Rainbows in a Jar!

Welcome Readers....Have you ever heard of Pinterest? It is a great social networking tool that you can use for educational purposes, whether you are a teacher or a student. This "tool" can make it possible to create boards for specific projects and to collect and share lesson resources. You can search Pinterest to discover almost any creative idea imaginable.

My favorite thing about Pinterest is …………….it is a beautiful, vivid website that provides enormous amounts of resources for anyone. For example, I am preparing the end of the year party for my child's class. I have created a whole page of activities related to a beach theme from snacks, crafts, decorations, and even whimsical names for the ice cream bar toppings. Sooo cute! My little girl and I even made our own "sand art" this weekend using salt, colored chalk, and a jar. It is one of my favorite finds on Pinterest this year. I have already passed it on to at least 10 friends! I believe this is what makes Pinterest so valuable and relatable to a varied group of online readers. You can find something to experiment with today and implement into your classroom or home immediately. I am going to use the sand activity for teaching colors and it is a great fine motor activity too.

What about literacy? How about following up my last blog post with this "Rainbow in a Jar" activity for further exploration of colors extending the book Purple, Green, and Yellow by Robert Munsch. Writing uppercase and lowercase letters in the "sand" before pouring them in jars would be a great activity for emerging readers.

Rainbow in a Jar

Materials

Paper
Colored Chalk
Salt
Small Jars
Pour about a tablespoon or 2 of salt on a piece of paper.

Take your chosen chalk color and rub the chalk back and forth across the salt until you get the desired color saturation. Pour different colored layers in jar. So pretty!!!!

Here are 5 easy ways to get started with Pinterest in your classroom:

Visit the Education Category
Creating your Own Boards
Providing Reading Lists and Additional Resources
Finding Projects and Supplemental Material
Students Using It to Track Research

You can visit websites and topics below for even more ideas for using Pinterest in the classroom and to further explore the 5 ways noted above.

Explore 5 Easy Tips for Pinterest

More Pinterest Teacher Tips

20 Ways Libraries are using Pinterest...Literacy!

Found 50 Things for Early Finishers on Pinterest :)

Lois Ehlert grew up in house where everyone seemed to be making things.  Watch this video and see how her artistic upbringing influenced her stories. 

Purple, Green, and Yellow

Happy almost May everyone!! 

I wanted to focus this blog on the benefits of  rhyme & repetition in the early childhood classroom, as well as to try inspire you to create an interactive wiki for your students. 

Who better to celebrate the art of rhyme & repetition than the stories of Robert Munsch.  There are many reasons I enjoy using Robert Munsch's stories in the classroom.  My students love them, the rhyme & repetition is clever, and I haven't  read his book without at least 5 or more giggles from my sweet audience of listeners.......the joy of reading at its best!   When I was teaching first grade, we read his books daily.  I can recite most of them without opening the cover.  Through my experiences, I found reluctant readers could read the chants in his books very easily. The rhythm in his stories provided great reading support for emerging readers. His stories also provided many opportunities for choral readings in the classroom.  To learn more about the benefits of choral readings, click here: Benefits of Choral Reading  

Robert Munsch has a great website that supports his books & offers the chance for students to click & hear him read the stories he has created. It is a very user friendly site for even the youngest students.  In my opinion, there is nothing better than to hear an author read his own works. Here is the link:  Robert Munsch Interactive Website It is the best author site I have found in recent years. He also includes students' writing samples and questions. He is an author who values our students' voices, which is very important to me.  

I would  like to share with you my wiki page inspired by Robert Munsch's dedication to literacy.  I created an author fan club for my students with bi-weekly & monthly assignments to encourage computer literacy opportunities at home and to promote the home/school connection.  Within my wiki, parents will find a reading tip of the day & a book selection of the day.  They can click on the link & print the reading tips too. Students will find follow-up activities from our class readings and links to post their thoughts and opinions.  Our first wiki author study focuses on the author Robert Munsch's story  Purple, Green, and Yellow.  It is a story about a little girl named Brigid. She really loves markers, but when she draws on herself with super-permanent ink, she knows that spells trouble. The illustrations make the text jump off the page. My students love to try and pronounce the funny words throughout this story, as Brigid has a big problem to solve. Munsch shares this about his story, " When he thinks about it, his daughter Tyya went through a long stage of coloring herself with magic markers and face paints." This inspired his story Purple, Green, and Yellow.

I hope you will take a few minutes to explore my wiki page. I am a novice, so I am hoping my first attempt is a great one.  Also, I am hoping this will inspire you to create an interactive wiki in your classroom too.  Here is my wiki link:  Munsch to Talk About Wiki  You will find our author video there this week. 

 (A little brag here: I hope you have time to scroll to the bottom of the home page to hear my little girl's podcast detailing the  Purple, Green, and Yellow class assignment.)

Lastly, here is an article supporting the uses of wikis in the classroom. When deciding on who, what, & why to have a wiki, I found this resource to be very valuable.

50 ways to use wikis in the classroom

Where the Sidewalk Ends.....

Hi Friends! I am blogging about one of my favorite teaching strategies. I first discovered "Environmental Print" as a first grade teacher. Being a graduate from Montevallo, I always welcomed interns in my classroom. I also had interns from UAB. One year, a professor from UAB, had co-authored a book about the benefits of environmental print in the early childhood classroom. She was there observing a intern in my classroom and we started a conversation. I bought her book, had countless conversations with her throughout the year, and environment print became an important part of my classroom curriculum. Here is a link to the book that started it all in my classroom: Integrating Environmental Print Book

What is environmental print? Environmental Print is the print that a child sees every day on street signs, signs on buildings, the store shelves, while in the checkout line, or anywhere there are words. Reading print from the world around us is one of the beginning stages of literacy development. The letters, numbers, shapes, and colors found in logos from products and stores such as McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, Coke, and Taco Bell all provide opportunities for emerging readers to interact with print and the written word in their own environment. I believe environmental print is the first print a child learns to read.


Here are a few ideas I used in my classroom every year. It is a perfect beginning of the year unit. It makes the home & school connection through lessons. Here are a few activities I enjoy with my students:

For Blog purposes I am going to refer to Environmental Print as (EP)

Make an “Eat the Alphabet” book: The children collect EP of all different foods & put them in a class book next to the corresponding alphabet letter. Take a look at this example :)
Environmental Print ABC Example

Make a class “ I Can Read” chart: The students glue on the chart the words from their environment they can read.

Sorting: Students can bring in all sorts of EP and you can have them sort them by category (food, toy, store, signs )

Find rhyming words, example of short & long vowels, and any other word building skill.

A field trip to the mall to look for EP or around the school building is a great way to experience environmental print. Walking around the school with a digital camera looking for EP to add to our class chart is always a favorite activity.

Can’t go on a field trip? How about accessing online games with environmental print? This is one, simple example of activities found online. This would be a great assessment tool at the end of the unit too. Street Sign Gallery Game

A reminder of how a love a reading begins at home.....Judy Blume.

 My personal, childhood FAVORITE author! 

Koala Lou and Social Bookmarking TOO!

Welcome Readers! How enthusiastic I am to share with you a few things I have been learning while exploring a social bookmarking site named Diigo. I learned a lot while creating my social bookmarking site. I started by comparing traditional bookmarking to 21^st century bookmarking. It is like comparing apples to oranges. In my opinion, browser bookmarking systems have not kept up with the changes and growth of the Internet. Traditional bookmarking can be time-consuming and the lists of favorite sites are only available on the individual user’s computer. In contrast, Diigo allows the user to bookmark important websites and access them from school or home and share them with other students. 

Large collections of bookmarks can quickly become unmanageable and disorganized, but using a social bookmarking site allows teachers or students to write comments directly on web pages.  Many times, when I traditionally bookmarked my favorite websites, I may not have remembered why I created a bookmark or what part of the page I was trying to save. Using Diigo, categorizing websites with titles, notes, keyword tags, lists, and groups is easy.  The Diigo toolbar gives the user instant access to the social bookmarking service’s features and marking your favorite sites is very efficient.

One very beneficial way I will use my collection of resources is to collaborate online and share information.  It is a wonderful professional development tool.  I recently discovered there are hundreds of educator groups on Diigo where educators are collaborating together. There are over 200 K-12 groups available for educators through Diigo. I will continue to use this site to access current articles for professional development and have a collection of resources available for parents in my classroom. I am always looking for articles to support early literacy at home, provide solid documentation of specific strategies I am using in the classroom, and to enhance my teaching to keep up-to-date on 21st century learning. You can access my Diigo list located in the sidebar of this blog or simply click this link Literacy & Technology List

My favorite site for sharing everything about literacy is www.readingrockets.com  It is a site I frequent weekly and site regularly on my blog and wiki.  It is a combination resource for parents and teachers. From podcast, videos, articles, author interviews, and current education topics, this resource is filled with valuable information for anyone concerned with education.  Little discoveries like these that are easily bookmarked, compiled, and stored using Diigo. I hope professionals will use my resource list as a practical list of early childhood articles to enhance their instruction, while providing productive resources for their classroom. 

Here is one example of how I use my social bookmarking resources:

Each week, on my blog posts, I focus on a specific author.  Reading Rockets, which is located in my social bookmarking site, has a huge library of author interviews available to readers. I post a video each week to my blog.  In addition to providing video, I can then search this resource for articles supporting the use of author studies in the classroom or a specific reading strategy.  I found this article showing how author studies are beneficial in the classroom.
10 Reasons for Author Studies


Mem Fox 

 

Here is an example of a wonderful author interview sharing about seeing herself as a writer for the first time. The addition of a supporting article for adding author’s studies to your classroom’s literacy instruction is a win, win for educators & parents of emerging readers. 

Brown Bear, Brown Bear......what can you DO?

I am very excited about my post this week.  I hope you find something special tucked inside this post to use in your daily teaching.  I have been researching ways literacy and technology work together in the early childhood classroom.  I also wanted to leave you with my NEW FAVORITE find to help with organizing classroom volunteers and encourage parents to be part of the classroom…..More about that later in the blog.

I believe technology has the power to potentially affect 3 main areas of our teaching profession.  In simple terms:  How we teach, what we teach, and how we share with others. I realize while trying to put each section in categories they overlap, which I feel is an added benefit to integrating technology into our classrooms.

What we Teach:

The internet helps support the various student abilities in the classroom. The different types of reading materials are more accessible to all students. Adaptations can easily be created to make accommodations for the individual learner. Text size can be increased for students with visual impairments. Vocabulary can be simplified for emerging readers. Key words, sounds, and concepts can be highlighted using different colors or fonts.  Additionally, text can be translated into almost any language with the click of a button.  Electronic books provide a multi-sensory approach with related pictures, sound, and video and it appeals to all learners. 

How we Teach:

I have been enjoying learning about virtual field trips.  With cost cuts and budget constraints, this is our 21^st century way of using technology in a new way. Virtual field trips allow children to travel beyond the classroom without actually leaving it.   
Click Here & Explore a Virtual Field Trip  
I also want to provide you with a great article about the benefits of virtual field trips and more top sites to visit.  To explore further, please click this link from Edutopia.com  Article About Virtual Field Trips

How we Share with others:

Collaborating with other educators is important, but I wanted to share my NEW favorite find for encouraging parent participation in the classroom.  Here it is…..Sign up Genius    ( I am secretly hoping this is new to all of you too.) On this free site, you can customize your theme or need, enter days and times, list slots for sign up and best of group members (your class email list) are automatically emailed your volunteer needs. The website emails reminders before the event date, members can even work together to “swap” times, if they change their minds about an event date.  What a wonderful tool for any teacher or room parent!  Even organizing a kindergarten snack list is possible through this website.  

Author of the Week: I have read this book too many times to count.  Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin.  I can’t believe he wrote it in 15 minutes!!  Rhyme and repetition at its best for teaching literacy skills.

The Very Hungry......App!

Happy Spring!    What beautiful weather we have been enjoying this month.  It has made me want to spend less time inside and more time outdoors. For this reason and a couple of others, I am the proud owner of an iPad!!!  After all the research during this class, I had to experience one myself.  I have been exploring apps for the early childhood learner and can't believe my eyes! 21st century learning is here to stay.

This week I will be introducing new ways to teach traditional skills such as reading and listening skills.  I will provide a short video to get you excited about iPads in the classroom and provide reviews of my favorite FREE apps for early literacy learners.  Let's start with a quick video to demonstrate how 21st century learning is changing classrooms across the United States.

I have been memorized by the amount of apps available. When reviewing the free versions, I wanted to look for content related to my topic, literacy and everyday skills, possibilities for use with ESL students, ease of use for all students...and FUN!

               My Top 3 App Picks ....this Week!

Preschool Memory Match

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/preschool-memory-match/id368542467?mt=8.

This app received great reviews. The categories relate to the early childhood curriculum and interests. Students can explore a variety of topics from animals and bugs to transportation. There are no timers or high scores, which I appreciate this change of pace. Conversations can change among students from high scores to "what did you like the most." The voice recordings in this app are by an early childhood speech therapist, which is an added language development bonus.

Read Me Stories

http://iTunes.apple.com/us/app/read-me-stories-childrens/id362042422?mt=8

The Read Me Stories app is terrific and the reviews by users are exceptional. The creator has organized whimsical stories in a virtual library.  Stories can be chosen easily by students. You can pause, preview, and reread books, which are essential tools in literacy development.  The books have great sound effects and illustrations.

Amazing Shape Puzzle Lite Version     

http://itunes.apple.com/app/amazing-shape-puzzle-lite/id469339346?mt=8

Lastly, the free version of this app is a little limiting, but t I couldn't resist including it. It contains puzzles and great animation for the early learner. Skills such as spacial logic and vocabulary are evident through this app.  I also appreciated the ease of use for students who need extra support during this lesson/game. It is also offered in several languages, which is another example of how 21st century learning is limitless.

As I promised....the author of the week!  I am choosing the wonderful Eric Carle...in honor of my ALEX lesson planning and years of teaching from his great stories.  Here is my favorite Eric Carle App....
http://itunes.apples.com/us/app/eric-carle-my-very-first-app/id392077095

If you give a kid a book.......

I love reading with children.  It is my favorite time; whether, I am in the classroom, with toddlers in the church nursery, or at home with my own children.  My favorite part of reading a book is when we revisit it again and again. A little one studying a picture or personally relating to the text is a wonderful teachable moment.  I believe encouraging children to be actively involved in answering questions and making predictions are essential in literacy development.  I believe this is essential to simply enjoying a book too.  Interaction with the text makes the book come alive in the classroom.  Pointing to pictures, gesturing, varying the pace of my voice are all ways I attempt to make the book come alive and encourage my children to participate.  Literacy in the early childhood classroom can be magical. 

I wanted one of my first blogs to begin by discussing ways to create a literacy rich environment in an early childhood classroom.  As a teacher, I was constantly looking for ways to create a classroom environment that set the stage for literacy learning.  I have attached a link to a great article from Early Childhood News.  It provides a comprehensive list of ideas for a literacy rich classroom. These are only suggestions, but I found the author to have a great grasp on literacy learning.  Creating a Literacy Rich Environment

I also want to provide an author’s  personal story during my posts.  I enjoy hearing authors describe their early literacy experiences and inevitably; it begins with an encouraging teacher or parent at a very early age.  This further supports my belief that a love of learning begins in the early childhood classroom.  I couldn't resist this story by Tomie dePaola about his literacy experiences at age 4.

As indicated in the article link provide, integrating books into every part of the classroom, whether directly or indirectly, provides students with great literacy opportunities.  Providing students with at least 2-3 books at each learning center that support the activity in the center is a great way to promote a literacy rich environment.  For example, when working on numbers in the math center, have several books about counting in the center with the mathematical attributes being used for the activity. I would like to provide you with an example of a book experience in my classroom. 

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff. This is a great book to have in the math center. After reading the book whole group, the children can further explore the book in the math center.  I always provide story problems with fun manipulative that support the learning process.  I have included a few of my favorite story problems below:

The mouse and the boy have a box of 24 crayons. The mouse lost 10 of the crayons. How many crayons are left? (I provide a box of crayons for the problem about crayons.)

The boy has 4 cookies and the mouse has 6 cookies. How many cookies do they have altogether? (Paper cookies for the cookie problem)

The mouse has 3 cookies, 5 straws for his milk, and 1 glass of milk. How many things does he have? (An empty cups with straws for the milk problem) 

This is a fun way to combine literacy and math.  I like to extend stories with a technology “link” in some way. Whether sharing whole group or providing it in a center, students can continue to enjoy a literacy experience.  For this particular book, there is a great site to enjoy other books by this author and participate in online games related to her stories. I hope you have time to check out this technology & literacy link Technology Link to Literacy

I hope you had a great time visiting my blog today.  Teaching reading is my passion & I hope it shows!