The Giving Tree

“The Giving Tree,” by Shel Silverstein, is a wonderful book that all children need to have read to them. I personally have always loved the book and “The Giving Tree” project is so cute! I helped one of my friends, who is a Kindergarten teacher, do this activity and had so much fun!

In this project, the ideas are great and there are so many ideas to use for all different teaching styles. I helped do this activity in conjunction with a unit on Community Helpers. The students wrote ways they could help their school or community on the pieces of paper. This project goes great with October/November because of the leaves changing colors and fall. My mom is also a teacher and suggested that instead of using the leaf cut-outs, to next time trace the students’ hands onto orange, red, yellow, and brown paper and cut them out to be leaves. She said then, closer to Thanksgiving, we should turn the tree into “The Thankful Tree” during the Thanksgiving unit and get the children to write what they are thankful for on their leaves. Overall, I think this activity is a great idea! There are so many fun ways to make it your own!

Stained Glass Apples

The Stained Glass Apples activity is definitely a very fun activity to do with the kids! It is a great idea to use in September, because that is when many teachers acknowledge Johnny Appleseed, or Jonathan Chapman, since his birthday is recognized at the end of September. Johnny Appleseed is an enjoyable way to engage the students while teaching them a unit on apples.

There are some changes I would make to the Stained Glass Apple activity. The first time, I passed the contact paper and then demonstrated to the students how and where to place their apple. This was somewhat challenging for some of the students. So, next time I will already have the apple placed on the contact paper so that all the children need to do is place the tissue paper in the middle of the apple. I also let the students cut out their own apple. Letting the students cut as much as possible is important so that they can enhance their cutting skills. However, this was also somewhat difficult for some of the students because some of the apples were cut too thin in the middle. Overall, it is a great apple activity that could be used in many different grade levels! I loved how beautiful the finished product looked!

In addition, I have read the story of Johnny Appleseed to the students when doing the unit on apples. However, I know that many of my friends that are teachers show a short video to students on Johnny Appleseed. So, I thought I would include a video I found on YouTube that told the story of Johnny Appleseed.

The Great M&M's Math Challenge

"The Great M&M's Math Challenge" definitely makes the kids want to learn. The kids have always loved this activity! This activity works with the Universal Design for Learning for all types of learners. Knowing that they can eat the M&M's at the end keeps the children interested. To get the worksheet for this activity, the link and information are under the "Links to Activities & Resources" tab on my home page.

M&M's can make math fun for everyone! Some children do not seem to enjoy math as much as others, but when you use candy or other objects, they seem to love it. I started off reading the "M&M's Chocolate Brand Candies Counting Book" by Barbara McGrath. We read the book and then I gave the children their M&M's and we did some of the patterns that were used in the book. I then used the M&M print out from pinterest that I found. The children loved guessing how many were in their packet, the color they had the most of, the color they had the least of, and the favorite color of the class. The children were then allowed to actually count the M&M's and see how well they guessed. They loved this part of the activity. We then graphed our M&M's and colored in our graphs. At the end, the children were allowed to eat their candy and then we shared our work with the class. Who says that math cannot be fun?! I will use this activity again!

Plants: Are, Have, Need

 A great activity I pinned about plants definitely makes learning about plants fun. This activity would be great to use right along with a plant unit! The kids really will enjoy the activity. This activity would appeal to auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners. The activity also incorporates thinking, creativity, drawing, and writing which keeps all of the children interested. All of the links and information on this activity are under the "Links to Activities & Resources" tab on my home page.

If I were doing this activity, I would most likely use it at the end of of the unit after we had already studied plants. As a class, I would talk about and graph what plants are, plants have, and plants need. It would be neat to make this a center and let the children rotate. One center could be the writing/drawing activity. The next one could be where the children get to plant real seeds and also a flowering plant. The children could put some in the the windows, some in the closet (no sun), some with no soil, some would not get watered, and some would get put in Ziploc bags (no air). This would allow the children to see what would happen to the plants when they did not get all of the things they needed to grow. Another center could be the reading center, where children had age appropriate books to read about plants. The children loved this activity and I would definitely recommend it!

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The Letter "C"

Since I have always been around children, I decided to do a Blog on something that might help teachers now and maybe me later when I become a teacher myself. This Blog will be dedicated to me reviewing different activities from Pinterest to do with students around Kindergarten age that I or other people I follow on Pinterest found. (If you are interested in learning what Pinterest is or how it has anything to do with education, click on this link and when on the website look under "Categories" and click on "Education".) I will try to go over what worked or not when doing the activity with students, what I changed about it, and what other teachers I talked to would change about it. The link to the websites explaining the activities in detail can be found on the other page in my Blog called "Links to Activities and other Resources."

The first activity I am reviewing is the "C" Caterpillar activity. This activity was a great one that any teacher could incorporate in many different ways into their classroom! The children loved doing this project, but there are a few changes I would make next time I did this. I would run off circles of different colors and let the children cut out their own circles so I could document it as something that reinforced their fine motor skills. I would also have the children pattern the circles by color (for example: red, yellow blue, red, yellow, blue, etc.). A teacher I spoke with suggested that it would be neat if the children were able to decide if they wanted an alphabet, number, or name caterpillar. The children could label each circle with the alphabet (A, B, C, D, E, F, etc.), they could number the circles (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc.), or they could use each circle to put a letter of their name on it. There are so many different ways to do this, but I really liked the idea of reinforcing the alphabet, numbers, colors, patterning, and/or names. Have fun with this activity and explore all the many ways that it can be used!! 

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