More December Ideas

Make a Pine Tree.  (Diagonal fold)

Use a 9-inch square of green construction paper.  Fold on the diagonal and cut.

SAVE one, take one.

Put long triangle side on the bottom and fold over and cut.
SAVE one, take one.

Fold triangle in half and cut for the last two parts.

Begin with largest triangle and put a dot of glue on the top.  Lay middle size triangle on top and press (count to 10) to stick.  
Put a dot of glue on the top and glue one of the small triangles.  Repeat.

I demonstrate then put all the steps on the board and label step 1,2,3... 

It is important for them to learn how to follow written directions.  This shows how they do. Just to practice folding by matching corners and edges is difficult for some.  
You could add details to make this into a Christmas tree or a winter tree by painting snow on the points and edges.


Counting Up, Counting Down 
Get them moving by counting up and gradually standing up from a seated position to standing.  And then reverse the counting and shrink to sitting place.  I like to call out 'halfway' to help those who need direction.  Dr. Jean has a great counting song to count to 20 and backwards. "Country Countdown" on her Totally Math CD.  I have the children refer to our numberline to help with the counting backwards.  We close our eyes from 10 to 1.  The kids love it! 

Countdown to Christmas Bell and Chain
From now until Christmas is the longest time of year,
It seems as if dear old Santa never will appear.
How many days until Christmas?  It's mighty hard to count,
but this countdown chain will tell you the exact amount.
Take off a loop every night when the sandman casts his spell,
And Christmas Eve will be here by the time you reach the bell.

Preprint the poem on a bell shape.  Students select colored strips for the number of days until Christmas Eve.  We practice raising our arms and laying our hands on top of each other (NOT pointing our fingers up) to make a loop.  This is difficult for some to manage even after physically practicing.  Connect all loops to make a chain except the last one.  Teacher makes a slit on the bottom of the bell and puts last strip through slit.  Attach the chain to the last loop.

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So keep them busy. 

And keep a countdown of days for you too!

Easy Reindeer Craft

 Precut the triangle.  Point the triangle downward.          Trace hands on two black 6-inch squares, draw a circle on the red and two ovals for eyes.  

I label the steps on the board for them to follow after I demonstrated how to make one.

 

The Days before Christmas

I admit I go through emotions of bah humbug to excitement and exhaustion these days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  If it wasn't for the kids at school, I would go crazy.  Now they do........
So here are some easy to do ideas to keep the spirit and provide needed fine motor practice.

Santa Stars
Have the children trace the star pattern on red construction paper, they need to practice this tracing on the outside of a pattern skill.(or have it preprinted).  You need only 3 colors of crayons, black, white, red/pink.  Color the gloves and boots black.  Make a double line and two squares for the buckle.  Practice making loopy coloring marks to help with the beard.  Use white for Santa's beard and white for the fur trim.  Black circles for his eyes and red nose and smile.

 Give the students ONE cotton ball and show them how to tear it into six small pieces.  Use regular glue to make a skinny line for the furry cuffs and a small dot for Santa's pom on his hat. 

Gingerbread Men/Boys
Read variations of THE GINGERBREAD MAN.  Make patterns for the children to trace.  We like to use a 12x18 but 9x12 is good also.  Allow the children to use paint to add frosting details.  When dry, they can cut it out.  They LOVE big projects.

Memory Games
Make smaller gingerbread men (or use Elison Die cuts) and use pictures for rhyming matches.  Or write words for sight words, pictures for beginning sound match or ending sound matching.
When we play memory, the player who turns over the two cards, MUST sit back with their hands in their lap and count to 3 before turning back over or removing the match.  I think it is important that the child also says the picture or word outloud for the others to hear.  There is no need to rush.  When the player's turn is over, they need to tell the next person by name that it's their turn.

More tomorrow to keep you going these last days.
Easy hand gift ideas and more student made crafts.  
 

It's November before Thanksgiving

It's November
The first early days of November I still do pumpkin activities post-Halloween.  We color, cut and sequence four sizes of pumpkins and show from left to right sequencing large to small.


We traced numbers in pumpkins and played a partner game to roll a die and coverup the numbers in order.  Who covers all their numbers first. 

Disguise a turkey home project.  TURKEY TROUBLE by Wendi Silvano was read and an invitation to disguise the turkey picture with their family at home.

The Turkey-in-disguise creations were displayed and the school could vote on which turkey they liked.  Our families are very creative!




Tell this story and conclude with a yummy popcorn snack.

The Magic Seeds by Ann R. Lee

All the Pilgrim women of Plymouth, Massachusetts, were busy cooking Thanksgiving dinner.  Some of them cooked over fires out-of-doors.  The dinner table was out-of-doors too.  It was set and ready for the Pilgrims and their Indian friends.
The Pilgrim women were happy as they cooked.  At last they had enough food to eat.  Their Indian friends had helped the Pilgrim men to plant corn, catch fish, and hunt birds and animals for food.  The pilgrims were very thankful that they had enough to eat.  So they had decided to have a Thanks giving dinner.  Because the Indians had helped them so much, the Pilgrims had asked the Indians to eat dinner with them.
The Indian chief and many members of his tribe came to this first Thanksgiving dinner.  They brought food and gifts for the Pilgrims.
One of the Indians who brought gifts was Quadequina, the chief's brother.  Quadequina stood with two deerskin bags in his hands.  The Pilgrims crowded around him.
Quadequina reached into one deerskin bag.  When he pulled his hand out of the bag, it was full of fluffy, little white things.
"What are they?  They look like tiny white flowers!" a Pilgrim girl said.
Quadequina laughed and put some of the white pieces on the Pilgrim girl's hair.  But next, he did a strange thing.  He popped a few of the white pieces into his mouth!
"Why, it is some kind of food." a Pilgrim man said.
Quadequina nodded his head.  He reached into the other deerskin bag.  He took out a handful of small seeds that looked like corn.  Then he walked over to a cooking-fire that was burning inside a circle of rocks.  He put the handful of seeds on one of the hot rocks.  Then he stood waiting
Pop!   Pop!   Pop!
Quadequina laughed as the Pilgrims gasped in surprise!  The seeds jumped off the hot rock as they popped.  And as they popped, they turned into the white fluffy things that Quadequina had taken from the first bag.
"Look" a Pilgrim boy shouted, "It's magic!"
One of the Pilgrims tasted this new kind of food.  "Ummm Delicious!" he said.
That's how the Pilgrims first learned about popcorn.  The Indians were eating popcorn long before the Pilgrims came to America.  Indians wore strings of popcorn around their necks and one around their heads when they danced.
It was thought that popcorn was eaten by people thousands of years ago.  But Pilgrim women were the first mothers to serve popcorn for breakfast with sugar and cream.  Popcorn was the first "puffed" breakfast cereal.
Today not many people eat popcorn with sugar and cream.  But each year, lots of people eat popcorn with butter and salt as a tasty treat.

One year a teaching friend was the narrator and I acted out the part of Quadequina.  I donned a headband yarn braid and a Halloween 'native American' costume.  Even to this day, I get the giggles about it.  The adults enjoyed it as much as the kids.  We used a hot air popcorn popper to dramatize the popping.  

 

Thanksgiving and friendship

THE INDIAN BOWL by Jean Marzollo
I found this story in Scholastic's LETS FIND OUT weekly news in my early years teaching. (It is dated November 1974!)
Every year I tell this story about an Indian (Native American) girl who sees another girl (pilgrim) and wants to be her friend.  Despite the language barrier, she presents her with a homemade bowl.
This is a wonderful story to discuss sharing and making friends.

THE INDIAN BOWL
Once upon a time Moon Flower decided to make a small bowl by herself.  She had watched her mother do this many times and had even helped some, but never had she made a bowl from start to finish all alone.  Now she wanted to for Moon Flower had a new friend.  Well, not exactly a friend..yet.  The day before when Moon Flower was picking berries, she had seen a girl like herself, but different.  The other girl had lighter skin and wore strange clothes.  But Moon Flower liked her and wanted to give her a gift.

So alone she went to the river bank and picked some rushes. (reeds--tall thick grass)  Back at the camp, she boiled them for strength in an iron pot over a wood fire.  Before they dried, she wove them in and out to make a "puki," a rush basket.
When the basket was dry, she went back to the river bank to dig clay.  She spread the clay out on a stone to look for pebbles.  (If there were any pebbles left in the clay, they would later crack the bowl.)  She worked the clay with her hands to find any small pebbles that were still left.
Back again at the camp, she flattened the clay into a pancake shape and pressed it over the puki, which was now turned upside-down.  When the clay was dry, she asked her mother to fire it.  Her mother, surprised that Moon Flower had made a bowl by herself, was   

pleased.  She put the bowl in an open pit in which there was a fire covered with hot stones.  The bowl
sat on the stones for several hours.  The rushes burned away but the bowl didn't; instead the heat made it harder and stronger.  After the fire had burned out and the bowl had cooled, Moon Flower picked it up.  It was perfect; inside she could see the marks the rushes had left.
Carefully she walked back to the berry patch and waited.  Sure enough, after a while the girl in the odd clothes came along.  Moon Flower quietly and shyly walked over and handed her the bowl.
Moon Flower and the other girl couldn't talk with each other because they spoke different languages.  But it didn't matter.  Their smiles made it clear that they were to be friends.

I have used this story so much that I just tell it.  I also act it out pantomiming which gives it a real feel to the kids.  I once had pressed playdoh on the back side of a rough basket as in the story.  Then showed them the indentions of the basket weave.  (Aw wow effect) 😲

We also use homemade playdoh and make pinch pots to take and share with their family for Thanksgiving.  We left these by the window to dry for at least 4 days.  I always make a few extra in case they crack too much when air drying.


In Art class, they have made clay pots which are glazed and kiln fired.
These are much 'fancier' and stronger.









It may be too late to make these clay bowls this year so file the idea for next year.
Tomorrow I will  share a story about Magic Seeds.  Get out your popcorn popper to demonstrate.  Enjoy.

Thanks for the giving

I love the new Walgreen's commercial with the phrase "Thanks for giving."  It took me awhile to get the flow of it. 

The power of change!

Things have been stressful....coming off a full moon and end of the grading period.....
So for this Thanksgiving I am trying to be more thankful for my students and all that I learn from them.  In addition, I want to try to help them realize more of how they can be thankful, grateful for what they have and can be.

 I read:
         
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 These are short stories that put the concept of thankfulness in the kids' perspective.  From the stories, I introduced the pie craft for them to illustrate what they are thankful for.

The "I am thankful for pie" craft  project is easy to do.  I made a circle and flood-filled it and drew a pie shape to cut out.  The children cut out the circle and pie piece.  On a paper plate that was premarked in six sections, the children trace the edge of the circle line and inside the triangle shape they draw a picture and on the outer bumpy edge they 'sound-out' the word.  We attached the pie with a paper fastener so the wheel can turn to show one piece of the pie.  I am impressed by their ideas and effort.


The First Thanksgiving fingerplay

When the Pilgrims came (one arm out for 'land' and other palm flat with thumb up for the Mayflower ship)  


to this new land (ship turns into person walking up on the land)    


They met the Indians (hands flat with
                      thumbs up for people meeting
And shook their hands (shake hands)
 They made a feast (gesture hands out to    

             show food on the table)
  With turkey (link thumbs together finger 
                     spread for turkey feathers)
   And corn (imitate eating corn-on-the-cob)

And that's the way (gesture hands out again)
Thanksgiving was born! (put palms
                    together as in a 'prayer' motion) 

 I hope you have time to try these.  
 

Five for Friday November 11, 2016

Thank you Kasey for this link. 


As the children were coming into class, one of my little girls was crying because she left her lunchbox in her mom's car.  I hugged her and said "Don't worry.  We can call her.  Does your mom have a cell phone?"   She continued to cry and answered sobbing, "No she only has an Iphone!"  

So, besides not calling those initial sound pictures 'telephones' any more, I now need to be specific on the phone pictures also.

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 I developed a cutting rubric and 'lesson' to go along with the coloring rubric I shared last week.
I plan to use a red circle with a line through for the way NOT to hold scissors or cut.

With time, practice and patience, they will improve.




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Veteran's Day hats
For our school program each year, kindergarten has to look cute.  We always wear an "Uncle Sam" red, white and blue hat that we make.  This year, I am having them write/glue the words "Thank you!" on the back.  
They all did so well during the program.  It always brings tears to my eyes hearing each class sing their song honoring our visitors and veterans.
Our kindergarten this year:

 

My son-in-law to be, is an army veteran and came to our celebration last year.  

 

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We love Pete the Cat.  This week we did a directed draw and a painted handprint and made a Pete.  Each time the children had to write a sentence about "I love my (color word) shoes."

 

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And there's a full moon Monday.  But I didn't need to remind you of that, did I?

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I'm Bored!

"I'm bored!"  
"It's  boring!"
"They will be bored if they have to do ___ again."
  

This is one of those words that is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.  
Over the years I've heard this way too much from parents and students, let's face it, people everywhere.

It is overused and misused.  I once heard "smart kids don't get bored, they can always find something to do."

Many times that children use the term "bored", it means they are tired or the information is too hard for them.  They don't want to put the effort into what must be done.

Parents use the term to explain misbehavior or when they want to complain that they already learned 'that.'  
So when I say 'smart kids' don't usually get bored (and I whisper it as if it is a bad word), because they can take in the known information and gain confidence they already know it.  They can take their knowledge to a deeper level of understanding.  A self-differentiation, so to speak.
For example, during a lesson about letter sounds, /m/  a student might think "hey my brother's name is  Mark and it begins with /m/.  There's a 'm' in Monday, it must have /m/ sound too."

The brain needs to have a rest at times with all the stimulus around us.  Some children just tune out because of overload.  They need time to process and rest the brain.
Some people are unaware that being quiet and listening is not to be misconstrued as being bored. Children need to learn to put effort into listening and thinking.


And what is wrong about being bored?
I still do NOT like that word and believe that our lives are so filled with activity that just doing nothing for a while is a good thing.  It helps us sort out what else to do, think of things, process, let our minds wander, etc. 

Take time to WONDER.