Wow!!! I cannot believe 3 weeks of school has come and gone. Now that the beginning of the school year is over, and the kiddos are getting into the routine, maybe my head will stop spinning long enough to blog...which means my Currently October with Oh' Boy 4th Grade is a little late, but better than never!!!{LOVING} I am absolutely loving the teaching staff I am working with this year. There are ideas flowing from everywhere...almost too many and I want to do them all! One of the ideas I received is doing a color of the week.
Then, on the last day of school for the week, we all wore the color orange and in the afternoon, we brought in an orange item to share with the class. One of my students brought in a pumpkin, and I taught them how to play Hot Potato, and how to dance to this song by the Wiggles. This was a fun impromptu game that they really enjoyed!
Next week, we will be learning the yellow song. This is the front side of my yellow poster. The yellow song is the longest song of them all, so I had to put the rest of the words and pictures on the back!
{THINKING} I am new to teaching this preschool program this year, and to having it be an all day program. We are getting evaluated on October 30th, the day before HALLOWEEN. Not only do I need more time to get into my schedule and routine, and get used to the program, but this might be a bit of a challenge for classroom management. Oh boy!
{NEEDING} With the start of the new school year, taking graduate classes, learning about the new way to record assessments online, and getting evaluated in a few weeks, I am in need of a good book to de-stress! If you enjoy reading fantasy, murder mysteries, or historical romance, and know of a good book or series, I'd love to hear about it so I can immerse myself in a good read!
{TRICK for the kids, TREAT for you!} My teaching partner had the wonderful idea of having her students cut up cooked spaghetti to practice fine motor skills. I decided to hold off a few weeks, and do it the week of Halloween and add gummy eyeballs to make it creepy! Muahahaha!!!!! :)
{TWO} We reread the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom from the first week of school, and created activities to go along with the story. Students did an art project by painting a trunk for the tree, and we painted their hands. They put on as many handprints as they wanted, and glued on letters to create a coconut tree.
{THREE} We've also been talking about the first letter of their name. So, we punched out the first letter of each students name with the die cut machine, and put them on our very own Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree.
{FOUR} Last week, we went on a nature walk around the school grounds and collected leaves, nuts, seeds, pine cones, sticks, and rocks. This week, we placed them in a science tub with magnifying glasses for the children to look at and explore the natural environment. They really enjoyed this activity, and we even found a few baby ladybugs!
{FIVE} One of the observations my classroom aide and I have made about our students' interests is that they created a campfire out of blocks. At one point, they even asked to move chairs so they could sit around the campfire! To encourage their interests, we turned the dramatic play area into a campsite today so they could go camping, and moved the blocks into this area so they could build their campfire there.
I am going to use a flashlight this week to tell ghost stories during Read Aloud. Among other stories, I am going to read the story The Dark, Dark Night by Christina Butler, a story about a frog that gets scared by his own shadow.
