"Over in the Meadow" Felt Board Story

We are studying the weather changes that come in the spring, including the animals coming out when it starts to get warm. So, I decided to read the book Over in the Meadow and made some felt board animals to along with it. This book is great for counting and rhyming and learning about what different animals do. 

Playing with Light and Color Patterns

Snugglepuppy and I have been playing with different apps that allow you to create with light. I will list the ones we have found that we like that are free.

Android:

1. KidsDoodle

This app is lots of fun. You can draw or write with many different brushes including the ones shown in the pic above. You can change the background color, undo and redo brush strokes and the really fun part is you can watch a video of how you made your creation!

2. RotoDoodle

This app is a digital version of a spirograph. It is fun to play with. You can choose the size, color, and pattern. We decided to look for an app like this after buying a spirograph from the dollar store for Snuggle Puppy's prize box and then realizing that it requires a lot of hand strength and hand eye coordination. He's not quite ready for it yet, but this one is much easier to work with.

3.Magic Brush Box (Kaleidoo)

This one is similar to the last spirograph type app. The difference is you can control more of the factors on this one. You can change the type of brush you use and you can draw your own pattern instead of choosing a pattern that will just keep repeating. This app is by the same people as KidsDoodle and you can do the video of how your created your drawing on this one as well.

4. Glow Spin Art

This app is so fun to play with. It spins and you put your finger or stylus on the screen to make spirals out from the center. You can change the speed at which it spins, the size, color, and shape. You can also stop the spinning to take a closer look at it.

Ipad or Iphone

1. Art of Glow

This app is kinda like fireworks. Wherever you touch the screen, shapes explode out everywhere. You can control the shape, color, amount of shapes, size, length of time they last, speed, blink speed, and whether they will renew or burn out. Kids love this one. You can stare at it for hours!

2. Forge of Neon

This is by far my favorite one. You can make patterns in symmetry of 2,4,8,16, or 32. The picture shown above is with 16. Then you can also choose your shape and color. The best part about it, is your pattern is 3-dimensional. You can pinch and zoom, use 2 fingers to move the image on the screen, or use 3 fingers to rotate the image around. It is very interesting to play with.

Hope you found some apps you will try that can be great for teaching math concepts to your kids!

Transition Board

Here is a transition board we are using this year to transition from large group to the next activity, usually going outside.  First, we will put the names of all the kids who are at school today on the hand prints. Then, we will have a child use the pointer to count how many girls and how many boys are here at school today and put the number up on the board.

What are you using to transition this year?

Nutrition Ideas

I'm not dead! Just thought I should start with that since I've been MIA for so long. Here are a few things we've been doing in our class focusing on our topic Food and Nutrition.

Found these pizza slice boxes in the back of a cabinet and decided to use them to make pizza. We added a little red paint to some glue to make the sauce, sprinkled on the cheese (shredded paper) and glued on pepperoni. Easy and fun!

Here is a great chart that my center purchased. It came with all the food cards sort. We put up pictures of the ones we ate for breakfast and lunch in this photo.

2 different graphs we made this week- favorite fruit and favorite vegetable. I liked doing the horizontal and vertical graph so that the children can see just a couple types of the many graphs there are. They get the opportunity to count, compare, and talk about more than and less than. Plus it is about them, so they had a good time. They were really anxious to see which fruit/veggie "won."

Puzzle Piece Names

Another one of our small groups for "All About Me." We had the children spell their names with these puzzle alphabet stickers identifying each letter as they go. We had their name strips with each child's name pre-written on it for them to look at to help them find the letters.  Some of the younger children just wanted to stick random letters everywhere, so we let them do their thing. When they are more ready for this activity, we will try again.

Then we had them count how many letters in their name. As an extension of this, you can have the children graph how many letters their names have and compare whose name has more or less. 

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Tutorial Tuesday: "Capture the Pigs!" Math Game

Hi this is Casey from Second Grade Math Maniac! Thank you Lori for letting me share over here today! 

Okay, so my tutorial is for a math game that you can use with kids at home or in the classroom to build fact fluency.

I am constantly reinforcing with parents how important it is for kids to add and subtract fluency without their fingers. They need to be able to focus on what problems are asking of them and not worrying about how many fingers they are going to need. :)

I made a cute game (with the audience of this blog in mind) to help kids practice adding numbers that equal sums of 10 or 100. 

For my tutorial I used the 100 sum set. 

First I cut apart all of the pigs. I used my paper cutter because I didn't have time to cut each pig out individually, I also think they will laminate better this way. 

Second, I glued the instruction page to the front of a large envelope. 

Third, I glued the barn to the back of the large envelope. After they match the sums they will put the pigs back into the envelope or "barn."

Now all I need to do is laminate and let my students practice! :)

Click on the images download these games from Google Docs! You can have the version with sums to 10 or 100.

Enjoy your week everyone! :)

Thinky Linky Thursday

So sorry, friends. I am completely behind on this. But at least I did get it done before the end of Thursday! 

Most clicked from last week:

Teaching Math Skills through Play from Preschool Powol Packets

Caps for Sale from Mrs. Goff's Pre-K

Thinky Linky Thursday

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Last week's most clicked links were:

Mighty Math Powers with Flowers

from Teaching Munchkins

The Grouchy Ladybug

from Teaching My Blessings

Thanks for linking up and here is a button for those who were featured:

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20 Toddler Goals Fulfilled at the Beach

Well, we are here at the hot, sunny Lake Erie (except for that one day of crazy thunderstorms we got stuck in) for the week and I thought I would share some of the things with you that my toddler has been learning. The objectives I am using come from the draft of the new early childhood content standards for Ohio. The age group is "Younger Toddlers."

OBSERVING YOUR SHADOW

1. Show a sense of satisfaction when making things happen. (Approaches Toward Learning)

2. Recognize self as a separate person with distinct characteristics. (Social and Emotional)

THROWING ROCKS/SHELLS IN THE WATER

3. Using trial and error to discover how things fit and move in space. (Math)

4. Use trial and error and repeat actions to explore objects. (Approaches Toward Learning)

USING TOOLS TO DIG, SCOOP, POUR, AND FILL

5. Repeat actions intentionally to achieve goal. (Approaches Toward Learning)

6.Use objects in new and unexpected ways. (Approaches Toward Learning)

7. Explores the environment through a variety of sensory motor activity. (Approaches Toward Learning)

8. Use both hands together to accomplish a task. (Physical Well-Being and Motor)

GATHERING, COLLECTING, GROUPING ROCKS/SHELLS

9. Pay attention to quantities when interacting with objects. (Math)

10. Notice changes in quantity of objects. (Math)

MATCHING SIMILAR SIZES and COMPARING DIFFERENT SIZES

(disclaimer: my son did not do this, it is just an example)

11. Match 2 objects that are the same. (Math)

12. Shows awareness of the size of objects. (Math)

WRITING IN THE SAND WITH A STICK

(disclaimer: my son also did not do this)

13. Use a full-hand grasp to hold a writing tool to make scribbles. (Language and Literacy)

And here are the rest of the goals/objectives that we covered at the beach while doing all these activities:

14. Purposefully try behaviors to make things happen. (Science) 

EX: scooping and pouring sand, throwing rocks

15. Try out different things with an object to see what happens or how things work. (Science)

EX: throwing rocks at different lengths, at different angles, or different heights

16. Focus on an activity for brief period of time (Approaches Toward Learning)

17. Show emerging signs of responding positively to limits and choices offered by adults to help guide behavior. (Social and Emotional)

EX: reminding child to share toys with other children

18. Walk with increasing coordination and balance. (Physical Well-Being and Motor)

19. Participate in active physical play. (Physical Well-Being and Motor)

20. Follow adult intervention/guidance regarding safety. (Physical Well-Being and Motor)

EX: reminding child not to go too far out into the water

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Study about Cars

We did a car study with the afternoon class a few weeks ago. Here are some of our activities.

These are some streets we made with construction paper in the shape of letters. They can be put together to make different paths and then they drove matchbox cars around it.

We read this book...

and the kids loved this page about the tunnel. Some of them decided to build their own tunnel.

They used the train table lid as a ramp.

Then they went to work building the tunnel at the end.

When the tall one would not stay up easily, I suggested that they build a shorter one.

They had lots of fun racing the cars down the ramp and through the tunnel. As you can see, we also got out some measuring tools and measured and compared the distance each car went when it reached the bottom of the ramp. We predicted whether the big cars or the little cars would go further.

Here are the felt cars I made and below is the chant we did, starting with one car and adding one for each verse.

Here is the source where I got this poem.

We did a graph of our favorite car...

And lastly, I don't have a picture, but we glued red, yellow and green circles on a black rectangle to make traffic lights.

Here are some of the books we read:

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