"Ruffle" Some Feathers with These Two Cute Chick Crafts

Every month we choose a new theme to feature in our classroom. 

A super fun part of our FARM theme, involved hatching chicks!
(click here)

That was an awesome experience for kids, parents, and teachers alike! 

To see something come from nothing (especially when that something is a fluffy little chick) was pretty neat!   

On the day the chicks hatched, we celebrated the big event by doing the craft below.  

Materials needed:

• paper cut outs for the head, body, wings and beak
• white paper ovals cut jaggedly in half for the eggs
• googly eyes
• feathers 

As the chicks grew, we did another craft in honour of our fluffy guests.  

This chick's beak was glued flat and wide open to the plate (instead of being 3D) so he appears to be chirping loudly! :)

This craft idea was brought in by our ECE student, Christine.

The wings were made from tracings of the children's hands.  You could trace each child's hand individually and/or have pre-cut tracings ready to go. 

 (We varied our approach depending upon the patience level of each child!) 

Here is the bulletin board Christine set up which showcases our chicks as well as a few more of the crafts she developed for this unit.

   Thanks for all your hard work, Christine!

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Start Your Circle Time with this Fun Colour Song

Every morning at circle time, we do a quick fingerplay and then enter into a Good Morning Song.   I have a few favourites, but I do like to switch things up regularly.  Variety is good!

One great way to start our circles is with a colour song.  I pick a colour that each student is wearing and then move my way one by one through the class.  

The tune for this song is "The Colour I See."

The words go like this (depending, of course, on what colour each student is wearing): 

Red, red is the colour I see

If you're wearing red please show it to me.

Stand up and turn around.

Show me your red, then sit back down.

Green, green is the colour I see

If you're wearing green please show it to me.

Stand up and turn around.

Show me your red and then sit down.

etc.

To turn this song into a game, you could also hand out 4 colours of paper to the class.  To make the game more challenging for older students, choose colours that you think they are less familiar with - grey, silver, gold, etc. 

Tell the children that when you sing about the colour they are holding, they can stand up and turn around.  

For more fun colour activities and games, click HERE to see a previous post.

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Farm Playdough Mats

I am cautiously optimistic that spring has finally arrived to the west coast!  My sister is even more optimistic.  This weekend she actually started planting seeds (indoors, mind you) for her vegetable garden.  

Well!  If that's the case and spring is on everyone's mind, I think it's a good time to feature my Farm Playdough Mat Set!

It includes 2 customers and a farmer, 4 garden bed mats (lettuce, pumpkins, carrots, blank), and a wheelbarrow and wagon.  

The children create vegetables out of playdough to place in the different garden beds.  The customer puppets can choose what they would like to purchase and place them in the wagon or wheelbarrow and then slide them across the table to take them home.  Just add a popsicle stick to the back of the farmer and 2 customers so that they are easy to hold.  

This Farm Playdough set also includes 10 number mats.  Your class can write the number on the mat with a washable marker, then represent it on the the ten frame by by adding playdough "vegetables."   

This set is available for in my Teachers Pay Teachers store for $2.95. Just click HERE or on the image below to pick up your copy!  

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The Chicks have Hatched in our Classroom!

We just had 7 little ones added to our classroom this week. But this time, the little ones are not children.  They're chicks!

Some of our eggs have hatched and we now have a family of adorable little puff balls peeping, sleeping, and pooping in our classroom.

Here they are in their little "nursery." (Also known as our water table. :))

In the bin, you can see their water container, some food, and the heat lamps.

A nice side benefit of having the chicks is that they are a great classroom management tool!   At center time, we tell the children that they must use their inside voices so that they don't "scare the chicks!"

Today we let one of our chick babies walk around on the carpet for a minute.  Here he is with my co-teacher Ms. Danica.

Our chick didn't end up making a run for it, but he did decide to poop on the rug much to the delight of the children!

We then gave each student a turn to gently pet one or two of the chicks.  We let them use one finger only to ensure that the pressure was light.

The process of hatching chicks has been lots of fun for our kids (and their parents!)  It definitely required a lot of extra time and effort (thank you Ms. Danica for making it happen!), but I think it's something that will really stand out as a special memory from their year at preschool.

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How to Make Letter Matching Fun

We like to encourage the children to get familiar with the alphabet, but in a way that's as fun as possible. 

I had purchased an old Scrabble game a while back because I knew that I'd be able to use the letters for a learning activity at centre time.

Here's the game I created.  

I made a big poster with all the letters of the alphabet.

Then I hid Scrabble letters from A-Z in a bin of sand beside the poster.

The children needed to dig to find the letters and then place them on the matching letter on the chart.  

For older students, I would provide a chart with lower case letters to make the matching game a little more challenging.  

When the players had matched all the letters, they enjoyed hiding them back under the sand again for the next person.

A version of this game would also be a good way to practice number recognition.  

Hmmm... and we just picked up some magnetic numbers.  I think I just picked my next little project :)  

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