All About Me

We had so much fun learning more about ourselves with our “All About Me” theme this week! It was such a great way to kick off our school year. There were so many different directions you can go with this theme. Since we were talking about body parts and facial features, I decided to focus more on this area. To do this I wanted to make a very detailed doctor’s office. By doing this, we had the chance to look at body part x-rays, examine our baby dolls, and have fun being doctors.

The best part about making this doctor’s office dramatic area is that there are tons of free printables available on Pinterest and if ever there were two things I love it would be free things and Pinterest! I was able to find some awesome printables for exam, patient, and doctor prescriptions forms. You can get them here.

 

This next part is my favorite. I came up with this as I was brain storming what kinds of things you would find in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. Magazines is what came to my mind, but how do you make paper magazines toddler-friendly?

Here is what you will need:
Magazine
3 binder rings
Laminator

First, I tore off the front page of a magazine and then some pages through-out the magazine that looked interesting. I then laminated those pages, punched 3 holes on the side and put them together with binder rings.

 

Of course you can’t have a doctor’s office without some doctor’s instruments. I’m sure most of you have some in your class already, but I didn’t. So I just paid a little visit to the local dollar store. I was so excited to actually find some there!

To decorate the office, I simply googled doctors office pictures and x-ray pictures and come up with these. It added a lot to the theme.

The last part is optional, but I wanted something that would divide the waiting room and doctor’s office.

What you will need is:
2 tri-fold boards
2 dowel sticks
doctor pictures

I first took the one tri-fold board and cut the middle out of it. I then used to 2 side pieces and hot glued it to the bottom of the second tri-fold board. This gave the prop a door way. I then added the dowel sticks to the back of the tri-fold board to make it sturdy. All that’s left to do is add doctor pictures to the outside to decorate it.

Now all you need to do is add the baby dolls to the area and there you have it. You’re all set to explore!

To learn more about facial features I came up with this fun game.

You will need:
Contact paper
Picture of a blank face
Pictures of facial features

Again I googled a picture of a blank face. I colored it to make it look bright and fun and used contact paper to laminate it to the table. Now all you need to do is add pictures of facial features. You can find some great facial feature pictures here.

Here are some really neat songs I found that will help your class learn more about themselves and their friends.

That's Me, Complete

I have ten little fingers and ten little toes
Two little arms and one little nose,
One little mouth and two little ears,
Two little eyes for smiles and tears,
One little head and two little feet,
One little chin, that's me complete 

My Name Is...

My name is Miss (Sarah), Miss (Sarah), Miss (Sarah),
My name is Miss (Sarah), who are you.

(Point at a child and have them continue the song.)

Where Are You

Where is (child's Name), Where is (child's name)
There he/she is, there he/she is.
How are you today, sir.
Very well today, sir.
Sit right down, sit right down.

Special Me

Special, special, special me
How I wonder what I'll be
In this big world I can be
Anything I want to be
Special, special, special me
How I wonder what I'll be

I Am Special

I am special
I am special, don't you see?
Don't you see, someone very special.
Someone very special
Yes, its me, yes, its me
(You can substitute 'because God made me, God made me' for the last line)

What's On A Face?

Here's a face, Now let's begin
It has two ears, a nose and chin.
A mouth, two eyes, with a bushy brow
What's on a face? We all know now

I Am Special

I am special, I am special
So are you, so are you
We can work together,
We can play together,
While we're at preschool
While we're at preschool
Yes we can, yes we can

Runaway

I have two eyes to see with,
I have two feet to run,
I have two hands to wave with,
And nose I have but one.

I have two ears to hear with,
And a tongue to say 'good day!'
And two red cheeks for you to kiss,
And now I'll run away.

Stand Up and Turn Around

(Child's Name) stand up; (Child's Name) stand up.
Turn around; touch the ground.
Reach up really high now; jump to touch the sky (wow)
Now sit down, now sit down.

You're Important

(Child's Name) is important, important, important.
(Child's Name) is important to you and me.
In work and in play, he does his best each day.
(Child's Name) is important to you and me. 

Hands

Hands for holding
Hands for shaking
Hands for giving
Hands for taking
Hands for counting one to ten
Hands for writing with a pen
Hands are helpful
But most of all
Hands are Handy

Two Little Hands

Two little hands so clean and bright,
This is my left and this is my right.

My hands

My hands can talk
In a special way.
These are some things
They help me say.
"Hello" (wave)
"Come here" (beckon with finger)
"It's A-OK" (make ok sign)
"Now stop" (hand out)
"Look" (hands shade eyes)
"Listen" (cup hand behind ear)
Or "It's far, far away" (point away)
And "Glad to meet you, how are you today." (shake neighbor's hand)

I Have

I have ten tiny fingers
I have ten tiny toes.
I have two ears,
I have two eyes,
I have a little nose.
I have a mouth to open,
And tiny teeth to bite,
I have a tongue,
Within my mouth
I keep it out of sight. 

Hands & Feet

My hands are clean
And ready to clap
One, two, three, four.
My feet are waiting for a sign
To jump upon the floor.

 I hope this was helpful and that you have as much fun as we did!

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

Space Week

We were out of this world with our Space Week. My toddlers had so much fun gazing at the stars in our dramatic area this week.

 

To make these fun star gazing boxes you will need to collect a one or two large boxes. I started out by cutting a square opening on one side of the box. I then  painted the boxes black to look like the night sky. After that, I cut out stars to glue to the outside of the boxes.

 

You will need to find a sharp knife or scissors to poke holes in the top of the box. You can do as many as you want. I did a lot so that it would look like a sky full of stars. When all that is done, It’s time to fish out those white Christmas lights you backed away. You will want to take a bulb on the strain and poke each one through a different hole. The last step is optional, but I added the words “Star Gaze” on the front of the box just for effect.

 

Younger kids might not stay at this activity for very long so you might want to add some space books so that they can look at them under the night sky.

Fun in the City

We had a great time exploring the city with our "Fun in the City" Theme. Most toddlers don’t understand the difference between life in the city and life in the country. That’s why we decided to play different sounds we would hear in the city. The class had a great time trying to figure out what noises they heard.

With this theme you will want to start out by collecting big boxes ahead of time. If you can’t find any you can go to your local grocery store and ask the manager if they have any extra boxes. You might have to dumpster dive for them a little but it will be worth it. =)

 

If you have tall boxes you might want to cut out the window like I did with the bus so that the class can see out of the box. You will need to start by wrapping the boxes like you would a present, cutting any windows out of the paper. Next, you can add windows (if needed) and wheels. If you want the cars to be more realistic you can add any extra decorating features you want.

 

For the next step, you need to tape blue paper to the wall to make a sky background. I then added picture of airplanes, helicopters, clouds, and a sun.

For the buildings you can tape black construction paper together making the buildings different heights. I used yellow post-it notes to make two rows of windows going down each building. I drew a picture of a super hero kid on poster board just for fun. This is optional.

 

I thought it would be fun to add a little gas station to this dramatic area because my class always likes to pretend to get gas. I started off with a tri-fold board with a square cut out of the top middle. After that you can just paint a simple rectangle around the cut out square and add the word “gas” to the top. I saved back an extra laundry detergent container to put in the cut out square for the gas pump.

 

This dramatic area will require some thinking ahead. Don't forget to save your laundry detergent containers and big boxes!

Carnival Day

We aren’t just clownin’ around this week! Every year we do a special event called, “Create your own Holiday”. This year we picked Carnival Day. My wonderful assistant put a lot of this together and it was so much fun.

 

 

 

 
We wanted this day to be as realistic as we could, so we started off with a ticket booth. Using two tri-fold boards, we hot glued them on top of each other and then painted red vertical lines on the boards. We completed this project by adding yellow flags at the top and a sign that showed how many tickets it took to get in. To make this even more fun we gave each child a few of those tickets so that they could pay to get in and play the carnival games.

 

 

 

Every good carnival has fun games to play and ours was no exception. To do this we started off by making signs and placing them in stations outside of the carnival tent.

 

Large Motor Skills





Large Motor Skills- If you have access to a bowling set, this is a fun game that our toddlers loved to play.



 

 



Eye-Hand Coordination

 

 

 

Eye-Hand Coordination-This game was a very easy game to put together. All you need is clothes pins and a bucket to play the traditional pin drop game.



 

 

Sensory Table

 

 

 

Sensory Table- We enjoyed exploring water play as we swam our ducks around in the water. Our class thought it was so funny to make the ducks “Quack”.

 

 

 

 

Large Motor Skills

 

 

Large Motor Skills- To make this bean bag toss you will need a tri-fold board. My assistant cut out a circle shape in the middle and then added a clown face around it. She then drew some balloons beside the clown face. The class was able to practice throwing the bean bags through the whole. Later that day we used the clown tri-fold board as a prop for our photo shoot. Each child was able to look through the clown whole as they gave their cheesiest smiles.

 

Small Motor Skills

 

 

 

Small Motor Skills- You will need pictures of different fish and a poster board for this game. We started off by making a fish scene on the poster board and taping it up to a door. We made a stick with a magnet attached to the end of the line. We then put a magnet on a laminated picture of a fish. The class was so excited when they saw a fish on the other end of their fishing pole.

Just For Fun

 

 

 

 

Just for Fun-What carnival is complete without a face painting station? There’s no need to run out and get some expensive face paint. Although it doesn’t come off of clothing, Acrylic paint wipes right off of skin. So that’s what we used. You might want to be careful to make sure that no one is allergic to it the paint by testing a small part of skin first.

Just to add a little decoration to the ceiling, we t out banner flags in alternating colors of red, yellow, and blue.

 

The best part of our holiday was our tent. This was also one of the hardest parts. We started this project out by tapping a small parachute to the ceiling using scotch tape.

We then needed to add the walls of the tent. For this you will need to start out by cutting large pieces of white and red paper that will reach from floor to ceiling. Before taping it to the ceiling you will need to lay it out on the floor and tape three stripes together alternating red-white-red. We then took scotch tape and taped the paper to the ceiling around the parachute. Repeat this step again on the other side leaving a doorway in the middle. This tent can be a little heavy and will fall easily so you can also use white and red vinyl tablecloths from the dollar store instead.

 

Since we put so much work into our tent, we decided to watch a carnival movie inside. Of course every carnival needs a special snack. We picked up some Popcorn bags from the store so that the class could enjoy popcorn during the movie.

 

This day took some work, but it was priceless to see the excitement on all of their faces.

Hope you enjoy it just as much as we did!

Dinosaur Week

Our toddlers aren’t going extinct with our Dinosaur Week. When you think of dinosaurs old and boring usually come to mind, but we found some great ways to make dinosaurs fun and exciting.

 

The concept of dinosaurs can be a little hard for a toddler to understand. So, why not make it come to life a little. We started off by having a small discussion about if dinosaurs lived in the zoo or jungle and if we had ever seen one before.

 

 

After the class has become a little more familiar with the idea of dinosaurs, it was time to get them up and moving. We had so much fun pretending to be dinosaurs as we went through the motions of this song:

 

What better way to make our theme come to life than to make a 3D dinosaur cave for our dramatic play. I started off by tapping four strips of brown paper together using scotch tape. After taping the brown paper to a secure area, I took a hula hoop and wrapped the open end of the paper around it. I finished it off by cutting some jungle looking leafs out of green paper and adding it to the opening of the cave. My class loved pretending to be dinosaurs as we read dinosaur themed books in our Dino Cave.



Our Dinosaur Stomp game was a great way to practice our gross motor skills. I started off by cutting out green dinosaur foot prints. I then used contact paper to laminate the prints to the floor. My toddlers had a great time as we stomped over the prints roaring as loudly as we could.

 

 We had such a great time learning all about dinosaurs.

Hope you have a roaring great time also!