Smelly Socks

On Monday during story time we read Smelly Socks by Robert Munsch. The kids absolutely loved it. It is about a young lady who gets new socks and will not take them off, not even to wash them. To extend the story further we decided we would wash Tina's sock for her since she makes her classmates wash them. I added two dolls and two pairs of clean socks to the water table along with a little soap. The kids spent the whole morning taking turns washing those "smelly" socks.

Shape Snapshots

On Friday, I read Tana Hoban's wonderful book, Shapes, Shapes, Shapes. It is a wordless book filled with beautiful photographs of shapes in the environment. We looked at each page and identified what shapes we saw in each picture and checked them off with the list of shapes she included in the front of the book. After our reading we decided to make our our version of the book. First, we made a list on the activboard of what shapes we thought we might find. Next we lined up with our cameras and explored outside the grounds of our school. The kids then found a shape and correctly identified it. Next the kids used one of our two cameras. They, yes you read right my four year old students, snapped pictures of their shape. After all 20 had taken a picture of a shape we compiled our photographs and made our own Shapes, Shapes, Shapes book. The kids enjoyed it so much I am planning on spending a few extra days next week and letting the kids make a 4-5 picture photo book to take home and photo books on each individual shape.

Teaching With iPad and iPods

Today during Center Time we had our first small group lesson using the iPad and iPod touches. We have been learning about apples all week so naturally I chose to introduce the letter Aa during this theme. This morning we review an Uppercase A. Using the app Letter Tracer I reviewed the letter A and demonstrated how to make the lines that form the letter. We practiced together using the tracer mode. After correctly demonstrating the letter A three times without help in tracer mode, I would demonstrate to each student how to write an A in the free hand mode. The child then switched to free hand mode and practiced several times writing an A without the tracer. Before leaving the table each child was given a piece of paper and asked to write an A. After using the app 13 out of 16 children could correctly write an A on their paper.