 or 3 sections)


Free Online games/videos for practicing rhyming:

You Tube: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

You Tube: Sesame Street "et" Rhyme

You Tube: Becka and the Big Bubble

Interactive Game: Oobi Rhyme

Interactive Game: Gus and Inky Rhyme

Interactive Game: Rhyme Time Picture Match Up

Interactive Game: Scholastic Reggie Loves to Rhyme

Interactive Game: Elmo Rhymes


Products to purchase:

Jack Hartmann: Shake Rattle and Read

Lakeshore Rhyming Books

Lakeshore Rhyming Tubs

Super Duper: Rhyme Deck



These are just a few of the many resources that are out there. Have fun exploring!