Friday, November 27, 2015

I Stink! with AM PreK and K

You can never have too many good ABC books on hand ... one of my favorites is I Stink! by Kate and Jim McMullen. The garbage truck gobbles up disgusting trash, each item beginning with a separate letter. Guess what P stands for?

We read the book and watched the Scholastic Storybook Treasures video version. Then the kids colored garbage trucks and glued the trash on them. I got the letters here at Making Learning Fun.

Here are the AM preschoolers and kindergartners with their trucks:















Saturday, November 14, 2015

Sock It To Me! with PM K

harpercollins.com
As a librarian, I have to say, I quite enjoy sorting things (putting them away, not so much). Being able to categorize objects, describe similarities and differences, and see patterns (in the case of this lesson, literally) are skills I want my students to have as well.

I read some fun books over the summer that had to do with socks, and thought that theme would make a fun lesson. We read a few of them, including A Pair of Socks by Stuart Murphy, illustrated by Lois Ehlert.

Then each student got a sock and had to perform an action (stand up, raise your hand, touch your head, etc.) if I called out something that described their sock (color, pattern, etc.).



Finally, the kids got a stack of sock pictures and had to match up the pairs. Then they colored the pairs with the same colors and brought them home to play memory/concentration with their families. Thanks to Nana Judy for creating the activity, inspired by Duck Sock Hop by Jane Kohuth!








Sunday, November 8, 2015

Room 11 Dewey Detectives

The Dewey Decimal system is a way of sorting nonfiction books. I don't expect my students to memorize specific numbers; that's what the online catalog is for. I do, however, want them to understand how certain topics go together. At least according to how Mr. Dewey thought they did.

Each table of fourth graders got a stack of books from a "hundreds." They had to work together to figure out how the subjects could be classified under one major label. Can you solve the puzzles?

  • 500s: planets, electricity, magnets, weather, dinosaurs, bugs, ecosystems, animals
  • 700s: movies, art, photography, music, sports, jokes, crafts
  • 900s: maps, ancient civilizations, countries, states, wars, explorers

Here are the successful Room 11 students: