"I Aint Gonna Paint No More" By Karen Beaumont has been a real hit! The kids love the illustrations the rhyming sing-song story. I love seeing their faces when we get to the last part... "I'm such a nut, gonna paint my....." Only a few of the kids really get the rhyming aspect of the story and fill in the appropriate word -- BUTT!
While we read, I usually give the kids dry paint brushes and have them pretend to paint their body parts while we read. This year, we followed up with making body tracings and coloring them in with crayons - our paper wasn't thick enough to withstand prek painting while taped on the wall; I'm sure the administration would have killed me if I let them paint their body pictures while taped up on the freshly repainted wall!
I love the kid's rendition of their eyes, nose, mouth and ears!
We've also been reading the heck out of our "Pete the Cat" books lately! I took a chance and ordered the Pete the Cat paperback and audio CD bundle.
I've been working or setting up a listening center for my students, but audiobooks can be very tough for kids with hearing loss to listen to - often there's just too much background noise and/or sound effects for the kids to hear the reading over. These CDs are pretty good, with a nice reading pace, good use of music and sound effects for the most part and the kids have really enjoyed listening to them! They especially love that Pete sings fun jazzy songs!
Turns out that you can download the mp3 tracks right from Harper Collins' Pete the Cat page! They seem to be identical to the CD's that I got with my books from Scholastic.
This is really a great book to talk about feelings with - Pete doesn't get mad, or worried, he just keeps on walking and singing - because it's all good!! Fun lesson for the kids. We've talked about how Pete the Cat would deal with friends taking toys, pushing, yelling etc.
I also introduced a new sensory bin for the next couple of weeks. I have several kids who get occupational therapy this year and need to work on a wide range of fine motor skills. I've been wanting to make kool-aid colored noodles for a while, so I had a perfect opportunity as I couldn't come up with a great "all about me" or "feelings" themed sensory bin. I thought about doing a photo tutorial of how to dye the noodles, but my kitchen was a disaster and I just couldn't bring my self to clean it up or show it off. So check out the great photo tutorial over at MamaMiss if you want to know how to do it! Here's our colored noodle bin:
Here are the kids going to town - they played for a good 30 minutes and I think that they might have stayed another 30 if I would have let them. There were tons of opportunities for fine motor practice including stringing noodles & buttons on pipecleaners and/or string, pouring, dumping, using the tongs to move noodles, putting them in containers with different size openings, scooping and stirring with the spoon etc.
Here's last week's Shredded Paper Sensory Bin -- it was SO simple, but also entertaining! However, it was incredibly difficult to clean up off of our carpeted area!
And last, we also stickered letter M for Me! Also a great fine motor activity.
There's a Peek at our Week! What are you up to in your classroom this week? Please leave comments or links to your blog - I'd love to see what you're up to!
