What You Must Know When Building Spiders with Children
I have repeated these spider lessons multiple years with different sets of children. This year I have had an epiphany! Most years I have handicapped spiders, spiders with missing legs, spiders with too many eyes, children who make the abdomen too small etc. This year I started with the legs. I modeled how to fold the legs first. Fold it down, flip it over, fold it down, flip it over, fold it down, and flip it over. I gave the children two legs to start with. This lets them have something to do to keep busy. Then I pass out more as they are working. Next, I pass out a large piece of construction paper and draw a small circle on the back to show them the wrong way to cut a spider body (abdomen). Then I show them the right way. I tell students to attach the legs to the spider when they have them all cut out. Doing it this way this year gave me a much higher rate of children with spiders that were accurately built with legs and body. Next week is my last spider lesson, so we will see how the finished products turn out!
To read more about the spider lessons go here.
What to Do about Know-it-Alls
I teacher gifted learners at the moment and an advanced math group. When you teach these type of kids, there is a fine line between sharing what you know and vomiting information. I share this with students before it gets to the point of vomiting information. Not only is it a nice proverb speak, it is a tiny bit of history since Theodore Roosevelt shared it. I tell my students that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. I introduce this in a type of circle time, they I can refer to it if I notice children becoming know-it-alls or gravitating towards arrogance. You are welcome to the sign also. I am sharing it with you here.
You Need These to Start Your Year Off Right!
Every year I like to have a good supply of Young Living essential oils to help everyone in the classroom to have a good attitude–me included! You also will need an ultrasonic cool mist diffuser to get the maximum benefits from the oils. I ONLY use Young Living because they are the purest. Lemon, lavender, and peppermint help me to stay focused personally, and I believe they have the same effect on my students. In addition, I like to have a bottle of Thieves oil for months where sickness abounds. Before school begins, I clean tables and chairs etc. with Thieves Household cleaner.
Also, who can start the year off without a subscription to Super Teacher Worksheets?! When I need a quick review on a topic, a collection of items for children to do when a substitute is expected, Super Teacher Worksheets “always has my back”. At such a low cost for a yearly subscription, you really must invest. You will be glad you did!
I also use these posters in my TPT store to teach procedures to my enrichment groups. This is when I “push in” to a classroom and teach a 30 minute or so lesson.
Easy End of the Year Hack!
Do you traipse to the work room at school to grab a spool of bulletin board paper to cover your shelves? This is chore seldom few look forward to except that it is getting one closer to packing up for the summer! I learned this helpful trick from my wise and soon to retire teaching partner. She had a lot of black cloth. These cloths served as easy cover ups for the end of the school year for shelves, bookcases, computers, and the like. No more cutting large pieces of paper from the workroom since these different sized sheets of cloth served to cover just about anything! During the school year, the pieces of fabric worked well to don showcase tables, cover open house tables, or create costumes for children! The ideas are endless. I keep them folded within easy reach during the school year. I just happened to have black, but you could use old sheets or others colors of fabric. This time saving tip rewards you every year!
A Hug? But like This?
Many times the best ideas come fromm the students. This year I was teaching the kinder students how to say hello to me in the hallway. I tell them to tap their head when they see me. I tell them that this is like our secret handshake. Many kinder children cannot contain themselves and want to hug me in the hallway and jump out of line. I can’t be disturbing the teacher who has just herded kittens to travel someplace, and I warn the children accordingly.
Well, enter grand idea! So I notice this one kindergartener tapping her tummy. I asked why was she tapping her belly. She said it is a secret hug! Oh my goodness!! How precious! Love this!
Children have the best ideas!
What is the Pile of Possibilities?
Since I currently teach GT, I usually have a collection of junk lying around. I especially have extra junk and recyclables when we are working on a project. This would work well for an art teacher or anyone who is making a project with recyclable items. I decided to name my junk container to spark more imagination in the room. It is now called the “Pile of Possibilities” after reading the book the Fantastic Bureau of Imagination.
I recently was introduced to a book called the Federal Bureau of Imagination. This book is so fun! You must read it to your child audience! There is another book coming soon after that called Failabrations! I can’t wait to read it!
I hope these books start the imagination in your classroom also!
Do Your Pencils Need a Trip to the Gym?
Since my classroom has “marker heaven” and “marker jail“, we thought it could use a pencil gym. This is a place where pencils go to get into shape. This would also be knows as the pencil sharpener. I hope you can incorporate some of this fun into your classroom!
Do Your Students Not Follow Directions? Try this!
To increase efficiency, when I am teaching very young children such as in kindergarten, I do this. After my lesson, I say, “okay, step one think.” I elaborate on what I want them to think about. I hold my finger up to my temple and tap it like I am thinking. I see the children imitating this when they go back to their seats from sitting at the carpet.
Then I say, “Step two glue.” (or whatever I want step two to be.) I hold my hand out in front of me and lightly slap the back of my hand like I am gluing something down. The children do this with me.
Then I say, “Step 3. add details.” I hold up both of my index fingers like I am making little dots everywhere with my fingers. After I have explained everything I want the students to do, I have the students repeat the whole process with me. It sounds something like this…
“Okay, what is step one?” The students tell me with hand motions.
“What is step two? The students tell me with hand motions.
“What is step three? Again the students tell me with hand motions.
Then I send them to their seats and they sometimes get the directions out of order, but it is easy to refer to the step one, step two, or step three because they remember when they are listed succinctly like that. I have had a lot of success with students following directions in this step one, step two, and step three fashion. Most children can hold three things in their minds to work towards. I hope this helps improve your classroom management!
Marker Heaven
Now, you all know you have markers that dry up. We have a community supply of markers in my room so, when one dries up, I have been asking students to put them in “marker heaven”…aka the trash can. The students find it amusing and it still makes me smile under my breath.
More recently, I thought I might should save the almost dried up markers that don’t color so well. I remembered the “marker bots” we had made a few years ago realized I had saved the almost dried up markers for this. I exclaimed, “Oh no!” during one class and told children we needed to save them somewhere. One child said, “Marker Jail, ” and so there it was, marker jail was born. Maybe marker purgatory would have been more appropriate, but I loved the child’s idea. Children who weren’t in the same class began inquiring about the marker jail. I love the curiosity it has generated. I used a random box top lid for marker jail because it was what I had nearby. Use whatever container you like. I hope this idea spreads a little fun in your classroom.
The Results are In!
I promised you results from the strawberry jars a while back. While the strawberry jars did not stink near as badly as the rice jar experiment I did previously, they didn’t reveal quite as important a message in my opinion. You could again definitely tell a difference in the scent of the jars, but the inside of the jars looked very similar. When I started this experiment all of the jars had fresh strawberries, so it is certainly possible there could have been a difference in bacteria etc. on the strawberries. If I were to do this again, I would have used frozen strawberries to make sure this wasn’t a factor. What surprised me the most is that the love jar smelled worse, in my opinion than the hate jar. There is probably some explanation for this. If I were to use fruit again, I would have used the blueberries. Also, if it was the first time for the experiment, I would have used the rice because they all smelled different and looked different reflective of the words love and hate.
Here are the backs of the jars pictured in the same order.
