Ll Looks Like a Lovely Letter

Here we are in late fall, looking at letter Ll - it's time for a leaf pile!  Playing in leaves has kept my kiddos busy for months every year, and it never seems to get old to them - or to me! 

Leafy learning certainly starts outside - watching the changing of the seasons, seeing leaves change color and beginning to fall, playing in leaf piles - but it doesn't have to stay outside!  It's fun to take leaves into the classroom and to sort them by shape, size or color, to make leaf rubbings, to graph the colors of the leaves we've collected, and more.  (I created printables for these activities, which are available in my TeachersPayTeachers store.)

I like to start our letter explorations with lots of items that start with our focus letter, so for Ll I collected ladybugs, lizards, lobsters, lunch lady, lightening, lions, lemons and more in a Lion King gift bag, and had the children take turns to pull them out and name each item. 

We lay on the floor and measured ourselves with lovely long lines of lace - to see whether we were longer or the lace was longer.

For some hand print fun, we made lions or ladybugs - we think they're lovely!

Another fun L word is lamb - so we replaced Mary with our own names and sang Mary Had a Little Lamb as we snuggled a stuffed animal lamb (or a leopard, because that's fun too)!  I typed out the words for each child's version of the song, and they highlighted all the Ll letters they could find, then made it into a class book so we could read it over and again. These pages are included in my Class Books Bundle.

Do you know the song Lavender's Blue?  This is a perfect week to learn it if you don't already know it!

By now you probably know I like to do a letter craft with the children too, and of course we made both upper and lower case letter Ll.  We put ladybugs and leaves on logs for the upper case letter, and glued on lace for the lowercase letter.

You could also do a directed drawing of a lion.  It's amazing what little children can manage when you break something down into tiny steps for them!  We made our drawings in pencil, then went over the lines with black or dark brown crayon, then finally painted with shades of orange and brown.

I hope you have fun learning with the letter L this week!  Which activity does your child like the most?  I'd love to hear from you!

 

More easy steps for amazing STEAM learning

Recently I began a blog post series about STEAM learning (STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) by looking at some ways to practice observing and recording data - 2 of the most basic science skills.  Today I want to continue with sorting, classifying, and labeling.

My students have always loved sorting / classifying.  Whether it's sorting building blocks by color, finding all the big buttons in my button box, or separating the mini erasers by shape, sorting seems to be a basic part of coming to understand their world.  Why not encourage it with fun materials, and add labels to those categories?!

It's easy to take sorting a step further with Venn Diagrams - which make us consider more than one sort-able attribute at a time. Do you see the red t-rex in this picture?  It isn't green, and doesn't walk on 4 legs, so the child asked me where it should go.  I helped him think it through - can it go in the green circle?  No.  Can it go in the 4 legs circle?  No. Is there a place on your sorting mat that isn't for green and isn't for 4 legs?  Children can do some amazing thinking!

Once children have begun categorizing things - not just sorting them, but also identifying how they've sorted them, it's a natural progression to count those things, and to compare what has more or less.  Graphs make it easy to compare several categories. (More on graphs next time!)

Children can also begin to label things they observe, from a single word for each item...

... to details as they develop vocabulary.

Don't you love teaching STEAM skills?!

Can You Name This Children's Book? (episode 2)

If this image immediately makes you think of a particular fall children's book - join the club!  It's one of my go-to books each year.  Need another clue?

"But if you want to visit my tree, come in the fall.  That's my favorite time.  Can you guess why?"

It's Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf, by Lois Ehlert.  I love it - do you?

My Favorite Books For Fall - a blog hop with the #KinderFriends

I think every teacher has favorite children's books - maybe a whole lot of favorites!  Still, even knowing there are some books I will absolutely read with my students doesn't stop me from wanting to find more favorites.  I'm a bibliophile through and through, and for all the other bibliophiles out there, the #KinderFriends are sharing our favorite fall books.  Take a look, see what you discover, and if there's something amazing we're missing, leave it in the comments!

 To me fall means leaves, apples, pumpkins, and animals getting ready for winter, so I focused on books about those topics.  

Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert is a classic for a reason; it's a beautiful read aloud, full of gorgeous illustrations and information about maple trees.  I can't imagine teaching and learning about leaves without it!  While you're learning about leaves, you have to also check out Leaf Man, also by Lois Ehlert.  This story is illustrated with pictures made from a variety of beautiful fall leaves, of every shape, size and color imaginable.  It lends itself to follow up activities like a leaf collecting walk, and creating images with those leaves.  

I've written about my favorite apple books before, but still had to include 2 on my list this time around:  Ten Red Apples, by Pat Hutchins, and How Do Apples Grow?, by Betsy Maestro.  I like Ten Red Apples for the memorable refrain, and for the math element of counting down.  I love everything about How Do Apples Grow?, especially all the science learning that's included and made understandable for young children.  

When I think of my favorite books about animals in fall, Time to Sleep by Denise Fleming tops the list!  Her illustrations are phenomenal, and each page of this lovely story features a different animal noticing different signs of fall.  There's a surprise at the end when the story comes full circle, but the tone of the book is one of calm, slowing down, preparing to sleep.  If you have a group of children who need to unwind a little, a gentle reading of this book will help them settle down, just like the animals in the story.

I've included one more book that doesn't, at first glance, seem to be related to fall: The Dot, by Peter Reynolds.  This is the story of Vashti, a little girl who doesn't believe she can draw.  When her wise teacher values her mark making, Vashti learns to value it too.  This book has inspired a movement, all about making our marks, and seeing where they'll take us.  You can learn more at http://www.thedotclub.org/dotday/.  International Dot Day is celebrated each year on September 15th-ish, so it's not too late to grab a copy of the book, and make your mark - with or without children.  Follow up by reading Ish, also by Peter Reynolds.  

I hope you enjoy these fall favorites, and I'd love to hear which books you'd recommend to me!  If there's an indispensable fall book missing from my list, please let me know, otherwise, I hope you'll continue our blog hop and check out more favorites!  Hop on over to Pamela at Pocket Full of Centers! 

Celebrating Earth Day With Natural Materials

Earth Day is just around the corner, April 22nd.  #Kinderfriends, a group of early childhood educators, decided to do a blog hop to showcase some of the fun ways we've found to celebrate Earth Day - thank you for stopping by!

I like to use natural materials with my kiddos whenever I can, so I thought I'd share some ways to use free, natural items from your environment to teach important concepts!  The only item you need to provide for this is a way for students to contain their collection - a lunch sack or reused grocery bag works really well.  Take a walk outside, and see what natural items your students can find!  Have them make a collection of treasures.

My collection includes a variety of leaves and fallen flowers, plus some seed pods - but your collection will vary, depending on where you live.  Your students might find rocks, sticks, pine cones, sea shells - what ever you have around your school or home will work!

Have students sort their collections into piles of similar things - they're working on sorting and classifying skills.  How many different ways can they sort them?

Natural materials make excellent counters too.  I found a lot of acorn caps in pairs - time to count by 2s.  How about making groups of 10s and 1s, then figuring out how many items you have?

Maybe your students would rather make a design, like this mandala - and practice symmetry while they are at it. 

For slightly older students, counting the individual items in a mandala will reveal multiples of the number of axis it has.  For example, this mandala has 6 leaves, but 12 pink seeds and 12 crepe myrtle seed pods - because everything is in multiples of 6.  Can they add items in another multiple of 6?

Designs don't have to be math inspired - check out these insects!  While they are all symmetrical, this is also a great way to show understanding of other concepts that you've covered - such as insects have 3 body parts, antennae, and 6 jointed legs.

There are so many ways to use natural materials in our teaching and learning, I'd love to hear how you and your students integrate them into your Earth Day celebrations!

For more Earth Day ideas, continue the blog hop and check out the free ideas from our clever #Kinderfriends!  Next stop: Class of Kinders

Thankful for the memories

I'm an imperfect person - aren't we all?! - but I am so grateful for one small thing I definitely did right.  I recorded some of the marvelous things the boys said when they were little, and I am ever so thankful!

For Thanksgiving 2001 I cut out lots and lots of paper leaves, and even added a touch of watercolor paint to them, to record what not only my own children, but also my daycare kiddos, were thankful for.  I thought these leaves would be just right to decorate the Thanksgiving table with, and I still dig them out for the holiday meal.

It's a small thing, but so often the small things turn out to be the big things.  The boys were 2 and 7 years old at the time, and thankful for the cutest things: each other, puzzles and games, playing in the leaves, and "for our army men that died in war saving us."  These faded scraps of construction paper encapsulate my memories of yesteryear, and the innocence of childhood.

A couple of years later I repeated this project, but used precut foam leaves.  Again, these are treasures beyond measure.

My (then) 8 year old was thankful for his alarm clock!  Ha!  At 20, I don't think he cares for it in quite the same way... well... for that matter, now he uses his cell phone.  Wow, some things really do change.  My (then) 5 year old has outgrown Zoobooks and markers, but we are all still thankful for friends, food, and Star Wars.  :-)

We are all older, and the things we are thankful for are different, but I'm going to break out this activity again, and this time I'm going to join in and make a note of the things I'm thankful for too.  Family, friends, work that I love, and memories of small boys who have grown into fantastic young men.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A simply wonderful Halloween!

Halloween is such a fun holiday!  I love the stories and crafts, the costumes and pretend, and the orange, purple, black and green colors.  I LOVE everything pumpkin, not just the delicious foods made with it, but the decorations and the opportunity to study cool non-fiction subjects along with the holiday. I'm not so sure about knocking on doors and taking candy from strangers, but overall, Halloween is pretty cool!

It would be easy to go overboard on this holiday... well... on almost any holiday.  To do too much, to plan too much, to buy too much, to expect too much... and I'm sure that sometimes I do exactly that.  With only a week to go until I close my school, and an interstate move to plan, organize, etc., this year I had to go simple, and I think it was just right.

Ms. Julie and I helped all the children put on their costumes after nap, and served this yummy snack.  Donuts, fake teeth and two chocolate chips - and a glass of milk.  The kiddos loved it, and it was quick and simple. 

 It didn't take long for the teeth to come out, and we had some lovely snarling princesses!

My only other plan for the rest of our party was to take group pictures, and then to make our first leaf pile of the season.  The photos went well, and I handed rakes to a couple of parents who came to the party...

 Ta-da!  Leaf pile.  Fun.  Simple.  The children were all very excited, ran and jumped in the pile, and appeared perfectly content.

Here's what I didn't plan - and thank goodness, because it was pretty special to see the children take charge of their fun.  Princess Elsa went and grabbed a crate, carried it over to the leaf pile, and made herself a diving board!

 She didn't mind sharing it, and without much help from the adults, the kiddos figured out how to share the leaf pile.

 Yes, there was some negotiating with the children that wanted to sit in the pile, none of the jumpers wanted to land on their friends.  Some waited patiently, some asked their friends to move, and I scooted some of them along when they appeared to have taken up residence.  Still, with only one very small leaf pile, 8 of our school friends, plus 4 more siblings, there was nothing but good-natured play.

 My favorite part is that the children spontaneously lined up and took turns!  Yes, there was a little cutting in line, but not much, and the children took care of that too.  I even saw one child go to jump, more or less slip off, and rethink what to do.  I could see she wanted to climb back up on the box and try again, and I don't think anyone would have stopped her.  She paused a moment, as if thinking about it, gave a tiny shrug, and went to the back of the line to wait for another turn.  Don't you wish more adults could act that way?

Yes, we had a pretty super, and wonderfully simple Halloween! 

Salad! (No, it's probably not what you think!)

We had some serious storms come through our area on Thursday afternoon, with straight line winds around 70 mph.  We are very lucky that we had no serious damage, just small branches and leaves down all over the yard.

I took the kiddos outside to play on Friday morning, and when they saw all the mess, they all started yelling, "Salad!"  (I really hope this is  a reflection on their imaginations, and not my food preparation skills!)  They quickly began racing around, gathering the leaf clusters and piling them on a bench.

Some of the children also gathered sticks, with which to beat the salad.  I redirected that game into putting the sticks in a trash bag, (What do you mean child labor laws? We were playing!) and the salad pile continued to grow.

 Kiddos took turns climbing into the pile of leaves, climbing through them, sitting in them, basically being kids and having a fine old time.

Look at this last picture, they even tossed the salad!

In between leaf and stick play, the kiddos played a rousing game of chase the dog (who LOVES to play that game), dumped and collected scrap wood blocks, and hunted for pill bugs.  All kinds of free, natural materials, perfect for imaginative play and exploration. 

Isn't it fascinating that fallen leaves, a trickle of water, bugs, and other free materials fascinate the children for hours on end?  There is no script for how to use a stick (save some safety rules of course), or limitation on what they can do with fallen leaves, these materials are "open-ended" - that is, they can be used for almost anything.  A plastic truck is good for many kinds of driving games, only somewhat limited in its potential uses, but most electronic toys or character specific toys are very limited in their potential.  Maybe last week, when they pronounced all of our outdoor toys "garbage", and piled them into a "garbage truck" they were on to something. 

Fall is coming, and with it leaves and "salad" galore.  While we adults are raking and bagging and seeing nature's beauty as a chore to deal with, I am thankful for children, who remind us that this too is good.