A Pizza Party for Snack and Other Fun Stuff

A few random pictures of work I found on my camera today, just thought I'd share.

SIGHT WORD BINGO

HOME-MADE VALENTINES

MAKE YOUR OWN PIZZA FOR A SNACK

Some of the most popular Toddler activities this week...

Spelling, sorting, and mapping...just a few new activities that are popular right now

I found a big bag of letter beads on sale at the craft store and I am trying to find creative uses for them. Here's a simple language work where children build words by sliding the letter beads onto a piece of pipe cleaner. It's sort of a variation on the movable alphabet, matching, and a fine motor beading activity. We have some first year students moving up from our toddler room this summer. Here is a simple sorting activity with dinosaur counters. They can be sorted by color or type of dinosaur.

This sorting activity is a little more challenging. Children place the objects on the chart sorting by color and type of vehicle. We have it out in our math area but it could just as easily find a home in the practical life area or language area.

Here's a simple map drawn on card stock, some command cards (recycled plastic pill containers), and some counter vehicles. Lot's of fun and incorporates so many different skills.

A Passion For Wildflowers...

Our children are discovering wildflowers on walks around our school property, through the nearby fields and up by the pond.

We incorporated this passion for wildflowers inot a variety of works throughout our classroom. Flower arranging in the practical life area, still life drawing in the art area, identification of wildflowers and wildflower bingo in the language area, parts of a flower and leaf identification in the science area, plus lots of books to do our research.

Back from Break ...

I spent most of our spring vacation as unplugged as possible. I am slowly easing back into a regular routine. Here are some activity pictures snapped just before break.

Collage materials with the last remnants of winter...

Plurals:

Phenomes and spelling work.

The sound /n/ is typically spelled in two ways n or kn.

The drawer is filled with samples of words with the sound /n/ spelled both ways.

No and Know, Not and Knot, Now and Knit, etc.

So far I've put out:

SOUND --SPELLED

/n/ --n or kn

/c/ --k, c, or ck

/f/-- f or ph

/sh/ --sh, ti, ci

/g/ or /j/-- g

/n/ or /ng/ --ng

Inch by Inch, Row by Row, Come and Watch Our Garden Grow

Wow, March certainly came in like a lion for us, roaring in more ways than just weather. For the last few weeks our children and teachers have been struggling with bouts of colds and viruses making it hard for me to find time to post to our blog. Fortunately March left like a lamb and hopefully left us all strong and healthy.

We welcomed April with the groundbreaking of our new school garden. How exciting!

Our ultimate goal is to connect children with the earth creating a 'seed to plate experience'. Since we are a year round Montessori School we can enjoy our garden throughout it's most productive time through the summer. More details on the garden will be posted on a separate blog soon.

In the classroom we are preparing work related to the season and our garden.

We have garden themed three part cards, matching, and science activities.

Just a personal note on making activities: Technology is wonderful. Downloading images, printing, and lamination are tools that were not available when I first started teaching so I really appreciated having these resources available to me now when I make my own materials. That said, I feel very strongly about balancing modern computer created plastic coated materials with hand made materials. There is a texture, a quality, a depth, and an energy to a hand made material that cannot be captured in something mass produced. I realize a card that is not laminated may only last one season, but that is part of the beauty of a hand made material. I also allow the children watch me make the materials. It includes them in the process and helps them value the effort that is invested in making an activity.

Here are two activities I recently put out on our shelves. The first is the life cycle of a pumpkin, a three part card activity I downloaded. The second activity is the parts of a seed sequencing work that I hand painted with acrylics on a parchment-like card stock. FYI the hand painted cards only took about 20 minutes to make and the printed cards took about the same amount of time to print and laminate.

Here is our seed sprouting experiment. We have eight trays. Each with a different combination of seed, soil, water, and light (we choose to keep air as a constant for this experiment).

As an art history and cultural studies unit we are studying the work of Andy Goldsworthy. We have photographs of his work, matching cards, and sequencing cards. We have been making our own sculptures using natural found materials from the grounds around our school. We will also be taking a field trip to visit Cornell's Lab of Ornithology's Sapsucker Woods. Andy Goldsworthy created a sculpture in the woods.

Our language area has been quite popular since we refreshed our initial sound activities with new objects and pictures.

I am always searching for interesting and appealing objects for the more challenging sounds like Q, U, Y, X, Z. Any suggestions?

Our metal inset area has also been quite popular.

TIP: I found these shoe storage racks work great as shelves for the insets. They are the perfect size and height. I think they are sold in home improvement stores as part of closet storage systems.

Some Early Language Building Activities

These activities are great for older Toddlers and young three year olds.

Five Green and Specckled Frogs

Sing the song and count the frogs. This is both a language and math activity.
Brown Bear, Brown Bear

Children can retell the story using matching cue cards. Great for sequencing, memorization, order, and practicing colors.

Sequencing Cards

What comes first, next, and last. Simple, fun sequencing cards.

Picture Matching

Using two packs of stickers and some leftover card stock matching games can be made in any theme. Horses are very popular in our classroom right now.

Farm Object Matching

2 sets of craft store animals -excellent for matching and vocabulary building