Paint Cups

I wish I would of thought of this a long time ago. I have always had paint ready to go in the paint cups so that if children wanted to paint I was ready, but once the paint had sat in them for awhile it is really hard to wash out. I would have to soak the cups over night. This year we received new paint cups and lid which we needed since ours were about 10 years old or older. Any ways we wanted to keep them looking nice so we started placing small sandwhich bags inside the cups before filling them with paint. When we change the paint we just simple remove the bag and throw them away.

Closing Kids World Exploration

Over the next couple of months I’m going to be moving my information from my web page Kids World Exploration to this blog. It has become to costly to keep the web page up and running but hate to lose all the information on the web site so I’m going to be transferring that information to this blog. I enjoy the blog community and would rather put all my time and effort into this community of professionals. Also if you read my All in the life of family you know that I am on a get out of debt mission and this will help me in make that goal. Sorry if some of the information will be repeat for you. I will still continue to add new information during the transition.


Thanks,

All About Me

The new year has gotten off to a great start. We started the school year off by learning everything we could about one another. The first thing we did was to trace all the children’s bodies onto butcher paper and rolled them up and sent them home for the family to create a life size poster all about their child.

When they started coming back we where amazed at how the families took time with their children to create a life like representation of their child. Each child had a turn to explain how they created their life size picture of themselves and why they chose certain things that represented themselves. Here are a few of the posters.

One of our fist small group projects was for each child to draw a self portrait. We found at the local dollar tree small table top mirrors. Each child looked into the mirror and drew a picture.

We had a discussion about different feeling. After the discussion we had the children tell us how they were feeling and we graphed what they said.

Daily Questions

Developing Oral Language Conversation Skills

To build young children oral language skills it requires having meaningful conversations with them through out the day. Build children’s oral language skills by having a daily question as part of your preschool curriculum will insure that you are having at least one meaningful conversation with every child in your classroom.

When having verbal interaction with children it will not only help them to communicate and be more sociable, but it is also crucial to their development of speaking, listening and writing we need to cultivate their oral language skills every day.

When having these conversations with children they will learn how conversations work, how to take turns, look attentively, use facial expressions and express new ideas in different ways.

What does your Daily Question look like?

I have a pocket chart that is centrally located in the classroom. At the top of the pocket chart is the question of the day. It is a question that has more than one right answer or that can be answered in many different ways. Each child in the classroom has a name card so that the staff knows who has been asked the daily question. This insures us that we have had at least one meaningful conversation with every child that was at school that day.

How are you able to get in a daily question for each child?

I have a group size of 24 children. There are three staff members at all times. At the beginning of the day we split the name cards evenly amongst us. This means that that the most we should have is 8 children each.

How does the conversation go?

• What is your favorite dinner?
• How do you think this dinner is made?
• When you have your favorite dinner how does it make you feel?

Things you should remember when you’re having a meaningful conversation with children.

• Get down to the child’s eye level.
• Avoid dominating the conversation.
• Find opportunities to use new or more sophisticated words as you talk with children.
• Make sure the conversation is able to go back and forth at least three times to each person having the conversation.

Remember that there is no such thing as talking too much with children. So talk, talk and talk some more.

Lets Talk About Communication by Deborah

Morning Message

Shared Writing Part Three
The morning message is used to provide children with a daily predictable, shared writing experience. It is an interactive writing activity that is done on a daily basis and introduces students to the writing process in a shared experience.


When using morning message students will actually see and hear the adult write, which will lead to the understanding of written word and oral language more clearly. When you write morning message with your students you are creating successful, independent writers.

By participating in the writing of the morning message, students learn…

• Writing is speech written down
• Proper letter formation
• Upper and lowercase letter recognition
• Punctuation, like period and question mark
• Left to right progression
• Associate letters and sounds
• Differentiate between a letter, a word, and a sentence
• Spacing between words
• Reading common sight words

What does our Morning Message look like?


I have a big book stand in the circle area where our dry eraser board sits.

Next to the board is a basket with different types of writing tools and items to make our Morning Message more meaningful.

• Dry eraser markers
• Different kinds of pointers
• Name plates
• Microphone (that lights up)
• Magnifying glass (Extra Large)
• Post it Notes

The first sentence of the Morning Message is always the same

____________ is the leader today.

___________ said “____________.”

This makes it more meaningful to the students, because they can identify their own name and those of their friends.


As I model the writing I point out how I make space between each word and say each word as I write it. When I come to the end of the sentence I will place a period, question mark and quotations marks, giving them the name of the punctuation aloud.

The leader of the day comes to the front of the class and we write the message together. The leader talks into the play microphone.

Write what the child said. Give ideas as needed.

“I like to __________.”
“I like __________.”
“I ate __________ for breakfast.”

“I ate __________ for dinner last night.”
“____________ went _________.”

When the message is finished we read it together as a whole group reading, using a pointer. Once we have read it together as a whole the leader pick a pointer of choice and reads the Morning Message to the class.

Tami is the leader today.

Tami said, “I like to play in the play house.”

Keep it fun and meaningful to the children. The possibilities are endless!


Be creative… and watch them write!

Leader of the Day

Shared Writing Part 2

The leader of the day provides children with a daily predictable, shared writing experience. It is an interactive writing activity that is done on a daily basis and introduces students to the writing process in a shared experience. By participating in the leader of the day, students learn…


• Name recognition
• Proper letter formation
• Upper and lowercase letter recognition
• Associate letters and sounds
• Number recognition
• Counting

All children get to be the leader of the day at some point through out the month. Depending on how many children you have in a class.

What does our Leader of the day look like?

When choosing the leader of the day, I go through name cards with names and picture of each child in the class.

I choose a child who is ready for the day and say…

• This person is sitting at carpet

• This person has eyes forward

• This person is ready for circle

• This person has seven letters in their name (how every many letters are in the childs name that you are thinking of)

I then draw seven lines on the dry earaser board counting as I draw them.

___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

Then I wirte 7 letters under the lines.

• This person has a vvv sound, who’s name starts with the vvv sound?

• Does Vicky start with the sound vvv?
• Does Valeria start with the sound vvv?
• Does Victor start with the sound vvv?

I write down all the children’s names that we come up with on the board.


Then we count all the letters in each childs name and write that number next to the name.

Vicky 5
Valeria 7
Victor 6

The group figures out which one has the 7 letters (or how many you have put under the lines on board)

I then wirte the name on the lines naming each letter as I write it.

If there is more then one child with the same amount of letters give them a clue by writing the ending letter and see if they can figure out who it is.


If that is not enough then give them verbal clues

• This person is a girl
• This girl is wearing a green shirt
• This girl has long brown hair
• This girl has it up in one pony tail

Once we have the leader of the day we go right into the morning message.

As the year progress you can keep challenging the children with this activity by…


• Asking them who has the ending sound of _____
• Asking who has 7 letters in their name (they will be able to tell you everyone in the group that has 7 letters)

Leader of the day will also help with circle time mangagement because the children want to be the leader.

Versatile Bloggers Award!

Versatile Bloggers Award!

It is with great surprise that I have been awarded a Versatile Blogger Award from Bea at All Join In.

Rule #1

Thank you Bea for giving me this honor, it made my week to come home and find out that I was given this honor.

Rule # 2 for receiving the award is to share seven things about myself, so here we go…


• Honor god with my family and finances.

• My faith makes me who I am.
• I work for a school district Child Development Program where I am the head teacher.
• It is my passion to create fun and engaging ways to teach children.
• I can’t throw some items out so that is why I find ways to bring them into my classroom and let the children create with them. Maybe someday I can write a book about a 100 ways to reuse egg cartons and paper tubes for art with preschoolers.
• I love getting dirty and being silly. That’s why I think I love teaching so much I’m still a kid myself.
• I also write a blog about the simple life.  All in the Life of Family

Rule # 3 I have to pass the award on to 15 bloggers that deserve it

Our World Wide Classroom
Mama-Jenn
Learn Live Laugh
Getting Messy with Ms. Jessi
Let the Children Play
Not Just Cute
Little Illumination
Irresistible Ideas for Play based learning
Leaves and Branches, Trunks and Roots
Elbows, Knees, Dreams
Nurturing Curiosity
Teach Preschool
The Write Start

These thirteen are my true favorites and I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave it there. I hope you find them as helpful as I have.

Shared Writing Part One

Children learn about the writing process by composing text together.


Shared writing is an important part of the preschool curriculum. The purpose is to model the thought process involved in writing. It teaches children how to organize their thoughts and see them on paper.

Shared writing should be done during group time. You can also have shared writing during small group or through out the day as children are at play.

During Group

• Teacher starts a discussion about a shared experience.
• Children share their ideas and thoughts while the teacher models the writing process.
• Write down what they say.
• As you write the word say the word out loud.
• Point out how you are writing from left to right.
• Point out when you are using a capital letter and lowercase letters.
• When you use punctuation point out what that mark on the paper is called.

Children that are encouraged to write and that have been exposed to writing through shared writing experiences will be able to compose more effectively and with greater confidence, then those children that have not.

Shared Writing for Parents

It is important for parents to write in front of their children. Children should see you write;
• Lists
• Letters
• Checks
• Recipe

Have those shared writing experiences with them by writing down their ideas about what they want at the grocery store. When your writing a letter to a family member let them tell you things to write in the letter from them. Let them watch you write, write and write. Point out what you’re doing as you write in front of them.

When you do lots of writing in the classroom their own writing will appear on every thing.


This child wrote on our tent project. She is jumping on the trampoline