Pinterest in the classroom: success and failure

My coworkers and I are all about the Pinterest swing and using the many ideas we love in the classroom. So we found this totally cute idea for Mother's Day where you decoupage a photo to a ceramic tile to make a pretty plaque or coaster. It was fool-proof, we thought. So Miss Amanda lined all the little munchkins up in assembly line fashion, handed them each a little chalkboard to hold with "Mom" written on it (awwww!), and started snapping away.

  A day or so later we had the pictures in hand. Our staff loved the photos. They were each adorable and we just knew our moms would love these hand-made tiles bearing their children's adorable smiles. We began the process of cutting the photos out, using Mod Podge to adhere them and seal them onto the tiles, and then topping that with an extra coat of spray-on Mod Podge sealer. Voila! We were so excited and so proud to present these.

What we didn't give any thought to was how the children's shirts looked in the photos. We had lots of children with slogans on their shirts. So we get this little gem done and although the child in the photo is precious ( and hopefully his Mom has a sense of humor), our Pinterest idea had failed miserably on this one gift:

(a close-up of the slogan with our Mom sign-sorry for the poor pic quality)

Yeah, so now he's grandpa's MOM. Oh boy, that is bad. Funny, but not necessarily something to hang on the family room wall. Well, we live and we learn. Next time we do this you can be sure we will stand back and assess the photo shoot before we actually make the shot. lol

Blessings!

Handwriting Helps

 Our preschoolers, ages 3 and 4, are learning to write and recognize their names. We usually print each child's name using http://www.handwritingworksheets.com/, a nifty worksheet generator that allows you to input any word/name and print off a practice sheet in the writing style of your choice. We love these but it does get costly to print them for sixteen children every day. Last year I tried to laminate them and use Expo markers to be able to re-use them, but depending on the brand of laminating pouches used, I found that wipe-off markers didn't always wipe off easily or completely. A handful of kids were so rough on their sheets that the lamination came apart after only a couple of months. And if by any chance a child wrote on his or her sheet with a Sharpie marker by accident, the sheets were ruined. Also by reusing the sheets we found we had nothing to send home to track progress. We had a small problem.

 Pinterest to the rescue! Somewhere out of the thousands of pins I've read and re-pinned, one of them had the simple but effective idea to write the child's name in plain pen or ink and allow the child to trace over the lines with a marker or highlighter. I had an assortment of highlighters in a drawer and got to thinking (dangerous, I know),  "What if the teachers wrote the name in one color of highlighter, say yellow, and allowed the child to trace over the letters in blue or pink, to make a new color?" My daughter and I spent an evening playing around with the idea and it worked great. We pick colors that we know blend to form a new color and encourage the kids to make the new color appear when tracing. It's like magic!

My daughter got in on the act with a blue and pink highlighter.

Written in blue

Adding pink....

=purple! ta da

   As long as the teacher has good handwriting and demonstrates proper letter formation to the children first, then staying on the lines is a fairly simple way to make inexpensive handwriting practice pages. You could even add a starting dot point to each letter if you find your children need that. You can let them watch you as you slowly write the original word for more practice. 

  Getting our children to write might be a little more fun when color-changing letters are involved. You could use this method to teach simple shapes, animals, and line art...any image that is easy to draw and trace over would work just fine.

Dollar Tree round-up

 Here are some random items I found today at the Dollar Tree to use in our classroom:

A bubble blower, large bottle of bubbles, and pool noodles (I cut them in half to make safe ball bats). This stuff will go on our playground.

A cookie sheet becomes a magnetic word wall just by adding a bright ribbon hanger. The little basket under it is to hold our magnetic ABC's and came in a set of 2, so I kept the other one to use at home. This can be hung on even a small wall to make an additional center. The basket can be hung beside or under it with an adhesive wall hook. Place laminated sight word flash cards on a metal ring to place in the basket so that kiddos can use their letters to make the words on the cards.

This cute safari hat would be great on the playground or in our dramatic play area. I think I'll pick up a couple more. 

The Dollar Tree is an excellent place to find cheap books. I got some of these for our science center and the others are for our book center. I prefer the hard back board books for our class of three year-olds as they hold up better to the daily wear and tear.

Not shown but also found today was a pack of ten mini food storage containers, about the size of  baby food jars. The plan is to poke holes in the top of each lid, then place cotton balls saturated with either soaping scents, perfume, or imitation food flavorings inside. Glue lids on (we're trying hot glue) to make Sensory Sniffers. When I get these made I'll post photos. One could recycle old spice containers, salt shakers, or even glitter tubes to make these. I just happened to be right in the aisle and grabbed these containers instead. I had glitter tubes but the lids would be a choking hazard for my class. For my Sensory sniffers I am using leftover soap-making scents from my crafting stash, with scents like Blackberry Jam and Butterfly Meadows. 

I would love to hear about your dollar store finds/ideas.

Spring has (almost) sprung and neat Easter finds

Our classroom board update, thanks to Miss A.

TN is warming up and the today the sun is shining brightly. I can see the river sparkling from my living room and I know it's just too pretty to be inside. But before my family hits the river walking trail, I'll update a bit to show you what Dollar Tree and Walmart have in their Easter sections for use in the classroom.

First off, I work in a daycare classroom with another teacher. So this makes it easier to pull a 4 children aside each morning during our center rotations to work in small groups on needed skills for school-readiness.     I am adding things to a stash at home to rotate out, such as fine motor activities, and all sorts of math and literacy activities. I am always looking for new items to add, and Pinterest inspires me by showing what simple tools others are using in their classrooms. Thanks to Pinterest and the creative teachers there I am really learning to think outside the box and see other uses for materials one might not commonly associate with a classroom.

Here are some examples:

Add alphabet letters to eggs; cover with clear nail polish to help keep letters on eggs longer. Match the egg halves together to match upper and lower case letters.

Have children match the magnetic letters to the proper egg. Opening, inserting, and closing the egg helps with fine motor skills.

Patterns, matching, and sorting can all be accomplished using the neat patterns on plastic eggs. Sort by flowers, animal prints, camo patterns, or colors for example.

Our children really enjoy matching the egg patterns together and then taking the eggs apart again.

These stamps were cheap and a fun addition to our art center.

These plastic egg trays were less than $1.00 each at Walmart. They are great for sorting.

Add some holiday pencil erasers and you have a great sorting activity.

Erasers are also great for patterns. 

Another fun activity uses these huge dice from Dollar Tree. Children take turns rolling a die, counting the dots on it, and putting that no. of plastic eggs into their trays. When a child has his or her tray filled they win. 

I welcome your small group ideas for preschoolers. Would love to hear from you all.

Blessings!

The end is near....of 2012, that is

First of all, a very Merry Christmas to my blogger friends and fellow teachers. I hope the holidays find you well and getting some rest.

I can't seem to find time to do all that I need to do and keep my blogging up to date. In August I moved back into the 2's and 3's classroom at our daycare center. I have finished my Start a Preschool training by Joy Anderson and bought a new training called Open a Preschool. I have been continually working on training myself in this area so when I graduate with my ECE degree I will have the option to work from home as a family preschool owner or a public or private school teacher. In September I started my third semester at Western Governors University and my husband and I signed on as volunteers in the church youth class. In October we moved into a new house and celebrated my daughter's 8th birthday. In November and December we celebrated my two teenage son's birthdays and began prepping for Christmas. I also try to maintain my family blog over at www.noplacelikehome-lynn.blogspot.com . So it's been pretty busy. But  here's to the little effort I can muster.

Unfortunately, TN has been hit hard with the flu. Our county is saturated with illnesses ranging from the flu itself to strep throat and  gastroenteritis (aka "the stomach bug"). Despite surrounding myself with cute little runny-nosed munchkins all day at work (to expose my system gradually--not that I had much choice) and eating Airbourne vitamin tablets like candy, I still managed to catch something this week. I guess you can't take care of your own sick without catching the nasties, despite precautions like Bath and Body Works Hand Sanitizers at every corner (hey now, I know you're thinking any old Germ X would do but there was a SALE) and Lysoling the house down on an hourly rotation; it still got us. It hit us hard. At least my husband and one child and I were spared until after our church Christmas play. I remember feeling the tickly throat on Saturday night, knowing I had to help direct the play and sing a solo, and praying a desperate prayer, something like, "Please Lord, just help us get through the play tomorrow morning."  We got through the play just fine; during the service my nephew fell ill and later that day my husband, mother-in-law, and I all got sick. Between hacking coughs exchanged on the phone by my MIL and I this morning, she informed me that the next time I pray, I might want to be a little more specific in my deadlines. lol

Anyway, it's been a busy month at daycare and loads of fun. We got three stars on our assessment (my first time to be assessed--thought I'd die from nervousness!). At least now I know more about what to expect from the ECCERS scale and what all this stuff means. Getting ready for assessment is always a good thing as we make new items for centers, revamp what works and what doesn't, and get a fresh start on the new school year.

I have been thinking as funny as our kiddos are lately, we should compile a little booklet with their sayings. I'll never forget how we'd been asking one little boy, "B." to work on recognizing his shapes for us at circle time. He just didn't seem all that interested until one day, we held up the flashcard of the octagon. Miss Amanda asked B. what shape it was it, and you could just see him trying so hard to think of it, when he excitedly yelled out, "Octopus!".

Another day we were on the playground, enjoying the fall weather and sunshine. Little Miss B. was twirling around and around the swing set pole by herself, spinning herself dizzy. After quite a few turns, she let go and looked at me and said, "Whew! Mrs. Lynn...I feel fizzy!"

I've been hitting Pinterest every couple of days for holiday ideas. We used The Elf on the Shelf  again this year at daycare. Our class and the 4's and 5's class worked together to name our elf "Sneaky Charlie Snowflake". How cute!

We added three portable themed centers to our room just for December.

The first was the "Letters to Santa Mailing Center". This was a big hit and was made easily by using a three-drawer storage container. In the drawers were colored pencils, the fronts off of old Christmas cards, stencils, labels, leftover scrap booking paper, rubber stamps, ink pads, and holiday stickers. The 2's and 3's had a blast "writing" letters to Santa and their families.

Our second center was the "Decorate a Tree" center and it was also a hit. Just a Sterilite container with room for two children's name tags (we velcro ours to the center we're using) with a mini tree and some mini decorations inside. Voila! instant fun!

Our last center for December was the "gift-wrapping center". Co-teacher Amanda used two small jewelry boxes and some scraps of wrapping paper, safety scissors, plus mini bows, and tape in another Sterilite box. The children cut and wrapped the gifts over and over. They gave gifts to us and to each other and really used their imaginations! They were so excited when we opened our gifts and commented on the "beautiful diamonds earrings" we'd received. :)  

To our art center we added winter-themed cookie cutters, and to our house center we added a mini gingerbread pan and some empty cookie tins to encourage holiday baking. I wanted to find time to make homemade Playdoh in peppermint and gingerbread scents but alas, too little time for so much fun.

This age is so neat to teach because they find pleasure in simple things and to them, learning is still fun.

What kinds of things did your class do to celebrate the holidays? I'd love to hear to from you.

a new school year, back to my old room

Last post found me finishing up my year in the preschool four and five year old class at our daycare. I stayed the summer with that group but decided to take the offer to return back to the two's and three's as an aide and fill-in teacher. It's a great age to work with, plus there are two teachers  for sixteen kids verses me alone with sixteen all day. With my busy life of raising my own kids, plus finishing my ECE degree plus working full-time at the daycare, plus an upcoming move and house hunt, I needed to *only* be an aide for a while. So watch for more posts about my adventures in the 2's and 3's room.

This week we are preparing for our yearly assessment. It's a nerve-wracking time but it gives us the urge to really get in there and purge the room of unwanted items. It's a chance to remodel, repaint, and rearrange our centers plus shop for new items for our kiddos. I've been really enjoying the organization ideas I find on Pinterest. See my favorites at http://pinterest.com/iteachpreschool/ 
 I'll try to make some photos of our room once we're ready and post them on here this week.

Blessings to teachers everywhere as you touch new lives this school year.

P.S. Don't forget to check out my other older blogs as I may try to update them as time allows:

For family, home, and homeschooling information, visit www.noplacelikehome-lynn.blogspot.com

For crafts and soap-making ideas, visit : www.whimsylanecreations.blogspot.com and www.SugarSweetBathShoppe.blogspot.com

More preschool graduation photos

graduation display table

half of our line of graduates getting ready to enter

waiting outside the banquet room

class award ribbons

presentation of diplomas

the best part was the crowd singing and dancing along to Tooty-Ta with us! :)

Goodbye and blessings to my class of 2012. I wish you much success in the future 

and can't wait to see how you impact the world.