Fun with Dr. Seuss

This week, we have been having lots of fun with Dr. Seuss!  We started our week with Horton Hears a Who.  We colored, cut, and attached elephant ears to a sentence strip to make a headband.  Click HERE for the free printable.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of our finished products.

We made patterns with Dr. Seuss:

It was a complete accident that this activity turned out so stinkin' cute!!  I originally intended to print the "______ can make patterns with Dr. Seuss" on white paper and then back it on red paper (that's what I have done in the past), BUT orange paper happened to be in the copier.  I didn't want to waste paper, so I stuck with the orange and added the picture of the Lorax instead of Cat in the Hat.  With the movie coming out on Friday, you'd think I would have planned this!

I was feeling creative, so I switched it up for the threes and love how cute it turned out this way too!  This patterning idea came from Jessica Meacham.

We read The Cat in the Hat and then made a Cat in the Hat headband:

We also read The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.  Although this story didn't have Thing 1 and Thing 2 in it, we made Deanna Jump's Thing 1.  Aren't they cute!?

I forgot to tell my threes (whose Thing 1s you see above) to tuck the blue hair behind the shirt.  I'll get this right tomorrow with my fours who will also be doing this adorable craft!

We also completed some worksheet pages...

Here, we designed a new hat for Cat.  Unfortunately, this was the only picture I got...(This printable is from abcteach.com)

And...students practiced following directions to complete this activity, from Mailbox:

And last... here's my favorite furry friend in his St. Patrick's Day bandana!

Love, Splat!

Who doesn't love Splat!  I read Love, Splat to my three and four year old classes this Thursday and Friday, even though it was after Valentine's Day.  Then we made Splat the cat, another great activity from Reagan at Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits.  I had wanted to do this around Christmas with Merry Christmas, Splat, since it's actually from Reagan's Christmas Pack, but I didn't get to it.  As you can see though, this craft can be adjusted easily to go with any Splat book. (Instead of having Splat hold holly, he is holding a little red Valentine, just like in the book...  Splat gives Kitty (his crush) a little red Valentine's card).  :-)

For this craft, I had all of the pieces precut and ready, except for the heart.  As you can see above, my threes and fours had to cut it out on their own.  They are doing great with scissors.  

Here's something we did for morning work this week:

This free template is available here from DLTK.  What I love about these bingo dauber pages is that they are great for sight word practice.  Simply fill in the circles with sight words that you've recently introduced or need reviewed and assign each a color.  These could also be used for numbers, letters, letters vs. words, shapes vs. numbers, even addition!  There are so many possibilities!  Enjoy!

Valentine's Day with Froggy!

After reading Froggy's First Kiss, my four year old class made their own Froggy, from Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits:

I should note that I didn't end up using the patterns from Reagan's Winter Art Pack, available HERE on TPT.  I had a limited supply of green construction paper, so I had to scale the size down so that the head, body, arms, and legs all fit on one piece of construction paper per student.  Reagan's Winter Art Pack has great stuff, so be sure to check it out if you haven't already.

The Hat

After reading The Hat, by Jan Brett, my three-year old class made these paper plate hats:

Here's a close-up:

This idea came from kidssoup.com.

Football Fun

On the Friday before the Superbowl, my four year old class predicted who would win.  Here's our graph:

MOST of my students predicted that the Giants would win.  (Two of the footballs on the left are teacher votes.  My aide and I both predicted the Patriots, so minus our votes 7 kids predicted the Giants and 6 kids predicted the Patriots).  Before doing this fun little graphing activity, my students wrote their name on their football.  They LOVED doing this graph.  This idea came from Mrs. Kilburn's Kiddos.

We had fun with Super Bowl themed centers...

Above, students read and colored the take-home book "Superbowl of Colors."  They also had to cut out and glue the footballs.  This was a free download from Mrs. Kilburn.  

Above, students completed this football addition page.  One of my advanced kids did the one that you see above.  Most of my other kids had the addends stamped for them ahead of time.  After they added, we stamped the answer for them to trace.  Again, this is from Mrs. Kilburn.

Students had to color the numbers blue and the letters brown above (from Kindergarten Hoppenings), and below they traced numbers in the top box and wrote them on their own in the bottom box.  Depending on the students' needs, I stamped different numbers in the box for them.  

On Monday, we discussed our predictions and then did some coloring to make a Giants helmet:
This modified idea came from Teaching Heart.

Another SUPER cute idea that I didn't have time to prep (but hope to do next year)....

This idea also comes from Teaching Heart.

Groundhog's Day!

Better late than never, right?  I had every intention of posting this weekend.  However, I woke up at 4am on Saturday SICK!!!  At first I thought maybe I had food poisoning, but after getting past the being sick in the bathroom part of my Saturday morning... I spent the rest of the day on the couch with a relentless headache which was actually probably a fever (didn't take my temp)... and back pain.  Flu symptoms??  I don't know.  But whatever it was... cost me an entire day this weekend.  Ughh!  I spent yesterday trying to get as much done as I could, but then there was the Superbowl... so, I need another weekend STAT!

Okay... on to the groundhogs!  I'll post Superbowl stuff in a separate post tomorrow!

We make these adorable little groundhog faces from Cara at The First Grade Parade!  This was my favorite activity of the day.  I would have LOVED to have had them draw the groundhog's burrow and do the writing piece that went with this craft (see Cara's post), but I haven't done a lot of writing with my preschoolers yet... other than their name and numbers.  Shame on me!  It was my New Year's Resolution.  

My 4s (above) drew their eyes.  My 3s (below) had wiggly eyes!

We made paper bag groundhog puppets!

We completed a groundhog dot-to-dot for morning work.

This one was of our center activities (from Mailbox)

Students also got to work through this "I Can..." packet from Enchanted Learning.

Thanks for stopping by!!!  Back to grad assignments now....

Hot Chocolate and Marshmallows!

We have been practicing simple addition and writing numbers in preschool.  To complete this activity, I had my students roll a dice to determine how many marshmallows they would get in each cup.  My students who are really getting it used a standard dice with dots for numbers 1-6.  Those who are at a beginning level used a dice I had from a Lakeshore game with numbers 1, 2 and 3.  

If you look closely, you can see that some of my students used number stamps so that they could trace the number.  I didn't let them use the stamp for the number 1.  ALL of my students can write a 1!

I got this idea from Mrs. Wood at Mrs. Wood's Dual Language Kindergarten Class.  I was able to print the "Hot Chocolate and marshmallows in my cup..." strip for free at April Larremore's blog.  When you get to her blog, look on the left.  You may need to scroll down to the "Find it Fast" section.  Click on CAMT, then scroll to the bottom where you will find a link to CAMT Masters.  For the mugs, I did an internet search and used "copy and paste."  I didn't have time to prepare mugs out of construction paper, and unfortunately I didn't have time to get real marshmallows either... be sure to check out Mrs. Wood's blog to see how cute hers turned out!  Hers have real marshmallows!  Next time that's what I plan to do, but my kids LOVED doing this activity, even with pom-pom balls (and some had to use cotton balls)!

Another fun hot chocolate and marshmallow activity we did was this little painting craft...

Lots of floating marshmallows!  : )

This idea is from Teach Preschool.  I loved Deborah's idea to add a little bit of chocolate extract to the brown paint, and of course, to let the kids paint marshmallows using a marshmallow!

I'll be back this weekend to post what my classes did for Groundhog's Day and the Superbowl!  

More eskimos!

Today, the nine four-year olds that made it to class made these cute eskimos from Life in First Grade.  Normally I have 15 four-year olds!  Something is going around, and whatever it is, I don't want it!

LOVE that the first one has red hair, just like the boy who made him, and rainbow hair on the right : )  

Kitty eskimo on the left, and purple hair over here on the right!

The one on the right has a mustache!  

The patterns for this craft are FREE over at Life in First Grade.  You'll notice that mine are a little different.  I opted to let my kids draw their hair instead of using the pattern.  I love these!  So cute!

Eskimos- Take 2!

So, today, I did the eskimo craft that I posted about yesterday again!  This time with my 3s, and this time I remembered to have them put the cotton balls on the arms and legs.... Voila!  I LOVE how much cuter they are with the little bit of extra detail!

And once again...time for me to get back to...what else...but READING for grad school!  I'm up to my eyeballs in reading assignments and it's only the first week!  Seriously, 5 chapters for one class, 2 for another, and 7 for another.  That's 14 chapters!  Technically, I've already read 11 of those chapters because I got the books ahead of time and read before classes had even started, BUT, I'm rereading.... maybe not all of them, but we'll see!    :)

Eskimos, anyone?

I'm taking a quick break from grad school reading to bring you a blog post!  (And I'll apologize ahead of time if my blogs become a bit infrequent.  I'm taking THREE grad classes this semester to work towards my Reading Specialist Certification and Master's in Language and Literacy Education).  But anyway... here's our craft of the day:

Cute Eskimos (Idea from Little Illuminations...just realized I forgot to have the kiddos glue cotton on the hands and feet...grr )

Here's a good book to go along with this craft:

Ok, time to get back to reading!