Cachey Mama's World of Learning

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Ocean Sensory Bin

This week, we finally made the ocean sensory bin with jello that I have been planning forever! There were a few fails on my part though that made it not turn out as planned, but we still had fun anyway and that's all that counts.

First of all, I had to use 8 boxes of jello and it still only turned out to be this much. I waited too long to add the sea animals and therefore it messed up the smoothness of the top (to give it the appearance of water).

Here is one of our sharks. Also, I tried putting these flat plastic glow-in-the-dark fish in, but not realizing that it would be very difficult to get enough light to them to make them glow once the jello set. But it's ok because we decided to take this messy project outside anyway.

He was a little tentative to put his hands in at first.

Then I showed him that he could eat it.

That really got him going and that's pretty much all he wanted to do after that.

We had a fun, messy time.

I finally got him to dig out some of the fish and he started making a pile of them on the bench, so I got him a bowl to collect them in.

Here's little man all jello-ed up!

Here is the aftermath!

Afterwards, we used the jello boxes to build with!

Enjoy and happy jello-ing :)

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Thinky Linky Thursday

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:

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Tutorial Tuesday: Teaching Letter Sounds

Hi! My name is Tammy from 123 Teach With Me.

I'm so glad Lori invited me to be here!! I'm a teacher of 10 years and love sharing and inspiring other teachers. I think it's so important to build a strong connection between school and home. That's the main reason why I started my blog....to share my ideas with teachers AND parents. A child's success is not possible with only the teacher or only the parent. It's takes both to build a successful student.

Today I'm going to share with you a fun way I teach my own kids beginning letter sounds and practice with finding sounds in words.

I came up with this when my son started to learn his letter sounds and he loved it!! We played this in the car, outside, and while we were shopping in stores. When I knew we were going play the game, I would give my son a magnifying glass and tell him we were going on a "hunt". It might be a good idea to keep a hand lens in your purse or bag so if they ask to go "hunting" you will be ready. He always loved to have his own lens to carry along while he was "hunting" because he thought it was funny the way things looked.

The song with this game goes to the tune of "A Hunting We Will Go" Here it is....

A hunting we will go

"B" is the sound we're listening for

A hunting we will go

**When they find something that begins with that sound sing...

Bat begins with "B" (make the sound)

Bat begins with "B"

Bat begins with "B B" (make the sound twice)

A hunting we will go.

When we returned home or finished the game, I would get this sheet out (pic below) where we would talk about what we saw that day and I would write down the words. Again, a sheet protector is great so you can easily erase the letter with a tissue and start with a new letter the next day.

This is a quick activity that your children or students will love!! You can also alter this for whatever sounds you are finding in words; ending sounds, blends, digraphs, long vowels, short vowels or just simply finding the actual letter....any specific phonetic skill will work! All children love a little song and I know they will really enjoy this!

Thanks for reading!

Friday, July 6, 2012

New Pinterest Boards!

I decided to go through all of my "Teach Central" pins on Pinterest and sort them by categories. You can click any of the links below to check out that category.

Also, check out my Pinterest page to see some other boards that might be of interest to teachers including many holiday boards, cool sites for kids, parents and educators, things to create, for moms, and yummies for kids.

Happy pinning!

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Thinky Linky Thursday

Here is the link with the most clicks from last week:

Behavior Management from I am a Mother Seeking

Congrats on being featured on your first time linking up! Here is a button if you would like to add it to your page:

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Be safe this 4th AND in your classrooms!

Happy 4th of July to all! Hope all you Americans are going to be doing something fun to celebrate the good old USA! I am planning on chillaxin at the beach all day! I thought today would be a good day for a post about safety considering fireworks and all that goes on during the 4th of July holiday.

Recently I have joined the community of We Are Teachers. I received a newsletter by e-mail and was interested in 2 different pages regarding safety.

The first one was about joining the Neighborhood Safety Network. By clicking on this link, you can find more resources about keeping your children and neighborhood safe. Some topics include fire safety and drowning prevention.

The other link that I liked was "7 'Safety' Tips for Teachers." This would be beneficial for teachers to read.

Have a safe and happy 4th!

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Tutorial Tuesday: Learning Air Pollution in Preschool

Today's guest post is from Brenna from Brenna Phillips: Children's Ministry, Education and Life. Please take a moment to visit her blog and make a comment!

Learning Air Pollution in Preschool

During Recycling week and studies on Earth Day, the preschool students learned about the importance of keeping the air clean.

They drew pictures on black bulletin board paper. There were pictures of flowers, the sun, and even some letters of the alphabet. Then we took the black paper outside and sprinkled baby powder on it. Yuck. It made a mess out of the students’ nice pictures.

We tried to shake the powder off the paper. It didn’t come off. We turned the paper over and tried to wipe the powder off on the grass. It only smeared it and didn’t come off.

The students were able to see how air pollution messes up good things. They learned the importance of keeping the air clean. We talked about factories with smoke stacks that cause air pollution and how that smoke sometimes makes our air yucky to breathe and not healthy for our lungs.