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?

Friday was yesterday...

Time has been flying by - being incredibly busy makes the week go by fast, but I feel like I've barely had time to breathe lately!

Here's my Five for Friday recap - a day late:

1. Goldilocks & the Three Bears - We read this classic in preschool this week. The kids were slow to warm up to the story, which surprised me, but I decided to give a few more reads before giving up on it entirely. I'm glad I did! By Friday, all the kids were excitedly retelling parts of the story and enjoying the Three Bear themed activities that I had pulled together. I had a collection of story telling props that we used during reading and than transferred those items to our doll house; introducing the bears to the doll house area was a fantastic way to get the boys engaged in an area that I rarely see them play in. I also like to read Brinton Turkle's wordless picture book, "Deep in the Forest," which has a similar storyline except it's a bear that enters a people house. We had fun looking for similarities and differences between the stories.

2. Oatmeal Sensory Bin - in the spirit of our story this week, I whipped up an oatmeal sensory bin. So simple and inexpensive, yet so much fun. I raided the kitchen for small, medium and large cups, bowls, spoons and plates so that we could reinforce the size concepts from the book. Unfortunately, I forgot that the other PreK teacher at my school is allergic to oatmeal! So when our kids got together (which happens daily!), I had to make sure it was put away and cleaned up! It won't last another week because of the allergy issue... on to beans next week!

3. Fingerpainting! This messy activity is always a favorite. My students could spend at least an hour fingerpainting, too bad we can't do it all day. We'll be cutting out and laminating these leaves for our classroom tree - which I've been delinquent in posting pictures of ....

4. This week, I worked on a guest post for Tutus & Tea Parties. Look for my "Sticks & Stuff: Xmas Ornaments" sometime next week!

5. Five more weeks until my course for professional development is finished. It's turning out to be an interesting experience and I'm actually looking forward to my field work at a nearby Reggio-inspsired childcare center.

Pumpkin Carving..

Just one more of many posts like this one all over the internet right now... it is, after all, almost Halloween! My son and I picked out this beautiful round orange pumpkin the other day at a roadside stand. There were so many to choose from!

He enjoyed rolling it around the living room and comparing it to a couple of other smaller pumpkins that we had purchased at different times this week. I showed him pictures of Jack-O-Lanterns in a few story books that we had around and we even explored pictures on Google images. Once he finally understood what we were going to do, he got very excited! The other night after dinner, we put out some newspaper and cut that pumpkin open.

He was a little hesitant to pull the top off....

And although he wasn't very keen on putting his hands inside to get the seeds out, he did end up giving it a try. I did have to pull most of them out myself though.

He helped me to decide how to draw the face by naming the parts that we needed: eyes, nose & mouth:

After we drew it, I worked on cutting the pieces out with a knife. He was very interested in the knife... why is it always the most dangerous part that the little ones are interested in? Once we got it cut out, he spend quite some time putting the pieces back in the holes like a puzzle.

Here it is all finished and lit up!

How did pumpkin carving go at your house??

Finally Friday!

What a week! I must say it was longer, busier and crazier than the last... how is that possible? I just hope that next week doesn't get worse!

1.  I love fall... the leaves, the weather, the golden sun, the smell.. all of it. I really just love this time of year. Here are some activities that I did with my son.

2.  Pumkins & Jack-O-Lanterns --  we made a jack-o-lantern during language group in our classroom. Here's our final carved pumpkin and here's what it looked like when we lit it up (with a battery operated flashlight) in the bathroom :)

3. FARM  -- we've been getting ready for a field trip to the farm next week... here's one of this week's lesson baskets. I've got "The Cow Who Clucked" by Denise Flemming, an animal sound book, props for my story and my interactive sticker book in the basket.

4. Professional Development. I can only hope that professional development for next year is something more meaningful and useful than what I'm required to do this year. I have to take (or retake) Human Growth and Development as per the wonderful state board of education. In an effort to keep a positive mind, here are the positives of retaking a 100 level class that I've already taken --

1. I will be reminded of typical growth and development as I do spend MOST of my time with children who have special needs 
2. I must complete a field placement and this will give me an opportunity to see what other teachers are doing -- right now I NEVER get to watch other teachers to see what they're doing 
3. I might learn how to be a better college level professor or 'highjack' some good ideas for use in my own higher learning classroom!

5.  Classroom Tree -- last year I had this great tree in the corner of my classroom that stayed up all year and that changed with the theme and/or season. This year, I just haven't have the time to resurrect it... until this week... here's a picture of the tree in progress -- there's more pictures and a final picture to come!

and that's my 5 for Friday!

Fall Leaves & Play Doh Fun...

My toddler (he's 2 1/2) and I did some fun fall activities this afternoon that I thought I'd share. First, we made some pumpkin pie/spice scented microwave play dough.

I didn't have any  cream of tartar, so we roughly followed the following recipe:

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 Tbs vinegar
1 Tbs oil
1 Tbs vanilla extract
1 tsp+ pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp+ cinnamon

1. mix all dry ingredients together in a bowl

2. stir in wet ingredients (it looks pretty wet)

3. microwave in increments of 30 seconds, stirring in between heatings until doughy consistency is achieved - about 3 minutes for us. ( I didn't take a picture of this because my son was screaming that he wanted to help; I was busy convincing him that it was too hot for him to help with)

4. knead until smooth (careful it's VERY hot!)

5. then get creative! We added items from our nature walk earlier in the day - leaves, sticks and acorns. Here are our creations:

 

 Later in the day, we used some of our leaves from our nature walk to for a painting activity that I saw on pinterst (darn pinterest... ). 

First, I taped the leaves to some newspaper with some painters tape, then I taped the newspaper to the table. I made my little one take off his shirt because I didn't have any paint other than acrylic, so I didn't want to ruin his shirt. Then I gave him a brush and some red and yellow paint and he went to town. he Was very serious at first... then loosened up. 

After he was done painting the leaves, I took a few pieces of scrap paper from some big old books that I keep around for projects like this and laid them over top to make 'prints.'  They came out cute, but you can't really tell that they're leaves.

Have you been doing any fun fall activities? I'd loved to hear about them....

Ahh... Friday!

It's been a crazy busy week - I almost thought I'd lose my mind this week between my day job at preschool, my night work at the university, my toddler at home AND the addition of a class for my teaching re-certification!!!  There have been more than a few movements where I about threw my hands into the air and walked away... but thankfully, there's always been something to bring me back to earth - my husband, my son, the beautiful fall weather, a university student thanking me for something that I taught them or one of my preschoolers accomplishing something new and exciting. I am thankful for everyone who supports me in ALL of my many endeavors - on this Friday, I'll recap with my a 5 for Friday:

1. Sensory Bin Preparation - My son and I enjoyed putting together the fall themed sensory bin for my preschool students. He tested it out and approved.  Here he is playing in the popcorn - you can find more about this sensory bin here.

2. Re-purposed Sensory Bin -- Then when I took the sensory bin to school, he threw a fit! He insisted that the 'popcorn box' come back - instead I brought home the rainbow pasta from 2 weeks ago. This is how he re-purposed the rainbow pasta for his own enjoyment.

3.  Fall Leaves -- At school, we've been learning about fall and leaves - I really LOVE the fall and all of the beautiful fall leaves. Today, I found myself wandering around the yard, looking for leaves... here's our scissor practice tray with colorful fall leaves.

4.  Paper Bag Pumpkin Craft - today we made a pumpkin out of a paper lunch sack during our language group. Our speech therapist did a great job with this activity! The kids loved stuffing the bag with paper towels, painting and then adding pieces for the face.

5. Fine Motor Friday... well it's really been all week. I have a few students who need lots of adaptations for activities, which has challenged me to think outside of the box many times this week. I'm working on a post of fine motor related modifications that I make so that all of my students can participate in activities during the week. Here are a few of this weeks' ideas - wiki sticks to help students look at their work and to color inside the lines and painted fingernails (hot pink, nail stickers and glitter) to help remind a student to orient hands properly for cutting tasks.

Thanks for visiting! What did you do this week? Feel free to link your post in the comments! 

 

Fall is here!

I think that fall is officially here - the leaves are beginning to change colors and the temperature has brought cool mornings and pleasantly warm days! This weekend, my toddler and I went on a Leaf Hunt during a walk around our neighborhood. We collected lots of different leaves, sticks, nuts and rocks for a little nature collection. When we got back we sorted through our leaves and picked out our favorites - they were so colorful!

Then I showed my son how to sort them out by color. He was interested for a few minutes, but then saw his yellow dump truck and decided to go dig in the dirt. This is an activity that I do with my preschool students every year, so I was excited (more excited than he was obviously) to share it with my son now that he's a little older!

 

I'm sure that I will be doing this color sorting activity with my preschool students soon. I only need more of the trees near my school to start turning colors and dropping leaves for us to have a wide variety to sort.

Here are some other Fall and Leaf themed activities that we've been working on in my classroom this week:

Scissor Tray: The kids seem to love cutting anything that's not paper!   We just collected leaves from outside and added scissors. Snipping the leaves to little bits was tons of fun and made a huge mess, but it cleaned up pretty easily considering some of the other messes that we end up with in my classroom.

Leaf Rubbings - I always enjoy this fall activity, but have had trouble getting my students to do it. The biggest reasons that we've been tragically unsuccessful with this simple activity are a lack of the fine motor skills required to actually accomplish it. It really requires a lot of fine motor control and coordination from the children to make a leaf rubbing picture. This year, I made lots of changes and we were VERY successful! First we taped the leaves to the table, with the 'vein' side up, using blue painters tape, then we taped the construction paper over top and provided a variety of different crayons, including fat crayons, triangular crayons and some round flat crayons (made in a muffin tin) that seem to easier to hold in the proper position to achieve the 'rubbing' effect rather than the 'scribble' effect.  Another modification that I thought of, but didn't use this year, was to use  contact paper to put the leaves on, cover the area with large butcher paper, and tape it to the table before rubbing with crayons.

Fall Sensory Bin: I switched out our sensory bin for fall themed materials including three 1lb bags of plain popcorn, fabric leaves in different sizes and colors, 'logs,'  and sweet gum seed pods - we call them 'prickly balls' here in my class. The kids love scooping, pouring and digging in the popcorn. I have students who hate the prickly seed pods and pick them out by their stems so that they don't have to accidentally touch them. We've already changed out some of the extras for a storybook extension activity with props from the book "Little Blue Truck" - so it easily turns into a 'farm themed' sensory bin -- more on the farm stuff another time though.

Today we read the book "Leaf Man" by Lois Elhert. Everyone was mesmerized by the illustrations and all of the different leaf shapes and colors. We will probably make some of our own leaf people and animals this week or next.

 
What kind of fall activities are you doing with your kids? I'd love to hear!