Two Great Centers

I have 2 great centers I'd like to share.

1.  My favorite, the art center.  I have them draw a picture using a white crayon.  They have to color pretty hard.  Then they paint the picture.  They turn out so pretty. 

I think it would look good with colored crayons too.  But I didn't have them do it that way.  They are loving it.  They are also writing secret messages and painting to find the message.  So cute!

2.  My next center is what I call Word Soup.  I just used ziti noodles and wrote all our sight words on them.  Then I put them with 1 small scooper and 3 bowls.  They have to scoop out the words and read them to add the noodles to their soup.  They are LOVING it.  If to make it a little more rigorous, they have to write the words they add to their soup.

The 100th Day

Being on the east coast we celebrate the 100th day so much later than everyone else because we start school later!  I guess it could be a good thing since I now get to steal borrow some great ideas out there.

At my school my very favorite activity is that we collect 100 canned goods to give to the local food bank.  It is fun for the kids because we pretty much count them everyday and it is helpful to our community.

If you haven't celebrated the 100th day, this activity is a MUST.

Our whole school ended up adopting the idea and we have a HUGE graph showing how many cans have been brought in and we collected over 1200 canned goods for our local food bank!

Chinese New Year- kinda part III

Today we had an early release day so our half day was even less time!  But I managed to fit in a fun Chinese New Year lesson.  We discussed the Chinese New Year (one more time!) and then we did a game called Pass the Stuff.  Since they use chopsticks I pulled out my clothes pins and a pile of stuff.  I had students hold the clothes pin and we had to grab the stuff and pass it around the circle.  They did a really good job and were very disappointed when the stuff ran out.  This was an excellent fine motor lesson since they crossed the mid-line and do a hard open and close with the clothes pin.  I wish I would have had real chopsticks that were made into kid usable ones, but I didn't.  Maybe next year! 

Here are a few pictures of the cute activity:

Chinese New Year- Day II

Today we reviewed the information we learned yesterday about Chinese New Year.

One thing we found interesting is that the Chinese give red envelopes to their family members.  And that it is filled with money!  So we colored an envelope red.

Then we reviewed the dime.  We have discussed the dime pretty much every 10th day of school.

I passed out a paper filled with dimes.

They colored the dimes grey and then circled them in groups of ten.  They cut them out also into groups of ten.

Then we stuffed our envelopes with the money that matched our age.  So if they are 5 they have $5 or 50 dimes or 6 years old they have $6 or 60 dimes.

The kids LOVED the money!  One asked me why they couldn't get real money!  (I put in my daily blog to parents if they wanted to extend the activity to have them find the right number of real dimes around the house and let them keep them.)

It was fun!  I also read this book:

Which is a great book... a little long but it was great to compare it to Jack and the Beanstalk.  It seemed to really hold their interest!

Hope you found this helpful!

Gung hay fat choy

Happy Chinese New Year!

 Today I read the story:  Celebrating Chinese New Year: Nick's New Year.

This was an excellent book to discuss what the tradition of the Chinese are for the new year.

Like:

They wear red for good luck.
They give red envelopes of money to each other.
They clean their house to get rid of the bad luck, before the new year.
The celebration last for 15 days!

Then we made oh so cute little dragon heads.  We did a dragon dance around the classroom and up and down the hallway saying Gung Hay Fat Choy... which means Happy New Year.

Here is a link to where I found the dragon head.  I just drew a circle around it so it would be easier for them to cut it.  Dragon Head

This year I have quite a few kiddies who do not have fun using their imagination... so I was kept having to tell them to play with us.. so funny how kids are like that!

But here is a cute slideshow of their dragon heads!

Digital slideshow generated with Smilebox

Tomorrow, I am going to review the book and do one more lesson!  Hopefully, they will enjoy that as well.  I will post about it tomorrow!

Happy New Year and MLKjr.

Sorry I've been away.  Getting back to work from the break was a little hard.

But I wanted to share what we did to ring in the new year in my class and give you a Martin Luther King Jr activity (that you have to do a little work with)

First New Years.  We talked about the new year and how the calendar has changed.  This is tricky. My youngest is in a multi-age 1st and 2nd grade class, as a younger.  She was so disappointed she wasn't an older when the NEW YEAR started.  So after all that explaining, we talked about resolutions or goals.

Here is what we made:

In 2012 I want to play outside more.

In 2012 I want to take care of my pets and dog. (I guess the dog isn't a pet?)

In 2012 I want to dress more like me and not my sister. (she gets the hand-me-downs!)

In 2012 I want to read more!

In 2012 I want to get to ride my bike more.

The project was pretty easy.  I cut the heads for them to save time, although I know they could do it.  And we talked about how we should look.  They really put thought into the hats and I think they are not only rigorous but cute as can be!

Next for the MLK activity.  I read this book today:

 Martin Luther King Jr is a little tricky.  Kids this age just don't understand.  I like this book because it is simple and the pictures are not too horrifying.  But overall it is a difficult concept to put your thoughts around.  So I like the idea of keeping it about treating everyone with kindness.

So I created this book with a page from Teacher Helper (Dec/Jan 2010) (I am pretty sure it was this issue, I'll double check in the morning!)

The cover.  This is just an 8.5 x 11 folded in half.

This is the first page.  The head was drawn (I did my best) and the students had to color it in.

Here is where I cut the worksheet in the Teacher's Helper Magazine.  This is suppose to be a listen and do activity.  But I just cut the pictures and used them here.

The students will color the pages and either draw a check or a smile face next to the picture they think they can do to be kind.

This is the back cover.  Just in case my drawing was too horrible.

  So there you have it.  I decided too I am going to make it my goal for the new year to try to make more books on the computer so I can actually upload them for you.

OH, and one more thing.  If you are reading this and you aren't a follower, I'd love to have you!  If you are a follower, please tell a friend.  I feel sad having only 30 followers!  But I will take all that are willing to find me helpful!