100th Day of School

Here are two photos of a craft we created on our 100th day of school!

Valentine's Day

So excited to celebrate Valentine's Day this past week!

I purchased several tissue boxes for the students to decorate...which was so much fun!

We also completed several other crafts inspired by Valentine's Day this week.  Our students do really well with the paint daubers...they really enjoy working with them.

We experimented with markers and shaving cream.  We had the students color in hearts using Crayola markers.  Next, we applied shaving cream to their pictures and encouraged them to rub and spread the cream around the paper resulting in a pastel-like image.

These door hangers were an inexpensive craft that keep our students busy!  They really enjoy peeling the backs off of foam shapes!

We have several students who love to use scissors and glue sticks.  We created cut paper collages with Valentine's Day colors!

We really enjoy this cut and paste activity.  We used similar printables during our Zoo Unit.

I also baked some yummy treats to send home with the students:

Valentine Sensory box: tinsel, paper hearts, red Easter grass, rose petals, and red manipulatives such as blocks and letters.

Here are some other activities I found that go along with Valentine's Day:

Cupid Cards

Conversation Hearts Math Game

Zoo Theme

These are some of the activities we completed during our Zoo Unit:

Our classroom bulletin board in the hallway sported a Missouri University chant, animals we created for craft time, and an animal cracker counting 

graph we completed during a Math lesson.

It was important to consider how we would be able to graph the crackers during this Math lesson.  Most all children love to eat crackers....so we scanned the crackers and several copies of each animal.  In doing this, the students were able to select a cracker from a bag, discover which animal it was, graph a copied image, and still get to eat the cracker!  Success!

 Bird seed made for a great sensory unit.  This container has a small bag of seed and a small amount of Crisco which allowed the seed to stick together for molding and shaping.

A great Math printable from 2 Teaching Mommies: 

Another great sensory idea for this unit - plastic Easter grass and various animal toys.  We had a combination of plastic, rubber, and stuffed toys for the students to use at this center.

These peel and stick foam masks were great fun, both to make and to wear!  We especially enjoyed watching them look at themselves in the mirror while wearing the masks!

The same company made some fun foam visors too!

We couldn't complete our unit with out singing, "Five Little Monkeys" - like ten times =)!

The students created finger puppets to accompany the song!

"Five Little Monkeys" video clip:

Here are some of the videos we watched this week:

Family Mini Book

I was so lucky to happen upon this mini book.  Since we read, Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You See, a few weeks ago, this was sure to be a hit with the kids!

Family Mini Book

Here is a picture of us completing our classroom book:

to download the book click the above link or visit:

http://www.playingwithwords365.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/DaddyWhoDoYouSeeBookPDF.pdf

Family Unit

Monday, January 28, 2013

Today we began a unit on "Family".  We had new items in our free choice area and sensory manipulatives to start the week off right!

  ( I enjoyed the eyes in the I Spy containters!)

The students really enjoyed bubble wrap and bubbles for sensory.

To tie family into the free choice area, I brought in some socks for sorting and matching.  This also could be considered skills practice for doing laundry which is always a family activity - at least it is at my house!

They also enjoyed making soup and creating meals!

I also brought in a pot and some kitchen utensils for pretend play cooking and cleaning dishes in the sink.  Our students really like water!

I also brought in my daughters old doll house and cut out some paper doll silhouettes for the students to use inside the doll house.

During Speech we watched a video about, "Goldilocks and the Three Bears".  The teacher prepared several mini activities to accompany the story.  It was really a great time!

This is the video that the teacher used for her lesson:

This will be a great way to watch the story over and over throughout the week.  The students love anything set to music:

A great sequence/sizing activity that we used to accompany our Goldilocks video and book reading  was this noodle and card necklace...students looked at sizing: small, medium, and large along with discussing what Goldilocks did first, second, and third.

We are always looking for fun ways to paint which do not ruin clothing.  I came across this idea while perusing the Internet one day...

The students painted a bear cut out with chocolate pudding!

The students created bear-shaped chocolate chip cookies for this unit!

A bulletin board outside of our classroom displays a Math graphing activity fro this unit.

We also created family books using cutouts which the students used to create images of their family members.

And, last but not least, we had to create a "home" tent out of blankets, pillows, and bean bags because our students love small individualized spaces!

Fish Tank

Our classroom is getting a fish tank!  So excited!  I am going to use this post to share pictures of the tank.

So far we have the tank, some equipment, and some rocks!

Yahoo!  We final have fish!

When there were no fish, we decorated the outside of the tank so the students had something to look at which distracted them from opening the tank...

Now we have starter fish that the students love to sit and admire!  There are 6 small fish!

TGIF!

Friday, January, 25, 2013

Every Friday our classroom cooks a treat in the afternoon.  This week we cooked up some blue cupcakes!

Why blue cupcakes, well they sort of tie into our Ocean unit, but the real answer is that one of our students was really interested in blue cupcakes this week.  They even looked them up several times on different days on the Smartboard.  

                                   

For the one hundredth day of school I worked with the students as they counted out 100 pieces of cereal and glued down pieces of construction paper to create a gum ball machine work of art!

Another ocean craft from this week was a coffee filter seahorse.

Check out this artwork created by one of our students during their free choice time...they look a bit like illustrations from a Dr. Seuss book!  The students amaze me every single day.