Baking Soda and Vinegar

Yesterday we had a lot of fun with vinegar and baking soda trying out lots of different little experiments. The first idea I got from Teacher Tom and it was the first experiment that we did. I put about 1/2 a cup of vinegar in the bottom of the bags and then put about 2 tbl. of baking soda in half a paper towel and then folded that up and put it in the bag (quickly zip locking, squeezing out what air I could) and then we sat back and watched as they slowly bloated with carbon dioxide. In theory the bags were supposed to pop open like a little bomb, however, we used quart sized freezer Ziplock bags and instead of popping they stretched just to the brink of explosion and then the air/liquid leaked out.

The second experiment merely consisted of a small vase half filled with vinegar and then added a little over a tablespoon of baking soda and watched as it foamed up and over the edges. The best part of this experiment was asking the kids prior to dropping in the baking soda what they thought would happen. "I think the glass will shatter" and "I think the glass will blow up" were some of the best.

The third experiment was more exploration based and was stolen from Child Central Station. I filled two cake pans with baking soda (just covering the bottom with a significant coating of the powder) then I half filled little cups with vinegar and food colouring that matched the colour of the cup. I then took straws and cut them in half (1 for each child), I wish I had turkey basters like in the fore-mentioned blog post. Having 14 kids it was a little hectic at first, but after a few minutes over half of them decided they were done and moved on to play time while I stayed with the remaining handful as they continued to explore. With fewer children we started pouring the cups of vinegar into the pans and watched the coloured bubbles expand and then disappear; it was quite enjoyable.

Being a Scientist

Wow, I don't even know how I so abruptly stopped posting...we're going to have to fix that. I can say that since it has been summer for a few months now that we haven't done quite as many fun learning activities; however, we did a fun wall display this month where the kids coloured beakers on a piece of paper and I asked them what they would do as a scientist....this is what they came up with

          4y boy - as a scientist I would find bones
          4y boy - as a scientist I would figure out things, like how the liquid in shark fins take over your brain
          3y girl - as a scientist I would study weather
          4y girl - as a scientist I would paint pretty pictures of flowers
          4y boy - as a scientist I would find bones
          4y girl - as a scientist I would teach friends how to do science stuff
          4y girl - as a scientist I would teach people how to do science stuff; but different than [previous student], making colours out of boiling hot water
          4y girl - as a scientist I would explore with pandas
          3y girl - as a scientist I would play hide and seek
          3y girl - as a scientist I would experiment on how to make a banana
          4y boy - as a scientist I would learn how to make a paper plate
          4y boy - as a scientist I would figure out how things work, like planets
          4y boy - as a scientist I would do explosion experiments
          3y girl - as a scientist I would study lions and tigers
          4y boy - as a scientist I would look for animal bones

Jellyfish Hall

 The original plan was to have the children each make their own jellyfish, however, there were some surprises that popped up and they didn't get a chance to make their own, so I went ahead and made a few myself and hung them up in the hallway. The children loved them, it led to lots of questions, which was a fun way for the kids to learn about jellyfish. I also enjoyed having them in the hallway because it gave some movement and dimension to an otherwise boring walkway.

Fish Fun

We had a 2 week ocean theme and the kids just loved this fun fish craft project! It's simple for setup too! The kids used their fingers to paint the bottom side of a plain white paper plate with any colours that they wanted and in any design that they wanted. I then let them dry and then I cut a triangle into the side for the mouth and used that piece as the tail (just taped it on the inside) and then I used a black sharpie to draw an eye. With their names being written on the inside of the plate and then taped to the wall the kids had a lot of fun trying to guess which fish was the one that they had painted.   :)

Career Week

The kids love career week, it gives them a chance to explore the possibilities, to tell stories about themselves or people that they know, and at the end of it all, to dress up! So we did lots of fun activities, including one where they drew a picture of what they wanted to be and then said why they wanted to be that; but the pictured activity on the right, is a graph we made of each of the students' parents professions, which was a lot of fun. I already knew all the parent's technical titles and then I reduced those to an easier level of understanding for the children. Then they went through and were able to put a star on the proper group, one for their father and one for their mother. It really got the students to talk about jobs and to explore their friends, especially after hanging it up on the fridge for another week or so where they could always come back to it. You can find my activity packet here.

Luck o' the Irish

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you! We had a lot of fun St. Patrick's day fun and I wanted to share it all with you! The above image is our display board of little leprechauns (their handprint cutout on cardstock with a little green construction paper hat on top; I drew their faces with a black sharpie). This was fun and the parents all thought their little faces were adorable, but the true hit of the display was the cloud rainbows. 

The cloud read: "If I found a pot of gold and a leprechaun gave me 6 wishes I would wish for a rainbow of things" (this worked out great because we also had been learning about rainbows in class). Then on each rainbow colour we wrote down the wish that the students would ask for and boy-oh-boy there were some funny ones! The kids absolutely loved sharing it with their parents too.

We teachers also captured a leprechaun early in the morning before the students arrived and placed him in a box to show them later...but he magically escaped and left us clues to find his hidden treasure. Our simple treasure hunt had our kids reeling with excitement and when they eventually found his pot of gold (a painted black cottage cheese container with a black pipe cleaner as a handle filled with cuties) they were overjoyed!

Sticker Charts are Overrated

So many teachers do sticker charts and they're just SO overrated....sure the concept works and the students love it. But there is so much waste in this style of a reward program....so what did I decide to do? Make something a little more re-usable that sparked a little more creative process. Instead of a sticker, the students earn a "step" from the village toward the castle and when they reach the castle they earn a prize and then they start all over at the village again. The kids love it and the fun images that appear along the way (wishing well, unicorn, dragon, and mermaid [not pictured]). I just googled images online for the moving characters (2 styles of princesses [one more feminine and one more ranger style] and 2 styles of princes). The kids love it and I'm not wasting paper and stickers. 

These are the guidelines I use:

find it on my TPT site here

Food Pyramid

It was our week of nutrition and health and I wanted to do a fun activity to help the children understand which foods went into which categories of the food pyramid. This was a great activity and they loved it. We started at the bottom with the carbohydrates/starches and I had the children taking turns pulling 1 food item from the pile and putting it in the section and then we went on to the next student and then the next until the section was done and then we moved onto the next section. Depending on the group of children I was working with, sometimes there were 2 students selecting a food item at a time. The only real con I had is that our food pyramid was a little unbalanced due to the supply of plastic foods our school had on had.  :)

They loved this unit and at meal times the kids were always telling us which section their food items would go into and what other foods went into which sections and which foods were good for you and which weren't.

Handprint Valentine

The children really enjoyed making these little poems for their father's for Valentine's Day! I found the poem online and I really liked it, I did edit the last line (it read something like, "when I was so little") to say the age that they were (so 3, 4, or 5). I pulled each kid individually to do their hand because it would be much simpler that way than trying to do it in a full class setting. I used a foam heart shaped sticker and placed it on their hand and then I painted their hand with their choice of colour (I had 3-4 colour options). After they had dried I pasted them to pink construction paper (in retrospect, I probably could have pasted to construction paper first and it may have helped with the warping of the paper as the paint dried...but I don't know for sure). The kids just loved giving the project to their fathers and the parents thought the poem was quite cute as well. Another cheap, fun, and sentimental gift!

Measuring Up

 Yay, measuring charts! The hardest part isn't making them...it's remembering to keep up with their measurements because they grow so fast!!
I took different coloured sheets of construction paper and made 1 inch and 1/2 inch marks with a black sharpie to make it look like one very long multi-coloured ruler. I finished it all off by covering it contact paper (if you continue to follow my blog, you will find that I am a BIG fan of contact paper!)

I just used yarn and little "speech bubbles" (which I wrote their name on and also covered in contact paper) and I adhered it to their height with a little bit of scotch tape! I then used a dry erase marker to write their height on their name!

Owl Always Love You

It was February and I needed a cute wall display that the kids could help me create. I hopped on the internet to browse for ideas and this is what I came up with. The idea was to put up letters that read "Owl Always Love You" but I never got around to that because, seriously, who has time to write and cut out all those letters?

Anywho (no pun intended) the kids loved making their owls. I printed and cut out several different types of eyes, all the hearts for the faces, beaks, and the owls themselves; then the children picked out what they wanted and glued them to the bodies. It was simple and yet adorable for everyone!!

Rocket Ship

We did a space unit for a couple weeks and I wanted to create some sort of visual that help stimulate creative thought, so I hit the internet; taking different ideas from Pinterest I decided to create our own rocket. I took white butcher paper and painted it red, blue, and yellow for the different elements and then I sized them to the entry-way and taped it to the wall. When I first did it I had not added the flames or "USA" and lots of people thought it was a house (I couldn't have that) so I added flames using orange construction paper and "USA" with red construction paper and it was instantly more recognized as a rocket. The kids loved it! They used it during play time and we also did little skits within our class groups to present for everyone else and they loved that too! They really loved it and it helped me feel artsy fartsy.   :)

Meal Manners

I don't know about you, but we seem to have quite a bit of troubles (sometimes) controlling and promoting proper table manners. So I compiled a short list of basic manners that should be observed by even the youngest of my students. While this poster didn't magically fix all our problems, it did help provide the visual that many of our students need. Often times we till take a few minutes during meals to review the poster just as a simple reminder. It took some work to find all the images online, print them, colour them, paste them above the letters that I tried to so neatly write, and then I used contact paper over the whole thing to help ensure longevity. 

Anti-Tattling

Working in an all day preschool with sixteen 3-5 year olds can be tough, especially when it comes to the topic of tattling on friends, in our efforts to fight this behaviour we tried to encourage our children to tell us when they saw their friends doing especially good things. I believe it was a great idea, however, it didn't work as well as we had hoped it would. The children would often say things along the lines of, "Suzie and I played together and she's my best friend" etc., which is great and all, but we were trying to encourage things like, "I saw Jonny share his toy with Luke because he didn't bring one to school today" etc. We even tried giving the children examples and recording the things that we saw through-out the day, but it never really caught on and we moved on to different means of encouraging positive behaviour and not tattling.

Hi

Hello, I figured my first post should be one of introduction, I have attempted starting blogs before, but I never really had a great direction that I was leaning toward; but now I do. I am currently a preschool teacher and an in-charge for a private preschool home with 16 adorable and intelligent students. I am with these children 6-10 hours a day and help them navigate all areas of learning that 3-5 year olds need. I love to be as hands-on as possible while still maintaining the ability to send home classwork with students so that parents can also see what they are learning and achieving while at school. I am a big fan of art (though I'm not verry gifted in artistic abilities) and technology in the classroom as well as taking the classroom outside where there is even more to learn and discover. I also rely heavily on books for a fun way to learn, I think it is vital to incorporate books and reading at the youngest of ages. I am also a seller on TeachersPayTeachers and sometimes I will show images of worksheets or other items that I will have up on my store.

I have worked with children all my life; as far as teaching goes, I have worked with children from infancy to 5th grade. Having formally taught children pre-k through 5th (skipping 3rd graders) in a classroom setting. I love children, always have and always will. some say that working with kids as much as I do every day that I must be on the best birth control ever, and in all honesty, I'm not. I eagerly look forward to the day that I can raise my own children with my husband and my two dogs. Being 24 and married not quite 2 years I have plenty of time to look forward to those days, because once it comes life will be a whirlwind.