Chinese New Year!

Being a first year teacher, I am extra excited about every holiday that comes around because I feel as if I am celebrating them for the first time. In the case of Chinese New Year, this really is the first time I am celebrating it, making it super special. Adding to my excitement was a chance to use all of the cool stuff in the Chinese New Year unit that I won from http://teachertothecore.blogspot.com/. It was created for first and second grade, so I modified some of the activities to fit my preschoolers. It has everything you need for a successful Chinese New Year celebration, including bulletin board goodies.

 
The Panda Smart Art was a big hit with the kids.

 

 



We also used the dragon hat template to create our tissue paper dragon head.
I recreated the image on poster board and wrote the color names in colored marker. I gave the children sheets of tissue paper to tear and glue onto the poster board.

 
 

 

Then it was time to decorate the body. I drew scales onto yellow roll paper and let the kids do the rest.

Our original costume was really long in order to accommodate all of our kids, but the day of our parade fell on the same day of Nor'easter, so many of our children did not show up for school. We cut the roll down and cut the excess into strips to hang from the sides. (We were originally going to do this with tissue paper). Sticks were added and Viola'!

We had been practicing our dragon dancing without the costume all week to traditional Chinese music and learning how to move in harmony with each other, so by the time our dragon costume was done we were pros. 

 

Of course no Chinese New Year Celebration is complete without chopsticks. The children were surprisingly good at using them. It helps that they had been using them in various centers throughout the week. (i.e letter sorting, colored rice sensory table, Lego color sorts). I was still impressed at the skill at which they used them to eat. :-D 

 

Other activities included fan dancing with child created fans, Chinese clothing for the dress-up center and one of my favorite books "Tikki-Tikki -Tembo". It was hi-la-rious to hear the children try to say the full name. I laughed so much my sides ached.

To find it on Amazon Click Here

To get a copy of the Chinese New Year unit I used, which includes many more activities,  Click Here 
To see the blog on the unit by its creator Click Here

I can't wait until next year!!! I have so much more planned. I would love to hear what ideas you have come up with for the Chinese New Year. Please comment below.

From one of our exercises on working in harmony.

Pajama Day!!!!!!

Today was Pajama Day at our school and I was so super excited since I have never been a part of one before. I was so elated to don my favorite Hello Kitty Onesie in public that I didn't even wait until I got to work and proudly sported my ensemble on the NYC subway system. New Yorkers are so cool that even though I got a few sideways glances, everyone tried to act like a grown woman in a onesie and a Cookie Monster hat with a purple spotted frog around her neck was the norm. Being a native New Yorker myself,   I calmly read my AM newspaper, as if this were my everyday gear.
I was all geared up to break all the normal classroom routines, only to find out that today we were receiving a visit from the Department of Health. I was crushed! I tried to imagine myself in a professional meeting with my pigtails and pajamas and it made me cringe.

Imagine my relief when our consultant walked in, smiled and said "Oh, it's pajama day? How nice", never even batting an eye. She must be a native New Yorker also. Gotta love my hometown!

Dodecahedron Sight Word Race

I geared up and began tackling sight words with my children this month. Our word wall got revamped, we were pointing them out, digging them up, tracing them, building them, fishing them out of snow disguised as packing peanuts. We even had a Super Sight Word scavenger hunt, which had children pulling words out of play-doh, manipulative bins and from underneath blocks. 
Half of my children bathed in the word immersion. They were excited as they found and read words around the room. There were some who found the words and could not read them. Those children folded them into pockets or held them crumbled in sweaty fists until they saw them again in small group or afternoon meeting. They would then produce the hidden word, yelling out its name, eager to get a check mark next to their name. There were some still, who were not interested in anything word related. They swiped the coveted pieces of paper out of their way as they continued through their day, not even attempting to view its content.
I scoured books, Pinterest and teaching blogs and websites for a way to get these children interested. 
Then one night between asleep and awake it hit me! A Dodecahedron Sight Word Race! It had everything! It was suitable for my beginners and my more advanced students. It used both gross and fine motor skills. Children who had difficulty reading the words could match them and the entire class could get involved. As an added bonus, I got to use a Dodecahedron, which I have been dying to try ever since I ran across the Dodecahedron Book Report Project. 

I woke up at 4am to work on the game and was carrying it to school at 7am that same day (and still had time to shower and dress). I began with the giant floor game board. This was made on large white roll paper. The twelve words were written at the bottom and columns ran the length of the paper. I then created rows which would serve as the "stops". 

Next, I wrote my words on my Dodecahedron die template and glued it together. I glued my tabs on the inside, but I have seen images with the tabs glued on the outside.

I then placed the sight words in a set of plastic cars ordered from Lakeshore. 

I used the cars with beds, but if your cars do not have them, the words can also be taped to the top.

The excitement began as soon as I started taping the board to the floor. The children rolled the die, read the word and raced the corresponding car to the next stop. As the children were racing, the children on the side were cheering the car on ("Go 'the'! Go 'the'"!). This stopped them from becoming distracted during someone else's turn.

It was a big hit!! I've since developed a table top version to be used for small groups. This will be available for free from my newly opened TPT store!!! 

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Free-Dodecahedron-Sight-Word-Game

Please comment and let me know what you think!

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

 I was doing my normal Facebook stalking, when I came across a photo posted by my former TA showing a display she created at her new school.

My very first thought was "That should have been in my classroom!". I jokingly commented "I'm totally stealing", in the back of my mind feeling there is NO way that I could ever make something of that caliber. This lady is AMAZING with a pencil and a pair of scissors and I'm lucky if I can even find my pencil and my scissors. 
I was so in love with this display however, that I had to try. So I picked her brain on her process and, like all great teachers, she shared the wealth. As an aspiring great teacher, I feel it is only right that I do the same. So here is my rendition of the display and my process, which due to my artistic shortcomings, is somewhat different from hers.

Everything in her display is hand drawn and since I no longer have her to draw for me :-( and I couldn't find my pencil, I decided to go to my next best friend for help-Google. All of my images are downloaded and printed on multiple colors of paper and then cut and glued together. 
I printed the log cabin on brown construction paper and the trees on green and white papers. I traced the top of the log cabin on white paper and cut it out to make a snowy roof. I then cut all of the snowy parts of the trees out of the white paper and glued it on top of the green trees. The sky is blue construction paper over poster board and the snow is white construction paper. 

The falling snow is holes punched out of white paper and individually glued to the paper. (This was the most tedious part of the project. The holes kept sticking to my finger and not the paper.)

Next, came the window frame (brown construction paper)

and the curtains (yellow construction paper).

Next came the candles. I printed the same image on black, white and green papers. Then I cut each individual part out and layered it onto the black base. The berries are cut from the white paper and colored with a red marker and the flames were cut freestyle from orange and yellow paper.

The poinsettias were printed on red, green and yellow paper. I used the green paper as my base and glued the red and yellow cut outs over the base. Layering it this way gives it a slight 3D effect. 

Next, I did the flames. I printed these on red, orange and yellow paper, but I layered it wrong, so the red is behind the yellow instead of the orange. My husband said it wasn't really noticeable so I left it, but if you are going to recreate it, I would suggest placing the orange behind the yellow and the red behind the orange.

 The logs are printed on brown construction paper and glued after the fire had been placed. This was done on black poster board, but I did another for the lobby of my building which utilized black construction paper over white oak tag.

The brick was bought in a roll from a neighborhood pharmacy and cost $1.99 each. I used two complete rolls. This is my finished project:

The entire thing is held onto the wall with contact paper and to protect it from little hands. The Mantle is white poster board and the stockings were purchased from Deals for $1.00 a piece and decorated by the two classes. My class decorated the one on the right with our hand prints.The other class' has a really cool hand print reindeer project housing their names. 
The stockings are held on with velcro strips and will be removed after the holiday. We plan on leaving the fireplace up throughout the winter. 

I also made one on a smaller scale for the lobby of my building. As previously stated, the fireplace uses black construction paper over oak tag. Other changes are that the trees are just printed once on white paper (I didn't think the layering made so much of a difference for the amount of work that it entailed) and the colors for the fire are in the correct order (pictured below).

   
Completed window and fire. 

Score 1 (or 2, if you count both) for the artistically challenged!

R.A.M

All Gingerbread Houses Have Witches

We loved the mini Gingerbread theme so much that we continued it for another week. We made gingerbread character headbands and took turns chasing that gingerbread boy until he was finally eaten. We made a class story titled "Going on a Gingerbread Hunt", which included snow angels and a snowball fight as we made our way through the snowstorm. After making it to the gingerbread house and finding and eating the gingerbread man, piece by piece, we got chased home by a witch! After all, in the words of a very intelligent four-year-old "All gingerbread houses have witches." Good point.
We topped off our unit by making the coolest gingerbread houses out of milk cartons. We used graham crackers with marshmallow fluff adhesive. Add some vanilla frosting, gumdrops, Twizzlers, peppermints, M&M's, marshmallows, sprinkles and imagination and you have some really cool 'witch cribs.'

Alas, we never got a chance to make gingerbread men of our own. I have been searching endlessly for some ready-made gingerbread dough to no avail. Looks like I am going to have to roll up my sleeves and make some from scratch. Thankfully, I have another week to figure it out.

RAM