abc’s and 123’s

I’m finally getting to write a post!  I meant to Monday – but I got busy with errands.  Then yesterday, I had a meeting!  A teachers job is never done!  🙂  So here I am.

A new activity to my class this year is Wikki Stix Alphabet and Number cards.  So far this seems to be something we do as a small group – with me sitting right there with them.  This is the first time any of them have ever used Wikki Stix and so they seem somewhat unsure of themselves.  At the same time, they really enjoyed learning how to make them stick and forming the letters and numbers!  We’ve gotten this activity out everyday this week so far – it really seems to keep their interest – which surprised me!  🙂

The only problem I’m really having is how to store the Wikki Stix so they don’t ball up or get too stuck together.  That part is frustrating me quite a bit.  Any ideas would be helpful.  Also, if any of your have Wikki Stix in your class, I’d be interested to hear how you use them.  This is the first time I’ve ever had them, but I was thinking there must be other uses for them, right?  Hope everyone is having a great week so far!

writing letters

I recently received the following question from a reader and since I didn’t have an immediate answer (or the time to go looking) I decided to post it to everyone.  I figured that some of you out there might have the answer and at the same time others might be helped out by what everyone has to say on the subject.  Here is the question:

“I am looking for little rhymes or sayings to help children to print the letters of the alphabet. I can’t remember any, but have seen them on sites. Do you know what i am talking about and do you know where i can find them?”

I personally don’t use rhymes or sayings to help my children write their letters.  I simply walk them through the steps. For example if I were to walk a child through writing an uppercase F, I might say:  “Make a straight line down, then go to the top and make a straight line across so that it makes a corner, and then go to the middle and make another straight line across.”  While explaining  I model what to do so the child has a visual to follow. This has always worked very well for me.  I try to break each letter down and walk the children through the process to make it as simple as possible.

I would like to hear how some of you show your children how to write their letters!  Also, if any of you could help my reader that would be great!  I love hearing all your ideas!  🙂

oh happy day!

Progress reports are done at last!  It takes a long time to observe the children, see what they know, and then write it down and make comments to parents – but now it’s all done and tomorrow they can all go home!  Yay!  Finally!  (insert sigh of relief here)

Today we made giraffes.  I wouldn’t really call it art – more of a fine motor exercise.  I die cut a giraffe for each child out of yellow paper then I gave them light and dark brown paper and a hole punch.  They then punched out dots to glue onto their giraffe.  They all enjoyed the process – some had a hard time with punching out the dots; others had a hard time picking the dots up off the table – but they all turned out cute!

We also started making lion masks today.  Ms. Bennet and I cut the center out of a paper plate.  Then we let them put a bunch of glue on the paper plate ring.  After that they put on some crinkly shredded yellow and brown paper to make a mane (this paper was used as hay when we had a farm in our playhouse and I saved it to use for this project).  Tomorrow I will let them cut out ears for their lion and they can help staple them on.  I will enjoy watching them play with their masks and pretend to be lions!  I’m sure they’ll look adorable!

They love playing with our green playdough!  Our blue and yellow playdough turned into green weeks ago.  Usually I put out plastic knives, sicssors, cookie cutters, and rolling pins with the playdough – but lately I’ve just been putting out playdough to see what they do with it.  A first, they weren’t so sure.  But today I was proud to see them trying to make the letters in their names!  A few spelled thier names completely!  All my children (except one) know their names – but some had trouble figuring out how to make the letters with playdough.  It was nice to see them making the attpemt without me having to prompt them!  I love my class!  I don’t think they would have tried this earlier in the  year – it appears my babies are growing up!