Friday Fun

  Fridays are the best day of the week when you teach school.  Fridays are filled with a sense of anticipation of the weekend.  This year our speech schedule was super busy on Friday.  Lady A and I have vowed never to do that again.  Fridays are for fun.  On Fridays, you never know what may happen.
  Today I am going to share the Princess's latest thrift store find,  (Cue Macklemore singing "I'm gonna pop some tags.")  As I have said before we are big thrift store, dollar store, make it yourself people.  Whenever we are near a thrift store, we always stop in to check it out.  This past Tuesday we were in Goodwill when we found this gem.

You know this young lady, don't you?

   Olivia is the main character in a series of books written and drawn by Ian Falconer.  Princess loves Olivia because she is a pig after her own heart.  She loves to perform and her life is a vintage lover's dream.  Princess loves the vintagey colors and illustrations in Olivia books.

This is an Olivia theatre (Olivia would never spell it the American way too provincial.)  When you open it up it looks like this.

 

See this insert.

It had even more set backgrounds and characters.

     Indoor recess in third grade may never be the same.   Princess is in a quandary....should she laminate these pieces to keep them safe from grubby fingers?  Everything is a pretty hefty cardstock weight.  She is afraid laminating will take away from the muted tones. What do you think?

Oh and by the way, she paid a whopping $3 for this.  There is nothing like a thrift store find to make your heart soar.

For the Love of Books

For the Love of Books

For the past few years, Princess Kay has been amassing books.  Lots and lots of books.  She says it was all for her classroom, but I think it really is to feed her habit.  Since she was little, she has loved to read.  Now she has an excuse to buy books.  She first tried buying lots on Ebay.  Pirces were reasonable, but shipping tended to add up.  She initially began her collection by doing what all teachers do...buying from Scholastic Books Clubs.  Then she discovered Goodwill book bins on half off day.  Books galore for a quarter apiece (or 50 cents if they are hardback.) Oh my...she thought she had died and gone to heaven. 

Over the past two years, she has collected close to 350 books.  She said she was organizing them, but I think she spread them out so she could gaze upon all their loveliness.  She has promised to stop for awhile.  However during our thrifting day last week I found her head deep in a bin shrieking "Junie B. Jones, Horrible Harry and Flat Stanley!!"

If you have young readers, you might want to check out Goodwill.  Just watch out for a redhead with a crazy gleam in her eye.  She just might pepper spray you to get that Fancy Nancy book you are holding.

Silly Sally Fun Pack

Another week of summer preschool has come and gone.  This week our theme was Silly Sally.  Silly Sally is a wonderful picture book that has a definite sequence and lends itself to teaching rhyming.

 

 I must admit I hate to teach rhyming.  Kids seem to get it right away or they don't.  I THOUGHT my students on the autism spectrum were going to town on the whole rhyming thing when I realized the had just memorized the word pairs we practiced!  I had to create several more tasks for them to practice.  I will post those soon.  In the meantime here are some of the pages in the Silly Sally Fun pack.

 

We practiced writing color words. (I have some five and six year old students who have mastered most if not all pre-K skills,  We just kept building!)

 I cut these apart and use clothes pins to select the correct answer.  You could laminate and use dry erase markers as well.  I laminate everything and use them over and over with dry erase markers.

You can get the whole pack here.   I hope you enjoy it.  You will have to let me know if our students are as puzzled as mine were by the character Neddy Buttercup....they just couldn't figure him out.

Queen Pea

Froggy Gets Dressed

Whew!  The week flew by...preschool has been keeping me busy.  Our summer preschool is for our students with more intense needs....for whom 12 weeks of down time would have us starting back at square one.  My preschool routine is based on ABA and TEACCH philosophies.  Each week I choose a book and we read it each day.  I do that because these students need repetition before they can participate.  By Thursday and Friday, they actively interact with the book and all our activities.  Following our circle time (which includes the usual calendar stuff as well as a language activity) the students do individual work basket task.  I try to create activities that follow the book as well as work on skills.

 

This week we read Froggy Gets Dressed.  I love the story for the wonderful sequencing skills.  I also thought a little snow in our drought-filled scorching summer might be cool! (pun intended)   I created some work tasks, a card game and a craft to go with the story.  The clipart came from kidzclub.com.  This wonderful site has tons and tons of story props for trade books.  It is one of the first sites I hit when I am lesson planning.  Here is a glimpse of some of the things I created.

Get the whole pack here.  This my first posting to Google docs so let me know if you have an problems.

Queen Kay

Book Pals- Pete the Cat

  We have just made our second book pal and we are in love.  If you haven't read the picture book series Pete the Cat  by Eric Litwin and illustrated by James Dean, you are missing out.  To get an idea, click on the books and rock away.  Just imagine a class of first graders singing away...you will fall in love too.

    We knew we wanted to create Pete, but weren't sure we what to do about shoes.  We thought we might find infant shoes at a thrift store, but no luck.  Then we found these at Marshall's.  Perfect!

   We dug some blue fabric out of the fabric scrap box.  It was a little dark, but we thought it would work.  Queen Pea just cut it out by eyeballing it.  She is so good, she only had to re-cut the head twice.  The eyes and nose were from felt and the mouth and eyebrows were black floss.  My job was the stuffing the body.  I love the final result.

  Now there is a third book out.  Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons.  I am trying to get the Queen to make a coat with four buttons, but she says I can't have everything.  Sometimes mothers are so mean!

Princess Kay

Book Pals - Fancy Nancy

I was an avid reader as a kid and being a teacher just gives me an excuse to buy books. For the last three years, I have been collecting books for my future classroom. Goodwill has been my best resource. My class library numbers close to 500 now. The Queen says I have to stop, but who can pass up a copy of The Watsons Go to Birmingham -1963 when it is lying there begging to be read and loved. Besides looking for books, I have been on the lookout for plush book characters for my favorite books. You can buy them, but my bank account cannot handle the prices. My current favorite picture book is Fancy Nancy.

I think that Fancy Nancy is what I was as a child. I loved nothing better than dressing up in as many ruffles and bows as I could pile on. As a teacher, I love Fancy Nancy for her wonderful way of choosing extraordinary words to say ordinary things. So of course the first character I wanted was Nancy.

Amazon Version $33.00

Queen Pea was sure we could create Fancy Nancy ourselves. She bought these dolls at Goodwill for 25 cents each.

We took the legs off one doll and attached them to another. We took purple tulle and hot glued on a dress. Then we accessorized. Beads, ribbon, jewels and a boa (a ribbon that we gathered). The glasses are made from craft foam and colored cellophane. Everything we used was from our craft junk drawer. I love the final product.

Total cost...50 cents! Stayed tuned for our next book pal project...Pete the Cat.

Princess Kay

P.S. News on the job front. I will be teaching third grade next year. Woohoo!