Fun FREE App for PreK!

I'm always on the look out for high quality, affordable apps that have a valid learning purpose for the classroom... recently I discovered two FREE apps - 123 Ninja and ABC Ninja from Alligator Apps that I just LOVE!


ABC Ninja is just like that other addictive fruit slicing app that so many adults have mindlessly played... I think that this, however, is a great learning tool to reinforce letter names AND sounds! I don't feel guilty letting my three year old play this on the commute to and from work and my students just about beg to play the 'ninja game!' The sound effects and music are subtle and not annoying in the least -- and are even minimalist compared to some apps, which is great for my students who have hearing loss; too much background noise & sound effects can be overwhelming and confusing! The game play is customizable with three different levels of difficulty (easy, medium, hard), can be adjusted to focus on capital, lowercase letter names and sounds and can be set for a time limit from 1-10 minutes! At the end of each session, data is displayed but cannot be emailed - I've used the screenshot function on my iPad to capture data when I need it.

123 Ninja is the exact same concept, except it focuses on numbers 0-99. Again, a hit with my students and my own child. It's customizable with different levels of play, the ability to select target numerals and time limits.

With both apps being free to download & also free of in-app purchase opportunities, it's really a win all around!

The only thing that might make this set of apps better would be to have the letter/number repeated somehow, as my students sometimes miss the target when it's announced. And the ability to email data after the game is played by a student and/or the ability to set up individual student profiles so that you don't have to go back and forth changing the settings every time a new child comes to play would be great. I'd also like to see this game expanded to include a version for shapes and colors - my youngest preschoolers would really love reinforcing options for practicing listening & basic concepts!

p.s. just for the record, I was not asked to write this review and did not receive any sort of compensation for my opinion.

Rewind {Snow & The Mitten... }

January was a strange, long month... filled with 2-hour delays, snow days, sick days and other odd interruptions to the usual routine. I'm glad to say that the month is over, but looking back, I realize that I blogged about only a few of our classroom activities from last month. Here's a quick recap of the month...

Snowball Counting Tray  - The kids counted out white pompom snowballs on to the numbered mittens and then checked their work with a filled out tens frame on the back. We used one of our 'Fine Motor Gloves' to practice pinching one snowball at a time with thumb and pointer finger.

Salt Tray - A simple, but classic tray! A little iridescent glitter makes the salt look a bit more like snow too. Students traced sandpaper letter cards with a finger, then copied the letter in the salt tray with a finger. 

Magazine Letter Cut & Paste -  For this tray, I used my printable magazine letters and alphabet worksheet. This tray was time consuming and we worked on it over the course of a week+ Students found & matched letters, cut them out and then pasted them on top of the matching letter on the alphabet worksheet.

Pipe Cleaners & Beads - I really love this activity & have many seasonally coordinated sets of pipe cleaners & beads for other times of the year! Preparation was simple - just hot glue little laminated mittens to the ends of the pipe cleaners, write a numeral on the mittens and provide beads for stringing. Some students worked on making sets of beads to match the numeral, while others just worked on the fine motor aspect of stringing the beads - there's one of our fine motor gloves again!

Foam Alphabet Puzzles & Hammers - What preschooler wouldn't be motivated by the opportunity to hammer something? I found these small individual letter puzzles at a dollar store a while back and was smart enough to by several sets of them. I've sorted out the letters needed for each child to construct their name and added a fun little wooden hammer - students find the letters they need for their names, put them together and hammer the pieces in to make their names. I provide a picture of the finished product for students who still need a model to correctly order the letters of their name. 

The Mitten Cut & Paste - After looking all over the internet for a cut & paste activity with the animals from the mitten, I ended up making my own - that had straight lines for simpler cutting! 

We used this as both a retelling activity & a vocabulary/preposition practice activity. The students had to listen for the name of the animal & the location to place the animal. With more advanced students, I gave longer directions that included a list of 2-3 animals and their locations all at once. It was great practice following orally given directions!

Roll-A-Mitten Color Game - We used this game, from my Roll-A-Mitten activity pack, as a small group game for color practice, waiting for a turn, following directions and more. Students rolled the dice, named the color, found a matching crayon and colored a mitten.

Tubes & Balls Exploration - I bought a variety of tubes (black plastic drainage pipes & dryer vent tubes) at the hardware store and collected a basket full of white balls of different sizes & weights - snowballs. (Our favorite balls are these 'Snowballs' that are like giant pompoms) We cut and hung the tubes along the window using suction cup hooks (the kind you'd use in the shower) and rubber bands. Then we did experiments to see which balls would go the furthest and/or fastest. The kids also explored the tubes using other toys including blocks and animal figurines - some things got stuck and others did not. It's been a great activity for students of all ability levels - with so many great concepts to talk about and try out!

Snow Day & Snowmen

Snow day off school and my toddler is napping ... it's a perfect opportunity to catch up on blogging - or my lack of blogging during the past week. I've been busy with preschool shenanigans, university end-of-semester tasks and holiday preparations at home. Managed to get our Christmas tree up - while not as organized as usual, it's up and my toddler LOVED decorating it - that's all that matters really!

We've been reading lots of Christmas books at our house lately. I had wanted to post a whole 25 days of Christmas reading, but couldn't get it together fast enough. However, we will be doing a '12 Days of Christmas Books' with some great vintage books and some new favorites ... stay tuned beginning December 13 -- I'll be sharing our favorite books in posts between the 13th and 25th of the month... probably a few at a time rather than one every day (I'm just not that organized to write a post a day!)

As for what's been going on at preschool, here are a few of our pictures from last week that I never got around to posting....

 We made a big ball of sparkly snow play-doh roughly using the microwave dough recipe from a while back.  I can't say we were champs at measuring this time, but it worked out well - microwaving did take extra time because we made a quadruple size batch! I put out assorted odds and ends for making a snowman and let the kids go to town.

Check out the biggest snowman with the black beads on the sides of its head -- those are hearing aids! I've got a student who has recently become very aware of his hearing aids and has started putting hearing aids on all of his drawings, sculptures ect.

The sparkles in the dough were about a cup or two of Buffalo Snow that I picked up on clearance somewhere last year. It makes a heck of a mess by itself, but in playdoh, it's really quite charming!

I also changed out the materials for light play and introduced a couple of sheets of cheap snowflake window clings. The kids are still getting the idea of the whole 'light play' thing... and many of them just aren't all that interested in it yet, but we'll keep trying to find just the right materials that catch their interest...

We sang "Five Little Snowflakes" (to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle") with the snowflakes, adding one at a time with each verse, and overhead that went something like this:

One little snowflake with nothing to do 

along came another, then there were two 

Two little snowflakes playing with me

along came another, then there were three 

Three little snowflakes calling for more

along came another, then there were four

Four little snowflakes dip and dive

along came another, then there were five 

Five little snowflakes having so much fun

whoooo! went the wind, then there were none!

I can't say that I remember where it came from, but there are similar versions all over the internet!

Lastly, we made this simple letter craft. S is for snow ... or snowballs. Pretty simple.

I have to say that I've enjoyed my day off... catching up on house work, laundry, blogging, time with my own child... They're calling for more snow late tonight and early tomorrow morning... two snow days in a row? We'll see...

Peek @ the Week

I've been so busy lately that I haven't had much time to post the last two weeks... here's a quick peek at what we've been up to this week!

We've been reading books about food, fall and family in preparation for Thanksgiving! Here's our bookshelf this week:

We've focused heavily on the books "Feast for 10" by Cathryn Falwell and "Today is Monday" by Eric Carle.

We're working on a take home book based on "Feast for 10" .... here's our artwork so far - 2 pumpkins, 3 chickens, 6 bunches of greens and 7 pickles... 

Our sensory bin the week has a variety of beans, play food, pots, pans, funnels, spoons etc.

Here's one of our morning work activities - bean sorting.

I introduced some light play using an overhead projector with a handful of translucent plastic leaves, leaf shaped sequins (table scatter decor from the craft store) and plastic letter tiles.

And we learned about letter 'L' for leaves since the leaves are still turning colors and falling - Here's our Rainbow writing letter 'L' with smashed up leaves sprinkled over glue. Simple but fun!

That's all for now... what are you up to this week?

{5 Fun Magazine Letter Ideas}

I must admit that I've got a serious thing for cutting up old magazines... It's nothing new. For me, there's just something mind-numbingly wonderful about cutting up paper. My love for paper has followed me from childhood to adulthood and now into my classroom - here are some of my favorite ways to use magazine letters with my students!

1. Letter ID Activities - Magazine letters are great for building letter recognition skills because there are so many different font colors, sizes & styles. At this level, I have students 'search, cut & paste' a single target letter using my printable magazine letters and alphabet worksheets. I also use this FREEBIE Letter Hunt worksheet for finding & matching all letters of the alphabet.

2. Upper & Lowercase Matching - Once students begin recognizing and learning letter names, I like to take advantage of the varied font styles for upper and lowercase matching practice. This is especially important for letters like 'Aa' - we teach students to write a lowercase 'a' one way, and we expect them to be able to recognize a letter 'a' in another way. These letter dominoes are one of my favorite ways to work on upper & lowercase matching; they also lend themselves for uppercase matching and 'traditional' dominoes type play for upper and lowercase matching with more capable students.

3. Sorting - There are so many ways to sort letters. With my very young students, we start by sorting letters by color, size, and shape. Then I provide two well known letters to sort and increase difficulty from there. We use different sorting strategies and visual organizers - I LOVE when my students come up with new sorting rules and ways of organizing their letters! 

4. Name Practice - What little kid doesn't love making something wonderful with their name? Last year, we made name plates for cubbies with my printable magazine letters. I printed each child's name on a sentence strip, provided pages of my printable magazine letters and glue to construct 'ransom note' inspired name tags; we laminated the names used them for cubby tags.

5. Sight Word & Spelling Word Practice - With older students, magazine letters are a fun hands-on way to practice spelling. It's much more than just writing the words out, students must find, cut, arrange and glue letters for this task. Great as a literacy center, morning work activities or for daily word work!

For most of the above activites, I've used a combination of printable magazine letter cutouts from my TpT or TN stores and real letter cutouts.

What other ways do you enjoy using magazine letters in your classroom? More ideas coming soon!

Peek @ the Week - 5 Senses

This week my students have been learning about the 5 Senses. We started out with Aliki's "My Five Senses" book and explored each of the five senses with a variety of projects, learning centers and additional books. Here are some of our 5 senses projects:


Touch Craft - We traced each child's hand on a piece of construction paper, explored a box full of pre-cut little texture squares, discussed how they felt, then students glued the texture squares on to the hand tracings. After gluing, we talked about each texture again and labeled the items with the words.

Touch craft with different textures.

Listening Tubes - The students really enjoyed this activity. I had collected these mini M&M tubes when I was potty training my son a while back. I took off the labels, cleaned with goo-gone, filled with different items (screws, beans, rice & pennies) and hot glued them shut. Then I glued some of the items that I put inside to cardboard squares so that the kids could see what was inside. The bottoms of the tubes are color coded with puff paint for self-checking, so that students can visually see which ones match even if they aren't sure which ones sound exactly the same.

Listening tubes - match the same sounds & match sounds to objects inside.

Toilet Paper Roll Binoculars- Pretty simple craft to emphasize the sense of sight. Just glue or tape two rolls together, cover with paper that students have decorated, punch holes in the sides of one edge and add a string so that they can wear them. Then practice using them to spot lots of interesting things!

Sight - Toilet Paper Roll Binoculars

Touch & Feel Letters- Simply glue different textured items to cardboard rectangles in the shape of letters. We've use them to practice spelling names and to match letters. The kids love them! The favorite letters seem to be made from sequins and pipe cleaners. I think we will continue to add to our collection throughout the year...

Touch & Feel Letters - Spell Names and Match Letters

What things do you like to do with your class for a 5 sense unit? Or what are you doing with your class this week?