'Santa Slime' (Regular slime with a holiday twist)

I can't believe it's been two months since my last post, this is what happens when your job changes and you spend less time getting crafty in a classroom. This is a recipe for slime that I have used for a while. This is not the drippy, slippery slime but more the silly putty consistency of slime. However, this is not what I consider silly putty, I make that creation from a different recipe.

Since I used this slime as a holiday gift for students I tutor I created 'make your own Santa slime' kits for each student. Included in the kit were the items in the photo, a bottle of glue, baggie with Borax, 'holiday dust' (green glitter), a baggie to contain the slime and of course, the recipe with a quick intro to why it's called Santa Slime.

I have attached the PDF with the recipe here:

Santa Slime

Happy Sliming!

Jack-O-Buddy-Lanterns

Here's a Halloween activity for doing with upper grade buddies, an older sibling or any sort of 'grown up.' This week in Kindergarten we worked on making paper plate jack-o-lanterns with our 4th grade buddies.

Step 1: the K's drew a jack-o-lantern face on the inside of the plate, being sure to make the shapes large enough to cut.

Step 2: the 4th graders cut out the faces.

Step 3: the buddies worked together to paint the

plates orange (on the outside). When the plates were dried a piece of yellow tissue paper was attached to the back, covering the holes.

The teacher who suggested this project placed her class' jack-o-lanterns on the classroom windows, creating a glowing effect. Due to lack of window space I hung our jack-o-lanterns from the light fixture- it turned out pretty festive!

Great Halloween Read Aloud/ Audio Book

With Halloween quickly approaching I found myself searching my book collection for one of my favorites, Big Pumpkin. Not only is this an adorable book to use for a read aloud but it also works really well for a dramatic re-tell. The best feature of Big Pumpkin was brought to my attention a few years ago by a parent in my class. After finding a radio that still had a working cassette tape player, I discovered that the audio recording was fantastic! The voices are perfectly matched for the characters and the background music adds just enough drama without being a distraction. My suggestion for your pre-Halloween activities is to dress up in your best witch's hat and give Big Pumpkin a listen!

Big Pumpkin audio (via YouTube): http://youtu.be/bHkuZKAW7bs

More Tech-Savy Literacy

I was recently chatting with a librarian friend of mine about Elephant and Piggy books by Mo Willems. I am HUGE fan of Elephant and Piggy books and am always looking for a new way to use them. If you do not know what I am talking about you need to run (not walk) to your nearest library and start borrowing the collection- they are so good I would even say skip the library and head straight to the book store!

What's nice about Piggy and Elephant is that each character speaks in an assigned colored bubble, pink for Piggy and blue-grey for Elephant (who sometimes goes by Gerald). My librarian friend told me that she uses the ELMO (you can use a document camera, or a laptop camera if you are really stretched for supplies) to project the books and have the classes read along. She sits half of the class on one side of the projector and the other on the other side. She then assigns a character to each side of the rug. Occasionally, there will be a character other than Piggy or Elephant who has a random colored bubble, which she reads.

The books take about 5-7 minutes to read, despite the high page count the word count is relatively low. The stories are adorable and enjoyable for both children and adults. While picking a favorite is a challenge (since I love them all) I would have to say, my personal favorite is Today I Will Fly.

One more thought on this: The year that I taught 3-year-olds they noticed that the word 'monday' and the word 'mo' started with the same two letters. Once the surprise of this discovery settled, we made an official decision to make Mondays 'Mo Mondays' and chose to read a new 'Mo book' every Monday. Mo Mondays were much anticipated and totally fantastic!

Here is a link to a great 'Piggy and Elephant Party Pack,' complete with activities for both home and classroom. http://www.pigeonpresents.com/teachersguides/eandp_eventkit_09.pdf

Happy reading!

Tech- Savy Literacy

I have been working on my computer for most of the day and got to thinking about how many links I have bookmarked that I use for classroom purposes. Every teacher has a slue of bookmarked pages to assist with lesson plans and of course there is that list of those great ideas we never seem to have time for. In addition to those, I have a few favorite links for direct classroom application (think students on the rug, eyes on a projection screen.)

This is one of the links I use to enhance a literacy and math lesson for 10 Apples Up on Top. I will add some of the other projects I connect with this book in another posting.

Sit back and enjoy! Be sure to listen through the credits- I love the extra lines the artist added in!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaT4WcgV3BU

Rip and glue collage letters

It's been such a busy month! Kindergarten has been filled with days of cutting, glueing, creating, exploring, playing, and lots of learning. To start off the year we worked with learning about our names. This project is a simple one but be forewarned it does involve some hands on adult cutting after the kid part is complete.

1. Create the large capital letter for each name by using WordArt (select the basic straight one and increase the outline to about 3.0).

2. Provide strips of construction paper to each table. We talked about how you only need one color at a time so use a little and then pass it

on. Instruct the children to rip the paper into little odd shapes- no scissors! After a few minutes it will become clear who has stronger fine motor skills. (On the second day I pre-ripped the paper and gave them confetti.)

3. Have children glue the paper all over the letters. Encourage the children to cover the outline and all of the white space inside the letter.

4. Print out "_______ is for ______________." and have each child complete the sentence.

5. Cross your fingers for a parent volunteer or a large block of prep time.

6. Cut out the letters on the lines- this will involve flipping the page over to be able to see the lines. You will have to do some re-glueing as some of the pieces will be glued on the outside of where you are cutting.

7. Glue both the sentence and the letter to black paper.

I am debating laminating the finished product but am torn because the layers being stacked add a great visual element. My reason to laminate is that I will be hanging these over the cubbies and am concerned about little hands causing little pieces of paper to come detached.

Apples, Apples Everywhere!

With the start of school every year comes apples. Apple tasting, apple printing, and of course amongst oodles of other things- cooking projects. One of my favorite apple recipes to do with young children is Swedish Apple Pie. What's great about Swedish Apple Pie is that it has very few ingredients and it makes it's own crust!

After using an apple cutter (with students) we provided plastic knives to a small group and instructed students to chop the slices into chunks. We also worked together to measure and mix the crust mixture which a teacher spread on top of the apples.

I do not have a specific recipe that I use each year but this one from All Recipes is what I used last year.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds Granny Smith apples - peeled, cored and sliced
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3/4 cup melted butter
• 1 egg

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Toss apples with 1 tablespoon of sugar, and pour them into a pie plate. Thoroughly mix together 1 cup of sugar with the flour, cinnamon, butter, and egg. Spread this evenly over the top of the pie.
3. Bake in preheated oven until the apples have cooked and the topping is golden brown, about 40 to 45 minutes.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/easy-swedish-apple-pie/detail.aspx

Jumping on board for a new school year!

Hey everyone! Kindergarteners arrive tomorrow morning which means I have been spending the last few days adding the finishing touches on the room I am teaching in this fall (as a maternity leave sub). This bulletin board is one of two that were passed on to me. Positioned at an angle high above the cubbies, this was nothing short of a challenge to assemble, so of course I tried to be as creative as possible to push the challenge level just a bit higher!

The original idea came from a photo I saw online. I designed a t-shirt template and copied it on colored paper. The t-shirts are laminated with names written in Sharpie (to be removed with an alcohol wipe and re-used in the future). I was able to find mini (1") wooden clothes pins at AC Moore to add a little finishing touch- this is my favorite part!

Other slogans you can use are, "off to a tee-rific start" or something about having a "tee-riffic year." I am using this board for a Kindergarten classroom so I am always careful about being creative with spelling words in funny ways.

Happy Boarding!

Classroom Art Gallery

I am a big supporter in displaying student work in a 'formal' setting. I have used an art gallery set up in three different classrooms now. Each year the set up looks a little different but it always gets a great response from students and parents (and fellow teachers).

To construct the art gallery you will need (per student) one 8.5" x 11" plastic sleeve, one piece of black paper with a small photo and student's name. I like to take photos of the students on the playground or 'in action' in the classroom, just be sure to have a clear image of each face.

Tip: This is a great set up for a monthly project. I have used this to display monthly portraits a few times. At the end of the month we have stored the portraits in a file and have assembled a book or calendar to send home at the end of the year. Parents have always been thrilled to see the end result and compare the work.

This is the art gallery from my 3-year-old Reggio inspired preschool class. I'm posting this idea now because I know there are many teachers searching for something different while setting up classrooms. Let me know how it goes!

This one just rocks!

While this idea seems best for Spring, a piece of it is perfect for Summer and Fall. One year, my 3-year-old preschool class spent most of the year working on plants. When the ground finally became soft enough to dig in we put shovels in small hands and went to work building a 'backyard garden.' We were searching for a project to help include the classroom families and came up with the idea of decorating the beach rocks we were using to form a boarder around our plants.

Each family took a turn taking home a plastic bin with the following items:

3 paint brushes (approx 1/2" size)

3 tubes of heavy acrylic paint (red, yellow, blue)

1 small paint tray (mixing your own colors was encouraged)

1 child sized smock

1 set of directions taped to the inside of the lid

The only request we asked of the families was to work together to pick a word that meant something to them. The words were painted on what would be displayed as the 'top' of the rock. Some of the words were love, adventure, discover, chillax, play, and explore.

When each rock was fully dry it was sprayed with a sealer (all sides) and placed in our garden. We hosted a garden party breakfast when all of the rocks were complete and welcomed families in to check out our beautiful new garden, featuring their rocks.

Here's the part that is suitable for this time of year. On one of your summer beach trips pick up some extra flat beach rocks. Spend some time this Fall thinking of a meaningful word and paint it on. If you don't have a garden, you can use your rocks to outline a piece of your yard or as a fun addition to your block collection.

Liquid Chalk (Homemade of course!)

Here's a fun outdoor activity good for late summer days and early fall afternoons. Liquid sidewalk chalk. Mix corn starch and water until you get a watery-ooblek (about equal parts corn starch and water). Add a few drops of food coloring- be careful as too much will stain the ground. I use 1in 'house' paint brushes and sand pails to mix my chalk and hand it off to the awaiting artists.

TIP: Using this chalk is a little like mystery ink. It does not look like much when it is wet. However, as it dries you will see bright, vibrant colors.

This picture is from the deck of my old preschool classroom, welcoming parents to our spring breakfast. Leading from the gate to the classroom were also paintings done by the preschoolers.

Too excited to only post weekly!

I am big supporter of messy-sensory experiences (as you will soon notice a trend with my posts) and like to 'spice-up' the Discovery Table as often as possible. Undoubtably, shaving cream is not a new idea in Preschool classrooms. We use it on trays to write words, to cover objects for children to scrape clean, in buckets of water to make 'mush,' to name a few. This time I decided to see how much shaving cream was actually in a bottle. At the bottom of this bucket are a collection of small items (gems, small animals, game pieces, etc). At first the shaving cream does not look like much and will require some 'mushing', this is an activity in itself!

1. Have a child mix/fluff up the shaving cream.

2. Hide (or have a child hide) items in the shaving cream.

3. Have children search with their hands to pull out and clean off the hidden items. (Provide tongs for children sensory challenges).

Tip: Use a clear tub/bucket so that children can see what's happening/hiding in the tub. Also, put out large popsicle sticks to help the children clean off the larger objects and their body.

This idea was part of a "Letter of the Week" program, not for letter S but for letter L as we called it, "Looking in Lather."

Here's an idea to kick off with

Baby Oil Painting- An awesome accidental discovery. Mix water and food coloring (or use liquid watercolors) in a small cup. Take a small tray and put a large drop of baby oil. Have children coat the tray with the oil (using fingers or by moving the tray). Have each child use an eye dropper to make a 'design' with the colored liquid. When design is ready, take a piece of thick white paper (we used watercolor paper) and place it on top. Wait 10-20 seconds and then peel the paper off carefully. Tip: Use a perm marker to write the child's name on the paper BEFORE getting it wet! Also, beware, these masterpieces take over 24 hours to dry.