Gingerbread Man primary play

I often get asked, “ How long does it take to teach the kids the Gingerbread Man primary play?” I do always start teaching the songs at the beginning of November, and that leaves you plenty of time for the kids to learn the whole thing easily by Christmas. I like doing it this way because it allows me to work with them on the songs just a few days per week, so I can still use other songs to keep teaching in the content area meanwhile. My friends at my school have done the whole thing in just three weeks, and have been fine with it, but that is more pressure than I like to put on myself.

Do you need the DVD to learn the motions? Well, you could always make some up yourself. I don't think that I did anything unusual with the handmotions at all. The DVD also has the kids putting on the play, so you can see how it all goes on the stage. It's easier with the DVD than without, but certainly not impossible by any means!


As far as sets are concerned, we used a painted cardboard box the first year for an oven. It fell apart before the show ever went on and I had to make another, and that was a pain. The next year, a parent made me one out of wood. If you have a playhouse oven that is big enough for a child to fit in, then that will work, but you will have to deal with the probability that the kids in your class will spend the rest of the year climbing in and out of that oven during playtime!

I always use a table or teacher's desk for the Gingerbread Man to climb up on as he sings his "Run, run" song. I cover it up with a bridge that has been made out of an unfolded and flattened cardboard box. I think that you can see what it looks like on my website if you look at the video clip from the show. A parent painted the box to look like a brick bridge going over a stream. I actually already had the bridge made from when we did the Three Nanny Goats Gruff from Millikin. So the Gman runs around and around the bridge/table, chased by whomever, and then finally climbs up on the bridge to be sort of "out of reach" of the chasing characters. The bridge can be folded up flat and stored in a closet. I also poked some holes into it and ran a piece of yarn through the holes to tie it onto the legs of the table. Otherwise, it falls down. The flaps of the box lay flat on the ground and look like water. The mom that made it for me volunteered to make it and had done similar things like it for her son's pre-K play.

Another thing I added as time went by is a backdrop of a Gingerbread Man house that was painted by another artistic mom. She actually painted it for me on a real painter's canvas so that it would last a good long time. But this is nothing that you cannot do without. We also hang up some giant silvery snowflakes that hang from fishing wire above the stage. They sparkle and glitter a lot, and that makes the whole thing pretty. But again, it's nothing that you can't do without. We got them from Target after their Christmas season ended. They were just hanging up, and we asked if we could have them when they were done. They said that it would be no problem, and called us when they were finished with them. I've used them ever since.

Costumes are mostly just sweatpants died to whatever color you need, if necessary. We add a sock tail and a hat of some type, usually made out of felt. The Gingerbread Man's outfit is a white sweat suit died a cinnamon color, with red pompoms pinned on the front. A Santa cap makes it cute. We had some red rickrack that we had glued onto the suit at the wrists and ankles, but it fell off, so a mom sewed it back on. The fox's outfit is just a red blanket sleeper, a simple felt headband (with some fabric stiffener ironed to the back of the band) and some triangle ears sewn on. It attaches with velcro in the back by folding over itself. We have a red sock tail with a white tip painted on it, and it pins to the back. The little fox always steals the show!

Sight Word String-Ups

Here's an idea I had for sight words using those pencil boxes with the slide out tray, available at Office Depot. I was going to put the plastic letters for one word in the box, write the word on the top of the box, and then the kids could build the word together. Well, I decided to use Sight Word String-Ups in the boxes! If you haven't seen Sight Word String-Ups yet, go to ReallyGoodStuff.com and search for them there. They are plastic letters with a hole in them for stringing words, but instead of strings, which are hard to manipulate and tangle up a lot, they use pipe cleaners. The hole in the letters is large enough for the pipe cleaners to go through. (The kit comes with 4 trays, word cards, and about 260 letters.) I figured that I would use those letters in my pencil boxes, and put a pipe cleaner in there with them.
My kids LOVED sight word string-ups! I actually made a table on a paper, with the words that they were responsible for making written in each box. As they finished assembling a word, they were supposed to color in the box for that word. If I had a volunteer at the table, I had that person put a star in the corner of the box to verify that the word had been completed. Anyway, the thing that slows them down with the activity is trying to find the correct letter. If the letters are sorted into the pencil boxes, then they won't encounter this problem. I'll have to see if it is just too easy for some, but I think that it will be a more efficient use of their time. I will also put out some extra letters so that they can make their names or other words when they are done. My kids last year would work on this one table for several days, so it was a good center activity that lasted, especially when you throw in the accountability paper.

When I first bought the Sight Word String-Ups, I just bought the set. When I saw that it had only four trays, I put those away and got out carpet squares instead. Then I realized that for a group of five or six kids, we really could use another set. As I looked online, I realized that you can buy the letters separately, in either upper or lower case, and it is half the price! So I bought another set.

Here is the link for the set:
www.reallygoodstuff.com

Here is a link for just the letters: (called "Manuscript Letter Beads- Lower Case.)
www.reallygoodstuff.com

Calendar Books

Calendar Books are becoming more popular these days. I have to agree that the calendar notebooks can be a powerful tool for increasing accountability to pay attention, and to review lots of concepts daily. A Calendar Book generally is a little binder for each child with a copy of the monthly calendar in it for them to fill in daily, one number at a time. You can add a blank 1-10o chart that they also fill in one number at a time as you count the days that you have been in school. I originally learned about the idea from the I Teach K Conference in Las Vegas last summer, in 2007, at a session by Shari Sloan. It sounded like a great idea, so I decided to try it. I took my masters from Shari Sloan’s website. She has a lot of prepared masters that you can download for your calendar book. There are lots of things you can add into it as the year goes by, such as an Odds and Evens chart, a Write the Date chart, a Tally Chart so they can practice counting by 5's, etc. I wound up making my own after a while so that I could tweak them to suit myself and add some cute clip art. Here are some things that I did with my class that made the calendar book work for me. I love to include language arts activities during our opening calendar activities, so I made up a few to go in our book.


One thing I added was a sheet called "Word Family of the Day" in which they added one word per day from whatever word family we were working on, like -at words or -an words. After they wrote it in, everyone would touch and point to all of the words, and read them together. Then I added another one called, "Sight Word of the Day," in which they added one new sight word each day. We didn't do these things until the last three months of the year, though. Otherwise, we would have been up to more than 150 words, and that is WAY too much! I also learned to number the boxes on the page, and set up the page so that it matched my concept board (a calendar board with some other concepts thrown in on the same wall right next to it). That way, if someone was absent, we could easily catch up by filling in all of the rows of word up to a certain word. I would put a sticky note under the last word to be written. It was only one a day, unless they were absent. Just make it so that the sheet and the board match exactly, and you'll have no problem. We also added a sheet for problem solving and called it the "Word Problem of the Day". I made up a math problem just out of my head, and they were to draw a picture and write the equation. Then they had to say whether or not they used addition or subtraction. We sometimes used a spinner or dice to choose the numbers for our problem.

Another thing I added was a Zoo-Animal Probability Graph that I already was using on the wall. There is a picture below. The chart on the wall was similar but made with stickers, and it was laminated. I put one of each animal in a bag, and the helper of the day got to pick one animal out without looking. We filled in a square for each animal that got pulled out of the bag. We returned the animal to the bag each day, so it was a lesson in the probability of how often something would get chosen, given an equal chance for each one every day. We used a dry erase marker to fill in the graph on the wall so that I could erase it and use the same one next year. I think that next year, I will add an estimation sheet, and let them write their guess in a designated box on a paper that I will create. Then we will count the objects and write the real quantity in a designated spot.


My kids worked on the floor because our tables are around the outsides of the room. But I made it work by putting a zippered pouch in each binder with crayons, a pencil, and an eraser. The kids had their crayons in a baggie, not in the crayola boxes that they come in. It was too hard for them to get the crayons back in the boxes. I didn't let them keep these binders or pouches at the end of the year, so I will be using them again. Since I never sent them home, they were still in pretty good condition.
Shari Sloan is very clever about the way she has her calendar masters organized. I really liked the way she gives the option of having the numbers on the calendar be dotted for tracing, or blank with no number cues written in. The boxes on the calendar that would never be used at all are blacked out, so the kids can't put numbers in boxes that belonged to other months. I think that she recommends that Kindergartners just use the trasable pages for the first two months, and then you switch to the blank ones. Two of my special needs kids never graduated to the blank ones, but no one seemed to notice the difference. I think that is actually a pretty good way to work around learning needs and still do it whole group. Another thing that helped a lot was filling it in in small groups the first time we did it. I showed them and modeled it whole group, and then we tried it in small groups to make sure that everyone got it. Once most of them understood what was expected, I had some of my higher, more nurturing girls give assistance to my lower ones when we did it whole group. I think that helping their lower achieving peers was a really great thing for them, too! I made sure that they understood that they were not to do it FOR their classmate, but to just point out the right spot and remind them of what should go there, and to allow that child to copy theirs, if necessary. It worked!
I really liked the Calendar book, and the kids liked it too.

What should I put in a fine motor skills kit for Preschool- Kindergarten aged children?

My fine motor kit includes lots of manipulatives that help children improve muscle control on the same muscles that are used in writing, cutting, etc. It is similar to many of the things that they show here. It has: spray bottles, squeeze bottles, tweezers & pompom balls or cotton balls, clothes pins and small plastic baskets, modeling clay, medicine droppers, etc. Nuts and bolts to screw in are a great thing to add to it. I found some yesterday at Discount School Supply that come in different sizes, shapes, and colors, so they can practice sorting them and then screwing them together! It's great practice to peel and place stickers, too. Try opening and closing padlocks, use a wrench, sort beads or marbles with a tweezer. You can cut a bath mat into squares and have them put marbles in the depressions with a tweezer or tongs, too. My kids LOVED to use turkey basters to transfer water from one container to another, especially colored water. I also had them watering plants with an eye dropper! (You would think that they would complain!!!) Get a piggy bank and have them put money into the slots. A jar with a piece of the lid cut out will work, too. You can combine language arts skills with fine motor improvement by putting letters on clothespins, and making words with them. Unifix with letters or numbers written on them with a permanent marker can also be snapped together in order. Snap beads are good for them, too. I also put my kids to work trying to remove masking tape from our carpet with tweezers. :) I have also collected a bunch of wind up toys that are really fun to play with. It helps develop the pincher grasp when they wind them up. I used these as their "reward" when they did the other things! Little did they know that they were STILL working on their fine motor skills! This website has lots of pictures of activities that promote fine motor skills: www.monthome.com.

I did most of these activities in an after school tutoring group, but as I thought about it more, I realized that if I combined math or language arts activities with the fine motor activities, I was killing two birds with one stone. They could count out objects by using tongs instead of a tweezer, for example. You could sort them, add them, or subtract them, too. Just manipulate things using tongs or tweezers, etc., instead of the fingers. Making words or letters out of playdough works, too! And you could measure how far a wind up toy goes as well. I'll bet that once you start thinking about this, you can all come up with gobs of great activities.

“Help! I have an extremely difficult child with a “helicopter” mom in my class. What should I do?”

This is a response that I posted on teachers.net to a question about a problem with a very difficult child, and a "helicopter mom." A "Helicopter Mom" is one that hovers over her child constantly, rarely ever asking the child to take any responsibility for his or her actions. Although this entry applies to the teacher's situation specifically, I thought that it might be helpful to post it here, since I am sure that many of us have found ourselves in similar situations. Here it is!

"One thing that I think is important in dealing with a situation like this is try to get that mom on your side somehow. It might be worth a home visit to see the child and the mom interact at home. Let the mom know that since she knows her child best, you are going to be looking to her to show you how to best teach her daughter the behavior that will be expected throughout her school career. I think that I would tell her what you need very specifically, like cooperation during activities, and her best effort given every time she tries something. You need her to sit quietly in a group and listen with the other children. How would her mom help her to learn that?

I think that it helps sometimes for parents to realize that some of the techniques that they use at home (like babying to calm) may not be appropriate in a school setting. Just leading the parent through the typical school day scenario, and having her describe how she would get her child to comply can be very revealing to the parent. She can then realize that her suggestions to calm the child down (like holding and rocking her) are not appropriate for a teacher/child relationship in most cases. After that, maybe she will be "on board" with you in helping her daughter to acquire some more appropriate behaviors. To me, having that parent support you in how you deal with their child means so much!

Her mom may very well say that her daughter will NEVER do those things that you are asking! If so, then at least you can prepare yourself for that, and consider a plan of ignoring as much of those behaviors as possible. Use that taped-off square and let her have her fit until she is tired of it. If it fails to get her whatever it is she is seeking, she may just stop.

I had a handicapped boy in my class one year who screamed non-stop for the first two weeks. (Of course, he was unidentified in his special needs at that point. It didn't take me long to figure it out; but it took the school district the whole year.) Anyway, after two weeks, he finally looked up and noticed that we were singing and dancing. He was interested, and wanted to join in! Yeah! It was the music in the end that won him over. His movements never matched ours, and he never could say all of the words, but he did finally learn all of the Zoo-Phonics sounds that he was able to make, 0-11, the shapes, most of the letter names, and about five sight words! He never was able to write his name recognizably, though. He was moved the following year to a special day class. My point, though, is that even though he couldn't communicate much in Spanish or English, music transcended through and he bought into the idea of being in school due to the music. Use any music that you and your kids enjoy, and see if you can get the little girl to LOVE school! Once she loves school (and you!) you will have a much better chance of getting her to comply and cooperate, I think."
Heidi

What To Do on the First Day of Kindergarten

Everyone has their own way of dealing with the first day of school. It's always tough, but this is the routine that I have developed. On the first day of school, I always teach my students Zoo-Phonics, and read a first day of school story (hopefully about first day jitters- I like the book, "Will I Have a Friend?").

Then I get out my monkey puppet and read "Bono Goes to School." Bono, the monkey, helps me read the story, and he acts it out as we go along. Of course, he breaks every rule, and the kids howl with laughter! At the end, he always gets it right, and we clap for him, and then he gets a star to wear that I attach with velcro. The kids would listen to that story every day for a month, if we had time for it. There are other Bono stories, too. Fun! This is how I teach my rules.

Then of course, we sing some songs. I teach them my Jumpin' Numbers and Shakin' Shapes motions and songs. This is similar to Zoo-Phonics, in that there is a visual cue on the flashcard embedded into the numeral, and they respond physically to it. There is a song for each number, and shape. We can usually make it through zero-five on the first day, and then I add in the rest of the songs over the next week until they know them all.

Then we all settle down to color a page from the Bono book. The Bono book is all in blackline, so it is easy to make a coloring page for them to do when we are done, and they love that. The book even comes with a reduced size booklet so that the kids can make their own! Unfortunately, it is only reduced by half, so it's a lot of xeroxing, so we just color one page. After they finish coloring, I let them choose either unifix cubes or pattern blocks to play with, and I show them how to make a simple pattern. When everyone is done, it is usually recess time. We go outside, learn the rules for the playground, and then I give them a snack and they play. Don't forget to show them what to do when the bell rings to come in, and where to line up!

When we come inside, we read another first day of school story (I like "Miss Bindergarten") and then I teach them the procedures for playing with my toys and how to put them away. I let them play for a while, and then clean up. After that, we sing a song and get ready to go home. I make sure that I tell them what the arrival procedures are before releasing them.

We also role play what happens when they see their moms or dads, etc., coming to get them. We don't run away to them without telling me that they are going! They have to wait until I release each of them by name to the correct person. I make sure that I tell the parents that as well in the morning when they drop off their kids, so that they don't signal for them and expect them to come running immediately. I had a child disappear once the first week of school, and it is not an experience I want to repeat!
Heidi