Closet Curtain

Quick entry to show how I hide my boxes and such in one of my doorless closets. Curtain rod + cute shower curtain = neat and tidy :)

VIP/Whiteboard Center

 On this board here I have our VIP (Very Important Pupil) display. I pick a different student each week to be my special helper and they get to bring in a book, movie and pictures of their family to share.

The bottom section of the board is our whiteboard center. I installed a whiteboard onto the wall and students use this center to practice writing their letter, numbers, sight words, morning messages, etc.

Johnny Appleseed Day

For Johnny Appleseed Day I made applesauce the night before with a food processor. We had a taste testing and made a T-chart of who liked it or not.


We also did a taste testing of different colored apples (red, yellow, green). I sent a note home to the parents asking to bring in 1 or 2 apples of the requested color apple. We made a chart for this as well.

I also asked each student to bring in a picture of things that apples can make.

First Name Activity

The first week of school we worked on the first letter of our names. We went over how names start with an uppercase letter. I precut the letters for their names and they decorated them with stickers. These were also on display for Back to School Night.

                             

Back to School Night Parent Card

For Back To School Night I have the kids make a card for their parents. I have them glue on windows and wheels for the school bus and I write the school name and the date of the first day of school. Inside the card is a picture of themselves holding a frame that says first day of Pre-K. The parents always love getting these on Back To School Night.

Magic Play Dough

My favorite back to school activity is "magic play dough!" I roll up a small ball of colored play dough and wrap it up with white play dough. I tell the students that the magic play dough will change colors if we are going to have a great school year.

Needless to say their faces are priceless when they start playing with their play dough and it changes colors! They absolutely love it! I usually do this activity the Monday of our first full week together.

1st Day of Pre-K!

I had the exciting opportunity to teach Pre-Kindergarten during the 2014-2015 school year! The following posts are from my Busy Life of Pre-K!

Here are some of the first day of school activities. We read the Kissing Hand story and created a Chester the raccoon paper bag puppet.  Along with the puppet I gave my students a bookmark, pencil, and a coloring page at their seat.

The plastic baggie was for their parents as a first day of school welcome gift. It contains a teabag, tissue and cotton ball. The note on the front says,
     "Dear Parent,
                Thank you for entrusting your child to me. I promise to do my best every day to be your child's companion in learning. After you have wiped your tears, make yourself a nice warm cup of  tea. Put your feet up and relax. Then hold the cotton ball in your hand. The softness will help you to recall the gentle spirit of your child. I will work alongside you this year to help your child grown.
Sincerely,
Miss Wolfe"

Butterfly life cycle

Here is a quick assessment to check the students understanding of a butterfly's life cycle. 

Graduation gifts

Here are a couple things I give my class for graduation. 

The first is a little puzzle I got from a dollar store and glued a cute little poem on it along with smarties. 

Here is the card I give my class.

Fancy word review

To review understanding of our fancy words, I started to go over one word a week. Every Monday morning my class would find our class mascot holding the fancy word of the week. 

We the. Go over the meaning of the word and use it in a sentence. I asked the class to go home and find a picture to go with the word.

Word family review

I did this as a quick review of our word families. I made three columns and gave each student a different word. They came up to the board and wrote their word in the correct column. 

Mother's Day

For Mother's Day I had my students fill out this paper about their mom.

After reading the book Love You Forever, we made a mommy and baby flower picture. I used an Ellison  machine to cut flowers out of the dried up wipes I saved from the butterfly paintings. 

 

I traced each students' hands and they made this fold up card for their mothers.

Letter O

I found online an owl for the letter O. 

It turns out like this...

Easter

Easter time! Here are a few things we did during Lent to prepare for Easter.

Here are a couple of chicks we made. I had all of the pieces cut already. The students got to decorate the egg however they wanted. 

For this cross egg, I used painters tape to make a cross cut out stay in the middle of the egg while  the students used bingo dotters to cover the whole egg. 

Here we made a banner with Jesus' name. We also learned how to remember how to spell His name by using the bingo tune. 

 There is a man who we all love and Jesus is His nameo. J-E-S-U-S!

To hold all of our goodies we got at our egg hunt, we made bunny baskets from milk/juice cartons. To save time, I ask the parents to wash and dry the inside of the carton and cut out the ears. I do this project with the help of 8th grade. The students cover the carton with cotton balls, add face features, and add Easter grass inside the carton.

 

April showers bring...

From all of this rain we've been getting, in our writing center the students had to finish the sentence, "April showers bring ..."

I got some pretty silly answers from my kids. 

Dr. Seuss week

                          Dr. Seuss Week!

We first learned a little bit about Dr. Seuss.

We created Thing 1 and 2 and created a Cat in the Hat hat with the -at word family on it.

For snack we had green eggs and ham! (It may look gross but it tasted delicious!) I put the scrambled eggs and ham in the crock pot an hour before I went to work and left it on low temp when I got to work until snack time. 

After reading the Foot Book, I had the students pair up and Trace each other's feet on a piece of paper and they were to create their own kind of silly feet.

Our community

This week we have been talking about our community  and street signs.

The picture above shows our made up neighborhood. Each group drew a picture of their own house and I put them altogether and as a group they named their street.

First we made a traffic light.

Then I lined up on the board pictures of various street signs. I gave each student a paper with five different shapes of street signs. They filled in the shapes with whatever kind of street sign they wanted to copy.

Earth Day

For Earth Day we created this craft. I already had the world and people cut out. The students colored the land and glued the people around the world. We talked about how we need to work together to keep the earth clean. 

Spring birds writing

I found a spring birds color and cut page online and turned it into a writing lesson. The students had to make a story from the picture they made.