Dice, Dice, Baby

Dice are so much fun! Pardon me, random number generators are so much fun! There are a bazillion different kinds to choose from and if you're like me you can't help but buy them all. (Look, green dice! Better buy them. These have hearts instead of dots! Better buy them. These are slightly larger/smaller/heavier/lighter than the ones I already have! Better buy them.)

I've seen so many great ideas for containing dice (random number generators) around the web and have tried a few out. I use the giant foam dice at the beginning of the year because they need to be able to touch each dot to count it, but later in the year we can use regular sized dice! (This activity and photos are from February of the past school year.) This opens up so many more possibilities to Pinterest-obsessed educators like myself.

I used some very small containers that I most likely bought at Dollar Tree and were most likely in the craft section. The lids are difficult to remove, which is a plus when a 4 year old is shaking it like her life depends on it. That reminds me- putting dice in containers adds a whole new level of motor skills to the activity. They can flail their arms back and forth with all their might, all in the name of mathematics!

Here are my random number generators in their containers. See how small those containers are? 

I recommend using containers with tightly fitting lids. I also tried another type of container with less success. These are probably easier to find and come with a lot in the package, but you'd need to glue the lids closed if your students are anywhere near as vigorous in their shaking as mine chose to be. Or you could just show them how to use them more gently. We'd already gone full shake so there was no going back for us!

There are infinite possibilities for how to use the dice, but here was our first activity which just so happens to be a math journal activity. I know a lot of folks are encouraged to use math journals in the early grades and a lot of those folks aren't sure how to fill those pages. In my classroom the answer is to fill them very simply. Teaching children to record their observations and data starts small but is a great advantage to them and their knowledge of math.

This activity was done in small groups with me. Some groups worked on drawing the dots then writing the numeral that went with that quantity of dots, while others rolled dice with the numerals and drew that many dots. Both of these end up with the same things written down, numbers and dots. I didn't show the children how to record their answers first, I simply said to record their numbers and dots in their journals. It was interesting to me to see how the children decided to draw.

That's really it. After introducing this activity with all my small groups I put several dice from my inappropriately large collection in the math center where children were free to repeat the activity on their own. It was a hit! The thing I enjoyed most about this activity was that it was a perfect set up for future games involving dice and recording data. Plus everyone loved it, so it was a win for all!

Construction Theme

We just finished up a month-long construction theme in my classroom. Here are some things we did to learn more about one of my favorite subjects- building stuff! I would say these are some of the "highlights" but really they're just the "things I managed to photograph."

We talked about the parts of buildings and structures and the children drew and labeled houses. They've been working on drawing houses basically all year, so most of them turned out pretty well. We do a LOT of labeling and it's a great way to add some print to any type of drawing or art project. This project was done in a small group with my assistant. This child is in a group who is working on writing and reading syllables. (Notice the hobbit-like windows of this house.)

One week was devoted to learning about tools, so we made a graph of our favorite tools. It's important to me that my students get plenty of vocabulary in English as well as Spanish, so I make sure to include as many thematic activities as possible during math (which is taught in English). For this graph the children drew a picture of their favorite tool and copied the word. When the children make the graph themselves they are much more likely to utilize the graph during centers and at other times of the day. I hung this graph in our construction center and they counted and compared the tools to their little hearts' contents.

Here are some closeups of some of the individual tools. We've worked hard on learning to draw this year and I'm very proud of what they're able to do now that we're 2/3 through the year.

Also during our week on tools was this ever-so-fancy project I've decided to call "draw, color, label, and cut." I got the idea from a colleague and discovered there's really nothing you can't draw, color, label, and cut. This activity is great for a bulletin board or other display and gets the kids excited about labeling and cutting (because they're just not excited enough about scissors already, right?).

By the way, I highly recommend giving your students interesting tools that they can actually use, like levels and tape measures. Every year my students L-O-V-E using levels with the blocks and end up checking random objects around the room to see if they are level or not.


Here are a few more random activities from the construction month.

Nuts and bolts

Locks and keys (hey, it's construction-y!)

Toy screws and hinges, which just happen to fit perfectly on the backs of our shelves

So there you have it, a bunch of jumbled ideas for learning about construction. Next up will be transportation, and I will be more mindful about taking photographs this time!

Splash!

Two weekends ago, I was fortunate to attend Frog Street Press' 2012 Splash Conference. It's a mecca of all things pre-school, pre-k, and K, and it was a blast! I have several pages of notes full of great ideas I'm already working on to start off the upcoming school year, and plenty of books and websites to check out over the next few months.

I'll start with a great educator, Carolea Williams. You may be familiar with her products sold under the company name Teach Bright.  She has some awesome products for those teaching in an early elementary setting, but I never really looked closely enough to see how they worked. After seeing them in use I can tell you they are GREAT! The best part is that she isn't in it to get you to buy her products. She's perfectly happy to show you things she's done and how you can do them, too. (Now, if you can buy her stuff you should because all the activities include full color photos that all match each other AND are on cardstock!)

First up is an activity that uses photos from her Phonics Sorts book. (See how nice those pictures are? Obviously you can use any
photos/pictures/clipart you darn well please, but hers are just so nice.) WELL, one of the ways she showed us to use these is to get one of those small magnetic message boards from the Target Dollar Spot and put magnets on the cards. When you add the magnets you can use them all sorts of ways, but this way limits children to matching a few letters at a time which is great for beginning practice. And these boards are at Target right now! Just think of all the possibilities now that you've learned you can use these as tiny magnet boards in the classroom!

Another awesome idea she had was to create sorting mats that match your activity. These cards are from her book Animals, Food, and Clothes which are actually part of a series to teach the alphabet and beginning sounds, but look how easily the same cards can be used to make a completely different activity. These are just some of the food cards; again, any foods cards will do. I love how she uses the gingham squares to add a picnic-y feel.

And look what she uses for the cards-  a sandwich container! What an easy idea that will add so much to the activity. This can be used for any level. Children can start by sorting and naming the foods then move to writing the beginning sounds, creating a list of the foods in their picnic baskets, writing a story about the foods, or more. I can't wait to create some mats like this for different activities.

One of her biggest points was that when we're creating materials for center activities, we should maximize our efforts. This is something I agree with wholeheartedly- don't spend 3 hours creating something children will finish in 3 minutes! For example, with the picnic activity, you can switch out the food pictures so that children can complete it several times with different results. Here's Carolea's advice for creating your own materials- instead of making sets of 2 matching cards, MAKE 3! It's that easy! If you're up for it, make 4, 5, or 6. Her reasoning is that when you make a game that involves matching 2 cards, it's a one-shot deal. Of course, these are great for children to do over and over to gain automaticity with letter sounds or rhymes, but when you have more cards in your arsenal, it becomes a new game as often as you like. An example of this is rhyming cards. Instead of "cat" and "rat," make "cat," "rat," and "bat" and you'll be able to switch the cards out to completely change the activity. You can see how creating just a card or 2 more can make a huge difference in your prep time and the duration of center activities in your classroom. Once they children understand an activity, you are free to change up the cards from week to week without having to spend additional instruction time showing students how these work. Having all those extra cards also lets you differentiate instruction easily because some students can work with more cards, some with fewer.

Another great idea she has is to use craft foam for sorting. She'll cut it into strips and give children 2 strips if they're sorting into 2 groups, 3 strips for 3 groups, and so on. She also uses the craft foam to create mats that can be used for ANY matching activity- what a time saver! This is cardstock with the foam glued on, but she also does this in laminated file folders.

Using a mat like this gives children a concrete idea of how the cards should go together and lets them focus on the attribute you want (beginning sound, category, rhyming word) instead of spending time deciding where to place their cards. Know some folks who would benefit from that? Me too! When she uses the file folders, it creates a space for children to put their recording papers. She actually staples lots of the sheets into the folder and children pull theirs off as they finish, but children could easily use their own papers to record. The organization of this is something I think would help a lot of my children with recording what they've done because so many just don't yet have that level of organizational skills. This looks like a great stepping stone for them. 

Carolea Williams was absolutely bursting with great ideas and I'm so excited to use them in the upcoming school year. Visit her site to see all her great ideas- she updates her site from time to time with even more ideas to use in your classroom. More on other great stuff from the conference later!

Erasable Dollar Spot Love

After going 6 weeks of summer vacation with only one trip to Target, and that for necessities, I decided it was high time I check out the Dollar Spot. It's good to get there soon after they put out all the teacher goodies because those suckers go fast, plus that section can get a little disheveled after a few days. So really, I was being extremely proactive by pacing the aisles of Target today. Sure.

Has anyone ever told you to use page protectors as a reusable surface for writing? As in, stick a paper you want to reuse in the page protector then let children write on it using dry erase markers? It turns a single copy into an activity that can be reused over and over without extra ink or paper. It's a great idea for any grade level. It saves paper and makes lessons that can be repeated over and over. It also doesn't work so well, in my experience. I've read that it's best to get "the crystal clear or diamond kind," whatever those may be. I have about 400 page protectors that must not be crystal clear or diamond-y because I tried this and the children were rubbing those things like Annie scrubbing the floor of the orphanage trying to remove the marker. Since I have such a huge quantity of them I wasn't about to purchase new, more diamond-y page protectors, so I kept an eye out for something else I'd seen people use: write and wipe pockets. These are made of vinyl so they erase very easily, but not too easily- children can rub against the writing and it won't completely go away. They're also much sturdier than page protectors, so you don't have to put the papers on cardstock or laminate them.

The best thing about the write and wipe pockets is that if you look carefully, you can find them in the Target Dollar Spot! They aren't that expensive at teacher or office supply stores, but they're unbeatable at $1. Some of my favorite activities with these are inserting graphs, ten frames, write-the-room recording sheets, and roll'n'write games (I do letters, numbers, or shapes with this game). All these activities are great to introduce in a small group setting and then place in centers for independent use.

I love using these pockets because they are very enticing to reluctant writers. Especially at the beginning of the year, many of my pre-k children haven't developed the motor skills or coordination to draw pictures or write letters. This can really kill their confidence, and who wants to do something they don't feel confident about? Dry erase markers are FUN FUN FUN, so even my most cautious children are willing to give writing a try. Being able to erase easily and try again is also a draw for some of them. Any dry erase markers you can find on sale or clearance are obviously the best, but I also really like these from, you guessed it, Target Dollar Spot!

Okay, so maybe only one of these is from Target- the smaller ones on top. So long as they stay capped they last as long as the larger ones and they're an awesome size for little hands just learning to form letters. The markers on the bottom are actually from Staples and were on clearance for 25 cents, I am not even joking. I bought 16 packages! Crayola has some dry erase crayons that WORK and aren't too difficult to erase, so I use those also.

With so many great ideas for incorporating dry erase activities into your classroom, there's no excuse not to give your students this fun writing experience. And if you can get the page protectors to work, more power to you!

Bottle Cap Letters

Like many of you, I've seen some great ideas for using bottle caps in the classroom. Something strange about me- I don't regularly drink anything that comes with plastic lids. Weird, right? Fortunately my very sweet assistant was more than willing to stock me up on lids, so I have a nice collection. A nice collection... that I've had for about 7 months. When I realized I've been wanting to do this project for nearly a year I decided it was high time. When I was finished and discovered it only took about 4 minutes, I felt a little silly for waiting so long. In conclusion, don't be like me- go ahead and create a set of bottle cap letters for yourself today (or as soon as it takes to collect 26 bottle caps)!

Here was my original inspiration. This is from a great blog called Growing in Pre-K created by Eilis Meyer. She has a LOT of brilliant ideas, but the one I'm focusing on today is what she calls her Caterpillar Alphabet which is made from Gatorade lids.

image: http://www.growinginprek.com/abccenter.htm

Things I love about hers: A) the uniformity of the lids; B) the size of the lids; C) the great alphabet stickers. For my own, the lids I have access to are smaller which is fine, but it would be nice to eventually do something with the larger caps. And as much as I like the 3D alphabet stickers I know these are not feasible in my classroom where they'll get peeled off within a week of hitting the shelf. So I decided on my own plan of attack for these guys, which I'm sharing with the world! The best part is that they really do take 5 minutes or less. 

Step 1: Gather your lids. Drink 26 bottles of your favorite beverage, have a coworker glug down some water for you, steal from your children, whatever it takes. 

Step 2: Get some alphabet stickers. I'm using these that I bought in the Target Dollar Spot last year. These are the perfect size to fit inside the lids to bottled water or 20 ounce bottles. The main thing you're looking for is that they will fit inside your lid. I chose to put them on the inside instead of the top because I think they will be more durable this way- less of a chance to pick them off. Only time will tell if this is accurate!

If you don't hoard collect stickers, these are available right now at Target. For $1! There are 5 pages in each of these packages which is a pretty great deal on shiny letter stickers, if you ask me.

 Step 3: Have your rabbit photo bomb the shoot and toss some of the lids aside.

 Step 4: Stick a sticker for each letter to the inside of the lid. I'm telling you, it really is that easy. Ta-da! You made a beautiful set of bottle cap letters.

If you're teaching in a bilingual classroom, feel free to add the fancy letters. You might need some slightly smaller stickers for Ch. Don't freak out about that letter being slightly different than the rest. Or do, who am I do judge.

Seriously, how easy was that?! Congratulations on making an easy tool you can use for literacy activities galore. Go ahead and make tons of them for spelling names or words, or make some with numbers for math activities. Then pat yourself on the back for paying a few bucks on these instead of pawning your worldly belongings for something similar from a teacher store!

Dollar Spot, My Hero

Since it seems everyone else is blogging about their uh-may-zing deals from the Target Dollar Spot, I figure I should share as well. As with anything you see on this blog, I am not a photographer, I do not claim to be a photographer, and I think it's pretty darn cool that I can even put pictures on the internet. So don't judge.

plenty-o-stickers

There are 5 sheets of stickers in each package with 270 stickers total for the round letters, 215 for the rainbow letters, and 560 for the stars! That is a lot of stars. They're also all glittery in case you can't tell from the photo. I'm going to borrow a great idea from Ms. Van Orman and use the round alphabet stickers on bottle caps for a different, fun manipulative in my ABC center.

In the package, so you know what to look for!

I also got these counting puzzles that have two sets of matching cards. Each set covers numbers 1 through 10 and what I love about these is that there is a set matching the numerals to pictures, but also a set to match the numerals to dots. I've recently learned a lot about subitizing, which is the ability to recognize a quantity without counting. Counting dots is a great way to teach subitizing because they are a static representation that look the same every time. When children are asked to count different pictures, they sometimes focus on the attributes of the objects and that can get in the way of their counting. When they are counting dots, they learn to recognize the number of dots without counting and can then apply this skill to objects and pictures. I'm excited to find sturdy puzzles for $1 that teach this important skill!

Now these cards are just awesome. They're photographs of animal families. I love finding quality photographs to use in my classroom because I believe they are much better for making connections and learning new concepts. Here's an example of some of the animal families:

mammals

birds

There are several other sets of animal families. Each set has 8 examples, which is a good number for exploring the similarities and differences found within each type of animal. I am so in love with these cards! Plus they could easily be used for any activity where pictures of animals are required.

This is another great product I found in the Dollar Spot. It's a mat with letter spinners! It's also made of a dry-erase laminate so it's already super sturdy. The intended use is to spin, name the letter you land on, then write the letter in the space below.  I plan on cutting each spinner out so I can use them for lots of different activities. In case you're interested, here's the other side of the mat:

I don't use a lot of activities like this in my class because I have many others I think are more meaningful and engaging to practice writing letters (like the spinners on the other side), so it's not a big loss for me to lose this side after I cut up the other side. If you wanted to do both, though, you could easily just buy two (or more!). This side is also dry-erase so it's an easy activity to put in a center.


There are PLENTY more things I've bought and am making to share, so I will leave with this for now. I wouldn't want to give away all my tricks in one post!

How Pinteresting

I'm going to get serious about this blog this year. I think starting earlier in the summer, way before school begins, will help me accomplish this goal.

Just last week I heard about a new technology trend (just like oh, every week of the year) called Pinterest. I enjoy technology but usually I wait it out to see if it's really THAT COOL. Let me tell you- Pinterest really is THAT. COOL. Pinterest is a social bookmarking site, similar to Delicious. You can choose activities, products, ideas, inspirational pictures, anything you'd like to bookmark.

Look at it- even the font is enticing! Instead of organizing your bookmarks as text which you can search through, Pinterest stores them as pictures. When you find something worthy of bookmarking, simply click on the icon you've installed in your bookmarking toolbar (don't worry, they show you how and it's simple), choose the photograph you'd like from the site, and choose a category. You decide the categories, you decide the captions, and you decide which bookmarks go where. The end result is like a giant cork board to which you've "pinned" items of interest.

This is my page. You'll notice there are some categories that look fuller than others- that's because I just started this morning. Each larger square is a different category that I created and named to suit my needs. Inside are the items I've pinned. To see a category, I simply click on the larger square and I'm taken to a new page with access to all the pictures I've pinned. From there I can click on any picture and be taken to the website from which it originated.

Teachers who know all about Gardener's theory of multiple intelligences will see why this site is so appealing. It appeals to spatial learners who can't get enough of pictures, diagrams, and models. One could argue that anything on a computer screen is appealing to a visual learner, but this site takes it much further by showing all the pictures at once.

I myself love being able to bookmark sites on Delicious and refer to them easily through their tags, but Pinterest allows me to add an aesthetic value to my references. Do I need a visual when I'm searching for that great asparagus recipe I found last month? Not really. But if I'm looking at ways to organize my office supplies or ideas for a party, pictures are the way to go.

In conclusion, everyone needs to get on Pinterest! It is an incredibly fun way to organize your bookmarks, plus you can check out other people's boards for even more great ideas. The best part? They refer to as the "curator" of your page. Come on.