Back To School pt. 2 - Classroom Displays

I want to touch a little on classroom displays. I have it easier than most teachers because where I work my classroom comes supplied with a Birthday Calendar display and a Rules Chart. All that is up to me is a Student Picture display and a Family Picture wall. I was a little more excited about this than I probably should have been, but I'm easily amused.
 

Family Picture wall

What you will need:

Clothes Pins
String
Big font letters

This display is so easy. You will need to start with cutting out the word “Family” in big font. I laminated these letters to make it look more professional, but it’s not a big deal if you don’t have access to a laminator. I then took two pieces of string and hung it to the wall, one string at the top of the word and one below.  Then I put the clothes pins on the string and attached the pictures.

Student Picture Display

You will need:
Student pictures
Picture of a roll of film
Picture of a film strip (one per child)

I absolutely love this one. I started with googling the clip art pictures of a roll of film and the film strips. Once I found those, I printed and laminated them. Again, it’s not necessary to laminate these. I then put it all up on the wall and taped each child’s picture to a film strip.
 

I’m so excited about this year! I have so many things planned and I can’t wait to share them all with you. We’ll get through it together one blog post at a time!

Back To School pt.1 - Classroom Playlist

I’m sure most of you have all been getting your classrooms ready for the brand new school year. I know I’ve been busy all week cleaning, organizing, and coming up with new ideas to help my class run more smoothly. That’s why I decided to focus more on back to school than my normal curriculum posts.

 I don’t know about any of you, but when you’re working with children, most of what you say just seems to go in one ear and float slowly right out the other. It’s pretty magical really. Here lately with all of my new kids, I feel like I just keep repeating the same things over and over. It can get a little frustrating sometimes both for you and them. That’s why I decided to put a little playlist together for each of our daily activities. When a certain song is played my class now knows exactly what to do and my voice gets a lovely little break.

I start the day out with lively happy songs. Separating from a parent can be a little difficult but is made much easier when you have a little something to dance to. All the kids come right in with a smile when they hear this playlist. It makes me laugh as they have a seat at the table and dance in their chairs. Really any upbeat song is good but here is my list.
    1. Pharrell Williams - Happy

     2.  Sara Bareilles - Brave
     3.  Bob Marley - Don't Worry Be Happy
     4.  Katy Perry - Roar
     5.  Kidz Bop Kids - Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)
     6.  Glee - Don't Stop Believing
     7.  Kidz Bop - Dynamite

Circle time is made so much more enjoyable when we start it off with a good morning song. It will take the class a little time to get all the words down. Honestly, I don’t even have the words down yet, but we’re getting there. I’ll include more about circle time in future posts.

Cleaning up is not one of my classes favorite things to do, but it is now that we play super cool clean up songs! I’ve included 2 songs for this because I really couldn’t pick which one I liked the best.

I have a love/hate feeling for this song. I love it because it couldn’t be more perfect for this activity, but I don’t think anyone should be that chipper to clean.
 

 

This is the song that I choose to play as our clean up song. My kids absolutely love it and get so excited when it comes on. They try to clean up as quickly as they can because they know when they’re done they get to dance to it. I actually have a little boy that cries when the song is over.

The hardest part of my day, as a teacher, is getting the class to regroup from centers. I found a great song that lets the class know that it’s time to come and have a seat.

As you may know, I’m a big fan of rhyming. That’s probably why I like this song so much. So far, my kids have done great at calming down and sitting criss-cross because of this song. It’s good to play right before you read a book to them.

 

This next song is definitely my all time favorite song pretty much in the world. It’s so catchy and I end up singing it all day. Lining the class up to go outside can sometimes be disastrous, depending on the age group. You can end up having a child running circles around you, climbing tables, rolling on the floor, drinking out of the toilet (trust me this can happen). Now, when this song comes on my class does exactly what they’re supposed to do. It’s teacher heaven!

The last song is the song I play right before we get ready to eat lunch. As you would assume it’s about none other than food. My class loves this song and giggles the whole time. I think it’s a rather annoying song, but it’s for the children.

I hope you enjoy this little playlist and it makes your life a little easier!

Learning to Build

Building is so much fun when you’re two! We loved learning more about how we can do that with our “Learning to Build” theme! This theme is such a great way to practice large motor and small motor skills. We started out by reading some great books about different tools and machines that help us build.

Tools by Taro Miura takes tools to a whole new level. It’s a great book for showing us what kind of tools different people use such as doctors, barbers, painters, and construction workers. As you read this book to your toddlers, try to get them involved by having them tell you what those certain tools are called.

  

I, personally, love books that rhyme and The Construction Crew by Lynn Meltzer is no exception. This book is a fun way of learning how different construction machines work. I was very impressed when my class was able to name them without help maybe yours will be able to also!

 

 

Old MacDonald Had a Woodshop by Lisa Shulman is a fun twist on the classic song “Old Macdonald had a Farm”. Not only can your class learn about different tools, they also can learn about the sounds those tools make. We giggled so much as we read this book!

 

Now for our fun Large Motor and Small Motor activities. My class absolutely loved our first activity and could have played with it for hours.

You will need:
  *Contact paper
  *Masking tape
  *Blocks

Cut a piece of contact paper to your desired length. The size will determine how many children you want building in this center. Remove the back of the contact paper and secure the paper to the wall with tape along the sides - sticky side up. Put the blocks out and your class will be able to build on the wall as they stick their blocks to the contact paper.
Tip: Make sure none of the children place their hands on the sticky paper. Little fingers are stickier than blocks and the whole thing will come down when they pull their hand away.

We all know how our toddlers love playing with blocks, so they will love this next activity.

You will need:
  *Large blocks
  *Masking Tape

I started off by stacking the large blocks in a tower against the wall. Then I outlined the shape of the tower with tape making the square patterns. My class did a great job placing their blocks in each square as they did this activity.

We loved putting on our hard hats as we prepared to build our very own city. This activity is a great way to show your class that construction workers are people that build the buildings we see in our cities. You will need to get out your contact paper again and laminate a paper road to the floor. You can get a free printable for the road here. Now it’s time to get out the blocks and small cars so you can get to building.

 

My favorite part of the week was our dramatic play center. This center may look a little difficult to make, but it was actually one of the easiest I’ve done.

 

We’ll start off by making our tool peg board. You can go a more expensive route and actually buy a peg board, but I think that might be just a little bit hard to tape up to a wall. Since I like to be thrifty, I just used a large piece of brown paper. I wasn’t sure how I was going to paint the black circles on without it taking hours. So I got a little creative and used the end of a glue stick to stamp painted circles onto the paper. The great thing about this is that you don’t have to be a perfectionist. I actually had a two year old leaning on my back as I did this :)

 

Next, you will need to Google some pictures of different tools you want so that you can glue them to your peg board. I added a picture I drew of a tool box to it also, but doing that is completely up to you. Now all you need to do is add some trucks, a car mat, and some pre-made hard hat headbands and you’re all set to go.

This was such a fun week. I can’t wait to do it again soon!

-Sarah