Teaching Two

This past weekend we headed to St. Pete to celebrate my grandma’s 85th birthday.  Her best present was from my older brother.  He flew in as a surprise to everyone and rang her doorbell the day before her party.  I hadn’t seen him in 5 years.  He got to meet my 3 year old for the first time!

Check out more Wordless Wednesday pictures at 5 Minutes of Mom, Sunny Day Today Mama, Seven Clown Circus, Experimental Mommy, & Mom Knows It All.

Every month in our 3’s class we do an artist of the month.  We teach the kids a little bit about the artist and then try to copy one of their works of art.  In April we put on an art show for the parents to come and see all that their kids have created.  This month we are doing Claude Monet’s (my favorite) Sunflowers.  I wanted to try it at home first with my 6 year old to see how it would look.

We took a white piece of paper and had her use a sponge brush to paint it.  Then she used a roller to paint a red half circle on the bottom.  I cut a sponge into a rectangle to make the vase and a circle for the middle of the flowers.  Then she used the other side of the rectangle sponge to paint the petals.  We only had room for two flowers because the red half circle was too big.  I now know to encourage my kids to make it smaller.

Check out more craft ideas here.

It’s Friday, which means that over at An Island Life it’s time for Aloha Friday.  I am 23 weeks pregnant (with my third) and have started to really show the last couple of weeks.  I was finishing up my day with my class of 3 and 4 year olds when one of my students’ moms came into the class to pick up her child.  As he was leaving he turned to me and said, “You know Mrs. Storms, you used to be skinny.”  I thought it was hilarious and started to laugh but his mom turned red and got embarrassed.  I love the honesty of kids!

It got me thinking about all the comments people make when you are pregnant.  For some reason, they think that because you are having a baby they can say whatever they want to you.  So my question is…

Do you have any funny (or not so funny) comments people have said to you while you were pregnant?

I continued the transportation theme in my class today by talking about boats and airplanes.  We started off by doing a little science experiment.  I am trying do more of these in my class because the kids love them.  I got some fun items and the kids had to predict what would sink and what would float.  We set up a chart and recorded our findings.  The kids figured out (I have very smart 3 and 4 year olds) that if something was light it floated and if it was heavy it sank.

During our centers time the kids had lots to choose from.  We made airplanes out of toilet paper rolls.  They water colored them and decorated them with stickers.

In the Discovery table I put lots of cotton balls with airplanes to pretend with.

We also had a stamp center where they had to use crayons first to draw a background then they could use the stamps to add to it.   They also had to use transportation sorters to put either on the sky, land, or water mats.  They loved this!  Sorry I don’t have pictures of the last two.  It’s hard to teach 10 3-4 years olds and take pictures.

I also wanted to show a couple of the trains my kids made on train day.  It was a free art center where I put out different colored shapes and dot markers.  I had them draw train tracks first and then create their trains.

 Check out more fun craft ideas here.

I actually won this game at a white elephant/raffle Christmas party but have never actually played it.  At least not the way they probably intended it to be played.  I have been using it for so many other fun activities with my girls.

With Ashlyn, who is 6, I have been giving her spelling tests and letting her make the words instead of write them.  We work on this each week and I wanted to switch things up a bit from the old school pencil and paper.   She liked it!  I also do making words activities with her.  I used to do this daily with my 1st graders when I taught in the public schools.

Yesterday we were talking about the rule about dropping the e and adding ing to a word.  I had her use the letter tiles and make the word take.  Then I asked her to turn it into taking.  She of course kept the e so I taught her the little rhyme.  Making words activities teaches tons of great phonics skills.  It gives kids the chance to manipulate the letters to see how letter sounds and rhyming go together to make words.  After doing ing words I asked her to make the word night.  Then I had her change it to light, sight, fight, flight, and then sigh. It really helps her recognize the patterns that many words have.

With Emil, who is 3, I have her spell out her sight words by copying them from a list that I make her.  Then I have her find those words in a book that I have just read to her.  Many kids know sight words in isolation but have a harder time reading them in a sentence.  This activity helps with that.