Penguin Footprints

We made the cutest Footprint Penguins this week, and I had to share :)
I've seen them all over the place, but it took me a bit to figure out how to do them - I saw tons of pictures of finished products, but none of the actual process! I'm not sure if this is the way you're supposed to do it, but I found that if I actually painted the white on my students' feet, it wouldn't transfer to the paper unless they were exceptionally flat-footed.

We ended up painting the outside edges and toes of each child's foot and adding the white middle by hand.

The "flippers" are fingerprints!

We added "snow" by mixing shaving cream and glue. I either got the proportions wrong or using $1 Store shaving cream was a no-no because it didn't puff up as much as I remember it doing last year. (Yes, I've done shaving cream snow before and yes, I have no clue how I did it...my brain willfully withholds these kind of fun facts from me, just to watch me fumble I think.)

I allowed each kiddo to choose their own "beak" and googly eyes from a variety of shapes and sizes. I try to give them as much ownership as possible in these kind of projects so that we don't end up with 20 carbon copies.

They also got to paint as much "snow" as they wanted...some chose the straight line effect.....

Other penguins were experiencing blizzard-like conditions...

This sweet girl went for symmetry...exactly 5 snowflakes on either side of the penguin...

And this penguin is experiencing very localized weather...

And, as a warning, not all children are going to be thrilled about having their foot painted. Be prepared with an alternate version for those sweeties. This little guy thought I was completely nuts to want to put paint on his foot, but he was tickled to get his hand painted instead!

These sweet penguins are cheering up our hallway now, and everyone loves them. I can't wait to add our snowmen to them next week!

Bright Ideas!

I'm joining up with the Bright Ideas Blog Hop again today! I have two ideas to share with you today!

First up - getting the paper off of crayons! If your class is anything like mine, at this time of year the crayons are looking pretty sad - teeth marks, broken shafts and missing tips are par for the course...particularly at some tables. Not that I'm pointing fingers (blue table!)

There are all kinds of things you can do with those broken crayons. Like those lovely melted crayons projects. I'd show you one, but mine turned out to be more along the lines of Pinterest Fail than a piece of art. But, if you feel that melted crayons are in your future for whatever reason, you're going to have to nakify the crayons first.

Heck, even if you're out of new crayons and your students are going to have to make do with what they have until the last bit of scribble is choked out of each crayon nub, you're probably going to want to nakify your crayons anyways, just to cut down on the annoying scraps of paper that will litter your room as the children painstakingly peel each miniscule crumb of crayon. Sure you could probably get away with having your students tear the paper off all of the crayons as a "fine motor skill activity" but just in case you want a faster, neater way of doing it, here goes:

Yes, I sacrificed nice crayons for this. Yes, it hurt my teacher heart, but I actually ditched all of my yucky crayons before Christmas Break (although you really can't tell by looking in blue table's caddy).

Put your crayons in some type of watertight container. This gives you the added benefit of being able to clean out whatever container usually holds your crayons so you can find those odd manipulatives or game pieces that have been missing for weeks, not to mention the odd tissue or bandaid that didn't find it's way to the trash. Pour in enough water to cover the crayons completely and let them soak.
Soak for a while - the water has to have a chance to get through all of the layers of paper. I actually let mine sit for a while so that I could try to slide the paper sleeves right off the crayons:

Yes, they did multiply...what did you expect when you left naked crayons in a container by themselves?!

I'm planning to reuse them as "invisible" crayons on April 1st...

Now I just have a few random tidbits:

"I'm your teacher, not a dj." This is my mantra. At first I have to explain the concept of a dj, and how you can call in to request a song on the radio, and I have to repeat the mantra over and over in the beginning. But, eventually they learn that the best way to get me to NOT play their favorite Brain Break is by yelling it out at carpet. Quiet hands get their choice of song...unless I just feel like doing Pop See Ko again and exercise my prerogative as the Keeper of the Keyboard.

Vaseline & Q-tips - Do your kiddos have clown lips? You know, that ring of chapped skin around their mouths that is reminiscent of PennyWise from Steven King's "It". Or those tiny cracks in their hands from frequent flu-season hand washing? Banish the tubes of chapstick that they either a) eat or b) fiddle with constantly or c) lose every 5 minutes, causing them to panic. Get a tub of Vaseline (generic works as well) and some q-tips! If a child has chapped lips, dip a q-tip in the Vaseline and when they're done with it they dispose of it, keeping the Vaseline germ-free. A smidgeon of Vaseline on their little hands soothes dry skin without the sting of fragranced lotions. Also, the Vaseline doesn't taste good so they generally don't ask for it unless they really need it, unlike flavored lip balms which sometimes exacerbate the problem because they lick the taste off their lips so much! I keep mine in a basket along with some extra gloves for recess time.

Those are my tips for January! If you enjoyed this Bright Idea, please consider joining me on Facebook or TPT for more great ideas. For more Bright Ideas from a variety of other bloggers, please browse through the link-up below and choose a topic/grade level that interests you! 

An InLinkz Link-up

Penguins!

We're having a ton of fun learning about penguins! It's wonderful teaching pre-k because they haven't done any of my favorite activities yet - there's no downer like preparing an activity and then having a kiddo yell out "Oh we did this last year!" Since my littles are brand new to school I get to expose them to everything :)
We've been dancing to the Penguin Dance by Jack Hartmann and the Learning Station's version - the jury is still out on which one we prefer - some kiddos love sticking their tongues out while others like making the penguin noises!
In our sand & water table we practiced perseverance by trying to melt ice! I prepared 3 containers of ice for the table, with blue, white and green gems of varying sizes and a Penguins TOOB like this one:

I froze the water in stages so that the materials were spread through each layer - that gave the kiddos incentive to keep working because they could see there were more things still embedded further down in the ice. I added a touch of blue food coloring to some of the layers, for visual appeal.

I used a Sharpie to write letters on each gem, but for some reason most of the letters washed off in the ice/water. When first frozen the letters showed up just fine, but by the time the ice melted all of the letters mysteriously vanished. Sad to think that the mighty Sharpie was conquered by cold water! I'm trying to think of an alternative or what I did wrong that the Sharpie came off so easily, if anyone knows of something else that will stay better please let me know!

I picked up some tools at the Dollar Tree for the kiddos to use to explore the ice. The basters are great for exercising little hands, as are the squeeze bottles. Wringing out the sponges was a lot of fun and again, great for fine motor skills! The kids explored friction while using the scrub brushes. I chose not to use salt - mainly because with the cold weather we all have dry hands and I was thinking the salt water would sting any little cracks and "owies". I also wanted the kids to have to work for a while at melting the ice to build up their patience, so we'll have to do a ice melting experiment with salt at a later date!
I included some cheapo wash clothes from Walmart so that they could wipe up any spills quickly - although we discourage splashing and try to keep the water in the table, there's always some drip. One of my rules is that the kids have to be able to clean up their center by themselves, so it's their job to make sure the floor is wiped up, all the sponges are wrung dry and the bottles emptied at the end of each center time. This gives them more ownership over the center and materials - you're less likely to be wild with the sand or water if you know you have to clean it up. It also makes the custodians less likely to complain about our sensory table!

After center time was over each day, I scooped up the remaining ice and refroze it. This was partly to ensure each child had a chance to explore the ice and also to teach perseverance - they couldn't get all the gems and penguins out in one go and had to keep coming back and working at the task. It took us 3 days to get all of the ice melted!

Once we had enough water in the table from the ice melting, I stopped filling up the squeeze bottles and the children had to fill their own using the tools at hand. They tried wringing the sponges over the bottles, using the ice cream scoopers or just dipping the bottle sideways through the water, but they soon learned that the basters were the most efficient method for filling the bottles!

On the 4th day I added some Styrofoam "ice floes". I didn't have any Styrofoam laying around at home so I had to purchase a sheet of it at Hobby Lobby - in the future I'm going to be saving every scrap of styrofoam I see because holy moly it was $8 to buy 1 sheet! No wonder companies charge so much for shipping and handling if that's the going rate for packaging materials lol!

The kids do love playing with it though - soon our penguins were laying "egg" gems and slipping and sliding on the "ice". The tools still come in handy as well - nothing like using a squeeze bottle to make it "rain" on the penguins!

 

We've played a lot with my Penguin Rhyming game. I always introduce it in whole group by passing out the cards and having the kiddos walk around to find their match. Once we've played it whole group a few times it goes to a center and the kiddos practice matching up the rhyming pairs. Then we did our cut n paste sheet so I had a quick assessment of who was still having difficulty with the concept. Most of my kiddos are good at rhyme recognition and are able to work on rhyme production now!

If you'd like to win your own copy of the game, rustle up a comment below and tell me your favorite thing to put into your sensory table!