Alligator, Bear, Bumble Bee

I'm thankful that every school year is a little different.  Different kids make for different dynamics in the classroom which leads to different learning activities.  It takes a season of trial and error to figure out what activities will engage a group of students.  I've been "learning" my class; their interests, strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes.    When I'm planning I try to balance between activities that I know will engage the kiddos and activities that are a little more experimental - so we can all expand our boundaries a little.  

Here are some activities we did while reviewing the letters "A" and "B" that were new to my curriculum this year:

ALLIGATOR TOSS:

To create the container I enlarged a picture of an alligator on our photocopier and then traced it onto a piece of green card-stock (if you want the alligator to last longer than 2 weeks I'd recommend using heavier cardboard or laminating)  I then taped the alligator to a plastic container to create a space to catch objects.  We tossed plastic apples (from our housekeeping toys) into the alligator's mouth - nom, nom, nom! (inspiration was from here)

BEAR STICKY TABLE

I love the idea of using contact paper sticky side up (inspiration @ Teach Preschool - search "sticky table").  This was our first experience with the sticky table this year and it was fairly successful.  I really liked that the contact paper gave traction with our ity-bity bear counters - lots of help for small, uncoordinated fingers.  

BEAR SORT AND COUNT

For a group activity I used some bear sorting cards that I made on Publisher.  To begin I placed one bear of a different color in each pocket on the chart.  I passed out a small number of bears to each student and they had to bring the bears to the pocket chart and match them to the correct row.  After we had matched all the bears we looked to see which color of bears "won" - practicing comparing sets!

 

BUMBLE BEE

The book "Bee-Wigged" is hilarious on a variety of levels. Jerry Bee is an enormous bee that has no friends because everyone is scared of enormous bees.  Jerry's life is transformed with the discovery of a wig...  We read the book together and made our own bumble bees that looked like "Jerry Bee" (minus the wig). 

 

To make these bees I used:

• Yellow construction paper, cut into a large oval (body)
• Black construction paper, cut into strips and accordion folded (legs)
• White construction paper, cut into small circles (eyes)
• Markers (to draw a face)
• Black paint (to add stripes)

My students chose to complete this project in a variety of different ways - they turned out really cute.

 

busy bees

My preschoolers were busy bees in our classroom this last week.  As I watch the students interact with various play areas I marveled at how different the classroom was from the previous weeks.  The kiddos were staying longer at learning centers and interacting much more with each other!

Here are some of our centers:

• "B" is for building: At our regular building center I added in a work bench and tools to go with our blocks.  I believe at one point during the week I overheard a group of students singing "Bob the Builder" - it was a hit! 

• "B" Trace & Erase: (I picked up this idea from a pin on Pinterest and morphed it into my own) I created my own tracing pages on publisher and slipped them into page protectors.  The kiddos then used dry erase crayons to "write" on the pages - just erase and reuse.  (Note: to "super" clean the page protectors I used a magic eraser since the dry erase crayons leave behind a little residue)

 

• Bee/Flower Count & Match:  I found this game in a Mailbox Numbers book.  The pictures are photocopied onto card stock & laminated.  The bees are glued onto clothes pins.   The object; count the flowers and pin to the correct, numbered bee.

• Big & Little: We are working on size sorting so I placed "big" and "little" flash cards on two separate trays.  In the middle I placed a container of big and little beans (lima & pinto respectively).  We sorted the beans onto the correct tray. 

• Sorting Fish, Color & Size:  This game was created by a fellow teacher and I have no idea if the game came from her imagination or from a source - but it's great!  She created game cards with squares that go from small to large.  There are fish cards that match the size and color of the game cards - great sorting activity!

•  Butterfly "B's":  We had a great time making this project, just glue 2 letter "B" cut-outs back to back onto a large piece of construction paper, add a circle cut-out for the butterfly's head, draw on a face, tape a piece of pipe cleaner to the back side of the paper for antennae, and decorate (we used dot painters) - "B"eautiful!

Love the lips!