Environmental Print Word Wall

In my classroom I do not have a lot of wall space so I use cupboard doors.  I turned these doors into my word wall.  Under each Dave Matteson letter card is the children's names and environmental print.  Then directly across from the letter card is the matching zoo animal letter from zoo phonics.

What is Environmental print?  It is the first step to children learning how to read.  They begin to recognize logos and the print around their environment.  In my classroom I encourage the children to bring logos in from home and then this also turns into a family culture project as well.

I also add the animal letters from the zoo phonics curriculum too.  Zoo phonics matches an animal to a letter with a sound and action.  For example Aa is Allie Alligator and then you make an alligator mouth with your hands and make the "a" sound to match it.  The children love to come up to the wall, find a letter, and say the animal, their name, or point out a logo they can recognize.

What creative ways have you incorporated a word wall?

Everyone Sign-in Please!

Every day before class starts I have the children sign-in their name as part of their daily routine.  The kids' names are put on the sign-in sheet in random order but I do write their names according to skill level. So some are in all caps and some are in standard name form.  I try to get all their names in standard form by the end of the year since in kindergarten they will be in standard form.  This is a great way to scaffold the children in their name writing skills!

This is also a great way to assess their pencil grip level too.

And because the names are numbered they also begin to understand which number has their name for number recognition skills.

Ice Cream in a bag!

For our nutrition activity last month we did ice-cream in a bag.  This is a great activity for science and uses  some gross motor skills too.  Not to mention it is very inexpensive for those on a class budget :)

Here are all of our ingredients: Ice Cubes; Ice Cream Salt; 1 cup half and half; 2 TB sugar; 1/2 tsp. vanilla

Add everything but the salt into a ziplock bag.  

Then close it tightly and place it in another bag that is filled 1/4 way with ice cubes. Next sprinkle in the salt. 

I didn't get a picture of the kids shaking the bag but here is the finished product!

Updating My Teacher's Office!

I have a separate office attached to my classroom that I share with two assistants.  It is quite cramped and I wanted to make it more homey.  So I decided to personalize it a little bit.  I decorated a bulletin board with zebra duck tape and black office organizers with the tape too.  I think they turned out well!

Before

 After

I filled the board with past children's/parents cards and class photos.

This is right above my computer screen now :)

Then I duck taped all the container's edges with the zebra tape too. 

Next I want to order one of those Etsy teacher signs.  Then it will definitely be more homey :)

Classroom Management Problem Solved!

Problem: I was noticing that my students had a hard time understanding how many could be in a center at a time.  
Solution: So to help with this I came up with our "Monkey" system.   

Each center has monkeys that represent  the amount of children that can be at that particular center.

 There is velcro on both monkeys so a student just places their monkey on the spot and it shows who is in that center.

 Then the students each have their own matching monkey with their name on it. If there is no room for their monkey then the center is full.  When a child moves, they move their monkey to a new "open" center.
At the end of choice time all the monkeys go back to their home on a black homing board.

 Problem Solved!  It only took a few days for the kids get the concept down.  Now they walk around saying "don't forget your monkey" and "is it monkey time?"  So cute!

Winter Water Table Play!

This time of year I always do a winter unit and include some sort of frozen water play, winter art, winter science and winter drama area.  For the water play my assistant had the idea of filling up a 5 gallon bucket with colored water and placing winter sea animals and polar animals into the water and freezing it over the weekend.  This was a big hit with the kids and lasted over a few days.

We also gave the kids sponges to work the ice down.  They couldn't wait to see what animal they would discover next.

   After a day of sponges we brought in basters and lastly salt.  This science discovery play is a wonderful opportunity for the children to learn about the properties of water!

I'm also working on assessments so I brought in the objectives comparing objects by differences and size with foam snowballs.

It helped that I printed the word small on smaller letters and the word Big on larger letters.  This way the kids knew which basket to sort into for the activity.

 Our state standards require that we have a sand and water table available daily, which limits me on other sensory play. So... I decided to bring in an extra sensory bin for other fun tactile experiences.  This is my rice bin that I placed snowflake confetti and foam snowflakes in for the winter theme.  The kids loved it!

One project we did for art was marshmallow painting.  I read Snowmen at Night first and I used big and small marshmallows so we could work on the comparing objective again :)

Here is a picture of my cold center.  The kids really enjoyed getting dressed up for the cold weather.

Then....I turned it into a Hot Cocoa center!  I posted on this in a previous post, Brrrr baby it's cold outside! but this year I added some new things: New sign, laminated hot cocoa packets, hot cocoa metal tins and boxes, marshmallow jar and peppermint jar.

  

This is one of my favorite times of teaching!  What do you do for your winter theme?

All About Me Nutrition Project!

 We are learning about our culture and what makes us special this month.  One of our projects was the children making their faces with food.   Here are the pictures.

I got the idea from the Mailbox Magazine and then my assistant laminated it onto this board.

 

This was great for their fine motor too.  I gave them tongs to pick up the food.

The finished faces!

The kids really enjoyed this project and afterwards a lot of them actually ate the vegetables with dressing too.