Raised Letters

For letter recognition for the early and tactile learner, raised letters are one method of teaching students. I have used various methods, one method that is easy and cheap is using puffy paint or glitter glue on index cards or squares of card stock (available at many dollar stores).  You simply write the letters and when they dry have the child trace over it with their finger and say the letter and the sound.  If you are teaching vowels, the vowels can be one color and consonants another color.

Yoga

I've used yoga for years, personally, in the classroom, and now with my toddler.  We're very lucky that one of his preschool teachers is actually a toddler/preschool yoga instructor, so knows how to bring it down to his level.

                                                                        cobra

                       

                                    downdog when we were waiting at an appointment

I have used it in the classroom when I taught second and third grade and had some very energetic (hyper) children in my classroom.  The whole class would do yoga for five minutes after our morning meeting and we had a "yoga corner" for kids who needed a break during working time.  This corner had a set of yoga cards, but sometimes the kids just stretched and came back to their seats.  Here is are a few shots of toddler/preschool yoga.  Now we do it when our son needs to unwind or quiet down after a big activity.

                                    Actual field trip during summer school to a kids' yoga studio.

Dream Bedrooms

To review area and perimeter a fun activity is creating a "Dream Bedroom" on a piece of grid paper.  The kids draw linear items, bed, entertainment center, bookcases, and get very creative, adding in fish tanks, cotton candy machines, etc.  They then have to calculate the area and perimeter of each object or piece of furniture before outlining them in marker and coloring them in.  You can create a bulletin board or class book to flip through and they love to share their rooms with their classmates and friends.  The students also can work on other rooms in a house.

Classmate Puzzle

I use this activity towards the beginning of the year or first days of class.  This one was made with teenagers who I teach from Taiwan in the summer.  Each student designs a puzzle piece that reflects them, their family, interests, etc.  They use them as a talking point (in this case to develop their English), when sharing about themselves.  We then put them back together (the kids do it), and glue it down and hang it outside the classroom.

Steps:

1.  Draw the correct amount of puzzle pieces.
     (If there are an odd amount of students, I have created extra pieces in the past, and made one myself
      and or written the name of the school or program on one- someone who is finished first can also
      design this one).

2.  Cut the pieces out.  Mark the top and front of each piece, or you may get backwards and
     upside down pieces back and have to remake pieces.

3.  Explain the assignment with a model piece.

4.  The kids design the pieces and share them with classmates.

5.  Glue the puzzle back together.

Planting Seeds

Planting seeds are a great science, math, writing activity that can be tied into literacy thematically with books like Titch, seed or gardening books.  They can be simply a fun activity or a daily exercise in graphing, writing, observation, and recorded through science journals.
Bean plants grow the most quickly and can be done as simply as by dampening a paper towel, folding it around a couple of seeds and placing them in ziplock bags.  This year I used sunflower seeds and clear Starbucks cups (reuse) and tied a ribbon around them as an end of the year present.

We grew them in math class and charted the growth on graphs each day.  A good tip is to always grow a couple of extra at home to switch them out if need be ; )

Working with the Clock

Reading an analog clock seems to be challenging for children, especially of this generation of phones, Ipods, computers, and other electronic devices, and of course digital clocks and watches.  I don't always teach time explicitly, rather I use the clock throughout the year and throughout each day to refer to as a tool.

One way that I scaffold reading the clock is by labeling it.  These labels can be numbers or words, and can be taken down, covered, and relabeled by the children.  School clocks that have a glass casing, can also be written on with Expo or other dry erase markers, and shaded in.  For example, we will look at the clock and determine how long we have until music class.  We discuss how much working time that is, transition time, and we can actually shade in that fraction of the the clock (yes, I also teach fractions in relation to the clock face).  Here is the clock this year in the classroom.

Surface Area and Volume

When the kids learn about surface area and volume, we begin collecting boxes that are rectangular prisms (shoe boxes do not work well as the lids overlap the top of the box).  We work with the formulas for volume and surface area for a few days. 

Two activities we do are:

Distinguishing between the uses.  The kids write the words "surface area" in large letters on one index card and "volume" on another.  You can attach these to popsicles sticks if you have some.  I then state a scenario:

"Filling a pool with water" and the kids hold up the corresponding index card.  Then "wrapping a present" and so on.  This is a quick, kinesthetic way to check on their understanding. 

Another activity we do is make a chart of different boxes that we have collected, then the kids measure the length, width, and height of the boxes, record them in the chart, then use the posted formulas to calculate the surface area and volume of each rectangular prism. 

- The kids often mix up which is the width, height, and length.   It is actually a good review of the rules of multiplication and the order of operations, as they figure out, as long as they have measured correctly, they will get the right answer.

- Another approach to finding the surface area is to find the area of each side, write it on a Post It note and then attach them to the corresponding side (or with a marker).  At the end, they pull of all the Post-its and add them up.