Vegetable Soup!

Last week we learned about flower gardens/water gardens..so this week we focused on vegetable gardens. I(and the kids too!) had a lot of fun this week!

Here are some of the activities we did:

-Read food books including "Growing Vegetable Soup" and "Gus the Horrible Eater"

-Planned our own vegetable soup..students drew and labeled vegetables (with their own pre-k spelling!) and we "put them in the pot" (butcher paper pot)

-My assistant read a Spanish book about making soup..each student added a felt vegetable to the felt pot...then they played with the felt set as a center.

-Counted vegetable syllables..highlighted letters in vegetable words..discussed beginning letter sounds of vegetables. 

-Sang "Vegetable Soup" and "Making Pizza with My Momma"

-Did the fingerplay "Peter Rabbit and the 10 little Carrots"
-sand rhyming words (included potato, tomato!!)
-played Mr. Potato Head game and hot potato

-Measured vegetables with unifix cubes and compared the sizes!

-Played vegetable bingo (included letter sounds)

-Had a celery taste test and completed a celery bubble chart (crunchy, green, stringy, watery, etc. and included the 5 senses!)

-Did a celery color experiment (we observed how the leaves drink the water from the roots)

-Planted herbs and voted on names for our two class plants..Tin Tin and Mara (oops we forgot to water them today!)

-Created a tops/above and bottoms/below vegetable chart to show which vegetables grow above and below ground..labeled with pre-k spelling and practiced positional words!

-Had our own farmer's market in the pretend center!

-Sorted seeds and did one-to-one correspondence in the science center.

-Explored the insides of vegetables..counted the seeds inside.

-Stamped with peppers, potatoes, and celery, and paints!

-annnd finally...cooked our very own vegetable soup today!!


....also this week:


-we reached our community "working together" goal of six cupcakes on the board! ..we had cupcakes along with our soup today!


-we attended an exciting assembly this morning where pre-k did an awesome job of singing and doing hand motions to twinkle twinkle and five little ducks!


-we completed all the sunny squares in our weather graph and planned a sunny party for Monday! ..they came up with ideas all on their own and we listed them on the board..they decided to wear their yellow school uniform shirts, drink lemonade, where their sunglasses, and eat yellow foods like bananas. I'm going to add in some "Sun Chips" and probably some yellow candies or iced cookies. 


-we added two HUGE! grasshoppers, a fat little caterpillar, and some snake skin to our science center..all of which the kids found on the playground... all creatures were released at dismissal today :) I guess the kids are a bit over excited about all the spring creepy crawlies on the playground..we studied Eric Carle insects the week before.. a poor frog got squeezed a little too much..because some of our prek friends got a little to excited and well..he's in froggy heaven :(  I hope we never find the snake who lost his skin! yikes!

Math Tubs and April Centers

We recently started our math groups...and they are going great!  The kids are divided into color groups (red group, green group, etc.) I have 5 groups and 5 shoe boxes. 4 kids are in each group. Each shoe box has a cute coordinating colored owl label I made. The image is from the internet and then I did the text, frame, and colors in photoshop. I laminated them and used velcro to attach to shoe boxes. 

We have practiced a lot of graphing lately. We have graphed things from stories we've read, our likes and dislikes, Last week we studied Eric Carle/Insects...I had a mason jar with plastic insects and we estimated then counted the insects daily...we then compared the results at the end of the week.  One of the math tub games for this week was a pattern block graphing game.  The students had to flick the spinner (q-tip stick/paperclip) and then graph/fill in the shape they landed on.  Instead of laminating, I used a plastic page protector.
This print out was free from:  
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Pattern-Block-Activities
This set on teachers pay teachers is great because it also comes with other activities such as a shape tally..We've been doing a daily tally that goes along with our date/number of the day.

This is a big/little number dice roll game.  Students roll two dice then write the bigger number under the big frog, and the smaller number under the small frog.  They did very well! This was also free and it is from:http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Big-and-Little-Frogs-Number-Dice-Game
I can change the clip art and make it a new game. 

I'm not a fan of worksheets but since we've been studying flower gardens this week ..and honeybees...I made this into a math tub.  It consists of 6 honeybee pages..inserted into plastic page protectors... finish the pattern, circle how many, math to the correct number or size.  My assistant takes one group out in the hall and I stay in the classroom and monitor, assess, and help with the games.

My assistant played this game with one of the groups. 
It is free from:
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Spring-Showers-Representing-Numbers-Math-Center
The students have to match the number on the dice card, to the written number, to the number symbol, and to the tally.
At the end, they practice writing a number in three different ways. The free download comes with that sheet also. 

This is a roll, color, count game I found for free from:
http://www.kidscount1234.com/mathcentersandgames.html

Here is one of our new centers..teacher pretend!  They LOVE this center. They get to use the teacher pointer, listen to ABC Disco or Learning Letter Sounds, and write on the board.  I made each letter on the alphabet on photoshop and found images on the internet..once I figure out how to provide a download, I will post it... I made the calendar number cards on photoshop also..they are chicks and bunnies for April.  Every morning we do our pattern calendar, write and tally the number, introduce our "Friend of the Day" with name cheer and handwriting name practice,  graph the weather, and sing!

Here is a photo from another one of our centers this week.. I have a sand table that has pots, dirt, rocks, and flowers...and then I have another sensory table for our "water garden." It consists of foam lily pads, flowers, colored rocks, jewel stones, frogs, and ducks. We toured our school's garden courtyard that had lilies, lily pads, daffodils, irises, frogs, turtles, and fish!!  I need to go take some photos of that area..it is AMAZING! We read a children's book about Claude Monet this week..and then drew water garden lilies, fish, turtles, flowers with crayons and watercolored over it.  They are beautiful and are hanging above our sensory tables.  Will post photos soon!

Another center this week was flower shop... I had some left over wedding flowers and added some dollar store daises.some plastic cups from home for vases... ribbon...tissue paper...cash register.. they had a lot of fun in this center! Pinterest has a lot of great vocab. that I've been using with each theme in the centers. 

Last week we were learning about insects..this week we are learning about flower gardens.  So we tied the two together and completed a pollination experiment/study.  We read "Where there's a Bear, there's trouble" and read "Number Bees."  We did our experiment with cheese balls instead of cheetos and they were so excited! Idea and above photo is from pinterest and little kinder warriors.

Another exciting thing has happened this week... I bought my car!  It is a Nissan Xterra and I am loving it!  It is especially great because I've been using it to haul stuff to school!  Aren't these butterflies cool!!?? I bought them at Ross for $4.99 each!! I am going to hang them from the ceiling in my science center next year. 

Setting up my new room

Welcome to Pre-K Teacher Tweets!  I am a first year teacher and I recently started teaching Pre-K. I'm taking over a pre-k class in a public school..it's a little different than starting in August. I am teaching at a year round school with breaks in between..so we will have about two and half months before the end of the semester...but I'm looking forward to having my own classroom and starting this new adventure! 
One of my first endeavors was organizing learning spaces in my classroom. There were existing centers in the classroom but they were pretty bare. I wanted to create an environment that was bright and cheery. I wanted the room to be student friendly..everything in kid reach will be available for them to use. (I have an amazing back room storage area with many cabinets and a large counter space for teacher supplies!) 
My first project was the reading center. I purchased bins at dollar tree..they were the perfect teal color I was going for! The only downfall is they are not very sturdy around the sides..at least they were only a dollar and hopefully will last till the end of the year. I added stickers (yellow circle, blue rectangle, purple square, etc.) to themed labels and then added stickers to the books.  I put minimal books in each bin so the kids could practice putting them in the right bins. So far the kids have done super with keeping the books organized! Better than I expected for pre-k. They actually made a game out of it one day..seeing who could find the shape stickers the fastest.

I use post-it notes for EVERYTHING!

This laminating machine was given to me as a gift for my new classroom! It works SO well! Of course the school will laminate things for me for free..I will use my laminating machine for small projects and things I need right away.. Scotch makes laminating sheets in various sizes and they are not that expensive for how many you get in a package. The laminate is a hard plastic..more durable than the school's.

I made the labels on Photoshop using clip art from
Microsoft Word and free polka dot labels from
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Polka-Dot-Classroom-Labels-Free 
I will post more photos of the finished reading center and classroom soon!
I have taught for one week with this new class! I have experienced two conference nights (which I turned into meet the teacher nights), writing lesson plans, teaching rules and procedures, and giving assessments..report cards are due next week! I must say the first day and first week has been AMAZING!!  I have wonderful co-teachers and a great assistant who have all been so helpful!  I stayed with the same theme "Community" as my co-prek teachers but I did not go into the theme very much. We discussed and described community helpers and read books about community helpers...I focused a lot more on rules and procedures. I am so grateful to my intern hosts and to the pre-k teacher I previously assisted for...classroom management is key!  I have learned so much from you and my experiences!!! And that is probably the biggest reason why my first week went so smoothly! Students have been practicing hallway procedures, clean up procedures, ect. and they've got the Signal 1, Signal 2, Signal 3 procedure down pat! I created a staying on target three circle chart for individual behavior.. and a "Sweet Behavior" chart for students to work together. (will post photos soon!) 
Thank you to my mom who sent a HUGE balloon bouquet the first day..each student was super excited to take home a balloon! She had the bouquet surprise delivered and she even had the store match the color of the balloons to the theme of my room!
 The first week is over..whew!! My stress and nerves of anticipation of the first day/week have disappeared and I am excited for students to experience the Eric Carle unit that I am presenting next week!