Fall Games!

Check out these fall new games and activities in the  Pre-K Tweets TPT shop! 

Tons of board games to enhance your fall learning centers!  

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Pre-k-Tweets/Category/Fall

Fall 2014

 Fall is here! ...the smell of a pumpkin spice Scentsy in the classroom...one of my favorite times of the school year! Here's a couple of photos of this year's set up. Here is the link to last year's set up and room arrangement. 

Discovery center - blank canvas awaiting our fall collage

Finished fall collage.. I am starting something new this year called seasons canvases. On this canvas students tried out collage and color mixing with paints. Our winter canvas might feature some recycled bottle cap art and more color mixing with winter colors!

Blocks area - variety of blocks, pumpkins from Goodwill, felt puppet tree from a garage sale, a silo toy, and loose parts (sunflowers & fake leaves). 

Our Owl art with fake leaves for wings and cupcake papers for eyes. 

Our marbled leaves in another area of the Discovery center. 

Marbled leaves were super simple to do..a little messy though! Next year I will invest in a squeegee.  Drip some paints into a container of shaving cream. I used a turkey roasting pan so I could just throw it away. Then, swirl the paints with  a paintbrush. Lay the paper cut out leaf on top then take it off. Drag a squeegee or piece of cardboard over the leaf to remove the excess and let dry.   

Discovery center table - life cycle charts, fake pumpkins, fake leaves.

Sensory tub - farm animals, apples, and green peas

Math center -  I picked up a really cute color/counting squirrel and nut game from Target this weekend!

Reading area - fall/farm books and a scarecrow felt board

ABC area - abc games, fall books, corn letter seek bottle, and fall decor from Goodwill

Pretend center - fall market with pumpkins galore, pumpkin pie, corn, and apples, oh and a cash register and fall books!

Fall Mega Pack!

Check out the new Fantastic Fall mega pack in Pre-K Tweets TPT shop! This pack includes vocabulary, math/literacy games, and even fall themed calendar cards...on sale now! 

Melted Crayon Pumpkins!

 Today we discussed heat and change (properties of matter!).  Students were asked why and how does a popsicle, snow, ice cream, butter, cheese, ect. melt. We then experimented with crayon color combos and a crafting heat gun. I read somewhere that a heat gun would prove faster results than a hair dryer.  It only took a few seconds for the crayons to start dripping.  Students even unwrapped the old crayons that we used in our experiment (fine motor practice). Of course after we unwrapped the crayons, little bits of paper were everywhere. We wrapped a little tape around the students hands and called it a clean up game..and in no time the carpet was spotless!  This is a fun activity that I would definitely do again! I would have used our big pumpkin but it decayyyyed! "Decay" is a popular word in our classroom lately. We watched a Sid the Science kid video and after that we've had decayed cheetos, celery, and even a decayed banana peel was found at home and brought to show! YUCK! : )  Happy fun friday!

Fall Room Tour! (Part 2)

Our math center!  

We used real pumpkins in whole group math to practice ordinal numbers. Students took turns placing the pumpkins in order. Then, a student was selected to take a pumpkin away and hide it as the other students closed their eyes. They took turns guessing which number/pumpkin was missing! Now the pumpkins have moved into our math center! Students can have hands-on practice with ordinal numbers or they can act out the story below.

There are a couple versions of "Five Little Pumpkins." I wrote this version to incorporate the pumpkin life cycle/production sequence. 

These mini pumpkins and leaves were in the Target dollar aisle! I made the cards on photoshop.

This is an idea I found on pinterest. They are fall tactile number cards! Students had to carefully punch the dots/count 10 and punch out the dots on the numeral with a thumbtack. I know what you are thinking..20 four year olds with thumbtacks..SCARY!  ..but amazingly they were so careful and focused (and quiet!) while they were punching dots with the tacks! Then they glued seed pods (beans) to their cards.  This activity idea is from: http://thepreschooltoolboxblog.com/?p=1216

Here is a photo of our fall harvest pretend center..

I love having  books, vocabulary, and writing in most of the centers! Fellow teachers that I worked with last year showed me how to incorporate literacy into practically any center! 

Our discovery center! 

In this center we have: color sensory bottles, rainbow observing with cd's/flashlights, rainbow light up wands, rain stick,magnets, ABC/number wood chips, tree slice, fall leaves, and colored feather sorting. 

We also have white boards for writing vocabulary, life cycle sequencing cards (from: http://www.montessoriforeveryone.com/assets/PDF/Life_Cycle_of_a_Pumpkin.pdf), binoculars, seasonal books, and our ongoing experiments! 

The teacher across the hall introduced me to "Sid the Science Kid" videos!  She always does something fun in class to go along with the Sid experiment.  She had her class do an experiment with decaying bread, clean/dirty apples, and part of a pumpkin.  We tried the bread and the apples. For the bread, we had the students squirt the slices with water, place in ziploc baggie, and hang in the window. For the apple, we passed around a slice of apple and talked about germs on our hands. The clean untouched apple was placed straight into the mason jar. It took less than a week for us to notice the differences! And my oh my is it disgusting! I am amazed at this experiment! The kids love saying "decay." I had one little boy say at lunch, "I'm eating decayed cheeto today!"  Science is my favorite part of the day! : ) 

We've had a pumpkin seed taste test and also some pumpkin investigations/observations! Did I mention I love fall?!! 

 We had tested a pumpkin in  class to see if it would sink or float. Then we made boats out of tin foil, floated them, and then sank them with marbles. Students counted how many marbles sank their boat ..love it when science and math combine!  Each student took home a mini pumpkin over the weekend with instructions to report back on how they sank their pumpkin (without using their hands!) I love how their ideas were their own. Some students wrote word for word how they did their experiment, some drew a picture, some parents even took pictures! A few ideas were to scoop it out and let it soak overnight, tape a hammer to it, tape legos to it, and tape a toy plane to it... (see if it flies instead of sinks! HA!)


Check out another fall setup HERE!

Fall Room Tour! - 2013 (Part 1)

Here's an update for ya! I moved into my new classroom in August days before school started. It is now October (!!!) and I finally have my classroom pretty much arranged/organized to how I want it. I have less shelves than last year and our school is going for a more natural look...so I am slowly weeding out my lime green/hot pink things and replacing them with neutral colors and baskets. My only problem now is, when I buy something,  have to decide whether I want the new item for my classroom or my house. I love baskets and my house is decorated in neutral colors! 

This is our sensory center. In my previous classroom I had a whole sensory tub/table. This year I don't have one for my classroom (we do have some for outside sand/water play)...so I found this shallow tub at Target and set it on a low table. (Works great!)  Currently the tub is filled with oatmeal, fall scents, apples, pumpkins, shovels, measuring cups, farm animals, and plastic alphabet letters. 

Above our sensory table is our pumpkin patch!  For a math activity, students had to draw a large circle, cut it out, and practice measuring
height/width with unifix cubes! They did AWESOME!
I love all the variations of their pumpkin sizes! 

Our ABC center! 

In our ABC center we have: Alphabet books, magnadoodles, highway letters with matchbox cars, a magnet letter match game, upper/lower case letter matching popsicles, Handwriting Without Tears wood pieces, an Apple Pie letter match game, alphabet bead stringing..

Alphabet letter stringing: I have a ton of pipe cleaners and this is a great way to use them up!  I change out the pipe cleaner colors with the seasons. The ABC beads are from a craft store. Students can practice spelling their name or words from vocab. cards!

...we also have a variety of writing utensils (including melted crayon hearts, pencils, colored pencils, skinny markers), paper, old keyboard, name cards, dry erase boards, stencils for story writing, mini mailbox,  wikki stix, and mini alphabet board books!

Birthday bags..they are finally up!  Some of my co-teachers have some adorable hanging birthday bags! We use these to sing the months of the year.  I covered reg. brown gift bags with scrapbook paper from Hobby Lobby. The book of scrapbook paper included all these fun rustic chevron prints!

This collage art is not in our room..but just outside our door.  We call them our "Fall Trees."  Students chose what items and how many items to glue on..and where! 

See Fall Room Tour part 2 HERE!
Also..check out another fall setup  

Autumn!

Here is a simple apple pie matching game to make for your ABC center: print off pie clip art and apple slices, cut & laminate, and write upper/lower case letters. You could easily change out the letters with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser..OR you could switch it and make it a math game! Students can record their letter or number matches on paper, white board, or even a magnadoodle! 

Mmmmm...the smells of Autumn!  We passed around spices, used our "sense of smell," and guessed what the spices could be!  Here are some of the spices we smelled: cinnamon, cloves, apple pie spice, pumpkin pie spice, nutmeg, and dried orange spice (Target!). After smelling the spices, students can create spice art! Mix a little watered down white glue with spices. Use paint brushes and thick paper. Students will take home some sweet smelling paintings! 

We set up a practical life station during centers. Students were able to grate their own cinnamon! I found these large cinnamon sticks at an Amish bakery but McCormick sells smaller cinnamon sticks (near the spices in the baking aisle of the grocery store).

I don't think I will ever get this song out of my head!  The kids love it and it is quite catchy! "Herman the Worm" by The Learning Station.  We gave each student a worm (half of a pipe cleaner). This song includes counting, sequencing, and measurement!  Students stuff their "worm" in their hand and as Herman eats, students pull out a little bit more of their pipe cleaner..showing small, bigger, longer!! ..and then he burps! ..and he goes back to small again.. It's a fun song!! doowop doowop! 

Here is another activity we did this week... I first saw the idea on kindergartenkindergarten.com.  It's called "Find the Worm."  I printed off apples..laminated them...and then used a sharpie to write the numerals, number words, and counting dots.  (Write over the laminate..so then later you can wipe it off and use the apples for something else!) We used a small piece of green pipe cleaner for the worm..yarn would work too..(or how about one of those rubber fishing worms!? ..maybe next year!)  We played this activity every day this week as an intro. game for our math group time.  The apples were arranged in a different pattern each day...ABAB..ABC..ABBA.. and after the worm was found I had extra apples on hand so the students could take turns finishing the pattern... Another way to play: Hand out the apples to the students..then they take turns arranging the apples in order...then one student could hide the worm.  Patterning, number identification, counting, colors, and ordering...LOVE IT!

Other things we did with apples this week:

-Finished simple patterns with real apples and created our own patterns with real apples!

-Graphed apples and taste tested apple butter!

-Measured ourselves with real apples, compared heights, and took turns measuring things around the classroom (with apples!)

-Played "Pin the Apple on the Tree" ..used the apples from the pocket chart, masking tape, scarf for blindfold, and butcher paper tree.

-Played "Meet Me at the Top of the Apple Tree" game.. the class was split into two teams. We laid out our butcher paper tree on the carpet and I had drawn a grid up the trunk. Teams rolled a jumbo dice and raced their beanie babies up the tree! (We used a worm and a snake..a chipmunk or bird would work too! OR print off clip art and laminate!) 

-We went apple picking! Red pom poms were hidden all over the classroom. Students worked with partners to collect 5 apples in their baskets. (We used berry baskets that I scored at a garage sale!)  Students had to determine with their partners if they had five apples, more than five, or less than five.

-Apple Eruptions!!! ..Students took turns stirring a bowl  filled with a cup of baking soda and some spices (Students used their sense of smell and they chose their spices..cinnamon, apple pie spice, etc.)...  Then, we dropped food coloring (experimented with a couple of colors!) into vinegar. I cut out holes on the tops of apples..Students took turns filling the apples with the baking soda mixture and (carefully) pouring the vinegar over top. We watched and listened to all the millions of  tiny popping bubbles.. At one point, we decided to try three apples at one time, each apple with a different color.. and then we watched the colors mix. This activity allowed students to use their senses, predict, experiment, and witness cause and effect! It was a super cool experiment that I highly recommend!  

Click here for more fall fun from Pre-K Tweets! 

Little Red Hen

I just found the photos from our Little Red Hen on one of my many camera cards... We did this unit after Fall/Pumpkins/Apples.. leading up to Thanksgiving..and right before our Gingerbread Man unit.  Our student "I Can" statements were about answering questions/asking questions about the story, counting sets, and identifying shapes. 

We had many cooking/baking projects including mixing homemade bread! The kids measured and mixed and I took the bread home and baked it.  I found a really easy recipe from Steamy Kitchen http://steamykitchen.com/168-no-knead-bread-revisited.html  The post says "so easy a 4 year old can do it!"and  it was THAT easy! It is no fail, really tasty bread that I have made several times now for family since our unit. 

For counting sets, students counted baked snacks like crackers and even mini chocolate cookies (cookie crisp cereal!).  We read many different versions of the little red hen, including "Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza." Students created paper plate pizzas with paper shapes..they turned out really cute..have to find the photo I took..it's somewhere on one of those camera cards : )

Sign for our pretend bakery that I made last year.  I used images of real life bakers, breads, and pastries. I found these great stickers at Michaels. 

My mother in law made this really cool pie.. she has been making all kinds of "amigurumi" foods and characters for our classroom! 

Small, medium and large amigurumi cookies, fortune cookies, felt cinn. rolls, and cookies... varied textures and sizes!

I picked up some baking tins and trays from the dollar store for our pretend bakery : )

Here are some of our read aloud stories.. I highly recommend "Cook-a-Doodle-Doo!"  For next year I plan to have the class make mini strawberry shortcakes.. wouldn't that be fun?! I put some of our stories in our pretend center along with some cookbooks/recipe cards I took from my kitchen.

We read "The Best Mouse Cookie" before we counted sets with cookie crisp cereal...it's so much fun to incorporate literacy with other subjects!

For the sensory tub, students sifted, poured, measured, and drew letters in flour.

We opened up our play dough center for molding and baking cupcakes and cookies.  I also added in some fall cookie cutters. I found the plastic table cloth for cheap at Big Lots. They had a ton of cute table cloths, including yellow and teal with white polka dots! (Which I also just had to pick up) : )

Cherry pie was the theme for our math center.. After the read aloud I kept the book in the center..students played hi ho cherrio (which I found at a garage sale for a buck over the summer!). I had some mini pie tins and created a little play dough counting game. 

And TADAAAA!!! my new blocks center curtains!  The fabric is from Hobby Lobby. LOVE!