The Life Cycle of a Caterpillar

Math:  

• Play the Very Hungry Caterpillar game  
• Sort and make a pattern with pom poms to make a caterpillar  

Science:

• Read Clifford magazine and other stories about caterpillars and butterflies.

Art:

• Life Cycle of a Caterpillar:  Using your pinkie print, make an egg.  Then, with your fingers make a caterpillar. Next, make use your thumbprint to make a cocoon.  And last use your pointer finger to make a butterfly. 

Writing:

•  Write each stage in the life cycle of a butterfly next to the picture of each: egg, caterpillar, cocoon, butterfly
• Decorate a butterfly and write words inside of it to describe it. 

Reading:

• Make a Lift-the-Flap Life Cycle book of a butterfly.  (Copied from Scholastic Clifford Magazine)

Reusing and Recycling Old Classroom Items

Being a teacher, especially in the private school system is little pay; therefore, I look for cheap and inexpensive items I have lying around my classroom when doing art projects.

Below are just a few of the ways we use old items in our classroom:

Item #1:
 Play Dough Lids:  These are great for holding paint and Elmer's school glue.  Anytime we are painting or gluing we pour the glue or paints into a lid and allow the students to use paint brushes or q-tips to put it onto their paper. Less mess is always best!

Item #2:
Play Dough Containers: These are great for holding water when the students are painting with watercolors.  We sit them next to our sink, and they help themselves to a container and water. 

Item #3:
Plastic Water or Coke Bottle Lids:  We use these for everything when it comes to reviewing or practicing our numbers, letters, sounds, sight words, etc.  Write a letter on each lid, and you have letter, sound and word practice.  The more lids, the more letters! Or write a number on a lid and use for math practice.  You can also use for adding, subtracting, etc. A few of the games we used them for are on the following link:  http://mrsguniqueideas.blogspot.com/2012/07/i-love-water-bottle-caps.html

Item #4:
Paintbrushes from Watercolors:  I am always loking for paint brushes.  Even when you toss the old watercolor paints, keep the brushes! You never know when you will need them.  However if you can't find one, old markers work great as paintbrushes as well as a paper towel.  We've used both before at home.

Item #5:
Plastic Disposable Plates: They work like dry erase boards and are much cheaper!

Plants and Seeds

This week, my littles have been busy learning all about plants and seeds.  Below are a few or a sneak peek of the activities that we did in our classroom this week.

Writing: 

• We wrote how our plant grows.  They wrote the order by using the words: first, next, then, last.
• We labeled parts of a flower.  (See Below)

Art: 

• We drew a picture of a flower.  This activity was a step by step following directions activity.  After drawing the pictures, we labeled parts of the flower: roots, seed, stem, leaf, and flower.

   

• We drew a picture of a flower and glued actual seeds on the middle of the flower.

Math:

•  We counted real seeds.
•  We sorted real seeds.

Science:  I know all of this theme is science; however, we do still have some actual science time set aside in our week.

• We read out Clifford magazine about plants.
• We planted our own seeds and learned that seeds need: sunlight, dirt, and water.  (And my students will not forget worm poop! While planting our seeds outside, a student found a worm.  We explained to them not to kill the worm, that their poop is good for the seeds and helps them grow! Now, everytime we ask what does a seed need to grow, they include that one!)

Reading:

• We took big books about plants, our classroom rugs, and enjoyed reading outside!

St. Patrick's Day!

My students had a busy day this year!  First, we read a story called, The Night Before St. Patrick's Day.  It was about a couple kids setting up traps to catch a leprechaun, but in the end the leprechaun fooled them.  We also played a game where they had to toss golden coins into a pot of gold.

Then they went to gym, and while they were there our classroom was destroyed by the leprechauns!

 After gym they participated in small groups.  We have been studying color words and learning how to read and spell them; therefore, we decided to do several rainbow activities instead of shamrock ones.  The groups included:

Making rainbow necklaces out of fruit loops.  They had to read the color words and put the fruit loops on in order of a real rainbow.

They painted rainbows. Again they had to read the word and paint accordingly.


We graphed Lucky Charms on a graph I found on Pinterest. 

We counted using Skittles.

Last, we had green, St. Patrick's day race, and a movie about St. Patrick's Day.

 

Jan Brett Theme

Below are several activities we did for Jan Brett week at our school:

Writing/Reading:

• After reading The Hat, the students chose an animal to draw and an article of clothing to put on their animal.  They then drew a picture of their animal. 

• Before reading Town Mouse, Country Mouse, the students made a t-chart with what they thought were the differences between the city and country.  Then we read the story and discussed what some of the differences really were.
• As a class, we wrote a letter to Jan Brett telling her how much we enjoyed her stories and pictures and our class' favorite stories.  (http://janbrett.com/emailjb.html)

Math:

• We cut out paper plate hedgehogs and numbered their spikes.  After coloring their hedgehogs and putting a face on them, the teacher called out a number and the students would cut that number to make pointy spikes.
• The students colored a pattern on their mittens.
• We measured how long a mitten was using: pennies, unifix cubes, waterbottle lids, pom pom balls, small pencil etc.
• Each mitten had a number from 1-20 on it.  Then, the students sequenced the mittens in the correct order.

President's Day Theme

This week was full of fun and learning here in my classroom!

I wanted to share just a few of the ideas we did this week:


Math: 

• The students cleaned quarters and pennies and while cleaning we quizzed them on how much a quarter and penny were worth.  They cleaned the coins in warm soapy water.  They then dried them and put them on a paper towel to finish drying.
• We made a book about a penny and a book about a quarter.  The books were really simple.  For example the penny book said: This is a penny.  It is copper brown.  Abraham Lincoln is on a penny.
• We played coin bingo.  I made this really easily on word using a table.  I placed coin amounts in the different squares.  As I held up a coin, they said what it was worth and covered that amount with the correct play coin.
• I used google images to find a simple big.  Then I wrote different amounts on them. (1-10 cents for the 3 year olds and 10-20 for the 4 and 5 year olds.)  They then counted the correct amount of pennies and placed them on the piggy bank.

Writing:

• The students filled in the blank to the following sentence.  When I become president, I ________.  They then drew a picture of what they will look like as president.

Fine Motors/Art/Listening:

• We followed directions while drawing a picture of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
• The students listened to directions and cut out certain shapes to make Abraham Lincoln  

Reading:

• We read several stories about presidents and had several out for the students to retell and/or picture read.

Gingerbread Man Theme

Math, Art, Fine Motor Ideas:

We created a giant gingerbread house.  I made sure all of the students had a chance to decorate it somehow.  We had two groups working on patterns and coloring the candy cane.  We then had three different groups painting the house.  One group finger painted the white snow on the roof and isicle handprints dangling from the roof.  Another group made green handprints around the door for greenery.  The last group made thumbprint berries on the greenery (holly leaves). (We did all this in two days.)

We fingerpainted chocolate pudding on giant gingerbread men.  We then decorated the men with candy.  We then measured these men with unifix cubes and estimated how big we thought they were with yarn.

We painted watercolor gumdrops and added glitter as extra decorations on and around the house.

We colored red and white peppermint paper plates.  (A great listening and pattern idea! They made a + first on there plate.  Then they drew an X through the plus.  They colored every other spot red to make it look like peppermints.  We used these as signs and windows for our house.

We played number word bingo and number recognition bingo.  The words/numbers were written on the inside of a gingerbread man. You can do this with letters or sight words as well.

We practiced directional words by placing a gingerbread man that was taped to a popsicle stick to the spot that was said.  (above, below, under, beside, next to, etc.)

Writing:
The students decorated a gingerbread man and wrote a sentence describing their man or woman.

We practiced writing 2 and 5 on a gingebread man to help us learn how to write each correctly.  For example for 2: Start on left eye, round to nose, down to the left side of mouth and across mouth. For 5: Start on right eye, go to left eye, down to left part of nose, around to right side of mouth and across mouth to the left.

We labeled gingerbread men body parts.

Working with Words/Letters:
We played gingerbread men letter matching.  They flipped over two men and tried to match uppercase letters with lowercase letters.

We played word flip.  Using a spatula, we flipped a gingerbread man and read the sight word on the man. 

We played number word bingo. The words were written on the inside of a gingerbread man. You can do this with letters or sight words as well.



Dramatic Play:
We had dress up clothes for students to dress up like gingerbread man. 

We had a story box with the characters laminated on popsicle sticks for the students to retell the story. 

We had a gingerbread man cookie sheet to make gingerbread men with play dough as well as had cookie cutters to make them.