Pinterest Picks!

I am linking up with inspiredowlscorner.blogspot.in to share 3 great pins I found on pinterest.

This fabulous 3D plant craft will teach children about the different parts of a plant.The finished plants  will look great on a display and will make a great visual treat.

Click here to read the original post.

This activity is a  great hands on way to teach children about pollination. Perfect to compliment your 'bee's unit.

Click here to read the original post.

If you are looking for an art project for Earth Day, check out this pin. Children will not only enjoy making the mobile but will also get an opportunity to think of ways to take care of planet Earth.

Click here to read the original post.

Follow me on pinterest for more ideas.

The Carrot Seed

I love to be amidst nature and Spring time is the best time in India to enjoy the outdoors because summers are too hot and winters are too cold. So I consider the few weeks that we get of this season a blessing. Its also a great time to take learning outdoors! You can have conversations about plants, bees, butterflies, different kinds of flowers and much more with little children. Planting different seeds and reading books about them are few of our favorite activities during this time.

And the one book we make sure to read is "The Carrot Seed" By Ruth Krauss.

It's an adorable book about a little boy who plants a carrot seed and waits for it to grow. He tends to his seed everyday even though others around him believe that it would never grow.

The book has simple words and illustrations and will appeal to little children. Through this book, they will also learn what does a seed need in order to grow.

I always ask children to sequence the story once we read it in order to find out weather they  comprehended the story or not and also to build their language skills. For this story, we made a carrot craft and then used pictures for sequencing.

I got the pictures from HERE.

We also used a real carrot to stamp different sizes of carrots.

We talked about how a carrot seed grows. Get this printable from HERE.

  

Since we were focusing on letters and reading words we played this fun game. Children had to match letter/word with  the picture.

Have you read this book? What activities do you use with this book? Leave a comment to let me know.

Read more about other PLANT BOOKS that we read during this time.

And follow my PLANT BOARD on Pinterest for more ideas.

Weekly Wednesday Book Talk

This week's book is the old classic "Tawny Scrawny Lion". 

The Lion eats all the animals in the jungle but is always hungry until he meets a little rabbit who feeds him some carrot soup. The Lion finds the soup so delicious that he turns into a vegetarian and never eats any animals in the jungle.

This old classic will win over children's heart because of its simplicity and they would want you to read it over and over again.

We follow up every book with a craft and this idea came from pinterest.

We also talked about a few lion facts. Get your free copy of the Lion facts from prekinders.

The kids tried to solve a Lion puzzle and played a Lion grid game.

We wrapped up this mini unit on Lions by singing the very popular "Going On A Lion Hunt" song.

Download your freebie from HERE.

Have fun doing these activities with your kids.

Under the Sea

The cool misty mornings that October brings with it always make me happy as it suggests the onset of winters. And if you live in the part of India that i do, you would understand the importance of winters and good weather.  I also look forward to the month of October  because its full of festivities and holidays. But the best part of October is that i get to teach my favorite unit of sea animals. Did i say that i love the sea and everything that goes along with it ?

No wonder my excitement level in school at this time is at its peak. It rubs off completely on my kids and i can sense enthusiasm and pure joy on their part to learn.

This year our annual event of exhibiting students work also falls in the month of October. Even though i am all charged up to do this unit , i can literally feel myself in the deep waters with all the work that i have taken upon me. But no complaints, I am thoroughly enjoying the process and i know the end product is going to be extremely gratifying.

So without further ado, i will share pictures and activities that my kids have been doing.

A lot of ideas have come from Deanna Jump's Ocean unit and of course everyone's favorite- Pinterest.

I zeroed down on pirates for the class door. The kids made pirate faces by assembling the cutouts and used white paint to make polka dots on the bandannas.

We made a schema of what we know about the ocean. We will add the new learning as we go along.

For the bulletin board, we made Orcas. We read a non fictional book about Killer Whales and did interactive writing on the big cutout of the Orca. Children had a blast making the Orca craft.

We studied about the Great White Shark. and made comparisons with the whale.

We read the book 'Sharks' and wrote facts.

We did shared reading of the poem, "Smiley Sharks" and found sight words . Children drew their own version of the Great White Shark.

We also did directed art and made sharks. The template of the shark came from Deanna's Ocean unit.

I will be posting more fun stuff related to this unit. So do come back for more.

Gratitude part 2

Just a week of school was enough to pull me back to reality. I was still somewhere on cloud 9, savoring the peace and bliss acquired from the holiday . But i say this with no regrets since this new year i have promised to be more grateful about the things in my life. Instead of feeling miserable about things that cause stress in my life , i  have vowed to find ways to come out of difficult situations positively. I was introduced to Deepak Chopra's soul healing meditations by a dear friend. The CD has 8 guided meditations with soothing instrumental music. My favorite is the heart meditation and it relaxes me immediately when i am stressed about something. Someone was kind enough to put it on you tube. You can listen to it by clicking on the video.

And since i want to sound efficacious about my brand new attitude, i would like to talk about the book" I am Thankful Each Day" by P.K. Hallinan.

I have been intending to read this book for some time now and was ecstatic when i received it during the first week of January. I had ordered it on Amazon and though they did take time to deliver it, i think it came to me at the right time.

The book has simple language and fantastic illustrations and children immediately related to it. We brainstormed various things we were thankful for and made a class book. These are few of the things they came up with.

If you would like to download the cover of the book, please click on the image below:

Also since this was the first time i made a new year resolution, i was pretty excited to hear from my kiddos, what would they like to do in 2014. The idea for the craft came from Pinterest.

 Children first did a countdown from 10-0 and shouted happy new year and made noise with the party blow- outs. Since they got an opportunity to make noise they were easily able to part with the blow-outs and use it in the craft. :)

This is what some of them said

We also continued with the transportation unit and i would be sharing the pictures very soon. So have a great day and be grateful !

Sight Words

I love teaching letters and words to my little kids. It gives me immense joy when they start reading. It starts with letters , then words and finally sentences. It is a wonderful process and a great high for a teacher when she sees her students actually reading books. In fact in school, my English teachers were always my favorite teachers. They really inspired me to read and do well in the subject. Another person who is responsible for inculcating in me a love for the language , is my dad. He used to take me to a book store every Sunday to buy story books. I used to love the Famous Five  and Goosebumps series. He has a stupendous vocabulary and reads at least one book in a week. Well i haven't been able to match up to him, but reading forms a significant part of my life. Books make me happy and i love collecting books for my little ones. Story time is my favorite time in the class. It is the only time in the class when there is utmost silence and no wiggles :), the stories do their magic!

In Kindergarten, we start the year by reading letters and their sounds and then move on to CVC words.
My school follows the whole reading and phonetic approach to teach language , therefore, i  introduce sight words right from the beginning. Since sight words have to be memorized as a whole word by sight it can be a bit daunting for the little ones. I introduce the concept by bringing in a magic hen who lays magic eggs( High frequency words). Children say a chant so the magic hen can give a word. We search inside the plastic eggs and find the word.

Then children sing a song to the tune of Bingo:
There was a sight word for the day and 'the' was the sight word
T-H-E, T-H-E, T-H-E
and The was the sight word.

Each child gets the egg with the sight word printed on it. They then color it and take it home to create their own word wall.

I found a fantastic idea on Pinterest to have a password for the day. It is printed near my class door and i change the word everyday. Whenever children go out for a special, they have to tell  the password before exiting.

We also use sight word wands while reading books.

Some of our favorite games to recapitulate sight words are the 'snow ball' game and 'hit the bug' game.
In the snow ball game , words are written on white paper. Children crumble them up and have a snow fight. Whenever i say freeze, they stop and read the word closest to them.

In 'hit the bug' game, words are written on a chart and children use a swatter to hit the word that is called out.

I printed sight word charts from Pinterest. I am unable to find its original source.Once i do i will definitely update. Children read the words during center time.

I also took an idea from Dr jean's sight to make a sight word album . Children use the sight word wands to read words from the album.

This is my sight word wall. The words are from www.mrsburgen.blogspot.com

My kids enjoy all these activities and learning happens without any stress.