Well summer is finally here! I will return in the fall with more themes and ideas. I will try to post a few of the fun, crazy things I do with my own kiddos during the summer. Enjoy your summer time!

preposition: review of "inside"

Who is inside the sleeping bag?

To review the preposition "inside" we used the sleeping bag today.

Language Goals
Expressive Language: preposition "inside" conjunction "and"
Receptive Language: Who/What questions

To start everyone made a large circle on the carpet area. I selected one student to go in the hall with my aide. Then I put one student inside the sleeping bag, all the way! Nothing can be showing. Call the student in the hall back in the classroom to try to guess who is inside the sleeping bag.

T: Who is inside the sleeping bag?
S: Hamoody is inside the sleeping bag!
(the student who was inside the sleeping bag now goes in the hallway.)
Once everyone has had a turn inside the sleeping bag, I hid camping items inside the sleeping bag. Sometimes I hid one item or sometimes I hid two items (hoping to get the "and" conjunction!)

T: What is inside the sleeping bag?
S: The tent and the pots are inside the sleeping bag.

CENTERS
Sleeping bags-the kiddos made sleeping bags from construction paper and yarn. I cut large strips of white construction paper and folded the bottom up about 3//4 of the way to the top.  Then I punched holes along the edges and tied a string for the kiddos to lace. Once the kiddos laced the sleeping bag, they got to decorate it however they wanted. I also took pictures of the kiddos laying down on the ground and let them cut out the pictures to put inside the  sleeping bag. Super cute!

here is the finished product minus the picture of the kiddos.



preposition: inside

Tent Day!

I love camping so much and I am super excited to share this experience with my kiddos at school!
Today was tent day. I brought  a small tent (borrowed from my kiddos at home) and we pitched a tent. I don't think my kiddos at school have every paid so close attention to what I was doing! They were all intrigued.

Language Goals
Expressive Language: inside, and (review pronouns I, he/she)
Receptive Language: Where and Who questions

Once the tent has been pitched, take turns going inside the tent.
T: Andrew, go inside the tent. Where are you?
S: I am inside the tent!
T: (ask another student) Where is Andrew?
S: He is inside the tent.
Give each child a chance to be in the tent alone. Then call on 2 or more students to go inside the tent.
T: Yousef and Symone go inside the tent. Where are you?
S: Yousef and I are inside the tent (Or We are inside the tent)
Then put everyone inside the tent!

CENTERS
Make a tent-I searched all over the Internet for a tent craft and everything was so detailed that the kiddos wouldn't get to do much. So, I created my own. Using 5 toothpicks, clay, paper, crayons/markers and hot glue gun (adult use) we made a tent. Roll the clay into 6 small balls. Stick the toothpicks in the clay to form the tent shape.

Then give each child a precut rectangle to decorate. This will be the "tent" top. The adult will hot glue the tent top on the toothpicks. We set the tent on dark green construction paper rectangle.

Wash mess kit- at the water table, the kiddos washed the mess kits. I brought in  some washcloths and filled the tub with soap and water. What a messy fun time they had, but hey my floors got clean!

Tent play- I left the tent from the morning set up and let the kiddos play inside. I added a sleeping bag, flashlight and cooler for a fun dramatic play center.

Writing Center-The kiddos cut and glued a tent shape onto green paper. Then they wrote "I am inside the tent" on the paper. Some kiddos traced and some wrote on their  own. Then the kiddos glued pictures I had taken early inside the tent (each kiddo laid on the ground with head in hands for the pictures. Super cute!)

future tense: I will

Camping!

We started our finally unit of the school year!! Hard to believe so much time has passed already. For the final unit, we are going camping! To start the unit off we reviewed camp vocabulary words and watched a video through Discovery Streaming. Your school needs to be a member to access the videos. If your school has a membership here is the link to the video we watched.

The next day, I brought in some camping items from home (a tent, sleeping bag, backpack, mess kit, cooler, and flashlight.) I set these out and some non-camping items. The kiddos had to decided what to bring on the camping trip!

Language Goals
Expressive language: Future tense (I will bring)
Receptive Language: What questions

Name and review all of the items to start.
Teacher should model the first item.
T: I will bring the tent camping. Who will bring the tent?
S: Sloan will bring the tent!
Let each child pick an item to bring. We sang a song after each item.
"I will bring the tent, I will bring the tent, heigh-ho off we go, I will bring the tent." (sung to Farmer and the Dell).
Here are the vocabulary pictures I used for this unit. 

 

CENTERS
Writing Center- I had a writing prompt made for the kids "I will bring the ______________." I set our the vocabulary pictures and the kiddos had to pick one item to bring. They wrote the word on the line (with the help of the classroom para) and drew a picture to match. 

Verb drink

Milk tasting! Yum. We first talked about where milk comes from. We looked at pictures in a book and talked about milking cows. Then on to tasting. We tasted white milk, chocolate milk and strawberry milk.

Language Goals
Expressive language: verb drink (will drink, drinking, drank), he/she pronoun review and spontaneous language
Receptive Language: Who questions

To make each kind of milk, I had the students give me the directions and I did EXACTLY what they told me to do!! What fun. If they told me to turn the milk, I turned the whole jug!! At one point, one of the students said "Just open!" What a great use of the word "just!

After each kind of milk was made everyone drank the milk.
T: Who drank the white milk?
S: Everyone drank the white milk.
Can do each student individually
T: Andrew, what did Hamoody drink?
S: He drank the white milk.

Make a chart, have the students come up after each milk and write if they liked it or didn't like it.

We made rainbow milk in the afternoon. We discussed what we thought would happen once we added the food coloring to the milk. Will the color stay together, spread out or get smaller? Nothing really happened! Now, what will happen if I did my cotton swab in dish soap? Will the color stay together, spread out or get smaller??? Watch the fun happen! I did on first to demonstrate for the students. Then I gave each student their own plate of milk. I found this activity on Pinterest. Step by step directions can be found here The milk MUST be 2% or higher. You only need a small drop of dish soap. If you dip the cotton swab again in the soap, it will spread again.

Preposition Review

The kiddos kept calling a barn a farm, so off on another lesson we went! Today we focused on the word "barn." We did a listening activity to review prepositions next to, bottom, top and middle.
First, my favorite aide cut the barns out for us and cut the pictures out as well. Each kiddo got an envelope and a barn. Most of the kiddos loved digging in their envelope for the picture I called out. For the ones that were struggling, I spread out their pictures on the table for easier success!

This was a listening activity to review animal names and prepositions. It could easily be make into expressive language as well by having the kiddos answer questions either during or after the activity.

Language Goals
Expressive language: prepositions, animal names, everyone
Receptive language: following directions

T: What is this? (hold up the barn)
S: It's a barn!
T: Right, who needs a barn?
S: Everyone needs a barn!
T: First we need to draw doors on the barn. (model for the students. We also drew a window at the top for hay). Pass out the animals.
T: Find the pigs. Who has pigs?
S: Everyone has pigs!
T: Glue the pigs on the bottom of the barn.
T: Where did everyone glue the pigs?
S: On the bottom of the barn.
Repeat with all the animals, place the animals wherever you like. We glued the farmer and his wife on the front next to the doors and put the tractor on the back.

The pictures are from a scholastic e-book about farms. Directions for the barn can be found here  as well as other fun farm printables!! The barn is quite easy. Take a large piece of red construction paper, fold the sides so they meet in the middle. Trim the corners off with a rounded cut to make the barn!

CENTERS
Roll to  make a barn. Directions and printables can be found here

Milk Carton barn. This craft turned out super cute! We glued washed out milk cartons to a cardboard square (I cut the flaps off a box and cut those in half). The kiddos painted the milk cartons red and painted empty toilet paper tubes red. Then painted the cardboard green for grass. After the paint had dried, I hot glued the toilet paper tube to the cardboard and hot glued a mini muffin wrapper on top. This made the silo! Had a bit of trouble getting the paint to stick. Might want to use paper and glue instead.

Pronoun: Everyone

The main focus of the farm unit was animal names. We focused on the adult animals and the baby animals as well as the sounds each one made. It was a fun, noisy time in my classroom!! Each of the following crafts was made using the same lesson plan (geared toward each animal). But the overall concept was the same. So, I am only typing the lesson plan once! We focused on one animal a day.


Language Goals
Expressive language: pronoun everyone, adjectives big, medium and small. Color review
Receptive language: Who questions


To start off each lesson, I showed the students a picture of the animals we would be making. We talked about the animal. What color, which one is big, small, etc. Then holding up the items we would be using to make the craft (for the pig, big paper plates and circles and small ones).
T: What will we use to  make the mommy pig? The big paper plate or the small paper plate?
S: the big paper plate!
T: Who needs a paper plate?
S: Everyone needs a paper plate!
T:What color is the pig?
S: The pig is pink.
T: What do we need to do to our paper plate?
S: Paint it pink!
T: Who will paint the plate pink?
S: Everyone!
T: Will we use the big circle or the small circle for the mommy pig?
S: The big circle! 
T: Who needs a pink circle?
S: Everyone needs a pink circle! (draw the face on first then put right on when paint is wet. we also added ears)
Repeat process for piglet.


Pig

Piglet





For Centers and morning work we laced and stuffed a pig. Super cute! The printout is from Scholastic Biggie Patterns Favorite Themes

The kiddos also painted pigs in mud! Using the same pattern, the kiddos cut it out and glued it on brown paper. Then finger painted mud on the piggy!

Cow day was next.

We used corks to make the spots. Super cute!
For centers, the kiddos played a dice game and colored in the dots on the cow and used the dabbers to make silly cows, again the pattern came from Scholastic Biggie Pattern Favorite Themes.
Great cow activities can be found here

Next up, hen, rooster and chick.
I found the patterns at Making Learning Fun I did enlarge the biggest one a bit to make the contrast bigger between the rooster and the hen. I copied the patterns on sturdy white paper. Then We painted. I started with the chick, yellow. Then we painted the hen brown and the rooster black. The colors blended quite nice because we used the same brush for all three!! After they chickens dried, the kiddos added faces and yarn to the rooster.

More chicken activities can be found here

Sheep and lamb, I think turned out to be my favorite!! We made paper plate sheet and toilet paper tube lambs. You will need lots of cotton balls and glue!!!

The templates for the sheep heads can be found here

For centers the kiddos painted sheep with Q-tips. I copied sheep on black paper and the kiddos used white paper to dot paint the sheep.

Last animal we focused on was horse and foal. The template can be found here
I used craft sticks instead of clothes pins.

For centers, the kiddos made shoe print horses and sponge painted horses. The directions can be found here

I used the same template for the sponge painted as the language lesson.