Ring My Bell!

I love when I find something lights a "spark" with my class!  Last year while carefully dissecting the newest items at my local Dollar Store (a.k.a. a teacher's best friend!), I came across a little desk bell.

OK, this is NOT the actual bell!  

There are NO flowers laying around in my classroom :0)

It came in handy last year when the noise level got a bit too loud in our room.  Towards the end of the year, all I had to do was give it a tiny "ding" and my class would come to a sudden stop and look to see what was next.  But alias, that was last year and this year's class is not quite ready for that YET (we will be soon).   ANYWAY. . . . . the other day while we were all in "circle time" playing "The Color Game", one of our favorites, a child found our "color of the day" way to quickly so I said, "what shape is it?".  When he told me the shape I made my famous, or maybe I should have said infamous, "ding-ding-ding" sound and an idea was born!  I jumped up, grabbed the little bell and brought it to our circle.  Suddenly, the same 'ole circle time game had a new twist.  When the child found the color AND could tell us the shape of the object, they got to "ring the bell"!  Now, EVERYONE wants to participate and ring the bell!  Of course, I have the the old disco song, Ring My Bell stuck in my head!

Facebook Time!

I guess it was time, our school is now on Facebook!  If you get a chance, please find us and hit the "like" button.  THANKS!

Getting Crazy with the Letter "C"

Our "C" week was so much fun!  We are all still getting to know each other, but all in all my tiny little class is doing great.  Since one of my favorite authors is Eric Carle, I knew we had to do some special to honor him.  And what better way than to read, The Very Hungry Caterpillar!  It is now officially a class favorite!  Of course a great book has to have a great art project to go with it and this one was so CUTE!  I had seen the caterpillar made with balloons and knew we had to give it a try.  I think we did a great job, don't you?

The children even drew on their own legs!  I'm so sorry I don't have pictures of the actual process, but this got a little wild and crazy!  The body is made by using 2 different colors of paint.  First, we used a balloon dipped in yellow paint, then put a balloon with green paint right on top.  Meet the Deubiens is a GREAT web site for instruction on how to make the caterpillar with balloons.

I'll go ahead and admit that I am a big 'ole softy when it comes to fingerprint and handprint art.  (Now what he is all grow-up, I wish I had more of it from my son!).  Our next little piece of artwork was so simple, but so cute - CORN!

We start out with our handprints - 

Then we glued them on our colored sheet (blue was our color of the week!)!  Easy-peasy!!!  NOTE:  You can also do this a little closer to Thanksgiving and make it into Indian corn by letting the children put different colored fingerprints on top of the yellow corn.

Our "Fabulous Fun Friday" was spent baking a color cake and since we knew there be NO leftovers, we made our very own birthday cakes to take home.

It is difficult to see the actual cake, but it is made from 3 different size squares (our shape of the week).  The children mix up shaving cream, glue and food coloring to make our special icing.  (There is no exact measurements for the shaving cream and glue.  I try to use equal parts of both.) 

Then we spread on the "icing"!

We added our candles and lit them with our fingerprints!

These are still puffy when they dry!  It is literally a science experiment AND an art project all mixed together!

We also had a wonderful time making our color tables, so all in all we had a great week!

Thanks for coming to visit us, I hope you pop back by again!

There are NO mistakes in Preschool

Last week my class and I were busy painting when suddenly I heard a "GASP!".  As any preschool teacher/parent knows, that is never a good thing.  I looked around to see one of my students literally holding his breath.  I ask him what was wrong (you can imagine the things running through my mind at the time) and he pointed to the table.  "There's paint on YOUR table!" he said.  My reply,  "UHHHHHHHH, okay, what's the problem?".  It seems the sweet child was worried because he thought he had done something wrong.  Remember, we are still trying to get use to each other.  I just started laughing and told him that get paint on the table was no big deal BUT . . . . he did give me a really good idea!  After we finished our craft and story time I quickly put my plan into action.  A couple of my "very best listeners" got to help me push our tables together and move our chairs.  Next, I quickly covered the tables with butcher paper.  It was so fun to listen to the children as they were guessing what in the world I was doing.  I guess by now you have all figured it out!  That's right, we painted on the tables!  Well, technically we didn't "paint" but we did use crayons, markers, colored pencils, stickers and we even glued on some old alphabet letters.  So "technically" we called it our "colored table"!  PERFECT FOR "C" WEEK!

The first of the year is always challenging for me as far as managing my time, but it especially hard since I have such a small class.  This was a great way for us to all learn a little bit more about each other and have fun at the same time.  I hope you will try it with your class too!

C is for Color Cake!

One of this week's activities has officially been named "THE MOST FUN EVER" by my class!  We baked and ate a color cake!!!   

I've seen this posted on PINTEREST but it was called a "tie-dyed cake".  Since it was our "C" week we called it a "color cake".  I don't care what YOU call it, just do it!  It was so much fun.  Let me show you what we did.  First, we followed the instruction and mixed up a plain white cake mix.  Next, we divided it up into little cups.  Each student decided what color they wanted to make their mix.  (You can probably tell by the end result that green was a big hit!)  We used gel food coloring so that the colors would be more intense and everyone started mixing.

Soon it was time to dump all the colors into a pan

and put it in the oven.

Thirty-seven magical minutes later we had a. . . . .

COLORFUL CAKE

Believe me, this was the most delicious "C" lesson ever!  I hope you will try it!

Let's Get This Year Started!

Well, it has been an interesting two weeks to say the least.  First, I find out that I only have 6 students in my class this year.  SIX!  Then, one doesn't actually bother to show up and one is not potty-trained (a must to be in my class).  Hmmmm . . . . now I am down to 4!  Luckily another student was moved into my class so now I am up to the big number 5.  SERIOUSLY!?!?  I had more than this during the "stomach-bug epidemic of Spring 2005!  I'm still adjusting to the small number and hoping that we will have a few more students join us during the year.  Seriously, it was a great first week.  I didn't have any criers and only a few bathroom issues, so all in all, things are going well.  One of the popular centers in my class is the "Dress-up" box.  To be honest, I'm not sure where half of the things in there came from and frankly, my students don't care.  They just love to rummage through it and pick out their "outfit of the day".  One of my new students absolutely loves to wear an old crochet vest (I think it is from my closet from the 1980's - don't judge!).  She pairs it with a different hat each day and sits down with a book.  I think she is adorable!

We really don't focus on our alphabet of our themes until after Labor Day so let me share with you our first real week of school.  We call it "All About Me" and we talk about the color RED, the number 1 and circles.  Our busy week started with a fun activity to help us learn our names.  I wrote everyone's name on a large piece of black construction paper.

Next, everyone added little pieces of torn (or cut) tissue paper to each of the letters of their name.

I loved watching each child as they carefully picked out "their favorite colors".  I think they all did a great job.

We also talked about the letter "A" by making our very own apple trees!  We all decided to make our apple trees BIG, maybe a bit too big because they didn't fit onto our paper, but we didn't mind.

The "apples" on our trees are actually our fingerprints.  I let the children use their fingers to stamp a piece of paper and then I punched them out with my handy-dandy little circle punch.  It was fun to watch everyone add their "apples" to their trees and talk about how we made them.

Our next "A" activity got a little bit out of hand, but then again, the best things usually do!  I cut out some very large letter "A"s and laid them in an old cardboard box (a tiny piece of double stick tape helps hold it down).

We talked about some very pretty acorns that came from my yard.  (A little hint - put the acorns in a plastic bag and sit them in your freezer for 24 hours.  This will kill any unwanted pest that may be living and eating inside the acorns.  Thanks to my friend Tiffany for that hint.).

 Next, we added the acorns to some RED paint.

Here comes the messy part!  We dumped the acorns into the box with our letter "A" and shook, shook, shook!

The end results were very pretty.  I think I added a little too much paint so most of the "A"s were covered.  But, they all had a very nice texture from the acorns.  COOOOOLLLLLL!

No "All About Me" week would be complete without making our little "ME" dolls.  Everyone had such a fun time dressing up their people.

We used some old material for the girls dresses and some left-over scrapbooking paper for the boys.  If you look closely you will notice the some of the boy's pants looks like blue jeans.  Oh, one more very important thing . . . the hair was cut by the students themselves!  Pretty good job, don't you think???????

A really fun "A" word is alligator.  We made our own alligators out of our handprints!

The children added their own grass at the bottom with some wonderful dot paint and the sun is their palm print.

Our Friday has become a little more hectic because we have added a Spanish class first thing in the morning.  This week we kept things a little calm by doing a little name art project.  We used little foam stick-on letters and wrote our names.  Next, we added our fingerprints (or in some cases, our handprints) to add some colors.

Towards the end of last year I added our "Password of the Day".

(This is a little misleading because right now we keep the same password all week).  The children will tell me our password whenever we leave or enter our room.  I also have been wearing it around my neck.  I made a necklace out of our name badge and now I ask the children what they word is all during the day.  We are keeping our words very simple.  For the next few weeks we will be using a color for our word.  I love to see everyone's faces when I say "congratulations, you just read a word!   THEY GET SO EXCITED!

Next week is "C" week and we will be talking about our pets.  Thanks for visiting and I hope you check with us again soon.

New School Year 2012-13!

First, I must say how very sorry I am that I have not posted over the summer.  Heck, I haven't had a chance to post since APRIL!  OH, I'M SO SORRY!  It seems that I underestimated the amount of time it would take to do some renovations in our house.  But, it is done and I am (almost) ready to head back to school.  We start with our  "Teacher Work Day" on Monday and I am very excited.  Let me show you a couple of fun new ideas that I have for my class this year.  The first is our new "Color Word Puzzle".

 It cost me absolutely NOTHING to make!  I used an old "Grime Boss" container (I think it is the generic version of a "Swifter" refill container)

and some paint chips from my local Lowe's.  I used by NEW Cricut Imagine (a Christmas gift from my sweet son) and added some letters.  INSTANT GAME!

Each one of the paint chips is a different shade of the color, and you can see in the GREEN picture that all the puzzle pieces fit nicely into the container.  (NOTE:  Before someone gets all upset about me "stealing" paint chips, I did ask if I could take them and was told "of course" by the sales associate.)

My next new item is a little attention grabber I made from an old box of sea salt.

Since all the salt would not come out of the bottle,

I figured I might as well do something fun with it.  First, I covered the box with some of scraps of scrapbooking paper.  I found this cute little guy on the internet and he looked like he was "trying to listen"

so I added him to the bottom.  I wrote "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?????" and glued it on the top.  The idea is simple, when we start to get a little loud in our circle time, I will shake the bottle.  As the noise settles down, I will shake it softer and softer.  You must be quiet to hear the salt shaking in the bottle!

I wanted a new chart for our "Number of the Week" activity so I made this -

Each week we will be able to see the number, the word and count it all on a new chart!  After it is laminated,  I am hoping to let the children write the number and it's name with a dry erase marker.

Okay, I know everyone has seen those adorable "First Day of School" frames floating around on PINTEREST and of course, I had to have one too!  Here is my version -

I can hardly wait to try it out!

I have a few more ideas that I will be busy working on this afternoon and I promise I will take some pictures of my classroom when I get it finished.  THANKS for visiting and I hope you stop back by soon!!