I Promise...

I promise I will get around to sharing my Alphabet Posters!!!!  My life is a hectic mess lately between teaching preschool, running a crazy business, having two kids, being on the PTO and Youth Baseball Boards, havving one child in baseball and another in dance and gymnastics!  But, as soon as our elementary school's Fall Festival is over, I will get it all together and send to anyone who wants it!  If you are interested, comment here with your e-mail and I will send a mass e-nail out in a few weeks!  

I am also in the middle of making Color Song posters.  We teach our kids the color songs from Frog Street Press and I have been making the cutest posters we used during circle time!  They are at school but I will take pictures next week and share!

Five Senses Fun

We had a fun week talking all about our Five Senses and the Human Body.  We sang songs, we read poems, we played games and helped the children learn all about how to smell, taste, touch, hear and see!  The kids had some fun (and some not so much fun) smelling different things!  Between all the spices and other smells, the kids definitely learned what they liked and did not like.  We also had fun listening to a CD of many different everyday sounds and letting the kids figure out what they all were.

The kids also learned all about their bodies and their bones.  We had fun talking about and feeling the bones in our hands and faces.  The kids loved getting to go home and tell their parents how many bones are in our bodies!  We did many fun crafts for this week!

 We made our 5 Senses Bear using jingle bells in the ears, wiggly eyes, cotton for the nose, sandpaper on the hands and real bubblegum on the mouth.

This is what the kids did for the human body.  We cut out the parts and they glued together their bodies.  The template was originally a game but we decided to make a craft instead.  You can find it here: http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/skeleton_game.htm

We make a spice hand every year and some enjoy the smells and some don't!  Each finger has a different spice glued on... Cinnamon, Garlic Powder, Cumin, Oregano and Basil.

And this is just a random one we did involving one of our letters for the month.  O is for Oatmeal.  

Fun Times With New Friends

We are back and we are having tons of fun!  We are taking things slowly and learning all about each other.  We went into learning all about our monthly themes, letters, color, shape and number.  This month, we are learning:

All About Me                               Letters: A, B, E

                  Friends & Family                               Color: Red

                 Fall & Scarecrows                            Shape: Square

          Apples & Johnny Appleseed                        Number: 1

We kicked off the year reading many books and doing activities with them such as The Kissing Hand, Elmer, If You Take a Mouse to School, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and The Crayon Box That Talked.  The kids had so much fun listening to all of them and doing fun crafts and activities also.  

Our Elmer Craft we did:

The kids love our stuffed Elmer:

The Kissing Hand Puzzles we made our parents:

Our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Handprint Trees:

We jumped into Friends and Family learning all about our new classmates and talking about who is in our family.  We had fun with activities and songs all about these themes.  We also began doing a few activities about our letters and a keepsake for our parents!  

Our Family Glyph:

Our Friendship Flowers:

We also did a few activities for fun involving all about ourselves, colors, alphabet and our first day!

A is for Apple Jacks

Our First Day Handprints

Look At Me Glyphs

I hope you all enjoy our fun crafts and activities we do in our Giraffe Class!  As we finish up the month of September with Fall and Apples, we will be sharing much more with you!

I'll Have a Side of Fries with My Alphabet

Oh what fun and creative ways you can find to help your class learn these days!  Of course, I yet again saw this idea and recreated it for myself.  I did not have an unused red french fry container so I used laminated red paper and constructed my own!  I laminated yellow paper with all 26 letters of the alphabet on it and used zig zag scissors to make crinkle fries.  I typed up the song I found and laminated it as well so it will last during our circle time.  

The idea is so cute to sing the song to each child, have them pick a fry and tell you the letter and the sound it makes!  I can't wait to try it but we will wait for this until later in the year!  

First Day of School!

Well, we are back at school!  The first day is always crazy but it went well!  A few tears were shed but that is understandable.  A few more days to get in the swing of things and then, we are headed to stick to our schedule and lessons!  I am the Queen of giving my sweet class as well as my personal children's classes goodies throughout the year.  This year, my big boy hit the big time and is in Kindergarten so it is just me and my sweet girl at our school.  We wanted to do something fun and yummy!  I found this idea and tweaked it to make it my own!  

We made a S'Mores Trail Mix... chocolate chips, mini marshmallows and mini square graham crackers.  It was so yummy and the kids loved it!

Back to School

 Okay... I have been such a slacker on keeping this up but made a promise to myself that would update each weekend this school year!  I want to be able to share all the wonderful ideas and crafts we do in my class this year.  I moved classrooms this year so now I am a Growing Giraffe and I had to think of all new classroom ideas!  I decided this year to make my own calendar headers and numbers with colorful giraffe paper I had.  I also used the paper for my kids name plates, backpack hangers, behavior chart and much more!  I teach at a church so they ask that our classroom doors be fun and cute yet combine a biblical sense to them.  What can you do with giraffes?!?!?  I quickly decided over the Summer... "Come on in... God has a spot for you!"  My door has a big giraffe on it covered in spots with each child's name on them.  Makes perfect sense!  We start back this Wednesday and I can't wait to share our fun year with you!  For now... here are a few pictures of my classroom!

It's Winter (but not really in Alabama!)

It's winter time! Well, like my title says, not really where we live in Alabama but at least it is in the Alligator room! The craziness of living in the South - 60-70 degree Winter days! We spend January in our class learning about Winter, Seasonal Clothing, Snowman, Penguins, Bears & Hibernation and Emotions & Manners. I am bringing you three different crafts we have done in this post!

I decided it would be fun to practice spelling our names and recognizing the letters by building a snowman with our names. My aide and I each sat with a child and let them tell us the letters to spell their names. Our kids are all 3 now so we are working very hard on this!

Seasonal Clothing is not always the easiest craft idea. So I thought it would be more fun to paint plates skin color and then add eyes, construction paper hair and ear muffs. For fun, they stamped a snowflake and sprinkled iridescent glitter onto a tongue like they were catching snowflakes!

The kids loved this craft as they got to eat a sweet treat once they were finished. I created a dotted line snowman on my computer and then we cut them out and glued them on light blue paper. We helped outline the circles with glue and the kids got a container of marshmallows to create their snowman and trace along the dotted lines. Of course, once done, they got to eat their leftover marshmallows.