For the fall, I was fortunate enough to get a temporary one-year position as a lead teacher for a universal pre-k program.

To find out how you can get involved click here.  This years book is Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar – one of my all time favorites.  I distinctly remember being read this book in primary school and I remember how captivated I was by the pictures and the size of the pages: how they went from small to big as the caterpillar ate and ate and ate.

In less than a month I start my Master’s degree in Literacy (birth-grade 6); however, I will be obtainging an extension to my initial certificate in special education — I’m going to find out my options at the end of the month, but I want to get something in early childhood special education.

Each day for 2 weeks the students listened to a story by Robert Munsch and were then given an option of what follow-up activity they would like to do.  To go along with the theme “Munsch” (Munch), students were given a menu, as if they were at a restaurant and picked what they’d like to do.

At the conclusion of the author study, the majority of the students’ favorite picture books was: A Promise is a Promise and Green, Yellow, and Purple. The only day students were not given an option was when we read the story Green Yellow and Purple. On that day, students were asked to be scientists.  We wore latex-free gloves and put “super-indelible-never-come-off-till-your-dead-and-maybe-even-later coloring markers” onto a 4″ by 4″ cut out of a plain white t-shirt.  They were told to choose 5 colors and create a design.  Then, we used a special liquid solution.  Students each put 10 drops in the center of the design.  Instantly, their design turned into a tie-dyed shirt!  When students saw some marker on their table, they tried to use water and soap to get it off — but it did not work, just like in the book (it wouldn’t come off her skin — good thing we wore gloves!).  But, when the students used the special liquid solution, it magically came off.  How could this be!?

Students LOVED this experiment and we later made a class quilt, putting together their 4″ by 4″ squares.  It will be displayed in 2 weeks at the school’s literacy festival.

I’m currently in charge of a mini social studies unit on community entitled “My Neighborhood” and a mini math unit on Time.  At first when I was told I was going to be teaching five year olds how to tell time I was in shock!  I remember learning it in first grade and being so confused that I didn’t really grasp the concept until second grade because everyone is so used to digital clocks.  So when I taught the students this past Thursday, I was, and am still, glowing with delight that they really got the concept of how to read an analog clock.  I wish I had taken pictures, but when you are teaching in the moment it’s hard to do.  I feel so proud of all 20 kindergarten students, and myself.  On Friday their morning work was putting together a clock on their own and every single student got it right and the time  that the clock was pointing to.

In social studies, I created the first lesson about homes.  We read a cute spin-off of The Three Little Pigs called, The Three Pigs and the students loved it!  They were engaged during the entire sitting.  Then, instead of having them sit back at their desks and do a hand out or something along those lines, I created different centers that they went to that correlated to homes and the story we had just read.  At one, the students were asked to be construction workers and they had to work together as a group to create one house made of sticks.  This was a difficult task to do but they put their name on their construction hats and went to work and some came out looking quite good.  In another center students built a house with wooden blocks for their brick home.  This was a much easier task and students built inventive architectual designs.  At another center students played a board game I created.  Students rolled the dice and prayed they didn’t land on the big bad wolf or they would have to go all the way back to start.  The first to the houses wins!  But if the big bad wolf wins the game all the little pig’s houses blow down.  And lastly, at another center students were given cards that they had to match in a memory game.

On Friday I created I taught a second lesson in my community unit.  I had brought in a picture book the students had already read (although I did not know), so we skimmed the pictures and talked about what a neighborhood is.  Then, I read My Map Book which is a very cute story and students got to see what different kinds of maps look like.  One student in the class is obsessed with creating maps and wants to be a map maker when he grows up.

Monday I have my first supervised lesson in kindergarten on measurement.  Wish me luck!

As executive board member, you can check out some of the newsletters that I have created at the website.

I’m looking forward to posting about the lessons I teach and work on with the students.