Category Archives: Kindergarten

Halloween crafts for early learners

I love Halloween for doing crafts with my kinders.  It seems that my boys (who are often the ones needing more exposure and practice with activities involving tracing, cutting, threading, etc.) are often very motivated and interested in practicing these skills when they involve bats, spiders or anything else Halloween.

Here are my top 5 favourite Halloween crafts for early learners (click for instructions):

#5 – Five Little Pumpkins

#4 – Pumpkin Sewing

#3 – Black Cats

#2 – Spider Webs

And my #1 favourite Halloween craft……Pop Can Bats

Do you have a different favourite Halloween craft for early learners?  If yes, please share your favourite below.

Finding your “favourites” made easy for kinders

A couple of years ago, I came across Symbaloo, a great website for sharing internet favourites with my kinders and their parents.  With symbaloo, you can create your own account (here’s mine) and make buttons for your favourite curriculum-related websites.  The brilliant thing about it is that you can add an image to each of your links so that non-readers can find their favourite sites too.  Also, you can constantly edit your Symbaloo page, adding and removing buttons as needed.

I set my Symbaloo account as my homepage on my classroom computers to help make my students more independent at finding their favourite sites (that being said, I still have to supervise them closely, but it stops me from being constantly asked to help find the pattern machine game or Toupie et Binou).

And, if that is not all, Symbaloo now has a FREE iPhone app! If you create your own free account, you can now access it and any other webmixes you like on the go.

I like to share my Symbaloo site with parents so that at home, they can easily find websites that are appropriate for kindergarten students.  Parents have the option of setting it as their homepage or adding it to their iPhone as well.

As a French immersion kindergarten teacher, my links relate to French language learning, math and problem solving.  What is your favourite website for your kindergarten students or child?

Teaching Kinders to Hold Scissors Properly

If you are like most kindergarten teachers, the beginning of the school year brought you a handful of students who are still learning to hold and use scissors properly.  If you are looking for a strategy to help them remember how to hold those scissors, try using these six cues that our OT used with my students.  I have made them into a poster with visual cues that my students are able to read independently as a reminder to themselves and each other.  (No chicken wings means keep your elbows down).

One other little trick that I sometimes use for students who are having a hard time keeping their elbows down is I have them lie down on their stomach while cutting.  As they need their elbows to support themselves, they are forced to keep their elbows down and in turn, use their helper hand to steer.

What do you do in your class to help your students learn scissor skills?  If you have another trick or idea, please share it below.

Teaching kinders a proper pencil grasp in five simple steps

At the beginning of every kindergarten year, I have at least one child who fists their pencil.  Here is my favourite way, in 5 simple steps, to teach most children how to hold their pencil with a proper tripod grasp.

1.  Make an elastic pencil holder (as you can see, I made this one out of a black and a blue hair elastic, a big star bead and a small zip tie).

2.  Have the child slide their dominant hand through the black elastic.

3.  Have the child hold the bead with their middle, ring and pinky fingers.  This gives these fingers something to do and gets them out of the way.

4.  The thumb and pointer finger become “pinchers” to hold the pencil.  I find using a Start Right pencil grip, makes “pinching” easier at first and stops the thumb and pointer from wrapping too far around the pencil.

5.  For most pencil fisters (or students who use too many fingers to stabilize their pencil), the pencil will often lean forward when they try using only their thumb and pointer to hold it.  To fix this, simply thread the un-sharpened end of the pencil through the small loop you created in the black elastic.  The pencil will be tilted back and held in the web space between the thumb and pointer.

Do you have a different tried, tested and true way of teaching your students proper pencil grasp?  If so, I’d love to hear about it.

Shoes on the Wrong Feet? Here’s a simple fix….

Do you know someone who always puts their shoes on the wrong feet?

If this looks familiar, here is a simple trick to help your little one get their shoes on the proper feet.  With a permanent marker, draw a dot on the inside edge the sole of each shoe.  Teach your child to line the dots up before putting their shoes one.  If their shoes are on the correct feet, the dots should be able to touch.  If they can’t touch, a simple reminder like “Did you check your dots?” is usually enough to help the child figure out how to make them right.

Lining up these little dots before putting on shoes helps children get them on the proper feet.

Using Scissors on Day 1 – here’s a trick to keep all those little pieces of paper off the floor

If you have ever watched little ones learn how to use scissors, you know how many little bits of paper you can end up with all over the table and floor when some of them try to cut out even the simplest of shapes.  For those of you who can’t relate, imagine taking a piece of paper and trimming the edges, a little piece at a time until you are left with the shape you want.  Now imagine trying to get all those bits from wherever they landed into the classroom recycle bin.  Not an easy feat to say the least!

One simple trick I learned from a colleague a few years back is to put mini-recycle bins on each table.  I teach my students from day 1 to put all their little scraps into these bins and they are emptied when we are all done cutting.  This simple little trick really helps make clean-up time easier.

My students use mini green recycling bins for all their paper scraps when doing cutting activities.

Our table-top recycling bins

Teaching AM and PM Kindergarten – How to keep it all straight

When I began teaching kindergarten, I muddled with different ways to keep everything organized for two different classes.  (Those of you who have always taught full-day kindergarten probably can’t relate!).  The secret to my success: I colour code my classes.

I use green for my AM class and blue for my PM class, but you could use any two colours as long as they are readily available.  (I use the same system for anecdotal notes and assessments so it is important that I pick colours that paper is also stocked in at my school).

These are our bins for inside shoes. AM students put their shoes in the green bin when they go home and PM students use the blue one.

These bins are our “catch-alls” for handouts (and student work) that need to go home, again green for AM and blue for PM.

In our class we all sit together for snack.  Each student hangs their open backpack on the back of their chair and once everyone is settled, I can easily put things directly into each student’s backpack.  At our school, we often have notices for the “oldest or only” student from each family.  At the beginning of the year (until I have this list memorized),  I tie a bright yellow ribbon on each “oldest or only” child’s backpack so that I can efficiently hand out these notices.

The green and blue bins on this shelf are used for students to return their library books (our librarian likes them to stay separate by class).

What is your secret to keeping more than one class organized?  Please leave a comment and share.

Creating an environment that fosters curiosity, creativity and play

After reading, google-ing and reading some more, I decided to set up my room a little differently this year.  I wanted to create an inviting environment that fosters independence, creativity, curiosity and exploration, all through play.  After much moving and reorganizing, here is what my kindergarten classroom looks like so far:

Here is the first impression you get when you walk in our classroom door.

Another look from the door, this time looking in and to the left.  Our sensory table still needs to be filled!

This is what you see standing in the door and looking towards the door.

Our carpet time and gathering area.

Here is our dramatic play area, setup with a “kitchen” to start the year off.

This is going to be our “art centre”. I made the bench this summer with drawers to hold some of our bigger art materials like paper rolls, egg cartons, etc.

This small carpet area is for our building and construction centre.  Beside it, is our shelf of “tub toys” that we use to start each day aa well as our blue and green bins for returned library books.

Here is a look at another play area carpet and soon-to-be science area. In this picture you can also see the blue egg-chair for children who need a moment to calm down right beside our computer station (we got new computers and they have not been set-up yet).

Please leave me a comment letting me know what you think so far.  Do you have any other ideas you use to create a welcoming classroom environment?

What did I learn today? – Set of Mini-Posters

Here is set of mini-posters I created this past year to help parents understand why we make so much time to play in our classroom.  They link kindergarten outcomes (from the Alberta curriculum) with different centres we have in our classroom.  I posted it just outside our room to help parents understand how play is children’s work.

Mme Melissa

Play in my Classroom

Why play in the kindergarten classroom (or any classroom), you ask?  Well, put simply, I regularly see how play captivates my students and stimulates language learning and growth (for examples of kindergarten outcomes evident during play, click here).  I have witnessed, first hand, a cardboard box in my dramatic play area become a pirate ship and my ELL students transform into the captain and crew.  As they “hoist the Jolly-Roger” and to “set sail on the seven seas” in search of their treasure, their interest in learning the desired language to enact their story is apparent.  It only takes hearing “Arrrr” “Land ahoy!” or “Shiver me timbers!” once before it has become part of the common language used regularly while playing in our classroom.

But can play be more than that?  At a recent PD session where we watched a video from the Galileo Network’s Website and looked at Stuart Brown’s seven patterns of play, I began to reflect on the the play that happens daily in my classroom and how it could help develop an even deeper understandings of the world around us.  I began to look not only at the materials that are readily available but also how the classroom environment could foster certain types of play, curiosity and exploration.  I became intrigued by the Reggio Emilia Approach and giving my classroom more of a “Reggio” feeling.  And that, my friends, is where my classroom remodel, begins.  Stay-tuned for the big reveal.

My classroom before I begin to set it up. You can see that after emptying most of it for summer cleanning, it really is a blank slate.

Another before picture, this time of the back of my room.

Mme Melissa