Holiday DIYs!

Get ready for some serious crafting...

Here's what we got:

1. my December door decoration!
2. the parents' gifts (from the kiddos)
3. the kiddos' gifts (from me!)

     First off, I feel like I should share my door decoration with everyone because it's one I am proud of! Cute and simple and full of Christmas cheer.

"Jolly Holiday Helpers"

     Secondly, it's the "gift-is" that we made the last full week before our Winter break! 

It's like Christmas exploded in there.

     Made with crayon shavings from a wide pencil sharpener, clear plastic ornaments, and a hair dryer. They picked from red/green/yellow/white/silver shavings and I put the shavings inside the ornament, and rotated/shook the ornament as it was heating up from the hair dryer (holding it by the silver top hook thing. When all the pieces were stuck to the plastic (but before they got too melty and swirly) I took the off the heat and put them aside to cool. When cool, I write their names and the year on the bottom and tied a small jingle bell on the top with a white ribbon (instead of a ugly metal hook).

     It was easy! The most time consuming part was definitely the crayon shavings, only because with 12 ornaments, the sheer quantity of shavings was more than I was expecting when I started. I'd say it probably took about 1-2 tablespoons of shavings to fully cover the inside of one ornament and make it look nice and speckled.

Lastly is the gift from me to my kids! 

     When I give gifts as a teacher, I try to stay functional. This time I went with the reindeer candy canes, but also added Holiday pencils behind! Made with candy canes, pencils, paper hole protectors, red buttons, brown pipe cleaners, and hot glue. I made sure each reindeer had a different combination of pencils and different buttons, just to make sure there weren't any issues of matching or being upset about not matching.  These were also fairly painless to assemble and pretty quick from start to finish.

So those were my main examples of craftiness for December, can't wait to see what's in store for 2015!!

Be safe and sweet, y'all! (And Merry Christmas!!)

Sequins Galore!

Winter and Christmas means it's time to sparkle!

     In any setting, glitter can be a trap. Meaning that once it gets released, you can never truly clean it all up. Any teacher, especially the crafty and art-inclined, would warn you to think twice before you go down that fabulous but often treacherous path. That's why I decided to go with an equally shiny art supply, the sequin!

So shiny!

     They're less hassle to clean, but still just as fancy and special! For an especially wintry activity, we used snowflake sequins to cover the letters in our names. I paired this activity with Millions of Snowflakes by Mary McKenna Siddal and we related the snowflakes landing on the book character's nose, chin, tongue, etc. to the sequin snowflakes landing on the letters of their name. I cut a piece of construction paper into thirds (hamburger style) and then just wrote their names with a sharpie.

Snowflake Cover-up!

     This activity is SO easily extended, also! You could do any of the following:

• place snow flakes on differently body parts that snowflakes could actually fall
• count how many snowflakes it took to cover all the letters and compare it to other names
• compare how many snowflakes it took to cover each letter 
• cover letters of winter/snow type words 
• let them pinch and drop snowflakes and see where they land, graph the results!
• write letters on snowflakes and match letters to names

     After my kids completed the initial activity, I let them choose to stay in the small group or go to a center. If they chose to stay, they could pick a different word to cover or use different sequins, such as red/green/yellow/silver circles, random Christmas patterns (Santas, stockings, trees, candles, etc).

Use those pinchers! 

     I loved incorporating fine motor skills with letter recognition and formation, with a wintry twist! The only thing I could improve for nest time would be to use sticky paper or possibly felt. I didn't want to glue the snowflakes because then they wouldn't be reusable for all students, but then whenever someone sneezed or accidentally moved their paper, all their sequins would fall off or get messed up and some would get extremely discouraged. Using sticky contact paper or felt would help keep the sequins on, but not permanently. 

Be safe and sweet, y'all! (and Merry Christmas!)

Get your a capella voice ready...

...and oh do I love Christmas music!!

     Now that it's socially acceptable to listen to holiday music, I have been playing it in our class! The kiddos love to hear songs that they know or at least "have heard in Daddy's car," and I love sharing my love for the holiday season with them! 

     As a teacher, your children look up to you every day. Whether you realize or like it or not, they are constantly looking to you for guidance in things outside of the academic realm. The most recent example that has been brought to my attention was how hesitant I was to sing in front of them. Each of the classes at our school is expected to perform a song at the Christmas program later this month and seeing as how I am a newly solo teacher, the responsibility of teaching a song to these bright-eyed and bushy-tailed kiddos fell solely upon my shoulders. 

     I believe that I have a fairly good singing voice (although I've never been one for karaoke nights or belting out a tune in a car full of people), but when I was sitting on the carpet with my precious kids looking to me for musical guidance, I had to buckle down and throw my self-consciousness out the tinsel-decorated window. 

     I recalled something that a professor in college once said: no matter how beautiful or awful your voice sounds, if you sing with confidence and joy then your kids basically think you are the greatest.  You are their teacher. Comparable to super heroes and even Mommy or Daddy. They will love you no less; actually they will probably love you even more, while you sing with them. That group of kids will probably be most acceptive audience any performer could ask for!

     Teachers (parents, even!): you don't have to be musically trained to make your kids happy. You just have to try. 

     That's what I did and it's worked for me! I catch my kids singing while they play and work in our class and it makes my heart happy. Also, it's just the darn cutest thing!

*(can you tell what my favorite Christmas movie is??)*

Be safe and sweet, y'all.

It's a Sign!

Signing to Success in the Classroom

     In school, I chose French as my language to learn when I had to pick one in high school and I continued throughout college. It's shown that knowing and practicing a second language is beneficial to learning in general, but why wait until middle or high school? Early childhood is arguably the most important time during a child's educational life, so I say let's put the two together! 

     I've started incorporating sign language into my 4K class by using the ol' classic, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle and my kiddos love it!

     

     Sign language is easy for kids to successfully learn quickly and they feel so accomplished when they can remember the signs! I love sign language because it incorporates sight and movement, along with the sounds of the words that they mean. So if you have English Language Learners, or even just some who learn better through sight rather than just hearing, everyone can be signing and learning! (It's also a great way to quiet your room for a bit if you feel like it's been a loud day!)

     So start off small with single words and build up to combinations and sentences. Also, get ready to see signs they may or may not have made up! So creative!

Be safe and sweet, y'all

The Freeze!

Today we froze!

Well, only when the music stopped. 

 
      Greg & Steve's song titled "The Freeze" has been formally introduced in our classroom and they love it! I've used the freeze game in my time as a gymnastics coach when we would have the entire open floor for us to roll, jump, and run around but using this song in the classroom was almost just as fun. (Especially the part after, when all my kiddos had gotten rid of those pesky wiggles).

   

     

     Instead of just running around all crazy-like, our class made a circle around our group of tables and marched, monkey-walked, fish-swam, giraffe-tip-toed, and a bunch of other things around said tables. It worked out because there was no line leader (or caboose which has become another desired position for some reason) and we changed movements pretty quickly so it was always engaging. 

     The song tells you when to freeze and isn't terrible to listen to multiple times (speaking as an adult), so I'd recommend it to anyone! You can listen to it here (it's number 10 on the list). 

Be safe and sweet, y'all.

Thanksgiving Planning

Whew!

     It's already November! 

     ...which means it's almost Thanksgiving, which means it's almost Christmas, which means the school year is almost halfway over, which means soon the school year will be over!! I know that's jumping ahead a bit but I'm not convinced that I'm wrong! It seems like this year just started, but it also seems like the beginning of the year was so long ago.

    Anyways, the point of this post is to remark on a few thoughts I had while planning my month of November. Yesterday and today I had a MUCH smaller class size than normal (about 1/4 of a normal class!) so I was able to plan just about all of November! Being a first-year solo teacher, I get to decide what I want my students to learn and in which ways to learn it. This is a curse and blessing. Mainly I'm referring to the whole "First-Thanksgiving-was-or-was-not-actually-a-totally-friendly-experience-for-everyone-involved-controversy". 

     There's so many teacher resources that depict the first Thanksgiving timeline as a quaint and happy sequence of events between "Pilgrims and Indians". But we also see that in the early grades, talking about the less amiable aspects of the first Thanksgiving or even forgoing them is not the norm. As we learn in higher education, that isn't the whole story. Now my schtick is that I don't like lying to my class because that's not fair to them or even to me later when they come back and say that someone else told them something different and then it becomes me against them and not about the actual topic and whatnot. 

     So thanks to a history lesson and research on my part,  I've chosen to include all the basic principles of the event and season. I don't want to fill my kids heads with historical jargon and miss out on the more important and relatable aspects of the holiday. The holiday is about celebrating what we've got. I choose to focus on family, friends, food, a home and even things beyond basic necessities such as toys or vacations. We'll talk about how Thanksgiving started and why it was first celebrated (i.e. the first settlers had a tough time living in the new land, they received help from native peoples and then celebrated their harvest), but discussing and practicing the concept of being thankful is more important than learning an abstract history lesson for my four year olds. 

Be safe and sweet, y'all.

Spooky Halloween Freebie!

No tricks, just a treat!

     Here's a little something spooky just in time for a unit on nocturnal animals, forest animals, birds, etc. Mostly useful for kiddos who are just getting started with their own writing or tracing skills, this sheet has the traceable dotted letters and an open line for them to "show what they know!" Also features a coloring picture based on a real photo of an owl and owlets.

Download here

Enjoy!

All comments and feedback are welcome!

Be safe and sweet, y'all.

Revelation

Today I successfully controlled a highly emotional situation 

     And I had a revelation right in the middle of it. 

     During a typical activity, my kids were moving around on the carpet and a situation occurred between a student became upset after gaining negative attention through a series of tattling, accidental bumping into, and becoming embarrassed. This embarrassment only caused him to become more upset when his yelling and fussing gained even more attention and escalated even further. In order to regain focus and remedy the situation, I removed him from the situation and tried to "logically talk him down" (by saying "we don't yell at friends", "I cant help you if you're yelling at me", etc.) all while he repeatedly yelled "No!" in my face.

     When this didn't work, I placed him out of the view of the others and knelt down to his level. I am normally a patient person, especially understanding when it comes to children, but that is the moment when I realized how not-calm I was. I thought his behavior was ridiculous for his age, and I could tell that was affecting me. I thought to myself, "I am not helping right now." I did a quick self-check and adjusted my own manner and feelings. Instead of a "what the heck is happening right now?!" attitude, I adjusted to a "how can I transform this to a calmer atmosphere?" attitude. 

     No jokes here, but the positive change in our interaction was almost instant. I felt my face relax and I softly repeated his name to regain focus on him. How does he feel right now? How can I help him? What does he need? After a few seconds of this, I was able to start a relatively normal conversation with him and he was able to calm down in a separate area while I continued with the rest of the class. 

     This is where the lesson comes in. Through that experience, I was able to fully realize how much teachers have to be able to self-regulate themselves before they can expect their students to do it. These are just little humans who are still new to this world and even to themselves and they need a model to not just teach them, but also show them. Find out what they need and show them acceptable ways to react to stressful situations. Show them how to successfully interact with others. Show them respect. Show them that you care about them. Show them love. 

Be safe and sweet, y'all. 

First!

Start at the beginning. 

Well start whenever you can. We're almost halfway done with our school year, but this blog is just getting started! Mostly to be used as a documentation tool for my own benefit, this place will also serve as a way to organize ideas/materials and share cool things I see or experience in my own preschool adventures! I've just begun my own K4 classroom and am excited to see where it takes me. So here we go! 

Adventure is out there!

Apple picking with the hubby!