Items filtered by date: June 2011

Drum Roll Please...

Yes you read the title correctly.  There is more than one winner this week!

 I decided since it's our first contest, and I love giving stuff away, that I'd pick a winner from several different categories. 

I tossed all the new subscribers into a bowl and chose a name, all of the people who purchased something this week went into the bowl next, and finally all the people who commented or shared a tip this week were in the final drawing.

If you were counting, you discovered that I am sending out 3 bracelets. 

Here are the winners names:

Doreen a New York 1st grade teacher, is our "Subscription" winner, Dana, a New Jersey kindergarten teacher, is our "Purchased a Product" winner, and Donna is our "Posted a Comment" winner. 

I thought it was pretty interesting that all the winners' names started with the initial D like mine! 

Congratulations to all of you!

If you didn't win this week, your name is still in my pile and will remain there for the remainder of the contest, but continue to enter as many times as you want. 

Click on the link for complete CONTEST details. 

I will run the contest through the last week of August.  Next week's winner will be announced Monday the 8th instead of Friday the 5th.  

Thanks to everyone who participated.

An Old Favorite:

I chose Mary Wore A Red Dress for this month’s book pick, because young children enjoy it.

It’s one of those “Read it again; read it again!” stories.

Learning colors is one of my report card standards and having color words as part of the word wall and doing a variety of things with colors, is a big part of most teacher’s back-to-school activities, so I thought this was a good choice to dream up some activities for you to do with your students.

The Gist: Why I Love it:

Mary Wore A Red Dress is an old Texas folk song. I love it because it provides the perfect Segway to the introduction of colors.

In this particular version, animals are on their way to a birthday party.  I also like that the author includes the music at the end of the story.

Story Telling Tips:

• Use the colored clothing pieces that I have made to match the story and pass them out to students.  This is the perfect “sequencing” story.
• When the “orange” shirt is read, the child who has the orange shirt piece adds it to the flannel or white board.

• After reading the story, mix up the pieces and see if the children can remember the order they came in.
• Substitute students’ names for character names.  Watch little ones’ eyes light up when you say their name.  “Am I really in the book?” They’ll ask. It gets them to really pay attention.

•  I say the colors in English as well as Spanish and have the children repeat them back to me.
• Another thing you can have students do is to stand up if they are wearing the color that is being talked about in the story. i.e., Mary is wearing a red dress.

•  If you’re also wearing red, stand up.
• Children can wiggle their fingers, touch their nose, take a bow or do something silly, point to that color and then sit down.

Magic Tricks: I use my change bag to produce different colored scarves to teach secondary colors.  “What color was Mary wearing?” Yes, red.  Did you know that red and yellow make orange?”

I put a red scarf and a yellow scarf in the change bag and have children exclaim:

“ _______________ wore an orange shirt!” Then I pop out an orange scarf.  I do the same thing when I produce a green scarf (blue + yellow) and a purple scarf (red + blue).

 If I have time, I let students smear what ever primary color combination they want together, to turn a white paper tee-shirt into a secondary color.  I then hang these on a clothesline with mini clothespins.

Math: 5 graphing extensions, connect the dots, & count how many and write the number skill sheet.

Writing Extensions: 2 Class books: We Wore __________ To School! and On the First Day Of School Who Did You See?

Art Activity: (T-shirt idea above.) Click on the link for a copy of a t-shirt to paint.

Language Arts: Trace to pre-write skill sheet, matching colors, alphabetical order, rhyming words.

Click on the link to view/print the She Wore A Red Dress Packet. This packet will be FREE til September 16th and then can be purchased for only .99 cents. 

 Bibliography for Back-To-School: Click on the link to view my favorites.

Be sure and check out our FREEBIE reader of the month: Where Are The Coconuts?  This is a great booklet to go along with any of your Chicka Chicka Boom Boom activities.

  If you’re a big fan of Chicka Chicka  Boom Boom, be sure and check out the Arts-Crafts and Activities section.  That is my major theme this month. 

Our free "Easy Reader" this month is The Students On the Bus, a great math extension booklet and a real keepsake when you add a few photographs.

Whatever you're reading this month, I hope it's simply T-riffic!  Happy August.

Chomper, the Alligator Alligobbler To The Rescue!

Less than and greater than can be confusing symbols to a young child.  Make it fun and easy to understand with Chomper my alligator-alligobbler.

Here’s how:

• Buy a pack of self-seal long green envelopes.
• Children peel and stick the envelope shut.
• Make a V-template.

• Using the V-template, students trace the V and then cut it out.
• To expedite things, this can be pre-done for young children
• Run off the “jaws” of Chomper on several sheets of white cardstock.

• Students carefully cut the upper and lower jaws out.
• Using a glue stick, children run a stripe along the top V of the envelope-mouth of the alligator and then press on the top row of teeth.
• They do the same thing for the bottom row.

• Students cut out the half circle of Chomper’s eye and glue it to the top of the “head”.
• Give students a large wiggle eye and a thick glue dot.
• Students glue the wiggle eye on top of the green ½-circle “orb”.

• Run off a set of “Alligobbler” labels and give each student a sticker to place on the back of their Chomper.
• Students write their name above the label in plural-possessive form.

• Run off a set of number tiles in different colors.
• Each student needs two sets so that they can play at home.
• Children cut out their tiles.

 How to play the game.

• When children face a partner and they look at the opposite alligator, it will be a “less than” alligator.  They will have a “more than” alligator.
• Children stack one set of colored cards making sure that it is not the same color as their opponent.

•  Students place the cards face down.
• Decide who goes first.

•  Both children flip over a number card.
• If it is child A’s turn, she looks at the two numbers and decides which is more than and takes that number, saying the equation: “5 is more than 3.”

• The other child takes the 3.
• Now it is child B’s turn.
• Both children flip a number.

• Child B is looking at her alligobbler which is also “more than” to her,  so she will take the greatest number.
• If she’d like to take a smaller number, she can flip her alligobbler over so she is looking at a “less than” symbol “mouth and say that equation and take that number.

• Play ends when all of the numbers are gone.
• Children spill the number tiles Chomper has eaten, back onto the table and sort them by color, giving each other their own cards back.

Do you have a math tip you'd like to share?  I'd enjoy hearing from you.  diane@teachwithme.com

Remember leaving a comment or sharing an idea are two easy ways to register for our back-to-school CONTEST!  Click on the link to check out the details. Thanks for participating.

There is quite a bit of chatter on several of my mail rings about Smart Boards. 

Unfortunately, I am not one of the lucky ones to have one. 

I think they are an awesome addition to the classroom that would be very valuable in helping students stay current with the latest technology. 

If you do have a Smart Board, I'd be interested in hearing the pro's and con's of it and how you use it in your classroom with your students.

Remember, commenting anywhere on any of the blog sections, automatically puts you in our CONTEST! Click on the link for details.

In the meantime, I've found some awesome smart board sites for you. Simply click on the links to zoom there.

A kindergarten teacher's favorite sites.

It seems "THE" place for "anything" smart board is the SMART exchange. Lots of info here.

A plethora of lessons at Longwood School's site.

Smart Board has a variety of all sorts of different things from lessons and tips to links.

Summit MO school district's wonderful list sorted by subject.

Rockingham VA also shares a long list sorted by subject.

Smart Board Resources + links.

I hope these helped you in your endeavors of staying current with all that's out there!  Enjoy surfin' smart!

Since some schools head back to school as early as the 2nd week of August, I wanted to post some art projects and activities that would go with that theme.

A favorite book that many teachers read the first week of school is Chicka Boom Boom, so I wanted to dream up some new ideas for that, as many teachers also make a Welcome bulletin board with that theme, and gear several days around letter activities as well.

I'm trying to design more things around favorite books and did two huge projects for Chicka Boom because of its popularity.

The first is entitled Trunk Tricks and has a variety of activities based around the trunk of the coconut tree.

I've seen others make painted handprints for fronds, which is cute, but sometimes messy and difficult and time-consuming to do if you're teaching a bunch of little ones by yourself.

I decided to trace my handprints to see how they would turn out and I really liked the affect.

You can have a room volunteer do the tracing and cutting for you, or send the green paper home during open house and have parents do this step

With the handprint portion out of the way, this adorable keepsake artwork can be whipped together in about 10 minutes.

For extra pizzazz, I used brown textured wallpaper for the trunk of my tree.

Brightly-colored foam letters also added that bit of 3-D pop and the picture on the coconut makes it all the more precious.

Click on the link to view/print the masters for the Chicka Boom handprint tree.

In Trunk Tricks you can also make a Name Tree, a Vowel Tree, a Color Tree and a count by 10's to 100 Tree.

Any of these would make quick and easy bulletin boards: "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Look What The K's Did In Mrs. Henderson's Room!"Click on the link to see the rest of this fun-filled activity book. Trunk Tricks

Make a copy of my master, run it off on tan construction paper. 

Students cut out their coconut and can either write their name with a variety of colored markers, or glue their school photo on the tag and write their name with an ink pen.

It's a wonderful project for the first week of school and a great companion to the book. 

As you can see by the photographs, many report card standards, subjects and skills are being reinforced. 

Click on the link to view/print the  Chicka Boom Name Tags.

Play I Spy A Letter!

• One of the things that I do everyday with my students for table top lessons is to play an I Spy game. 
• I make these up by drawing circles on pictures of whatever theme we are studying and filling them with dashed letters and numbers. 
• I spy a number and my students circle it and then raise their hand. 


• The first one to raise their hand gets to spy the next letter/number. 
• My students really enjoy playing "I Spy". It's a wonderful whole-group assessment tool for me as well.  I can see in just 2 minutes who is having difficulty spying letters and numbers because they aren't able to recognize them. 
• I jot down notes and then can work with these students later on a one-on-one basis. 

• Since we study apples for one of our big back to school science themes, I thought it would be fun for students to compare apples and coconuts. 


• This comparison not only involves various math extensions, but you can toss in some science exploration as well, by having a discussion with your students about what they think is inside the coconut etc. 


• Once you break the coconut open, give everyone a taste of the liquid as well as the meat.  Graph whether students like apples or coconuts better. 


• Make a Venn diagram to compare the two.  It's surprising how many things you can find that they have in common.  Picka Chicka lists several pages of very interesting facts + a 1/2 page of terrific links and You Tube videos, including how to open a coconut and climb a coconut tree!


• Click on the link to view/print the Chicka Boom graph and Venn diagram

Chicka Boom Envelope Letter Game:

There's nothing like a game to help students learn lessons.  Children can play with a partner or in a group of 3. 

You can make a class set of Chicka Boom trees, or allow each student to make their own "Chicka Boom Name Tree".  Play the game several times in class and then let children take them home to enjoy with family.

Children glue construction paper to a sealed envelope making a trunk so that they can insert letters into the back of their tree's "pocket".  Students roll a dice to determine how many letters they put in their envelope. 

If they roll a 1 they take a letter out, if they roll a 6 they lose their turn. 

Click on the link to view/print the Chicka Boom Envelope Letter Game patterns.

Chicka Boom Popsicle Stick Puzzle:

I love making Popsicle stick puzzles.  They are easy and inexpensive and fun for students to put together. 

• Simply find the clip art you want to match whatever theme you're doing and enlarge it to 5 1/2 x 4 1/2.  Print it off and cut it out.
• Number 6 large wooden Popsicle sticks from 1-6 on the back and then arrange them side by side. 
  
• Smooth white glue over the top and then press your picture over the sticks. 
  
•  
• Flip the sticks over onto another sheet of paper so that you can make a tiny space inbetwen the sticks so that you can cut them apart with an Exacto knife when they dry. 
  
• Making a Popsicle stick puzzle out of your students' first day of school photo makes a nice keepsake as well. 
  
• You can keep these puzzles for your classroom, or send them home with your students as a sweet back-to-school surprise!

I've also made a Welcome To School apple puzzle for you as well.  They'd make a cute gift for each of your students. 

You could print their names with a black marker across the center of the apple.  A great "learn-to-recognize-your-name" activity for little ones.

Click on the link to view/print that pattern. Back-to-school Apple Puzzle.

A is for Apple and A is a VOWEL.

As mentioned above, apples are a big theme for back-to-school, so I wanted to toss in an apple project. 

One of the things that I taught my first graders was a Vowel Song to the tune of Bingo that I made up.   (There was a class who knew their vowels and this it what they sang oh: AEIOU-AEIOU-AEIOU They were a very smart class!)

When I designed this project for my first graders years ago, I thought it was funny how they would break out in song while they worked on this vowel apple!  They really enjoyed both!  I hope your kiddo's do too!

Run off my master on red construction paper, have your students cut and assemble the parts and glue either the vowel song or a words on the back. 

Punch a hole in the stem and hang from the ceiling with fish line. 

This makes a great decoration as well as a reminer of what all of the vowels are.

Click on the link to view/print the vowel apple pattern.

The Very Hungry Student!

A fun activity for the first week of school.

Your students will enjoy writing what they learned each month in this adorable booklet; it's  sure to become a cherished keepsake!

• The rhyming text makes it a fun read-aloud.
• There's a page in the back for your students' autographs! 

• It's also a nice way to review or learn the names of the months.
• This makes a great addition to a portfolio to show progress at Parent/Teacher Conferences.
  


• Glue the child's photo in the head of the caterpillar (like my sample) or leave it with the artwork provided.
• Depending on what grade level you teach, there are 3 different scenarios for the ending,
  

• What a fun way to remember all that you've done throughout the year; and  build writing skills and self-esteem as you go along!
• 
• Read Eric Carles' The Very Hungry Caterpillar as a nice introduction to this activity!
• There's a Pop-Up version out that my students adore.
  


• Click on the link to view/print a copy for your students. The Very Hungry Students back-to-school keepsake booklet.

Do you have a tip to share?  I'd enjoy hearing from you. diane@teachwithme.com

Remember... sharing a tip or commenting on an article are two ways to enter our back-to-school button bracelet CONTEST! 

 Click on the CONTEST link to see all the details.

Be sure to pop in tomorrow to print another adorable keepsake booklet entitled The Students On The Bus. This one is a great math extension!