Wishlist Wednesday: Filling our Bucket

This week's guest blogger is from Filling our Bucket, an awesome mommy blog that you have to check out. This mommy has so many ideas and shares her everyday experiences with her family. So stop on by and enjoy!

 

A wish for for my baby boy.

I love watching my son grow and play everyday. I love watching him learn through his play as he discovers new things in the world around him. Whether it be new skills - like standing up on his own, or realizing something new about a toy - such as the fact the ball not only rolls, but bounces too, watching him learn and grow is one of the greatest joys of being a mom.

When I was pregnant, I dreamed about what my little boy would look like, be like. Would he have my chin? Would he take after Daddy and be a sports fanatic? Would he love music, like Mommy? One of the biggest dreams - and hopes - I had, was that he would be an avid reader, like me.

Reading has always been one of my greatest and most beloved hobbies. And recently, my little boy has shown more and more interest in reading and books. Our nightly reading has gone from one book to three. When he plays in our living room, after a while he will always make a crawling beeline for his little bookshelf and pull a book out to look at. Whenever he does, I take advantage of the opportunity to get down on the floor with him, pull him onto my lap and read to him. As I do, he stares in awe at the pages, the pictures. He will, every once in a while, look up at me with this big smile on his face and then, look back at the book with the same smile. With some books, such as his nightly readings, he knows when the page has ended, and he will turn to the next himself, or look at me expectantly as if to say, "What happens next, Mommy??"

My wish for my son is that he continue to grow in his love of learning, but in particular in his love of reading. I wish for him to let reading expand his imagination, his horizons and his experiences with our world. As he grows older, I wish for reading to be something we can continue to share together as mother and son. A shared love, within a shared life.

Thank you Lori, for having me as a guest blogger today!

Motivational Monday: Thanksgiving Part 2

Source: ishareprintables.com via Christy on Pinterest

Source: bitsotruth.blogspot.com via Nancy on Pinterest

Source: google.com via LK on Pinterest

Source: libby-bonjour.blogspot.com via Aimee on Pinterest

Storytime Sunday: Pets I

This week we have began our pets study. Here are the books we read:

 This is from Lakeshore's Phonics Reader series. I love these books because they come with a big book and several small paperbacks for the kids to look at individually.

Also, they have a list of the sight words in the back.

Here is another of the readers. There are rhyming words in this one and you can give children the opportunity to answer questions about the pictures.

And lastly, we read Fifteen Animals which has a song on CD to go with it. The kids like this song because it has a catchy beat and just wait to see what special names the author gives all the animals!

Happy Reading!

Saturday's Top 5 Laughs

4 Preschool Laughs of the week and a baby laugh thrown in for good measure:

1. Playing pet store: Child 1-“That will be 99 dollars.” Child 2-“I don’t have 99 dollars!”

2. Lunch Time Chat: Child 1-“I’m from Sudan. I love Sudan!” Me-“Have you been there?” Child 1-“No” Child 2- “My mom’s name is Susan.”

3. Choice Time: Child 1 who barely speaks (holding a magnet wand with 2 magnet balls, one attached to each side) “It has ears!”

4. Snack Time: I am putting in attendance at the computer and turn around to Child 1 who says “Look!” and his hand is completely covered in yogurt!

5. The baby is starting to imitate everything we do. The dancing and shaking the head is pretty funny, but this week he has begun to crab crawl. The other day he was crab crawling with a Duplo block in his mouth. He came over to me and stuck in it my mouth and when I bit down on it and wouldn’t let go, he thought it was hilarious and screamed with laughter!

Follow Friday Bloggy Style

Here is my version of #FF for bloggers. I will start with 3 and probably at least one Friday a month will add more. Please don't be offended if your blog doesn't show up right away. There are TONS of great ones out there and it is so difficult to choose only a few. To see the great bloggers who have guest posted for me, check out Wishlist Wednesday feature. Also, I am working on a Blog Love page currently and hoping it will be up soon. Again, I apologize if I miss anyone and feel free to e-mail me and let me know if you would like to be included!

#1

Gotta give a shoutout to TBA though I am sure most teacher bloggers already know about it. This is one of the blogs from which I get a majority of resources these days. They have so many authors now, that it seems like there are new postings every hour! They are worth a follow, so get on it if you haven't already!
#2These guys have pretty much got the market cornered on free classroom materials. From worksheets to posters and many more activities, they have everything you could possibly look for in a freebie site.
#3 This girl has got you covered with lesson plans! Over 1100 followers and going strong, she keeps her readers coming back with tons of ideas and freebies. 
Please check these out and hope you find something new you like!

Thinky Linky Thursday: Pets

We are beginning our unit on pets as the children have shown interest in them by pretending to be cats and other animals while the other students take care of them. So here are a few of the activities we have done this so far.

First, we turned our block area into a pet shop. The kids can use play money to buy pets and pet supplies. The workers at the store can learn how to take care of the pets and count the money. They can also use the blocks to build a house for their pets. We added ads from a pet store to the area as well (not shown in photos).

Then after the pets were purchased, we had to take them outside for a walk, of course.

In dramatic play, we left the area like a house, but added some pets and a pet bed. We will soon be changing this area into a vets office. Stay tuned for more photos.

In the sensory table, we washed animals with soapy water. Though they are not pets, we still wanted to have these animals out to play with because next week we will be comparing wild vs. tame animals.

We used pattern blocks to make animal shapes.

We traced animals with the large stencils.

The kids painted pictures of their pets. Well, it was originally supposed to be a brown dog, but as you can see, some of the kids had more imaginative ideas for colors of animals they wanted to paint.

The home activity that we sent home was to draw or cut out pictures of their favorite pet. Here is some of the work the kids did. I LOVE the writing!

And lastly, we just got out some table games and puzzles relating to animals.

Here are just a couple of pics of the kids with their pretend and real(hermit crab) class pets!

What are you doing with your kids? Link up and share!

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Wishlist Wednesday: Exploring Pre-K

This week's guest blogger is from Exploring Pre-K. Please check out her new blog and support her as she begins her quest as a public blogger. I am sure she has lots of fun things to share and I am so glad she agreed to guest post for me!

Hello everyone at Cachey Mama's Classroom!  I was excited and honored to be asked to be a guest blogger here since all the blogging I do is behind a invite only website.  I have a daily classroom blog where the excitement of our day is posted but since there are LOTS of pictures involved it has to be a parents only blog.  Right when I got this invite I had been tooling around with starting a public blog but as always time got in the way and it really has never gotten off the ground!

This feeds nicely into a big wish for Wishlist Wednesday...

TIME

I feel like I always need more of it!  More time to teach, plan, have fun, etc.  I'm sure this is a common request from almost all teachers though so I guess I'll get more specific and creative for my Wishlist.  

OK well seriously I feel very privileged since I have many things in my classroom that only a few years ago I would have never even dreamed off.  I have a built in smart board and projector, classroom and teacher computer, a stage for performing, wonderful materials, and of course a wonderful class!

There are a few things that make my all time Wishlist for my classroom...

1.  Programs to use with my smartboard.  I have found some of wonderful websites that I can use on the smartboard but would love some specific smartboard materials. (any website suggestions would be greatly appreciated :).

2. A dark classroom for nap/rest time.  I know this sounds crazy but there are windows which I love on one entire side of my classroom as well as emergency lights that never turn off so lets just say that even when all the lights are off in the room I can read a book and organize the classroom library with out any problems!

3. The last wish I have is more for my entire school.  While we have 4 wonderful outdoor play areas I wish we had an indoor gym!  The outdoor spaces are fantastic on beautiful days but rainy or cold days not having a gym makes free play more difficult. 

Thanks so much Lori for inviting me to guest post!  Jumping in the greater blogging world is both exciting and scary and this was a great way to take a dip in the waters :).

Fall Wrap-Up

As we are winding down our fall study, we compared our weather chart that we have been working on to see if the temperatures have been getting colder or warmer. We also did another pumpkin and leaf activity. This is just a center that we put out for children to make pumpkins with gear blocks (IDK what they are really called, so I call them gear blocks). Anyway, I began to think about how I set up centers. One was is just to put out the blocks on the table in the container like this:

While we may be tempted to do this as we might say it evokes more creativity, it is not very inviting and there is no prompt to show children what you want them to do.  So here is how I prepared the center:

With this purposeful planning, you are more likely to get results such as this:

The next activity I did with the kids was one I found on a blog or Pinterest, I can't remember exactly where, but if you happen to know where it came from, please leave me a comment :)

Leaf prints with different colored paint:

And here are the wonderful results!