A Butterfly Story for my VPK Friends

A Zoo Story for my VPK Friends

Here's another story for my VPK friends. 

Which animal would you want the zoo to send to you? 

A Story for my VPK friends

 

Hello, my friends! Today I will be reading to you Seven Eggs by Meredith Hooper.

 All five of my own children loved this book and I read it to my class every Spring. As you listen, try to remember the different animals that come out of the eggs. 

"I had a happy first day!" Headbands

 

 I have had a lot of success with these headbands in my pre-kindergarten class.  It is a great first day of school project because it is easy and the children always enjoy putting the smile stickers on! I make the headbands ahead of time (including writing their name in tiny letters...although I do encourage them to try to write the name themselves if they can) and then the children can color the headbands and add as many smiley face stickers as they would like.

I used free printable clip art for the smiley faces and copy it on yellow construction paper or cardstock.  You could also print up the happy faces right from the computer.  With the children so fascinated by emojis, it might be fun to print those up and let them choose. On a sentence strip, I wrote the words "I had a happy 1st day in VPK! (The voluntary pre-k program that I teach in my state)

Of course, not every child is happy at school on the first day, but I do have this written for each child.  If a child is sad, we talk with them about SOMETHING that was happy about their day.  Sometimes it is as simple as the snack that they had, but we can usually find a reason for them to smile.

Penguins!

This is definitely one of our favorite "cooking projects" all year! I save a bit of our extra Halloween candy and then all we need is an Oreo. Sometimes we use extra candy corn for the feet, but I didn't have enough this year so we used Starburst candy cut in half.  I think that looks even cuter!

We try to make special snacks once a week.  Usually it coordinates with our letter of the week or a thematic unit.  I print up "recipes" to help build literacy skills.

As part of our penguin unit, we make "shape penguins".  When I do crafts in my classroom, I like to make sure they have some meaning beyond just creating something cute.  As the children build their penguins, we review the names of the shapes which makes it a Math lesson as well as an art project.

We read several nonfiction books about penguins as part of this unit, so the children learn quite a lot of information about these polar animals! 

After the shape penguins dry, I have each child dictate a fact about penguins and I attach it to their artwork. 

A few other things that we did this week to build Math skills were counting mats with penguin shaped erasers (from the Target dollar spot! I use these same mats with different shaped erasers to coordinate with our themes) and beginning addition mats that I made with stickers (also from the Target dollar spot!)  The addition sheets are laminated and work well with dry erase markers, but I made little laminated number squares so that the children could focus on the number rather than on forming the numeral (which really isn't developmentally appropriate for the age that I teach).

A few of our other penguin activities included building a floor puzzle that I got from Scholastic and polar animals with ice blocks in our sensory bin.  

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Snack, Sensory Bin & More

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr and John Archambault is one of the first books that I read in the school year and this is our first "cooking project".  There are actually a few healthy elements and the children usually love it!  I have seen a few different variations online, but this is my favorite. The ingredients are a large pretzel rod, apple slices, grapes and alphabet cereal.  Preparing special snacks is a great way to teach sequencing, following directions and beginning literacy.  We try to "cook" 3 times a month.  Often our cooking projects coordinate with the letter of the week. 

A popular center during Chicka Chicka Boom Boom week is our sensory bin.  I fill it with dyed alphabet shaped pasta, plastic coconuts (from the Dollar Store), large alphabet beads, foam ABC puzzle letters, brown pom poms  and tongs.  

Another favorite of mine is the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree that my husband made for me years ago.  It is made from painted coffee cans (it is hard to find the metal ones these days!) that are filled with Plaster of Paris to weigh them down. There are artificial leaves attached to the top.  The children use the tree to retell the story with magnetic alphabet letters. 

 For Science, we observe a real coconut and shake the milk out.  A few of the children are brave enough to taste it, but only a few of them like it! 

I downloaded this Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Alphabet Bingo game from lovetoteach.org.  Cute, fun and a great way to find out which of my prekindergarten students know alphabet letters! 

http://www.lovetoteach.org/by-subject/reading/chicka-chicka-boom-boom-alphabet-bingo.html

I do this craft every year and I think the original idea came from this same website.  The trunk of the palm tree is made by painting the child's forearm and the leaves are made by painting the child's hand and printing it twice.  We add fingerprint "coconuts" and sticker letters the next day. 

Indoor Snowball Fight and a Florida Snowman

Since we live in Florida, most children here haven't experienced snow unless they have traveled to colder places.  We try to provide lots of "winter" experiences and one of the favorites is our indoor snowball fight.  

We start by crumpling white tissue paper. (I tried using toilet paper the first year I did this and the mess was horrible!) This is great for building up the small muscles! The children often complain that their hands are getting tired when they do this, but I tell them that the more paper they crumple, the more fun they will have.  

We bring the "snowballs" into the multipurpose room next to our classroom and then the fun begins! 

  When it is time to clean up, I bring out white garbage bags and they fill them to make snowballs.  Then we create our "Florida Snowman"!  Here are a few that we have made through the years. The best part is that they don't melt!