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

For the Love of Reading: E. L. Konigsburg

When I was in elementary school, one of my favorite books was From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg.  I so wanted to hide out in a museum and have the same adventure.  I reread it over and over again.  The book won the Newbury Award in 1967.   Princess Pea read the book in fourth grade (and I confess I re-read it  for like the hundredth time.)  It is a part of both of our classroom libraries.  Princess Pea is always shocked when she brings up the book and her fellow education majors have never heard of it.

 

 With six teachers retiring this year, Princess Pea did a fair amount of snatching up books for her classroom library.  From one teacher, she found two other books by E.L. Konigsburg.  Who knew she was still writing after all these years.  We looked her up and she is quite the prolific writer.  We thoroughly enjoyed these two books.

 

 

This summer we encourage you to throw a few E.L. Konigsburg titles along with your usual beach reads.  You won't be sorry!

Queen Pea

Heard at Preschool

Every summer I teach our special ed cooperative's summer preschool.  Each our four preschools across two counties recommend their little lovelies who they think need a little extra boost over the summer.  I have been teaching it for eight years.  For eight years I have laughed and laughed at the things they say or the predicaments we get in.  Today  was an affirmation that the younger generation are the techie kings.

Overheard on the playground from a delightful young man on the truck play equipment:

:"Does this firetruck have a Garman?"

Overheard at playtime, from a little sweetheart playing with the cash register:

"What should I tweet?"

Queen Pea

Book Pals Part 3 -The Saga of a Turtle

Those little touches to a classroom often don't come cheap.  We have found  if you dig through those bins of stuffed toys in your local thrift store, you can find Book Pals for very very cheap.   After pricing Book Pals online, (anywhere from $15- $50) we decided to try and recreate them.  See our Fancy Nancy here and our Pete the Cat here.  While out recently, we were looking for stuffed characters we could adapt and re-purpose for pals when we came across these friends.

That's the dinosaur from How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? (among other sequels.)  Next is Thing 1 from Cat in the Hat.  He is sitting next to Sam I Am from Green Eggs and Ham.  On his left is Franklin the Turtle.  Finally there is a dinosaur that we do not know the name.  He looked familiar and he is a Kohl's for Kids creature which is usually a book pal. Any ideas of the book?  We didn't pay over $1.50 for any of them.  WooHoo!

   So we first found this guy at a Goodwill.  We thought he looked just like Franklin without a hat.  We thought we could create a hat for him.  We were sure we had found our Franklin.

  Then we stopped at another Goodwill and found this guy.

   What were we thinking???  We hang our heads in shame.  How can we call ourselves book lovers when we make this kind of mistake???  They look NOTHING alike.  

   So now we have this unnamed turtle.  Maybe we can find a rabbit and then we will have the characters from The Tortoise and the Hare.  Despite our confusion, we still think we scored big in our search for book characters.  What do you think?

Queen Pea and Princess Kay

Pinterest Inspiration - The Teacher Chair

Princess Kay is working on her classroom.  We will be posting before and after pictures in a few weeks (it is going to take that long.  Cleaning out a retired teachers 40 years of stuff takes a while!)  She is doing a travel theme and has been looking for a classroom chair.  We pinned this one a while ago.

Amber's Teacher's Chair

We found this white chair and considered just duplicating this Amber's chair since Princess could make a zebra fit a travel theme (and she has always had a love of zebra....it was her freshman dorm room theme.)   However, she dug out an old atlas from our closet and asked if we could use it somehow.

So with a little Mod Podge,  a little paint and a coat of polyurethane and Princess Kay's first ever teacher was created.

One room project done and  a few  several  a million more to go....good thing my own classroom just needs a few touches to get it ready.

Queen Pea

I am linking to the Pnterest Challenge at
 Young House Love
Bower Power
Censational Girl

Teachers Don't Work in the Summer...Hah!

All year long I applaud fog delays and snow days.  I anxiously await Christmas Break and Spring Break.  The counting down to summer starts in April.  There is something about the thought "I don't have to go to work today." that sets my heart yearning.  Yet, I probably have been at school 20 of the 30 summer break days so far!  Not only that, there have been other teachers in the building with me (one of the reasons I have to go in so much because I never get anything done because I am too busy gabbing having great pedagogical discussions.)

Princess has been tutoring in my classroom so I often head over there with her trying to get ready for the summer special needs preschool I teach (starts in a week...yikes...quit talking and get working.)  Princess and I and another teacher wrote a grant that was selected by our state department so we have been meeting with that team.  I am on the RTI committee....there is another meeting.  Last week we had four days of training.

Seriously though I might complain, I love the school in the summer.  I love the time and the freedom to dream, plan and create.  I love the darkened hall ways and the smell of new paint and cleaning fluids.  I love having time to talk with the custodians.  I always feel like during the year all I do is ask them to do something for me.  I love coming in in flip flops and shorts.  I even love the challenge of being encouraged to shake things up.

This past week we had four days of Quality Learning training.  If you have never had this training, you should check it out here.  I first went to this training four years ago when our superintendent took a group of us to West Virginia.  I have to tell you, it turned my philosophy of education upside down (I knew it needed shaking up...just didn't know how.)  Our Super for the last three summers has hosted the four day training in our school district and made it free to teachers and gave us a stipend.  I decided to go again for a refresher this year and I am glad I did. 

Quality Learning is about changing the system so students are fully and actively engaged.  The teacher is more of a coach.  David Langford gives you a lot of tools to use and lots of challenges to look at why you do things and what the real impact on your students is.  The first time I went, I came home and implemented a few things, but time and ease of the familiar had me falling back into the old "tried and true" system.  I am determined this year to take what I am doing now and expand it further.  You will probably hear me reference QL a few times this year.  Princess also went to the training.  She was a bit overwhelmed, but she has an awesome third grade team and each one of them was there.  They do quite a bit of QL systems and they have everything ready to go for her.  (and she thought she was done with teacher school!)

So even though it is the end of June, I still haven't let go of school.   There is an invisible thread pulling me back and I can't seem to cut it.

Queen Pea

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