Teacher Things We Love Giveaway

Happy Valentines Day!  There are many things that make teacher's hearts pitter pat: watching the light bulbs go off in our students' heads, drinking our coffee while it's still hot, long lunches (you know, like more than 10 minutes)... and then there's these things!

 To say "THANK YOU!" to teachers everywhere, I'm participating in giving away ALL these fun resources to one lucky teacher!  Scroll down to enter!

GIVEAWAY DETAILS:

Prize: Things We LOVE prize pack including: Mr. Sketch Markers, Flair Markers, Personal Laminator, Dry Erase Pockets, Dry Erase Markers, Astrobrights Paper, Ticonderoga Pencils, and a $50 Teachers pay Teachers gift card.

Giveaway Organized by: Kelly Malloy (An Apple for the Teacher)

Co-hosts: An Apple for the Teacher, A Plus Kids, Smart 2 Heart Creations, TheBeezyTeacher, Teach & Play with Mrs J, Pint Size Learners, Star Kids, Think Grow Giggle, It's Kinder Time, The Fun Factory, The Chocolate Teacher, Kelly McCown, Leah Popinski, Mickey's Place, The Literacy Garden, Little Owl's Teacher Treats, Priscilla Woodard - Tasked 2 Teach, Right Down the Middle with Andrea, Sugar Cube Learning, Paula's Primary Classroom, and The Froggy Factory.

Rules: Use the Rafflecopter to enter. Giveaway ends 2/21/20 and is open worldwide.

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Here's Hoping You Have a Wonderful Valentine's Day!

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February is upon us, and for teachers that means another busy month of learning, and of excited kiddos who are more interested in candy and fun than whatever plans we might have.  Just as we are recovering from the triple hit of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas / Hanukkah, here comes Valentine's Day to throw us off our schedules again.  What is a teacher to do?!

We outsmart them!  When we know our students have a lot to say about something, we harness that energy and turn it into a learning opportunity!  Thinking about candy?  Okay, let's graph that! 

While we're at it, would you rather have Valentine's cookies or candy?  Did you make Valentines Day cards this year? 

Who could resist?!  As we follow up our graphs with questions about how many, how many more/fewer, which is most popular, etc., we're covering lots of math skills just talking about the holiday. 😉

We also read a LOT of books.  Reading together is probably my favorite part of being a teacher!  I love sharing my favorite books, and it's so thrilling when students unlock the magic of reading for themselves!

Working on rhyming?  Read Some Things Go Together by Charlotte Zolotow, and have your students make up their own rhymes of things that go together.

Passionate about pop-up books? I adore Love Bugs by David A. Carter.

Kindergarten - third grade students with a sense of humor?  Sam's Surprise by David Pelham has a sister making chocolate covered icky things for her brother's birthday - and gets kids laughing and intently listening to figure out the rhymes!

Do some of your students struggle with being kind to each other?  Of course they do, it's part of learning and growing.  Roses Are Pink, Your Feet Really Stink by Diane deGroat might be just the thing to help students make better choices.

Those of you who know me have to be expecting a Pete the Cat book on this list - and sure enough, I enjoy reading Pete the Cat: Valentines Day is Cool with my kiddos!

Another beautiful book that's worth mentioning is The Invisible String.  I found this beautiful story when I was looking to comfort some of my little's who had lost a pet - it's perfect for that, but it's not the focus.  The invisible string is the love that holds us in each other's hearts, even when we're apart.  If that doesn't speak to Valentines Day, what does?! 

My students and I also really love 100 and 120 chart mystery pictures, so of course I made them for Valentines.  They love figuring out what each mystery picture is, and I love that they're engaged, that it's easy to put them down and come back to them later (what classroom doesn't deal with interruptions?!), and that they're ready to print and go.  Win, win, win!  I've had several teachers tell me they use these in the time leading up to class parties, and that it helps keep their students focused.

In the last year or so I've started using a variation on my hundreds charts: 100 POCKET charts.  Oh. My. Goodness!  This is a game changer too!  Now my students can get hands on practice in small groups during math centers - and they WANT to complete the pictures.  This is what these puzzles look like - and if you catch yourself wondering what the picture is going to be, chances are good your students will too!

What are your favorite ways to enjoy Valentines with your students?  I'd love to hear from you in the comments below!  Thanks for stopping by!

                                                                                                 Paula

Hearts for Valentine's Day

 For our STEAM story time this week, we focused on Valentines day and hearts.  Yes, the cutesy pink and purple ones to glue on paper and to give to our beloved family members, but also the blood pumping, hard working muscular kind!

Ms. Debbie chose stories for both kinds of hearts, and we did some serious dancing and singing in between them to get our hearts beating hard.  It's so much easier to sit still for a story when you've had a chance to get your wiggles out!

The only difficulty we had with this theme, was limiting the number of activities we had to follow up!

One of our stories was My Heart Is Like a Zoo, by Michael Hall.   All the illustrations were of animals made exclusively with heart shapes - so we offered lots and lots of heart shapes, glue, paper and crayons for the children to create with.

Here are a couple of their creations:

There were also crowns, cards, and a few animals, as well as a whole lot of little fingers working hard at spreading glue and placing hearts - great fine motor skills for our preschool crowd to work on, and a lot of special 1-1 time with our caregivers.

I mentioned last week that a lot of our friends seem to crave sensory experiences, immersing themselves in whatever medium they can (quite literally) get their hands on!  This week we offered sensory slime to meet that need.  I added directions and links to the recipe so that parents and kiddos could easily recreate the experience at home.  Want to make slime?  I found the recipe here.

 I offered 3 different slimes to start with.  Two were made with Elmer's glue and liquid starch - one bright pink, the other white, and a third was made with clear glue and liquid starch, and included heart confetti pieces.  The texture of the one made with clear glue was much lumpier, and the children didn't use it nearly as much as the others.  As you can see, mixing colors with them was almost as much fun as feeling the cold, slimy mess running through our fingers.

 This was probably the most popular of our activities, with not only children playing with the slime, but more than one adult caregiver joining in on the fun.  (And why not?!  I am happy to admit that I work with little children because I get to cut and paste and play and learn along with them.)

We added a math element with this counting activity that I created.  The colorful pompons were a hit with the children, but as you can see below, one of our friends improvised with the marshmallows too! 

Here's what we thought the marshmallows were for:

 - a see-your-pulse activity from http://whattheteacherwants.blogspot.com/2011/02/science-experiments-for-elementary.html

- and a stethoscope experience with both homemade and real stethoscopes.  Unfortunately, with over 100 people enjoying our story time, we couldn't hear our hearts with the home made stethoscopes - but we did see children enjoying them and pretending to be doctors!

For an engineering element, we had recycled heart building blocks.  I found the idea here. This was a lot of fun, but more popular with the few older siblings than the preschoolers. 

To prepare this activity, I cut hearts from all kinds of food packaging that we had at home this week.  Into each heart I cut several small slits - the instructions suggested 1/4 - 1/2".  I double cut the slits, making them slightly wider, and added bright lights to the table so the children could check out the shadows their creations made.  (We didn't do a Groundhog Day activity as such, but Ms. Debbie mentioned the groundhog and shadows as we introduced this activity.)

I mentioned that we did a lot, and had trouble limiting the activities, right?  Yes, there were more!

This was my absolute favorite!  We turned the light table on it's side and put it up on another table, then taped on a set of animal x-rays.  On the table we put normal pictures of the animals, and the children came up and matched pictures and x-rays.  No, not hearts, but bones are pretty cool too!

Outside the door to our story time room we added a graphing activity, which I'm hoping to make a regular part of our routine.  It asked, "Which activity did you enjoy the most today?"  and gave 4 options.  I forgot all about the pompon counting and x-ray activities as I was preparing the day before, so those weren't on the graph this time.  Still, a lot of our families stopped on the way out and talked about which activities the children enjoyed most, and helped them contribute to the graph.  We'll look at it together next time, and talk about what has the most, least, fewest, more than, less than, etc.

Our STEAM program absolutely rocks!

Valentines Day

Are your students getting excited about Valentines Day?  It's such a fun holiday to celebrate - there's good things to eat, crafts to make, and kind words spoken or written.  A lot of the children seem to show up in red, pink and purple clothes, often with hearts on them.  Valentines day can be a lot of fun, and even although I don't have a class of kids to prepare for it this year, I thought I'd share some of the things we've enjoyed doing in the past.

One of the things my kiddos have always loved to do is cooking.  There are a lot of fine motor skills and life skills involved, not to mention measuring and counting.  For our Valentines day party I like to have the children bake cupcakes - and they are all too willing to oblige!

After our snack, our party begins in earnest.  A lot of parents come and join us, so I like to take the opportunity to show the parents what the children have been learning.  Valentines is a great week to talk about the letter V in preschool, and you can see one of our letter crafts behind this happy kiddo.

Another way we show off what we've been learning during our party is with a modified game of pass the parcel.  I grew up in Australia, and pass the parcel was a popular party game.  It's a bit like musical chairs, but with a gift.  While music plays, the gift is passed around a circle of children.  When the music stops, whoever is holding the parcel takes off one layer of wrapping.  There are always a lot of layers!

 Between each layer, I put a note on a heart shaped paper, with directions for something for us to all do.  Some are simple and fun, like go hug a grown up (I don't say parent, in case someone doesn't have a parent attending, but of course it's their own grown ups they go to first!)  We also have directions like "say something nice to the person next to you" or "smile at someone you like."  My oldest students are usually able to read these simple directions, but if they can't, there's also former students who come back to visit, brothers and sisters who want to join in and help.

Other directions include reciting learning songs, jumping up and down while we count to 20 - just quick little things that are part of our daily routine precisely because they help the children learn and remember.

Of course we have the obligatory Valentines containers.  I use paper sacks that the children decorate at school earlier in the week.  That also is a lesson.  I show them a bag I made years ago.  One side has layer upon layer of ribbon and stickers, hearts and sparkles - way, way too much.  We talk about the word "gaudy", and how you can't see the things that are on there because there is too much.  The other side is what I call "tasteful" - enough decorations, not bare, but not ridiculous either.  Check out their bags, I think all the kiddos hit the target!

Many of the children write their friends' names on treats or Valentines that they bring.  Sometimes parents help them, but not always.  Either way, they take turns reading the names of their friends, and delivering their Valentines.  Reading names is a great way to begin reading, what could have more meaning than your own name, and the name of your friends?  They see each other's names in our classroom so often that even the 3 year olds can usually figure out each name - even if only by the first letter.  Oh yes!  We practice looking each other in the eye and thanking our friends for each card or treat, no matter how small. It's easy to get overwhelmed in the giving and receiving, but gratitude is not only a social nicety, but I think a big part of feeling happy.

Our Valentines learning gets another boost about a week later.  Those of you who work in early childhood will smile and understand totally!  My husband usually gets me roses for Valentines (I'm a lucky wife!), and I enjoy them as long as they last.  There comes a day though when they are no longer attractive on my kitchen counter, and it's time to move them on.  Not to the compost or the trash can, oh no!  We can sort and graph with them!

But we still aren't done.  The children love to pull the petals off, pretend with them, give each other flowers... those roses still have at least 2 days of learning left in them!

 Eventually we take them outside and inevitably they are thrown up in the air, danced in, gathered and dumped, loved upon until they are no longer even pretty scraps.  Some end up in sandcastles and "soup", others dry up  on the playground and settle into the mulch. 

I've used this activity with my own kiddos for several years, and they love it.  I hope yours do too!  It's an easy emergent reader that has children reading "This heart is ___ (color)" - a simple text to help them work on color words.

If you're planning your Valentines Day learning, I hope you'll also check out my Valentines Day resources.

Happy Valentines Day everyone!