Getting there!

I have spent the last three days getting my classroom set up. Now I am done as much as I can be until I get my class list.

I cannot wait until August 24th. This year is going to be rough, but totally awesome.

The countdown begins

29 days until the first day of school!

I'm setting up my classroom this week. I'm excited.

Preschool invades our spare room

They're waxing the floors at my school, which means everything comes home! Most of the furniture is stacked in my classroom, but all of my things had to come home for the summer. Lucky for us, we have a spare room. Okay, it's the room we keep the dogs in when we leave, but they don't mind if I add things to their room. It's amazing how much JUNK I have accumulated in just a year of teaching. Piles of baskets used for my library, a net full of balls, bins that go in my cubbies to keep little fingers away from teacher stuff, big books, small books, board books, books on cd, shelves, art examples, a blender! It took me three trips to get this all home from school in my little Honda Fit. My floors should be waxed next week or the week after, and then I get the joy of hauling it all back.


That part I really can't wait for though. I have a new layout in mind based on what did and did not work last year. I can't wait to rearrange and set up. This year, I had circle time near the cubbies. This was bad because the kids kept laying in the cubbies! Next year, it moves to the opposite corner of the room. I'm also going to arrange my long library bookshelf so it creates a room divider between the cubbies and everything else. I'm hoping this will keep the kids out of the cubbies when it's not time to be there. My art center is moving near my huge window sills so I can use the window sills for storage and move the shelves I was using to split science and math into science and math. This year, my layout didn't really allow me to have two separate centers for them, and let's just say it was a mess.

Oh I can't wait for August!

Lining up

It is a feat to get 15 three year olds to line up. Some of us are lucky enough to have doors that open onto the playground and eat in our rooms, so it's a nonissue. I have to take my kids down the hallway for the bathroom, the playground, chapel, and lunch. The first week or so, I was frustrated. They were three and had no idea how to stand in line and I had no idea how to make them stand in line.

Then I remembered that at a previous daycare I worked at, the toddler teachers would get their kids down the hallway by singing a tune that went "Put your finger on the wall, on the wall." Now, we can't do that, because there's art covering our walls. But I took their tune (which is "If you're happy and you know it) and made my own. I take my students names written on sentence strips and tape them in 'line order' on the ground. Then we sing this song to line up.

Line up Song
(To the tune of "If you're happy and you know it")

Put your toes on your name, on your name
Put your toes on your name, on your name
Put your toes on your name if you want to go (outside/to lunch/to chapel/potty)
Put your toes on your name, on your name.

Our line is nice and straight, yes it is
Our line is nice and straight, yes it is
Our line is nice and straight because we're really really great
Our line is nice and straight, yes it is.

We are quiet in the hall, yes we are
We are quiet in the hall, yes we are
We are quiet in the hall so the other kids can learn
We are quiet in the hall, yes we are

When we are not in the classroom, we line up by singing this verse first

Make your line nice and straight, nice and straight
Make your line nice and straight, nice and straight
Make your line nice and straight, make it really really great
Make your like nice and straight, nice and straight

It works like a charm! It still took us a good solid month to get used to walking quietly in line and watching where we were going, but I made great progress using this song. Also, it made me laugh once because one of my students called out "But YOU aren't quiet in the hall. YOU are singing!"

I can't get away

I use my iPod for music at work. It's easier to create playlists, I don't have to worry about scratched CDs, and it's more compact than having all of those CDs running around.

Today I clicked on "most played songs." My #1 most played song is Lisa Loeb "The wake up song" with 154 plays. That is the song that I used the second half of school to wake everyone up from naptime. My #2 most played song was the song we used for cleaning up. In fact, of my top 25 most played songs, only two are songs that aren't from school.

I guess I won't be using that playlist at home!

It's been a while

The summer doesn't really leave me with very much to talk about preschool-wise. I'm excited to report that next year, I will have the younger threes again. I've gotten a sneak peek at my class list and it's almost full! All great kids, too. I think I'm going to have another excellent batch of students and parents next year, which is good. I had the BEST class this past year, so I'm completely spoiled.

Anyway, so over the summer this will probably just end up being a hub for my ideas. That way I can keep track of them and if my computer crashes (which it does), I don't lose all of my ideas!

- All about today pocket chart.
- A headphone hub thing so more than one kid can listen to a book on cd. Also, headphones.
- Enough spray bottles for each kid in my class. Then I want to do this when we study fall to spray leaves onto a tree.
- I want to split my book subjects up. "Animals" can be changed to "insects" "fish" and then maybe just animals. I don't know what to call left over animals, but I had too many animal books this year. They didn't fit into two baskets and that's too much.
- Pillows for my library. Last year I had beanbags and they busted, so I threw them away. Pillows won't make such a mess.
- Enough smocks for everyone, but I guess I will settle for large t-shirts.
- Velcro that isn't sticky. I took the velcro I had this year off with a razor, but it was such a pain, I'd rather not deal with it again.
- Scissors that actually cut construction paper easily. We had those safety scissors this year and the kids would get frustrated because the scissors would bend the paper instead of cutting it. As long as I teach them how to hold scissors properly, they can handle ones that will actually cut.
- I'm going to laminate a piece of posterboard and tape it to the wall for a "whiteboard" that they can reach and use in an alphabet center. I need to surround that with something raised though, so they don't write on the walls.
- A tension rod used for curtains. One of the other teachers had one on her windows to store her big books there. I love it. I'm stealing the idea.

Happy Mother's Day!

This is what we did for Mother's Day. It was very well received by all of the parents and took a solid week to get done! We started out by painting the pots. We used washable paint, which I do not think I will do next year. It soaked into the terra cotta pots and we had to do eight layers of paint. (Not that the kids minded having to paint so much, just that I started to get concerned they wouldn't be done in time!). The handprints are done with Crayola's Model Magic. This is very lightweight, which worked great for our purposes. The kids painted dowel sticks green.

Then I set up to getting them all put together. I ran through three HUGE hot glue sticks. The flower petals and leaves are foam. I have the dowels sticking in the pots using a styrofoam block. After I took this picture, I got the bright idea to use my multitudes of Easter Grass to stuff them and cover the styrofoam.

I love them and we got a ton of compliments on them. I think I'll do it next year, too.

Ribbit Ribbit

Don't mind my sideways picture. Yesterday we learned about how frogs eat bugs. We made these really adorable paper plate frogs. The kids painted both sides of the paper plate green, I helped them fold it down the middle. We glued on construction paper eyes and I helped them cut a hole for the "tongue." It's just one of those party favor things. I couldn't find plain red though! Ours say "Wildcats" and are from high school musical, lol. After they were finished, we took a walk around the school to blow out our long, sticky tongues and catch bugs.

I can't believe I only have three more weeks with these kids before the school year is over!

Stripey fish!

I forgot to take after pictures of this one. We have been working on simple patterns lately and our new May theme of water afforded the opportunity to make pattern fish! I gave the students two colors of paint, showed them a few patterns, and said "Now, can you make a pattern?" Almost all of them did really well. Even when the pattern wasn't clear on the plate they were painting, it was clear to me that they were doing one stroke in color A, then switching to one stroke in color B. After the paint dried, I cut out the white parts of the plate. The students added a side fin and a tail fin and we hung them up in the hallway from the ceiling. My neighbor and I are aiming to create a school of fish going down our hallway.

Moo cows

We made these lovely cows towards the end of our farm unit. The students learned about the different parts of the cows and where milk comes from. They glued together the cows and then used letter stamps to use the letters of their names to make the spots. It worked really well and was a good activity for learning to spell their names, which we have been working on lately.

Shake shake shake.

Yesterday we made butter! I made a playlist of shaking on my iPod and we had a shaking party. It was surprisingly easy. All you do is take a little bit of heavy whipping cream and shake it up! We used the ziploc bags that have two zippers, but I've also seen it done with a mason jar. I added a little bit of salt and left over honey from when we studied bees to give it a little flavor. The kids shook their bags for 25 minutes, then we put the butter in the fridge to harden and set. We had it for afternoon snack and it was a hit!

I speak for the trees!

Happy Earth Day! Today we celebrated the earth that God gave us and discussed why we shouldn't muck it up!

We read The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. This is a pretty long book, to be honest. I expected that my students, who are just three and won't be turning four until the summer and into the next school year, would not be able to sit for the entire book. Imagine my surprise when not only did they sit, but they paid attention! They asked questions! They were interested in it and I had all of their attention. Way to go, Dr. Seuss! Reading this book went well over our usual ten minute story time into a 25 minute story time. I'm so proud of them for sitting. They were especially focused on the fact that you never see the Once-ler's face. They kept hoping it would show up!

After reading The Lorax we talked about the earth that we were given. I teach at a Christian school, so we took the line of discussing that God gave us this earth to take care of. We talked about how we should all be like a Lorax and speak for the trees and the animals, so they can keep living with us on the earth. They really grasped the connection between the animals having to leave and the trees getting cut down. It was totally awesome! I'm not going to lie, it brought a little tear to my eye.

We created our own Truffula Trees, using an idea I found on the internet. I can't remember where now! The kids loved it because they finally got to make rivers with the glue! Like any other preschool teacher, time spent with liquid glue means time spent repeating "A dot is a lot!" and "Dots! Not lakes!" My students ALWAYS want to make rivers and lakes with the glue, which is usually not necessary and we're working hard on not being wasteful! This is our finished product. Well, almost. They pasted pictures of themselves in the "unless" stand, because "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it's not." We used Easter grass for the truffula tops. They aren't as soft as described in the books, but it gets the visual across.

After nap, we took a hike! Our preschool is in a fairly developed area, and we're sitting literally in a parking lot with very little nature around. We try to take hikes as often as we can, but there's only so many times you can look at the same grass. And the grass is sprayed with pesticides, so there aren't even bugs! Today on our Earth Day hike, we picked up trash! Clean up the Earth! We filled one small plastic bag and then quickly washed our hands!

I think it was a good Earth Day. Tomorrow is going back to the farm and going to be totally awesome.

Pepper prints and salsa

Today we continued on with our farm and learning about what grows on a farm. Because my students love salsa, we made our own. I love cooking with my students. I do it often because I personally cannot cook. I like the idea that I can get a three year old into cooking so they won't turn into me: A 24 year old who is about to go out to eat because no one is home to cook for me. We used an onion, a red pepper, and a tomato, along with other spices. I cut up the vegetables, and the students put those vegetables into my food processor. Then we all took turns pushing the "pulse" button on the food processor. This is, by far, their favorite part of cooking.
Tada! Chips and salsa. It wasn't the world's greatest salsa, but it did spur a discussion about how we could make it better next time. And if that's not creating little cooks, I don't know what is.

We also did some painting, because I love painting almost as much as I love cooking. We took an extra green pepper, cut it in half, and used it to stamp on the paper.
This is my example to show them what they were going to be doing.

This is what most of them did! I love how I can always depend on my students to use whatever I give them to paint with to cover the entire sheet of paper. They had fun though, and that's the part that matters! And they can all tell you where our vegetables come from: "The farm!"

001: Aw shucks, you caught us being corny

As a preschool teacher, I find that blogs can sometimes be my best source of inspiration and craft ideas. I read many other blogs and finally got to thinking "Hey, me too!" I may also eventually give out this blog website to my students' parents, and let them see the thought process that goes behind the many, many art projects we do in class. We'll see how well this turns out first! And by that, I mean how often I actually keep up with this blog. I don't have the best blogging reputation.

So we'll start here. Our current theme at the preschool is "The Farm." I love farm animals, but I also love teaching students what a farm is for! Our science activity for Friday was shucking corn. We used this as a vocabulary lesson also. The students learned words like "ear," "shuck," "husk," and "stalk." The shucking took quite nearly 20 minutes and the kids were completely invested in the whole concept. I even had one extra ear of corn, because of an absent student, and had students clamoring to shuck that ear! I loved the look of amazement on their faces when they realized that I was actually telling the truth! There is corn under all that husk. We were unable to cook the corn that day. Because we were shortstaffed in the preschool, I was unable to run to the kitchen and boil it. I did send it home though, and I hope the parents cooked it!

After we were done shucking, we used the extra husks to paint! Painting is a much more rewarding experience for children when they are allowed to paint whatever they please. In preschool, we often forget this for the sake of making something that the parents and people coming in on tours will think is adorable and cute. It was great to watch how my students differed when they used the husks. Some held it like a paint brush and used it to spread the paint around. Others used it like a stamp, putting an entire length of it in the paint before pressing it flat on to the paper. Everyone loved it! I only let two students paint at a time, because I was doing this activity during center time at the art center. I had a line of students waiting to come do their painting. We used yellow and red paint in order to incorporate more learning, because then the students could see how the paint changed to orange as it mixed together.

I loved this activity and will definitely be doing it again next year.