November Currently!

Oh. My. Goodness.  I cannot believe it is already November.  This year is flying by at super sonic speed!  I don't remember a year ever going this fast.  Well, since it's November 1st, that means it's time for Currently hosted by Farley at Oh Boy 4th Grade.

I love autumn.  The weather, the leaves, and this year I am getting spoiled by having both football and baseball to follow.  {happy dance}

Right now, I am LISTENING to football, while I get a few things finished up on my computer.

I am LOVING that the Kansas City Royals are in the World Series!  It's been a long time {30 years to be exact} since the Royals have won a World Series.  We are so, so, close…fingers crossed.

I am almost finished with my lesson plans for the week, but I am still THINKING about trying to fit a few more activities in.

Fall weather is amazing.  I am WANTING the weather to stay just like this.  Unfortunately, I know cold, snowy weather will be right around the corner.  :(

This feels so good to say, but I am NEEDING absolutely nothing.  The stars must be aligned just right. Either that or I finally have my priorities straight and have learned to appreciate all things in life.  Even painful events have meaning I can learn from.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday……family, food, football…..what else do you need?  I love all foods Thanksgiving, but my favorite food is my mom's sweet potato casserole recipe.  It's topped with brown sugar and pecans.  It really is more like a sweet potato pie.  It's YUMMY!

Now, it's your turn!  Link up with Farley's Currently linky party and tell us about what's up with you.

Thanks for reading!  Have a spectacular day.  :)

Bats, Monsters, and Baseball!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday.

Last weekend my family celebrated my mom's birthday.  She's a huge Royals' fan, so we surprised her with Royals playoff tickets.  This is how she found out she was going to the game... 

Here is my mom and one of my sisters at the game.  She LOVED it!

Since this was the week before Halloween, we celebrated with some sensory/fine motor fun!

The little ones loved playing in and cutting 'monster hair' {cooked spaghetti noodles}.

They gathered 'eyeballs' {ping pong balls and pom poms}with scissor spoons and tongs.

They cut play dough with scissors {more 'monster' hair} and hid and then found jack-o-lantern mini erasers in kinetic sand. {a new favorite}

We voted on our favorite shape and then turned them into bats.

The littles are getting SO good at cutting.  Check out the concentration!

I love how these turned out!

After reading 'There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat', we answer comprehension questions.

I put the questions on the TeamBoard and everyone had a clipboard and individual paper to follow along as we went through each question.

They did a wonderful job.

This is one of the activities from my pack available HERE.

It's on sale, along with all my products this weekend.  Everything is 20% off.  Click HERE to take you to my store.

Another favorite story of our class is 'Go Away Big Green Monster'.  We read the book, and then retold the story with a puppet.

We then painted paper plates green and when they were dry…

we created our own very special green monsters.

We used our favorite color for his mouth and number of teeth for our age.  A balloon nose, pipe cleaner ears, yellow eyes, and strips of purple felt for hair.

My favorite part is how they all turned out unique!

Link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching and let us know about your Five for Friday!

Thanks for reading!  Have a Happy and safe Halloween!  :)

Tricks and Treats Blog Hop!

I'm participating in a fabulous SPED tricks and treats blog hop.  You can follow along and pick up some great ideas for tricks played in the classroom, along with some very special treats {freebies to use, too}!

Of course for me teaching preschool is the best because my little sweeties are at that tender age where they can be easily 'tricked'.  I love reading 'spooky' stories and 'knocking' on the door when the book calls for it or turning out the lights as I am reading the story {I arrange these things ahead of time with my para}.  They fall for it every time!  My favorite books to read are 'Five Little Pumpkins, 'Inside a House That is Haunted', and 'Big Pumpkin'.

I also LOVE using my water table for Halloween sensory activities.

After reading 'Even Monsters Need Haircuts', 

I have my little ones cut cut spaghetti noodles with play dough or blunt scissors.  To make, simply cook noodles according to package directions, then add 1/2 cup oil after the water is drained to keep the noodles from sticking together. 

Another super fun sensory activity to use for this time of year is to make green slime and add some wiggle eyes to the mix.  If you would like to make your own, here is the recipe:

Every year, I have my little ones practice trick or treating at school.  We decorate a small paper bag.  {Sometimes I will decrease the size on a copy machine and then glue the visual steps of trick or treating on the bag to be referred to, if needed}  I also take a copy with me to point to each step as we go. Either my students will bring a simple costume to wear or we use some dress up clothes from the classroom.  I arrange ahead of time the classrooms or people in the school we will visit.  

You can ask the parents send in a bag of candy and pass these bags out to anyone who is helping with this activity. Before we go out, we practice, practice, practice what to do.  My hope is that after practicing, when the parents take their children out, it will run more smoothly.

Now is a great time to stock up on little bags of M & M's to use for sorting, graphing, and counting activities.  Enjoy these mats as another freebie.  Print on card stock and laminate to reuse.

 

Thanks to 

Creative Clips for the border clipart.

Now follow along to the next stop to grab some more ticks and treats!

Check out what Mrs. D's has for you!

All Things Pumpkins!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for a peek at this week's activities.

This week has been 'all things pumpkin'.  

Our Pumpkin theme was used to work on color identification as well as coloring in a designated space.

The littles worked really hard on this.

We also used shapes we have been learning to make jack-o-lanterns.  After pulling a shape from a box, each learner found the shape in their tray and placed it on the pumpkin for eyes, nose, or mouth.

These cards and student recording sheet were used to work on shape identification. I have been pleasantly surprised with how well my sweeties are learning uncommon shapes, such as trapezoid, and pentagon.  They are rock stars!

We used the poem "Five Little Pumpkins" to learn about ordinal numbers.

They pointed to and/or identified the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth pumpkin.

Everyone then made their own 'Five Little Pumpkins' poem.

I love how they turned out.

 

We also made sun catcher pumpkins by brushing liquid starch onto wax paper, adding different colors of tissue paper squares, and  then brushing a layer of liquid starch over the tissue paper.

After it dried, we placed a cut out pumpkin shape over the colorful squares….

 

They took great pride in their work and comment often about how beautiful the pumpkins are.

We also got in a little fine motor work by hammering golf t's into pumpkins.

Every year, this is a favorite!

I just posted my Pumpkin Math Activities Pack that includes many of this week's activities.  If you are interested, you can find it HERE.

 

Thanks for reading!  Have a great day.  :)

Learning Disguised as Fun!

 I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday to tell about our week of learning disguised as fun, fun, fun!

This week we were able to take a trip to the zoo.  We learned about webbed feet and how they help different kinds of birds and animals swim.  The little ones then made a craft of a flamingo.

Then we took a tour of the zoo to view webbed feet!  

Lucky for us this swan was showing off her webbed feet.  :)

Our next stop was off to see the polar bear.  He put on quite a show for us!

It was so cool to see the penguin exhibit.  Everyone had SO much fun.

 We have been reading Laura Numeroff books.  After we read "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake", I placed letter tiles in small plastic cupcakes.

After the learners opened the cupcakes and got their letter out, they either named the letter or tried to figure out the letter name by saying the abc's until they got to the letter they needed. This was a way for them to try to figure out the letter on their own.

 Later, they played with kinetic sand to fill the cupcakes and tiles.  They had so much fun.

The nursery rhyme we focused on this week was 'Humpty Dumpty'.

 We acted it out while saying the nursery rhyme.

Then we made the page for our nursery rhyme book.  You can find the patterns HERE.

Our shape this week was trapezoid.  I had our sweetie pies complete this page later in the week to go along with the shape posters hung in our room.

One of the great things about being in an elementary school is learning what the kindergarten teachers teach their students.  They use the term vertices instead of corners, so that is what I am teaching my little learners.  They are doing amazingly well learning that a fancy name for corner is vertices.

You can find my shape posters with both corners and vertices listed, along with my student work pages HERE in my newest pack.

It's half price right now.  :)

Last week we learned about fire safety.

The little ones scribbled with white and gray crayons, and then cut out flames.

I hung the completed 'smoke and fire' on an easel. They took turns 'staying low' and crawling to safety.

We also practiced 'stop, drop, and roll'.

Everyone did a fabulous job.

We also painted construction paper t-shirts and then sequenced the steps to reinforce this concept.

We also made these adorable fire trucks to go along with our theme.  It's a great way to practice listening to and following directions.

I wil be posting about the patterns for these activities soon.

Go to Doodle Bugs Teaching to post about your week or read what others are doing in their classrooms!

Thanks for reading.  Have a great day.  :)