The Little Old Lady Who Wasn’t Afraid of Anything

We read this story today before our Harvest Party and I made a cute little powerpoint to review the sequence of scarecrow parts.  If you touch the shoes, shirt, etc. they will move.  Touch the lady to move to the next page.   (Download from Scribd for best results!)

 

Enjoy!

Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything

The most important classroom rules

In 4K, I need my students to learn their letters and numbers, write their name, and learn letter sounds; however, more importantly I need them to be a good friend, be responsible, and DREAM BIG!  I created this little poster for my classroom to remind my kiddos and those who enter what is most important in our classroom.

 

Classroom Rules Copy

Enjoy!

Take a peek at my (next) week…

I always love reading the peek at my week posts over at

 

so I just had to share my own.  This is actually the first week this school year that I’ve been able to really sit down and type everything out.  So far, I had just been going off a list of things I wanted to accomplish/read/investigate and making sure I did as much as I could.  I’m sure that’s not the most effective way to teach, but it’s all I could seem to manage.  Next week, we begin our parent observations so I really needed to get organized!  Parents will come in and observe our class for the entire class period and then we will have a 15 minute conference – yikes!  This is going to be a long couple of months. 

 

Well, anyway, here’s my plans for next week.  (Keep in mind, I have an AM group and a PM group.  Each class is 2.5 hours long.)

 

 

Peek and My Week 10_10

Okay, enough posting from me for one weekend! 

More Firefighter Fun!

Here is an activity I created to use this week with my little ones in our guided investigation stations.  The Kindergarten classes are working on labeling in their Stephanie Harvey unit, so I wanted to give my littles a taste of the labeling fun!  Please leave me a comment if you use this activity!  The firefighter image is from Coloring Pages for Kids.
Firefighter Labeling Actiivty

Fire Prevention Week

Next week we will be learning about the letter F and fire prevention.  My partner always uses the fingerplay Five Little Firefighters, so I wanted to create a powerpoint to use on our smartboards.  I love all the photographs that Microsoft Publisher offers, too, which ties in nicely with all of our nonfiction books!
The powerpoint looks a little odd in the scribd preview, but looks fine once downloaded.  Please leave a comment if you like or use this powerpoint!  Enjoy. 
Five Little Firefighters

Block Play Freebie!

Great way to post learning intentions/targets for all to see…block play is SO important!
Blocks - What are we learning?

Teaching (and learning!) Self-Control

I posted this on my classroom blog tonight, as well, but thought others could benefit from reading it as well!
My husband shared an interesting article with me this evening about how children acquire new knowledge.  He was intending it for me to read and relate to our 11-month-old daughter, but the following excerpt relates well to the four- and five-year-olds!

Teaching Self-Control
Aamodt and Wang also emphasize the importance of teaching your children self-control from an early age.
"This is really critical because there are so many things parents want to do when they read parenting books," he says. "They take steps to teach their children math or reading ... but a big thing we can do for our children is to do the best to foster the development of self-control and willpower. Self-control and the ability to restrain impulses is associated with success at every age, whether it means being able to read at age 4, or being able to restrain impulses at a later age, or even what your peers think of you in high school. At all of these ages, willpower and self-control is a stronger predictor of academic success than IQ."
When children are young, they can learn self-control by focusing on any fun activity — whether that means studying martial arts or playing with dolls and planning a make-believe tea party.
"It gives the child practice at planning and organizing a series of topics to achieve a desired goal," says Aamodt. "When you're planning a tea party, you can't be acting like a fighter pilot. You have to be acting like a lady having a tea party. So pretending is one of the earliest types of exposure most kids get to planning and organizing their actions. And the more you practice that, the better you're going to be at it."
Making sure your child has fun while learning self-control is vitally important. Aamodt and Wang recommend, for instance, telling your child to pretend he or she is protecting a castle instead of just saying, "Stand still."
"Taking advantage of a child's natural sense of fun is a terrific way to instill these things," says Wang. "This is not the kind of thing that works well if it's forced. It can be something as easy as pretending to guard the castle or playing a take-turns game where you say, 'I'm going to draw an ear on this piece of paper, and when you see an ear, then it's your time to listen. And if you see a mouth on this other piece of paper, then it's your time to talk.' So all of these things can be done in very simple ways — in ways that are often fun — and the more fun it is, the more likely the child is to pay attention for a longer period of time. These things are fun, they don't cost money, and anybody can do it."

Read the entire article here.