Welcome to Paula's Primary Classroom! This blog is where I share ideas for teaching and learning with families, friends and other early childhood educators. Please don't use the photos or text of this blog without permission, but please do use any ideas you find useful. Thank you for stopping by!
Showing posts with label fire drill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fire drill. Show all posts

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Fabulous fun for the letter F


Fabulous fun for the letter F: fun ideas and activities for teaching preschool.

 I mentioned recently that I like to have a "big event" to start each week, something that is hands on and memorable for the children, and will help them remember our letter of the week.  For the letter F I've made a flowery feely box lined with fur, and the children take turns feeling in it for an item that starts with F.  There's plenty of good stuff to find!
Fabulous fun for the letter F: fun ideas and activities for teaching preschool.
 As they find and identify each item, we put it on a paper letter F, and then we make it available for playing with.
Fabulous fun for the letter F: fun ideas and activities for teaching preschool.
 The children cut out their lowercase letter f crafts, then decorated them with feathers, flowers and flamingos.
Fabulous fun for the letter F: fun ideas and activities for teaching preschool.

For the uppercase F, the children glued on a frog catching a fly - an awesome follow up for the book Jump, Frog, Jump! by Robert Kalan.
Fabulous fun for the letter F: fun ideas and activities for teaching preschool.

 This group of kiddos isn't ready to work on hundreds charts yet, but when the oldest children are, we'll reread the book, and make these fun mystery pictures that I recently created:
Hundreds chart puzzles inspired by Jump, Frog, Jump If your children love the story, please check out the activity on my Teachers Pay Teachers store!

Fabulous fun for the letter F: fun ideas and activities for teaching preschool.
 We had a friend turn four this week - more letter F words, plus a baking and eating activity - win win win for us!

Finally, I'm including some of our hand and foot print art.  If you'd like to see more of our artwork, please check us out on Artsonia.com: a free, online gallery of student artwork.
Fabulous fun for the letter F: fun ideas and activities for teaching preschool.

Fabulous fun for the letter F: fun ideas and activities for teaching preschool.

Fabulous fun for the letter F: fun ideas and activities for teaching preschool.

We also did our fire drill, played with fire fighter puzzles, and made friendship fruit salad - and I'll blog about that tomorrow!

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Fun with letter Ff

One of the very important subject to cover for the letter Ff is fire safety.  
Learning about fire safety with Paula's Preschool and Kindergarten

Each month, when we do our fire drill, we start by going over the 3 things necessary for a fire: fuel, a spark, and oxygen.  I light a candle in a jar, and then put on the lid, and we count how many seconds it takes for the fire to go out.  The kiddos know that without oxygen in the air, a fire will be smothered and go out.  
Next we practice our stop, drop, and roll drill.  If our clothes ever catch on fire, we would definitely want the fire to go out, so we smother it by pushing it into the ground where it can't get any oxygen.  An adult might help smother the fire with a blanket or pillow, but they might get burned helping out, so kids don't do that.  See how we cover our eyes to protect them?
Learning about fire safety with Paula's Preschool and Kindergarten
 We check out our fire extinguisher, to make sure it is charged and ready, just in case we ever need it.
Learning about fire safety with Paula's Preschool and Kindergarten
 We practice lining up quickly, ready to exit, and one of the teachers takes the sign in sheet with us, so we can check that everyone is out safely.  This is a time to be quiet, so we can hear any instructions our teachers give us!
Learning about fire safety with Paula's Preschool and Kindergarten
 We walk quickly to the mail box - that's our meeting place in an emergency.  Here the kiddos are telling me where they see people.  If there was a real fire, we would need to find someone to call 911 for help.


Another day, I took some of the kiddos on a field trip to the Botanic Gardens.  We saw so many awesome things!  Flowers...
 foot prints...
 we even stopped in a comfy place to draw and write about what we were seeing.
 There is a beautiful fountain in a pond, so we stopped a while to watch the turtles in the water.


 Back at home we heard the story of Rainbow Fish, and even saw a short video of the book, then we painted our own plaster rainbow fish.
 Cleaning the table is as much fun as the painting is when we use shaving cream!
We added silver glitter as a finishing touch.
Here are some of our finished fish.
 


On Thursday, we made Friendship Fruit Salad for snack.  Each child brought a piece of fruit from home to contribute, and we graphed the different kinds of fruit that came in.  We also graphed which day each child brought their fruit.
We all helped to make the fruit salad. The kiddos rinsed...
cut...


(look how we make our fingers into a tent over the knife, to keep them away from the cutting edge.  You have to watch those butter knives, you know!)


...and finally tossed (literally!) the fruit in the bowl. So was it any good?
 Well, we had a first serving... then seconds, thirds, fourths and even fifth servings!  The kiddos LOVED the friendship fruit salad!  Yummy yummy!