Valentines

Made my own this year. I like them better than Spiderman and Strawberry Shortcake! You?

Community Helpers

So far our Community Helpers unit is going a bit slow; as Christmas programs, projects, and excitement has taken over. However, my students LOVED my "grocery store" center. I had some play money, real empty food boxes, cans, etc, and play grocery carts. We took a couple extra brown bags from Winco, and I found these WalMart name badges as clip art.

We set up store and they played their guts out! This week I decided I would let them play "Post Office". I am cutting a big hole out of a large box for them to mail letters. I have paper, envelopes, pens, pencils, and homemade stamps. I found the stamp template by typing in "postage stamp coloring pages" into my Google search. Then I did the same only I typed in "christmas coloring pages" and "USA coloring pages" to get the pics for each stamp. Tomorrow, I will put the "glue" on the back of the stamps, so that when they play post office they can actually lick and stick the stamps! You can find the stamp glue recipe here: DLTK

I think it will be tons of fun!

Munchers

I saw these great ideas to help with literacy. You could "feed the trash cans/ monster all sorts of things: ABC cards, magnet letters, colors, shapes, etc. To go to these awesome blogs, with even more incredible ideas, click on the pics. On the Dr. jean and Friends website is this darling song:

(Sung to the tune Tiny Tim)
I have a hungry friend.
His name is Mr. Munch
And what he likes to do all day is gobble up his lunch.
He likes the letter ___ (for example H)
And things that start with ___(make /h/ sound)
And he is very happy when he goes munch, munch, munch, crunch.

Children's Books Read By Their Authors!

Amazing find!!! Here is a website that has the following stories read by their authors or different celebs:

The Kissing Hand
Splish, Splash, Splat
Ladybug Girl at the Beach
Charlie the Ranch Dog
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Pinkalicious
Strega Nona
The Polar Express
The Mitten
Where the Wild Things Are
Olivia
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Smash! Crash!
Fancy Nancy: Bonjour, Butterfly

May-Plants

I found this sensory box idea here, and wanted to be sure I remembered it for mext year!

Weather Bear
Darling idea for the little ones to help choose what to wear during different types of weather! I chose the black and white version and pasted them into the paint program first, so I could choose my own colors.

Monthly Themes-Dramatic Play

Here are my monthly themes and my plans for dramatic play:

January (weather) rain coat, rain boots, umbrella, coat, snow pants, scarf, winter hat, winter boots, sun screen bottle (cleaned out and lid glued on), and sunglasses.

February (transportation) uniforms, steering wheel, train out of boxes ad cunductor hat/ overalls, pilot wings, bus driver hat, and bike helmet.

March (Dr. Seuss) red and white tall hats (Cat in the Hat), elephant trunk (Horton), fish hat (One Fish..), other crazy items to dress up like characters from books.

April (animals) masks from oriental trading

May (plants) overalls, hoe, shovel, flower pots, fake flowers/ plants, farmer hat, and gloves.

June (insects) butterflies/ nets, rubber insects, beehive/ bees, and rubber spiders.

July (camping/ safety) small tent, sleeping bag, hats, boots, hiking gear, flashlights, wood for a "fire", and marshmallows.

August and September (back to school) back packs, school supplies, school clothes, toothbrush, comb, shampoo bottle, wash cloth, coat, and clock.

October (all about me) phone, wigs, dress-up clothes like mom and dad, play make-up, mirror, and stuffed animals for pets with leashes.

November and December (neighborhoods and community helpers) set up a grocery store with play food and money, post office with paper/ envelopes/ stamps with home-made glue, restaurant with play food and money, bank with play money and play checks, car wash, farm, veterenarian, police, and fire fighter.