Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear!

Every year since I started teaching, I do a week with a teddy bear theme. We read books with teddy bears, sing teddy bear songs, and on the last day we have a teddy bear Olympics Day. On this day, the kids complete different gross motor activities with the teddy bears at their side.  They walk a balance beam, do a teddy bear toss, sort and graph all the teddy bears, measure the teddies with unifix cubes, and sing and dance with their bears. The teddies can come  to visit on the final day or can stay for the week as long as behavior is good. I make this decision based on the class I have that year and what they can handle. The Teddy Olympics and the letter I send home comes from The Little Giraffes website. If you have never visited, I highly recommend this site for Early Childhood teacher, www.littlegiraffes.com.

The one area I have struggled with for this theme is dramatic play. Last year I attempted a Goldilocks and the Three Bears center, but there wasn't enough action there for the kids. They got bored quickly! This year I was so excited with my idea for dramatic play! A Build-A-Bear Workshop in our classroom. I have no idea how popular Build-A-Bear is in other states, but in Missouri (where the corporate offices are located), most children have been to, or at least heard of Build-A-Bear. This center turned out super cool and the kids really enjoyed it!

Welcome to our Build-A-Bear Workshop in the The Little Owls classroom!

Pick a bear!
I asked co-workers to send in any old stuffed animals they were wanting to get rid of. We de-stuffed the animals with a slit down the back (sounds kind of gruesome) and hot glued some Velcro on the opening so they could open and close the animals.

The Stuffing Station!
After the kids chose their bear, they went to the stuffing station to fill it up as much or as little as they wished. We talked about the more amount of stuffing, the harder the bear. The less amount of stuffing, the softer the teddy!

Some of our decorations!

After the bears are stuffed, the kids take them to the dressing room and choose an outfit.

We had bear pants, dresses, shirts, full outfits, and hats to choose from.



Get a home!
In the "real" store, these are called bear condos, but since our kiddos wouldn't know that term,
 we just called these their homes.

When finished, the kids went to the check-out counter to pay for their bear.
We had a cash register, money, and I even made fake Build-a-Bear gift cards.

 

Our 5 Senses!

This was a fun week for our kiddos as they learned about our 5 senses!  We tried different foods to learn about our taste buds, we looked at our environment through different lenses to experiment with our sight, we played a game where we had to guess the sounds, we felt many different textures, and we played a game where we smelled different scents to guess what they were.

We painted with kool-aid water colors, so our papers smelled yummy!

We used our sense of touch to feel diffeent textures on our feet.

I guess he thought this was a weird feeling!

Not too sure about this one!

Our smelly bottles. We used our sense of smell to guess the scent in the bottle. I dipped cotton balls in different scents such as: vinegar, vanilla, cinnamon, strawberry, garlic, and pickles. The kids LOVED this activity!

See?!!

Hmmm, what is it?

He needed to come to the front and stick his entire face in!!!LOL!

At the end of the week, we completed this sheet by lifting the flap and drawing a
 picture of something we could use for this sense.

One child said we can see a tree, touch blueberries, taste an apple,
hear a baby crying, and smell cinnamon.

A Jelly Belly taste test. I gave each kiddo the same flavor jelly bean and they had to guess what the taste was. I used some common flavors and some different, but familiar flavors such as: cherry, strawberry, popcorn, coffee, orange, and chocolate.

They had fun with this!

Trying to figure it out.

Pete the Cat Week and Learning about Colors

This week we focused on the two Pete the Cat books, "I Love My White Shoes" and "Rocking in My School Shoes". We were learning all about our colors and color mixing. When reading the book, "Rocking in My School Shoes", we realized our school had lots of different classrooms too. We found a note left from Pete and went on a hunt around our school looking for him. While walking around the building, we got to stop at the Library, Art room, Music room, Gym, and computer room for a brief peek and a quick meet the teacher.

Exploring color by mixing different color water with droppers.

Pete the Cat sensory table filled with (clean) kitty litter, little shoes, yarn, and rakes.

Sorting pom poms by colors and using our fine motor muscles to pick them up with clothespins.

Making color volcanoes with baking soda and colored vinegar. I loved watching their faces when it really fizzed!!!

Color volcanos. Another way to explore with color mixing.

Making a tissue paper collage, then spraying with water, and watching the effects.

We made our very own class book about our favorite shoes. Each page said, "I love my  ________ shoes." and had a picture of the child's shoes along with a drawing of their shoes, and a picture of that student so the others could "read" the book too.

 

 

 

 For snack we had a color mixing experiment with red, yellow, and blue icing. We made green, orange, and purple. Next we ate it with some pretzels and animal crackers. YUM!

First Week of School! All About Me and My friends!

We spend a lot of time during our first week focusing on rules, routines, and procedures. We also spend a LOT of time with re-teaching and modeling appropriate behavior at school. During this first week it is very hard to get through a lot of actual "teaching" and activities or lessons that I plan, so I try to keep things very simple to start out.

The pictures I took on the first day and sent home with the kiddos for their parents.

Some of the activities we did during the first week of school. Starting off very simply so that we can learn how to play.

 



An owl we made to help us feel more like a "Little Owls" class community



Getting ready to make "friendship fruit salad". We each brought in a piece of fruit to add to our salad. Each fruit was different, just like each child in a class is different.

We cut it all up!

Then mixed it together; each taking turns stirring.

We ate it all up! Each piece of fruit tasted great alone; but combined, it tasted even better! Each student is great by themselves, but combined as a class, they can do amazing things!

 

The Little Owls Classroom!

 

 

Our classroom!

 

 

I love the curtains! I have always just had a valance to go at the top, and it just seemed so small for these tall windows. When I was peeking into other rooms at the beginning of the year, I saw these long curtains in a first grade room. I knew I had to have them, and when she told me they were $20 for all four panels, I rushed to get them! They are actually twin bed sheets. I just bought each panel separately as one twin, flat bed sheet for $5 each, cut a slit at each side of the folded end, and slid them onto spring rods. Turned out beautiful! Thanks Mrs. Asberry for the idea! 

Our calendar time wall in our circle area. At the top left is a Scholastic letter sounds poem flip chart. I LOVE this! There is a different song for each letter and they are all set to a familiar tune the children would know. The songs use lots of words that have that letter's sound. In the middle we will display our star student. The top right has our months poster, below that is the calendar and days of the week poster next to it. On the bottom left is our frog which we dress for the weather.

My new color owls that I made this summer.

Here is our owl tree hanging by the dramatic play area. I made some tissue paper flowers to go in the tree and some owls lanterns that I found on pinterest. On the left is the PVC house my husband made for me to use with our dramatic play center. I made the sheet to fit right over it, making it look a little more like a house. We have transformed this into many different things to go along with our theme of the center.

One of my owl lanterns (made from a lantern I found at Dollar Tree). I accidentally got this oblong cylinder lantern on accident. I was upset, thinking it wouldn't look as good as the round ones. Turns out, this owl is my favorite. Now I will have to try to find more lanterns this shape.

Here is a close-up of the round one. It's cute too!



One more close-up of the tree.

Our classroom tree. We change the leaves with the seasons. This year I decided to use our name owls to help decorate the tree.

We are a PBS school and our class works for "hoots", these cute little owl cutouts. They can earn hoots during their special classes (a music hoot, art hoot, PE hoot, etc), while in line (a hallway hoot), or anytime the majority of the class is showing good behavior. Once we meet our goal of 20 hoots, we have a celebration. This can range from a pj day, to a popcorn and movie day, to an ice-cream sundae party. The kids get to vote for what they want to work towards and we put a picture of that reward on the wall next to our hoots.

Our reminder of how to show "The Windsor Way".

I love to use puppets to teach different concepts in my class. I have to thank one of my former team teacher's for introducing me to this when I student taught in her room. I will never be as good as she is, but she definitely introduced me to this different way to teach. I cannot express how much the kids love this!

Our "Shape Monster" for learning different shapes.