A Teaching Treasure

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a training led by the mentors of the
 Rice School Literacy & Culture Project.  It was amazing!!  I'll be sharing more of what I learned in other posts.  We learned that children need to hear 1000 stories read aloud to be ready to read on their own and that reading aloud to children is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT ACTIVITY FOR BUILDING THE UNDERSTANDINGS AND SKILLS NECESSARY FOR CHILDREN TO SUCCEED AS READERS (Mem Fox). 

The training prompted me to share one of my TEACHING TREASURES. It's a teacher resource book called Book Cooks from Creative Teaching Press that uses children's literature and cooking in a very creative way. It gives 26 simple recipes--one for each letter of the alphabet--and other literacy and math activities to use with children after reading a story.  

Since its Go Texan Day here in Houston, here is a recipe called Cowboy Cookies inspired by the story A Campfire for Cowboy Billy by Wendy K. Ulmer. 

There are additional cowboy activities including this compound word game offered in the book as well.

Yee-Haw! Have fun with this teaching treasure y'all.

A Fantastic Find

Lakeshore is a store known for offering great educational resources to parents and teachers.  I did not know until recently that the website has a wealth of free resources. This hyperlink will take you immediately to FREE Projects & Activities, Printables and Lesson Plans for grades pre-k-5th.

Lakeshore Free Resources

Mid Month MUST Read

Children naturally learn about the concepts of friendship and kindness during the month of February.  Valentine's Day gives the opportunity to talk to children about how to be a good friend and how it feels to receive a valentine and/or hug.  

Heartprints by P.K. Hallinan explores how children can leave "heartprints" by doing something kind to the people around them.  

Reading aloud a story and asking questions based on what is happening in the text allows an adult to have a rich dialogue with a child.  

Here is an excerpt from the book Heartprints...

Here are a few examples of questions you can ask as you read the book:

• How do you feel when someone smiles at you?
• How can you help a friend?  How can you help mommy or daddy today?
• When has a friend helped you?  When has mommy or daddy helped you?
• How do you feel when you get a gift?
• How could you share with your friend at school?  How could you share with your brother or sister at home?
• How do you know someone is sad?
• How could you make someone happy who is feeling sad? 

Fine Motor with a Muffin Tin & More

This post is FULL of simple activities for your child or students to develop the muscles in their fingers and hands.   With fine motor control and strength, your child/student (among other things) will learn to grasp a pencil correctly and write legibly.

 A quick trip to the Dollar Store allowed me to find the materials I need to demonstrate a few fine motor activities.

This is a very simple activity that only costs a $2.00:)  Using beads and pipe cleaners, your children/students can develop their fine motor skills by making bracelets.  For an added challenge, ask your child/student to create a pattern with the colors.  Molding clay and/or play-dough is also beneficial in strengthening hand and finger muscles. I picked up a package of clay because it takes more strength to mold clay than regular play-dough. Have your child/student use his/her creativity to mold the clay into people, animals, letters, etc...

At Lakeshore I bought a package of Fine Motor Tweezer Tongs.  These are ideal for preschool age students. You can order this useful tool online by clicking here on Lakeshore.

When your child is able to utilize and manipulate objects with these tongs easily, he or she can use smaller tweezers which require greater strength and coordination. 

Fill up a container with pompoms or other objects.  Your child/student needs to use the tweezers to transfer the objects from one place or container to another.  

It may be fun for your child/students to fill up a muffin tin with the pom-poms or objects.

For an added challenge place dominoes in the muffin tin.  

Your child/student must count the number of dots on the domino and fill each section of the muffin tin with the correct number of pom-poms.

Have fun!!

Sing, Sing, Sing!

  

We've just had back to back visits from my mother and my mother-in-law.  It was delightful to watch them interact with my baby girl.  They were constantly talking and singing to her.  In the photo you see that I love singing to Emma Rebekah as well!!

In this blog I'll show you how to turn a song into an activity to use in either a bathtub or a preschool classroom.

I'm sure you've heard the song Five Little Ducks. It goes like this...

 Five little ducks went out one day. Over the hills and far away. Mama duck said, 

" Quack, quack, quack, quack," but only four little ducks came waddling back.

If you click here on the song Five Little Ducks you will be directed to an amazing website DLTK that has the lyrics and print-outs for a wonderful song to sing with your children. I created popsicle stick puppets from the print-outs I found on the website and created a story basket for my preschool students along with the books that contain various versions of the song.

I recently found both these rubber ducks and the plastic container in the dollar section at Target.  

Children can turn the plastic container over and it becomes a "story prop".  As children sing the song, they can move the ducks over the container or "the hill".   

Don't forget to SING, SING, SING with your children or students.  It will help them develop the concept of rhyme and is a very effective way to build vocabulary.  

Fine Motor Friday

Happy Friday!

I recently found a fine motor activity that I want to share with you.  Fine Motor skills involve the coordination of small muscles in the hands and fingers.  It is necessary to practice these skills so that children have success in school.

How can children practice these skills?

• Cutting
• Writing with markers, chalk or pencils
• Using a fork and spoon
• Lacing
• Zipping
• Buttoning
• Tying shoe laces

Creative Teaching Press (CTP) has a link to a fine motor Valentine Activity that involves cutting, pasting and drawing.  Children can enjoy developing their fine motor skills with this activity.  Simply click here:  Valentine Activity

Have a beautiful weekend.  

A Sweet Way to Learn

Seeing all the Valentine's Day cards in the stores reminded me of a SWEET way to practice categorizing objects with children.  An important critical thinking skill is to sort objects according to similarities and differences.  Begin by simply buying a box or boxes of valentine cards.  I found these at the Dollar Store.  

Then, you can cut them apart and glue one of each in a file folder.  Leave the rest in a stack.  Your child can look at the card and find the one that matches.  Below are a few examples. It's so easy and fast to create:)

As your child is sorting or matching the valentine cards, ask your child questions such as... 

"How come the cards are a match?"

 "How are they alike?"/"How are they the same?"

"How are they different?"

Ask questions so that children must pick out and talk about the details of the valentine cards.  This will help them practice naming colors, animals, objects, etc...

 You can also sit down and play "Memory" with your child or children in a classroom can play together.  Simply tear out the valentine cards. Place them face down and take turns turning over two cards.  While you are playing, ask your child the questions I mentioned above.  Children will be having fun and developing critical thinking skills.  How sweet!!!

Valentine's Story Basket

One of my MOST favorite reading activities to do with young children are story baskets.  Story baskets are designed to attract young children to literature and enable them to become hands-on with a story.   Children retell the story, page by page, as they interact with the objects in the basket.  

I decided to make a Valentine surprise for my former students:  A Valentine's Story Basket.  Their current teacher is my friend and I know they will love using the story basket in their library center during the month of February.  

Making a story basket is lots of fun and it's easy to do:)

Start out by choosing a story.  I bought Celebrating Valentine's Day by Kimberly Roark at Lakeshore.  Then, as I was shopping at Target I found objects for the story basket. The Dollar Store is also a GREAT place to shop for story basket objects.

        This book and other easy readers with holiday themes also available online at Creative Teaching Press (CTP).  

You can use a real basket or another container to encourage children to explore the story basket.  I found this colorful bucket and thought the students would enjoy it.

Here are the objects I bought so that the pages come to life as students retell the story after listening to the teacher read it.

My plan is to laminate the hearts and encourage the children to write names of their own friends on the front of the valentines.  So, I must add dry eraser markers and index cards with the names of all the students to the story basket.  

Many objects for story baskets you will already have at home or in your classroom (like this doll).  

All finished!!  Hope they like it.

If you have any experience with story baskets, please post what stories have worked best for you.  

Welcome to A Child's World

Welcome to my blog!  I'm a new mom and wanted to begin by sharing a photo of my family.  As I wrote in my profile, the experience of being a mother has renewed my passion for early childhood education.  A child's experiences in his or her first years of life will have a profound impact on his or her future.  I will be using my blog to share activities and strategies that will benefit both educators and parents.  I'm excited to start this new journey with you.