Jack O'Learning

It's time to check out my newest kit Jack O'Learning on Teachers Pay Teachers! This one is loaded with fun pumpkin items. Fall is always a fun time in any early childhood class. And what is a better symbol of October than a pumpkin?

In this kit, you will find:

Peter, Peter Pumpkin Class book. After having children learn the poem Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater, have the children write a page of what they would put into a pumpkin shell to protect. There are two pages as one says he and one says she.
Many Faces of Jack. This is a mini book that the children can read and create their own illustrations to match the words. It is a great way to talk about reading emotions too.
How Do Pumpkins Grow? After reading stories about how pumpkin's grow such as Pumpkin Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington, It's Pumpkin Time by Zoe Hall or From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeffer, have children make their own books to show the process of how pumpkins grow.
Pumpkin Glyph. A glyph is a fun way for children to collect information. This also makes a fun bulletin board. Give each child a sheet of orange construction paper, a half sheet of black construction paper and a square of either green or brown (depending on gender), then have the children create their own pumpkin according to the glyph's criteria. After they have been displayed, you can go back and answer the questions on the second sheet. I suggest hanging a copy of the criteria on the bulletin board too so others can see why each pumpkin was made that way.
Pumpkin Measurement. This would make a fun learning station during your pumpkin activity week. The children cut the strip of pumpkins at the bottom of the sheet and use it to measure common classroom items.
Pumpkin Words. This is a fun and easy way to practice common kindergarten sight words. The children have to read the words and then color by the number of letters in each word. This would be a simple morning work paper or be great in a homework packet.
Blank pumpkins. I gave you a set of blank pumpkins to use as you'd like... other sight words, pumpkin patterns, longer measuring strips, writing numbers or letters... whatever you'd like!

And.... for visiting my blog you get one more free pumpkin paper. Alphabet pumpkins. A quick and fun review of alphabetical order.

These learning activities grouped with a few fun pumpkin art projects and you've got a fun week of learning. Click here and here to see some of the pumpkin art we've done in the past I hope you have fun with these fun pumpkin items. If you use my kit in your class, please come back and let me know what you liked!

Apples Abound!

One topic that is often taught in both preK and kindergarten is apples! Who doesn't love to learn with food?

I created the kit Apples Abound for Teachers Pay Teachers. It includes: -parent letter asking for apples -HW graph comparing ways to eat apples -finger print apple counting -identify parts of an apple -using a balance scale to weigh apples -apple patterns -Story extension for Ten Apples on Top -Johnny Appleseed writing --whole class venn diagram

When I taught apples with my classes I often made apple sauce with them too. Many children do not know how to make real apple sauce and only know it comes in a jar at the grocery store. It is very easy to make and can even be made in a microwave, but that is sort of cheating! All you need to do is cut apples into cubes, the smaller the cubes the faster they cook. Add sugar and cinnamon and let the apples do their magic! If you want a chunkier applesauce do not put all the apples in to begin with and add them towards the end so they stay firmer. If you want a smoother applesauce, then bring a potato masher in mash the apples as they cook down.

One thing that I did not add to the original kit that you can get here is an apple tasting graph. Many children do not know that different apples taste different. Here is a quick apple graph that you can use with your students. I would copy it on poster paper and then laminate it. You can then use sharpie markers on it which wash off with rubbing alcohol so you can use it again next year.

I hope you enjoy using these apple activities with your students! Let me know if you use any and what you did different.

Summer Olympics

I don't know about you, but I can tell you that I'm an Olympic junkie! I love the competition, the pride of country and sport, the fun of seeing sports that are as recognized as others, and so much more that is the Olympics.

I'm so excited to share this with the boys. This year we are expanding up on it by doing some fun learning with the Olympics. I have posted a free Olympic kit at Teachers Pay Teachers.

Here is a sneak peek... if you like it, go to the site and download the rest of it. It includes a sheet for each child to learn a bit more about a country that is participating in the Olympics, a chart to track that country's medal count, and a sheet discussing sports and sports dreams. This is a free kit... even if you aren't a teacher you can download it and do it with your own children! Check it out. If you like it please rate it for me.

Red, White and Blue fun

This week I decided to do a red, white and blue project since tomorrow is July 4th.

The first project we did was based on a t-shirt I saw in Family Fun Magazine. Yep, I have it on my pinterest board. The concept is a reverse stencil. You decide what you want to have as the focus of your shirt and make the design with contact paper. For this project I made each child a USA and then made a ton of stars of differing sizes. The children then added the USA and the stars in whatever design they wanted.

When all contact paper design is done (and pushed down to ensure the edges are firmly sealed), begin painting. In the original directions they watered down fabric paint and added it to squirt bottles. I decided that 6 kids with squirt bottles full of paint sounded like a recipe for disaster. I altered it and used the watered down fabric paint with sponges.





When they were done we put the shirts out in the sun to dry.



When they were dry we removed the contact paper. I decided to go around all the USA's with a black sharpie marker to make them "pop". After everyone left, I decided to go over Blake and Colby's stars too.



You can see that some kids got a lot more elaborate in their designs, but they all came out really cute and are super unique. Our second project I found on Pinterest, are you on Pinterest... no? why not? When I was a teacher I used to play a game similar to this called race to 100. This one is called shape fill-in. Give 2 children one game board, which is a grid of any shape, I used stars and flags. Each child needs a crayon and the pair needs a die. The children take turns rolling the die. They then fill in that many squares on the board. You can make it a competition if you want having the one who colors the most as the winner.



If you want to modify this: you can use a deck of cards (1-10), have them roll two dice and add them together, have each child do their own board with two colors, use a 12 sided die, or any other variation you want.

Sink and Float and Make your own Boat

This week has been rainy and miserable here. But, we still did our Tuesday project. Last week I sent the kids home with an assignment to make a boat.

When they arrived we tested the boats out to see if they were seaworthy. The children had to estimate how many cubes it would take to sink their boats. Let me tell you their guesses were WAY off. My guesses would have been too. They all took over 100 cubes to sink and some took over 200. Next time I'd use heavier blocks (o:





After snack we continued with the water fun, inside this time. We took two tubs of water and lots of fun objects and did a sink and float experiment.



I made recording sheets for these activities and posted them on Teachers Pay Teachers. Here some of the sheets you will find in the set:



There are two versions of the boat test sheet and two versions of the sink and float sheet. There are also cloze sheets for -oat and -ink words and other -oat and -ink word family activities. Check it out if you are interested in this activity for you own kids or your classroom.

Frozen Animals

My friends and I are getting the kids together on Tuesday's to do fun projects. This was last weeks! I froze animals into blocks of water and challenged them to get them out.

In the pictures you can see some of their attempts. I finally showed them if you pour warm/hot water over the ice it will make it melt. On Teachers Pay Teachers, I added an ice project link (for $1). Included is the recording sheet we used and a higher level one, ice family word sheet and flip book, and color mixing with ice cube sheet.

 These are the ones in my free download
 

Pumpkins, some good, some... not so much

As promised on Friday, a late project post.

Last week, we did two pumpkin projects, both found on pinterest.

The first turn out as a royal flop. We were supposed to make homemade play dough. Then make pumpkins with Mickey ears. Here's the link to the original post, in case you want to try yourself. I will admit that I can think of a few reasons why it flopped. I only had sea salt at home and coarse salt at that. It was super humid that day which effects dough consistency. I was also trying to make them bigger than suggested.


note ours turned out flat. Mine is the left, Colby in the middle (I helped him), and Blake's on the right.

As you may have seen yesterday in project 365, we also made circle pumpkins.

I cut 30 orange strips of paper and 2 green. Then stapled them into circles. I drizzled glue on the paper and let them go to town. These came our really cool, in my opinion.

Making streams, bats and more

We have done a lot of projects this week...

I gave each of the boys a piece of white paper, some red and yellow paint and told them to paint it for a pumpkin (I don't know why Colby's red paint looks orange in the picture, but it was red)


The next day, I cut them into pumpkin shapes. The boys then took black paper shapes and made them into jack o'lanterns.




Another day we decided to do a project. The boys couldn't agree on one, so we did two.

I traced their hands on piece of black paper, cut a circle out and then face pieces to make bats:


I gave them a sheet of white paper divided into three sections.


Over the weekend it rained a little, as in they recorded almost 7" of rain from Friday to Sunday. There was just a little bit of water in the sandbox. The boys had a lot of fun jumping in it, check out tomorrow's pictures to see more of that. On Monday I decided to give the sandbox a hand drying out and do a project with the boys at the same time. All the water was collected in one end of the sandbox. So we made rivers, lakes, islands, and streams.

Yes, the monster trucks had to test out water ways too.

fall trees and spider webs

We may not have the season of fall here in Florida, but that doesn't mean we can't do fall projects. I saw variations on both of these projects on Pinterest, I just made them my own.



I traced the boys' hand and arm onto a piece of brown paper. We then took torn pieces of red, yellow, orange and brown paper and glued them on as the fall leaves.





The boys first scribbled lines on a piece of paper with a black marker. Then I put black paint on a piece of cardboard and gave each of the boys a cup (those are the cups that fruit comes in we use them as paint containers They dipped the bottom of the cup into the paint and used that as the spider body. They then painted the legs onto the spiders.

).

(yes I made one too to demonstrate the legs, but notice mine looks NOTHING like theirs!)

apples, stickers, and repaires

We didn't have many "structured" projects this week, but that doesn't mean we didn't have projects.


I decided to put out a basket of stickers for the boys to make pictures. Isn't it funny how much children love stickers, but never know what to do with them. When you give them stickers with other craft items they can use them as part of their picture, or as my boys often do just stick them all over.


We decided to take the soccer balls outside for an impromptu practice. The boys love playing soccer games and it gives me a chance to practice before practice.


We got a new garbage disposal, which is super quiet by the way. The boys decided to help Richard put it in. Yes, this wasn't really a project either, but it is a life lesson and all life lessons are worth mentioning!

Ok for a real project! I saw this one on Pinterest. Have you checked it out yet? There is a link on the side of my blog if you want to follow me there too. (I'm not as big into it as some of my friends but it is a unique site)

First I tore up the paper for the project and then had Colby sort the colors into piles. This is a great math lesson. Call it sorting by color... instant math lesson!


I decided to cut out paper apples instead of using paper plates.

The boys had fun and as you can see their apples are very different!


You could easily turn this into other items too. I think I'll do it in October and make them into Jack O'Lanterns too.

Hope you had some structured and unstructured fun with your kiddos this week.