Category: Uncategorized

Calendar Work

Calendar Work

In preparing for the upcoming school year, I realized I needed to update the work calendar I made two years ago. I saw this work in another classroom of the school I was working at and thought it was a such neat way for children to work with a calendar rather than just filling in a blank paper one.

I went out right away to gather supplies to make one for the children to begin using. I needed small tiles which I found at a hardware store. A large piece of felt from a craft store along with colored card stock paper. I also needed a white puff paint type of pen. Then I made the calendar and brought it into the classroom. The children really enjoy working with this new material. They especially like working with on the calendar with a friend. After a child or the children fill in the blank spaces on the felt calendar including the days of the week, they still will fill out a paper one. If you’d like, you can provide a little container of small stickers or a stamp so that it can be placed on the day it is in during that month.

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Reading Program

Reading Program

I have been busy reorganizing my reading program and getting it ready for the new school year. There are three reasons for me doing this. One is because the shelf space at the school I will begin working at is limited so I needed to condense the many boxes somehow. The second reason is because it will be an older group of children and I realized I may need to provide more than one set of say, sentences to work with. Some of my things are very old and so a making them again has felt great! Another reason is

because I have been doing some Dyslexia Tutoring and I wanted to incorporate some of the ideas from those lessons. I think they could prove to be helpful and enhance the reading program.

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Rainbows

Rainbows

Spring is a great time to talk about rainbows with the children. There is more rain during this time of the year and chances of seeing a rainbow are pretty good if you live in an area with rainy spring days. Most children enjoy rainbow anything, so you can include a variety of activities for them as you learn about rainbows together.

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Farm Field Trip

Farm Field Trip

I first need to apologize for such delayed blog posts. We had a recent move, are building, things still in boxes, etc. I did however, have an opportunity recently to join a friend on her farm one morning for a field trip she was presenting for two homeschool families. If you have my Cultural Curriculum, lessons on farm and farm animals can be found in Week 32 Days 4 and 5.

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Apple Tasting and Art Mediums

Apple Tasting and Art Mediums

In Week 5 Day 2 of my Cultural Curriculum we talked about another one of the five senses, taste. We then did some apple tasting, talked about the different kinds of Apples. On my Botany 5 lap card I help you to know what to say, like, “Today we are going to talk about apples. There are so many different kinds of apples. During the season of Fall many people go apple picking. It is the time of the year for the apples to be harvested. Let’s look at the parts of an apple. As we look at our cards we will also take this real apple and try to find the parts on it. I wonder how many seeds we will find?”

We then tried three different kinds of apples and learned about our taste buds. Mmmm…

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Praying Mantis

Praying Mantis

Sometimes a child finds something special and wants to share it with their friends in the classroom.  I find this happens if the item they want to share is alive. Perhaps it is a frog they discovered that morning and are excited about it.  They bring it to school and you have a spontaneous lesson on frogs! How wonderful! The children gather and share what they know about the frog. You gather some books and read about frogs. Younger children can draw a picture of the frog as they observe it, and older child may decide to write a story about the frog that visited that day. Continue reading “Praying Mantis”

Started Adding Video to Online Curriculum

So, this past week was a milestone for me, because I finally started to think about how videos can help with teaching, especially if you are now transitioning to online classes. Covid-19 may have started us having to learn about how to teach online, but I was part of a Zoom conference call last week where a San Francisco school is really taking it to another level! I was really impressed by this school, they really worked together, cared for one another, and were even willing to help veteran teachers like me learn more about online teaching – video being a huge part.

So here was a video I quickly put together (well, my husband did the editing) which I added to the Cultural Curriculum Week 31 Day 2. Check it out…

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