I am making these gift boxes for the women at New Life for Girls. Belle will be helping me to fill them with assorted tea bags and I will take them there in a few weeks!
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Service Project - New Life for Girls - Tea boxes
I am making these gift boxes for the women at New Life for Girls. Belle will be helping me to fill them with assorted tea bags and I will take them there in a few weeks!
First Day of School Gift
I made these little gift packages for the kids to celebrate Belle's first day of Kindergarten next month. I haven't decided what I'm going to put in them yet :-) But will update it when I do!
Sorting Clothes dilema?
OK, so this isn't really "school stuff", although sorting is a very important academic skill for our young preschoolers, so I guess technically it is! LOL!
Anyway, the girls (mostly Belle) are responsible for putting their dirty clothes in our hamper at the end of every day. We have a sorter for our laundry, but it does NO good when people dump all the clothes in the same little section.
SO, to remedy this problem, I made signs for our laundry sorter! The girls think it's GREAT fun matching colors to the pictures and sorting laundry all by themselves just like Mommy! And, I'm happy because I don't have to re-sort the laundry every day! It's a win-win! :-)
Anyway, the girls (mostly Belle) are responsible for putting their dirty clothes in our hamper at the end of every day. We have a sorter for our laundry, but it does NO good when people dump all the clothes in the same little section.
SO, to remedy this problem, I made signs for our laundry sorter! The girls think it's GREAT fun matching colors to the pictures and sorting laundry all by themselves just like Mommy! And, I'm happy because I don't have to re-sort the laundry every day! It's a win-win! :-)
Ice Cream Games(2)
Since both of my girls are at totally different places with their skills (duh! I have a 5 year old and a 2 year old! LOL!) I am making activities that we can work on together, and yet they do their own separate work. So, I made two sets of bingo cards for them (6 in all). Julie's set just has capital letters on it, and Belle's has sight words. I didn't get her words from any list, I just put easy words in there that I knew she either is being exposed to in her readers or just ones that I thought she can/should learn.
I am a BIG FAN of laminators! I use mine all the time. In fact, I just broke the one I've had for about 8 years and finally had to replace it with a new one. They are very cheap (I got my new one at walmart for just $26.88!) and I get the laminating sheets from Sam's for very cheap too. If you plan on using activities multiple times, or if you have several children who you will probably want to have activities for as they each grow and learn, then laminating is awesome! I can make things once and know they will pretty much last forever! :-)
I am also a big fan of Boardmaker software. It's very expensive, but for educators it is awesome! I got mine while I was in Grad School b/c I didn't spend much time on campus or at my elementary schools I was working at. I wanted to make sure I could work from home and still have everything I need. Whenever I have picture symbols (you'll see some eventually), or BINGO CARDS especially, I used this software to make them.
You could probably use Word and just make a 3x3 table, and insert your pictures that way.
Once the bingo cards are laminated, you can use bingo daubers (like we did), or washable markers, dry erase markers, or any little coins, etc. to cover your spaces. For Belle's game, I called out words and she had to find and mark them. For Julie though, she doesn't know her letters yet, so I wrote them down and said "A...Julie, can you find the A like this one? A" Etc, etc, etc.
Ice Cream - Glitter Art
We just decorated these ice cream cones with glitter pens...gotta love the glitter pens!
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Smelly Ice Cream Cones
Ice Cream - Playtime - Ice Cream Playdoh
I made up 3 large batches of playdoh to use for our Ice Cream Parlor! We have chocolate, vanilla, and orange sherbet!
Here's the recipe:
2 cups flour
2 cups warm water
1 cup salt
2 Tbsp cooking oil
1 Tbsp cream of tartar
Extras - chocolate cocoa, vanilla powder, orange extract, food coloring, koolaid packets, etc.
Mix all ingredients together in large saucepan. Cook over medium heat while stirring constantly, for just a few minutes until it comes together like mashed potatoes. Flip out onto floured surface and knead in any extras you wish! Store in air tight container for about a month.
We're gonna pull out some play ice cream cones we have, a cash register, an ice cream scoop, some plastic bowls, an apron, and some spoons, and there we have our very own ice cream parlor, with scoopable ice cream!
Ice Cream Games - Color/color word cards
These are the cards we're using for color matching (Julie) and color/color word matching (Belle) this week! Here's the link to the ice cream cone image to make some cards!
Today I had Belle do a memory game with colors and color words to make it a bit harder, but she did great!!!
We also spent A LOT of time on the computer today on different learning sites! FUN DAY!
And we spent about an hour of reading/story time this morning too! Just grabbed a big box of books from the basement and they went to town with them!!!
Ice Cream Cones - Shaving cream color (2)
Today we did our cones for our shaving cream painting project. Then, we put them together and made a "Today's Specials" sign for our ice cream parlor!
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Farm Art
I got these chip board farm animals at Lakeshore in Towson, but you could use regular printer paper and print animals from the internet...
I just got together some glue, paint (brown, black, and white), a bag of feathers, googly eyes, some cotton balls, paintbrushes, and refillable bingo marker bottles (also from teacher store).
We finger painted brown on the pigs (for mud), painted glue on the sheep and added cotton balls that we pulled apart, painted glue on the chickens and added feathers, and then used the paint in the bingo marker bottles to add spots to our cows. Then we added googly eyes to all of them!
Kids Make their own Pizza Day
We invited Hannah and Joe over one day a few weeks ago for lunch and the kids each made their own mini pizza for lunch. I made dough (see my other blog) and the kids put on sauce, cheese, pepperoni, bacon, mushrooms, and onions. They had a blast!
Ice Cream Games
Today my laminator broke!!! CRUD! That's only my most prized possession when it comes to teaching! Chris said he will try and fix it tonight! If not, I will be making a trip to Walmart this week for sure!
Anyway, for today's games, I made a bunch of small ice cream cones and colored in the ice cream to make 2 sets of all the colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, black, brown, white, and even chocolate chip!). I attached some construction paper to the back so you can't see through them and we laid them out face down to play a game of memory.
Then, I made one more set of cards with the color names written on them.
For Belle, I laid out all the colored ice cream cones of one set and handed her the cards with the color words written on them, and she read the word and matched the word to the actual colored card.
For Julie I did the same thing, only using the two sets of colored cards. I laid one set out, and gave her one card at a time from the other set, and she identified the color and then matched it to the other one.
Anyway, for today's games, I made a bunch of small ice cream cones and colored in the ice cream to make 2 sets of all the colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, black, brown, white, and even chocolate chip!). I attached some construction paper to the back so you can't see through them and we laid them out face down to play a game of memory.
Then, I made one more set of cards with the color names written on them.
For Belle, I laid out all the colored ice cream cones of one set and handed her the cards with the color words written on them, and she read the word and matched the word to the actual colored card.
For Julie I did the same thing, only using the two sets of colored cards. I laid one set out, and gave her one card at a time from the other set, and she identified the color and then matched it to the other one.
Ice Cream Cones - shaving cream color
Today I gave the kids each a large 12x12 piece of paper. We sprayed a LOT of shaving cream on top. Then the kids picked pink, purple, and blue paint. We counted drops into it of each color (up to 3 drops at a time per color) and the kids used their hands to mix the colors together into the shaving cream.
Once the colors were mixed in pretty well (but still with a tye dye effect), we took ice cream scoop cut outs (from extras printed yesterday) and pushed them down into the shaving cream, making sure to get the color all over. Then we took a paper towel and wiped the foam off to leave just the colors.
Tomorrow we will make construction paper cones to attach our beautiful ice cream scoops to! :-)
Once the colors were mixed in pretty well (but still with a tye dye effect), we took ice cream scoop cut outs (from extras printed yesterday) and pushed them down into the shaving cream, making sure to get the color all over. Then we took a paper towel and wiped the foam off to leave just the colors.
Tomorrow we will make construction paper cones to attach our beautiful ice cream scoops to! :-)
Coloring Ice Cream Cones
Yesterday's art was simple (and maybe a little boring) but they can't all be super exciting! :-)
I found a few pictures of ice cream cones online, blew them up to full page size and the kids colored them with crayons.
I found a few pictures of ice cream cones online, blew them up to full page size and the kids colored them with crayons.
New Theme - Ice Cream
I like teaching with themes! Some teachers hate it, but I love the idea of creating lots of activities that can all be linked together to one basic theme. It usually helps get the kids excited and it's easier for me to focus on what I'm trying to teach within the confines of one basic, simple idea :-)
So, for our first official theme (I've done themes with them in the past, but am making the first official commitment to working with Julie daily!), I have choosen ICE CREAM! Thought it would be a super fun theme for the middle of the summer!
Everyday we will be doing an art project and at least one or two games. There will not be new games every day, we will just pick from several games that I come up with. But hopefully the art project will be new each day.
So, for our first official theme (I've done themes with them in the past, but am making the first official commitment to working with Julie daily!), I have choosen ICE CREAM! Thought it would be a super fun theme for the middle of the summer!
Everyday we will be doing an art project and at least one or two games. There will not be new games every day, we will just pick from several games that I come up with. But hopefully the art project will be new each day.
Our Home (pre)School
So I have gone through ups and downs with working with the kids on a daily basis with their preschool learning.
I did much better when it was just Belle!!! By the time she was 2 she knew all her letters (upper and lower case) and all her letter sounds, even her vowels! She could match letters easily and of course knew all her colors too. She was able to count to over 30 and could also count objects up to about 15!
Now that she is 5, she has been able to add and subtract numbers for about 2 years now, and is reading on about a 1st grade reading level! She would be reading even better if 1 - I spent time working on reading with her! and 2 - if she would show even the slightest interest in learning to read! :-)
The more I think about it, the sadder I am because Julie is already 2 1/2 and she only knows 2 or 3 of her letters, no sounds, and she can barely count 5 objects! :-) This is a tiny bit because she won't sit still long enough for me to teach her anything, but MUCH MORE SO it's because I have NOT been good about working with her!
THAT IS CHANGING THIS WEEK!!!!!!!!!!
I am now committing to not only work with them daily, but on blogging it so that I can look back and see what we've done and what's worked/not worked. I figure this will be a great tool for me in the future as I create lessons/games for my kids that I can eventually use in whatever classroom I might end up teaching in! :-)
So, without further ado, welcome to our home (pre)school!
I did much better when it was just Belle!!! By the time she was 2 she knew all her letters (upper and lower case) and all her letter sounds, even her vowels! She could match letters easily and of course knew all her colors too. She was able to count to over 30 and could also count objects up to about 15!
Now that she is 5, she has been able to add and subtract numbers for about 2 years now, and is reading on about a 1st grade reading level! She would be reading even better if 1 - I spent time working on reading with her! and 2 - if she would show even the slightest interest in learning to read! :-)
The more I think about it, the sadder I am because Julie is already 2 1/2 and she only knows 2 or 3 of her letters, no sounds, and she can barely count 5 objects! :-) This is a tiny bit because she won't sit still long enough for me to teach her anything, but MUCH MORE SO it's because I have NOT been good about working with her!
THAT IS CHANGING THIS WEEK!!!!!!!!!!
I am now committing to not only work with them daily, but on blogging it so that I can look back and see what we've done and what's worked/not worked. I figure this will be a great tool for me in the future as I create lessons/games for my kids that I can eventually use in whatever classroom I might end up teaching in! :-)
So, without further ado, welcome to our home (pre)school!
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