Fall Activity

A fun fall art project - bushy tailed squirrels - I use card stock - squirrel body is painted brown, tail is covered with crushed chex cereal and attached with a brass fastener - it can be tied into so many of our favorite fall stories!
from Rosemary J Aldrich

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Literacy Activities

I would suggest the morning message, it gets the children ready for what's happening during the day, and its a great way to develop reading and writing skills.
by Michelle

We make a Classmate book designed like the Brown Bear book. We use our kid's names instead of the animals and include a picture of each kid. They love it and we take turns taking it home for the night the first few weeks of school so that families can get to know the kids in our class.
Jane Ayers

I do the Kissing Hand the first day of school. I paint the students' hands white, post on black paper, and put a red heart in the middle. Then I paste a poem about the first day of school underneath. As a parent, Ilike to send something home right away!

More Literacy Activities for Centers

More Literacy Activities for Centers

Summer Craft

Summer fun mobile: Materials required:
Salt dough,
a wooden stick about 8 cm long,
plastic wire or strong thin thread - 3 pieces of 10-15 cms.
Method:
Help or guide the children to mould the salt dough into shapes of the sun, pails, shovels, parasols and other objects related to the summer theme.
Insert a paper clip into the dough at the top of each object.
Bake the objects at 120 degree centigrade for 30 minutes.
Paint them after they have cooled completely.
Allow them to select three shapes from the ones they have made.
Tie the threads to the paper clips on each of the objects and then tie them to the stick - the one in the middle being shorter than the ones at the sides of the stick.
Tie a loop to the stick at the centre so that the mobile can be hung.
by Aparna

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Positional Math Activity

Today durring math centers we worked on positional words (in, on, under, ontop, ect.) I had the kids get into pairs of two and gave each child a pile of blocks and put a piece of construction paper between them. Then child A told child B where to place ther block and vise versa. The kids had a ton of fun telling thier friends where to put the blocks & they made really cool structures too. by Brooke

Name Recogntion Activity

I extended the flower garden idea for my name recognition activity or attendance. I free had drew a larger flower onto construction paper and wrote the child's name. The children colored their flower template and then I attached a picture in the middle oval. Each flower was laminated and a piece of velcro attached. Upon arrival, the children find their flower picture and then go to the board and find their name on a flower. by Heather Osterman

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Reward System

I've actually used the friendship tree in many other areas of the curriculum. I teach a reception class at a special needs school in the UK so some of the concepts in the unit are not yet appropriate but most aspects are very adaptable. I have used the trees as a reward system. The 'learning trees' are on a big diaplay board on the wall, they have branches, each branch belongs to one child. The branches have leaves on them with the child's face. Some leaves have statements on them (targets/goals). They receive a leaf everytime they reach a target or do something special. These leaves get sent home and the parents stick them in our 'learning tree' scrapbook. Most leaves are sent home with a picture of the child engaged in the targeted activity.
by Marjolein

Science Concept

Below you will find a suggestion from Shamiela Leo to intoduce the concept of deep, deeper, deepest, shallow, shallower, and shallowest.

Supplies: Containers for water, sticks or long paintbrushes. Work in groups of three. They pour different levels of water in 3 containers. Arrange the containers with water levels from shallow to shallowest. This exercise is NOT ABOUT how much water there is, but how deep the level is. Show learners how they can measure the depth of water with a stick. Pour more water in the containers so that one is deep, another deeper and the last container the deepest. Measure the water levels and compare them with each other by comparing the watermarks on the sticks. Talk about he depth of birdbath, fishpond, baths, swimming pools,brooks, rivers and the sea. Warn learners that children can drown in a pail of water

Transition Classroom Ideas

Transition Idea 1
Just a great transition idea. When my class has to move from one part of the center to another, we catch imaginary bubbles in our mouths. If you open your mouth to talk, the bubble floats out. Nobody wants to lose their bubble, so mouths stop immediately talking. It is magic!
from Judi Case

Transition Idea 2
When children are getting antsy and moving around I start to sing and clap, "Everybody, Everybody, Jump Up and Down, Jump Up and Down, Jump Up and Down. Everybody, Everybody, Jump Up and Down. Now Sit Back Down." This gets 'em all the time. Then they're ready to refocus. If needed, I continue with, "If you're wearing orange, jump up and down, etc...can switch it out to include any items they're wearing, boy/girl, hair color, etc.
by Janice Boyles

First Week Activities

Learning Names
My children enjoyed making a spider web with yarn to help learn each other's names. You hand one child a ball of yarn. Have the child hold the end of the yarn while throwing the ball to another child. The child catching the ball says" My name is _____." That child throws the ball across the circle to another, being sure to hold the yarn closest to the ball with his other hand. Continue around the circle. by Helen Parker

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