We're digging Dd!

Happy Wednesday friends!  I hope you're enjoying learning about the letter D with all our activities this week - and I'm here to share even more!

Have you ever made play dough with your children? It's a great sensory experience - this dough is even scented with sugar free Kool-Aid - and it is cheaper than buying, and lasts a LONG time! Making dough is this week's cooking activity!

While we're talking about sensory activities, I have some adorable hand print ideas for you this week! 

I found the idea for the dinosaur here, and the duck inspiration here.  You can also find a lot more great ideas on my Hand print and Foot print Pinterest board.

If your child is a junior paleontologist - a dinosaur scientist - I have an abundance of dinosaur themed learning activities, including this free counting and adding activity!

It includes 2 sets of dino number cards 1 - 20, the addition mat pictured at top, and a worksheet. (Sorry, the plastic dinos and number tiles don't come with it.)
 

My students also had a blast making these dragons! I taped bubble wrap to the table (or to boxes), let the children paint all over the bubble wrap, and then we laid paper over the painted bubble wrap, pressed down to take a print, carefully lifted the paper, and ta-da! Scales!  When its dry cut out your dragon, and provide paper scraps to add details!

For dog lovers (please tell me you're ALL dog lovers!) I have this cute letter counting activity.  

Children choose a dog name card, count how many letters are in the name, and count out a matching number of doggy bones OR if they're working on letter recognition, they can match the letters in each doggy name with 1" letter tiles.  

While we're focusing on letters, here's a fun initial sound activity for Dd!  Go on a scavenger hunt for things that start with Dd (think duck, dragon, deer, donuts, dogs, etc.), a few things that do NOT start with D, and a non-breakable dish.  Children go through the items one at a time, placing only those that start with D on the dish.  As they do, they sing this song (to the tune of there's a spider on the floor):

"There's a d___ on the dish, on the dish.  There's a d___ on the dish on the dish.  If I had a wish, I'd put a d____ on a dish, there's a d____ on a dish, on a dish."  (Click here to hear me sing it on my YouTube channel.)

Finally, you and your kiddos can make letter D crafts!  There are a couple of ways to make the dotty D.  For the one pictured below I offered wine bottle corks to dip in paint and stamp onto our D.  They're a great size for small hands to hold, and make a lovely circular dot.  Another way to do it is to use a circle punch and work finger muscles to make lots and lots of polka dots to glue on.  

The lowercase d is a dinosaur - we added a head with mouth and eyes, and triangles for the tail.  I had the children glue a piece of white paper behind the hole in the d, and in that space I wrote "First the dinosaur, then its tail."  If you made the lowercase b craft, you can see that these two letter crafts complement each other, and help children remember the difference between the two letters.

Are YOU digging the letter Dd yet?  Subscribe or come back next week for hands on ideas for the letter E - it's exciting!

Books and Activities to make this the Best Chinese New Year

Happy New Year everyone!  While Chinese New Year doesn't begin until February 5th, we teachers like to start early to gather books and materials - so I thought I'd share some of my favorites!

This Next New Year, by Janet S. Wong:  (links for your convenience, I am not an amazon affiliate).

I like this book for several reasons.  First, it's told from the perspective of a young boy, and is simply told.  Many Chinese New Year preparations and traditions are explained by him, so young children will easily understand them.  I think it's also important that the narrator talks about people from different cultures celebrating lunar new year - this holiday isn't limited to China!

 Dragon Dancing, by Carole Lexa Schaefer:

 Dragon Dancing is also told from the perspective of a young child.  A beautifully diverse school group learns about dragons, then creates their own dragon in art class.  They work together to dance their dragon all over, imagining it's actions through various settings.  This book really sets the stage for imagining and mimicking dragon actions, and is likely to inspire children to cooperate to make their own dragon.  This book absolutely begs for participation from readers!

The Runaway Wok by Ying Chang Compestine

This story is longer than the other two, but the fast pace will keep children listening!  This one has elements of Jack and the Beanstalk and the Gingerbread Man, but is a very different story.  The emphasis is on sharing and being fair, something children usually have strong feelings about.  It talks about Chinese New Year foods and activities, and has a satisfying moral at the end.  If you are able to follow up by serving traditional foods and showing children a real wok, they'll be fascinated! 


My very favorite activity to do for Chinese New Year is tangrams, an ancient Chinese puzzle with unlimited possible answers.  Tangrams look deceptively easy: the puzzle is made up of only 7 simple shapes, but even adults often struggle to make a basic square with them!

Working on spacial awareness, and manipulating 2D shapes are important mathematical concepts, so I like to offer my students both the challenge, and an option to get clues, so they can choose the right level of difficulty for themselves.  Check out this short video explanation:

 If you'd like to use my tangram puzzles, you can find them in my TeachersPayTeachers store here.

There are a couple of lovely story books about tangrams: Grandfather Tang's Story, and The Tangram Magician are both great for introducing the puzzles, and using literature to bring math into your classroom!

I've written before about Chinese New Year sensory bins, painting, and the story of the Great Race, and about making a Chinese New Year dragon blower, today I'd also like to share how to make an egg carton dragon.


 Egg Carton Dragon
You'll need half of the bottom of an egg carton, red paint and a brush, scissors, pipe cleaners, wiggle eyes and glue, and a push pin:

 Paint the egg carton red:

 When it is dry, use the push pin to poke holes for the pipe cleaners to stick out of the dragon's head.  Glue on wiggle eyes.  If desired, use a marker to add facial features!  You can also use yellow, orange and red paper scraps to help your dragon breath fire, or add sequins to  make it sparkle.

Next time I'll talk about fun ideas that are specific to celebrating the Year of the Pig.  Please follow my blog to be notified when new posts are ready.  Until then, Happy New Year!

Dotty for the letter D

 One of our weekly routines is making a page for our abc photo albums.  The children decorate a page with stamps and stickers of things that start with the letter of the week, and then I print a photo of them doing one of our letter activities to face it.  They love to read their albums, to see what they made, and to look at photos of themselves and their friends having fun.  I love that they revisit their learning!

 One of the boys noticed this amazing leaf bug crawling near the garage this week, so we moved it to a tree where we could see it, and be sure no-one would accidentally step on it.  The kiddos were amazed - they kept saying the bug was "made out of a leaf."  Of course, we talked a little about camouflage!

Here's a couple of the handprint creations we made this week - these go in a second abc book for the children.  By the end of the school year they have an alphabet of hand and foot print art, and once again, they love to visit and revisit them.  If you'd like to see more of these, check out our class page on Artsonia!

Since we've been learning the letter D, and doing dinosaur activities, I used my die cut machine to make a dozen dinos for each child, and then had them sort them however they wanted.  They had lots of great ideas: sorting by color, by shape (or type of dino), and even by carnivores/herbivores!

 During outside time, one of the kiddos decided the pile of bones were from a dinosaur - not surprising!  I think we have a future paleontologist on our hands!

 This one is looking for worms, insects, and roly pollies - a future entomologist.

D is also for dog, and my dog, Patriot, is definitely part of our school family.  He doesn't realize that he is a D. O. G. - he thinks he's one of the kiddos.  When we line up, he lines up with us (but I have to admit he still cuts in line terribly), he has his own special spot to sit with us during story time, his own spot for nap time (on the couch, spoiled dog!), doesn't understand why he doesn't get a place of his own at lunch time (but patrols the floor hopefully), and loves to play with the children.

When the weather isn't too hot, he loves to play chase with the kids.  They usually start it, by running up to him and jumping into a play bow position like I've shown them, and then they're all off, racing around the yard yelling and having a fine old time.  Patriot is a lot quicker than the kids, so he'll slow down and look at them over his shoulder, wait until they almost catch up, and then bolt off again. It's a game they play over and over, kids and dog all getting worn out, and then collapsing happily to rest afterwards.

 One of the mommies saw this game for the first time this week, and asked, "What does Patriot do on the weekend?"  He pouts.  He lays around the house looking miserable, missing his friends, and catching up on his sleep.  He'll be ready for friends to come play on Monday!

This kiddo has an "ipad" - "See the button there, that's to turn it on."

I haven't mentioned why I titled this post "Dotty for the letter D" yet.  Well, here it is.  We read The Dot earlier this week, and painted our own dots - I wrote about that in the previous post.  I finally got all 24 dot paintings up on the wall - they are so colorful in our lunch room!

 We also decorated ducks one day this week, using torn paper to cover our ducks with feathers.  When I put them up on the wall, the kiddos informed me that there were 5 adults and 6 babies, so there were more babies than mommas.  We talk about math concepts like this often, so it's just a normal part of their day, to notice and comment on number, more/less - on almost anything they notice.

 Finally, here's the craft project we did on Friday, when we talked about dragons.  I read the children some of my favorite poems from The Dragons Are Singing Tonight, by Jack Prelutsky.
I found this cute dragon craft on terrific2s.blogspot.ca and love that it uses bubble wrap printing to make the scales!  The children enjoyed painting, cutting out their dragons, and gluing on the details, and now our dragons are hanging over the table in our playroom, guarding us!

Thank you for stopping by to check out what we've been up to at Paula's Preschool and Kindergarten!  Please come back soon!