Five Little Turkeys

 I have been posting lots of the puppets I have made on here so here is one more set . . . .

Yup, turkeys! I use these guys for thanksgiving and in the off season for Old Macdonald.  The kids love when the turkeys gooble gooble gooble around the circle.

One of the songs I sing is this one . . .

 Five little turkeys sitting on a gate

The first one said “Oh my, it is getting late”

The second one said “There are leaves in the air”

The third one said “But we don’t care”

The fourth one said “Let’s run and run and run”

The fifth one said “It’s Thanksgiving Fun”

Oohhhh went the wind

And out went the light

And five little turkeys ran out of site

By the way you can now buy my felt puppets on Etsy here . . . so please go check it out!!!

The Goldilocks and the Three Bears Rap

Everyone knows the story of goldilocks and the three bears. However I found this version . . .

Once upon a time in the middle of the woods there were three bears

One was a papa bear, one was a mama bear, one was a wee bear

Along came a girl with a golden girl she knocked on the door but no one was there

So she walked right in ‘cause she didn’t care

Home, home, home came the papa bear

Home, home, home came the mama bear

Home, home, home came the wee bear

“Someone’s been eating my porridge” said the papa bear “Grrrrrr” (make hands like claws)

“Someone’s been eating my porridge” said the mama bear “Ahhhhh” (throw hands in the air)

“Hey-baba-ree-bear someone has eaten my soup” said the wee “hmmmmm” (cross arms and pout)

“Someone’s been sitting in my chair” said the papa bear “Grrrrrr” (make hands like claws)

“Someone’s been sitting in my chair” said the mama bear “Ahhhhh” (throw hands in the air)

“Hey-baba-ree-bear someone has broken my seat” said the wee “hmmmmm” (cross arms and pout)

“Someone’s been sleeping in my bed” said the papa bear “Grrrrrr” (make hands like claws)

“Someone’s been sleeping in my bed” said the mama bear “Ahhhhh” (throw hands in the air)

“Hey-baba-ree-bear someone is still in my bed!!” said the wee “hmmmmm” (cross arms and pout)

Just then Goldilocks woke up “AHHHHHHHH” and she beat it out a there

“Bye, Bye, Bye” said the papa bear

“Bye, Bye, Bye” said the mama bear

“Hey-baba-ree-bear this is the end of our tail” said the wee bear “hmmmmm” (cross arms and pout)   

And so I made these puppets . . .

And turned this old staple story into an interactive circle time activity!  

Five Little Monkeys

Over the next little bit (and I am sure well into the future) I will be sharing some of the finger puppets I have made for my class over the last couple years. The first set that I ever made was these guys . . .

The monkeys are not the original. When I first tried my hand at making these I glued on the detail such as face and belly. However I learned quickly that the toddlers I was teaching at the time could get the glue off in about two minutes! So from then on I have sewed all of the details down or used marker. I have not had to replace anymore of the puppets I have made after that (However there have been some minor repairs.)

I even named my blog after these guys since I think of them as kind of a turning point in my career as an ECE. It was from here on out that I stopped looking at big companies to create what I wanted/ needed for my program. It was then that I started making what I wanted. I found that I could make things for almost nothing and since it was cheap I wasn’t as stressed about what the kids did with it. I remember (mostly internally) freaking out about some of the younger kids touching a new puzzle because I knew that there would be pieces lost, corners broken and that I would not be able to replace it. Now I just print off, colour and laminate a new one. I can customize what I want to make. For example while I have only shown the official “set” of monkeys and crocodile I actually have ten monkeys in my kit so that all the children can have one. Our version of this song can take a long time to sing.  I have found a hobby I like and the kids seem to love them.

And just in case you don’t know the song . . .

Five Little Monkeys swinging in a tree

Teasing Mr. Crocodile “You can’t catch me, can’t catch me”

When along comes Mr. Crocodile quiet as can be . . .

And  SNAP

Continue on with four, three, two , one monkeys

No more monkeys swinging in the tree

Away swims Mr. Crocodile full as can be

There are many other version of this song. Most notably one that ends with the monkeys still in the tree. However I am a circle of life kind of person and just as I don’t hide the fact that our meat comes from animals I also don’t hide the fact that carnivores eat other animals. However the choice is yours.   

Cake and Ice Cream Sensory Bin

So yesterday I changed the fall sensory bin for this one . . .

It is kind of a birthday party/ cake and ice cream kindda thing. I decided to make something like this since (as I mentioned before) the kids are wanting to turn everything into cakes. They will put almost anything into a bowl, call it a cake and sing endless renditions of “Happy Birthday to You.” So I made these out of felt . . .

White cake made of felt with pink icing . . . Yummy !!

Step one: White or Chcolote Step Two: What colour (flavour)
 would you like? Step Three: Mix and match

Chocolate felt cake

And gave them pompoms . . . as ice cream? Or decorations? Whatever they want.

Ice cream with your cake?

 In total I included . . .

-          White cake bases (x4)

-          Chocolate cake bases (x2)

-          Icing (blue, purple, red, yellow, orange) . . . these are felt disks to layer with cake

-          Pompoms

-          Sequins (decorations for cake? Sprinkles?)

-          Ice cream scoops

-          Wooden bowls

-          Plastic bowls

-          Baby food jars

-          Birthday treat bags

-          Birthday napkins   

Five Pumpkins

I made these finger puppets to go along with the five little pumpkins song. They are all made out of felt.

Five Little Pumpkins

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate

The first one said “Oh my, it is getting late”

The second one said “There are witches in the air”

The third one said “But we don’t care”

The fourth one said “Let’s run and run and run”

The fifth one said “It’s Halloween Fun”

Oohhhh went the wind

And out went the light

And five little pumpkins rolled out of site

Science Bottles #3

Number Three:

Relaxation bottle:

This bottle is designed to help children relax. It has about 1/3 cup of corn syrup and a bunch of glitter. Please note that I didn’t measure the syrup and I suspect I actually put in more than the 1/3 cup called for in the book(please see first bottle post for book details). I just used what was left in the bottle. I used purple and silver glitter for this one. And again glue the lid on (use lots of glue as all of the kids in my class spend at least five minutes trying to pick the lid off!!) You can than twist and turn the bottle and watch the syrup run and drip around. I found it very relaxing and calming and judging by the fact that I keep finding the bottles stashed around the room I assume the kids also at least enjoy the bottles.    

(Please see Science Bottle #1 and #2 for more information)

Science in a Bottle #2

Science bottles continued . . .

Number Two:

Dirt Bottle:

This one is even simpler then the last bottle. You just add some water and some dirt (I took some from the flower pot in the playground) to the bottle and glue the lid on. The dirt will mix up and settle as the kids carry it around, shake it, and forget about it. I am going to continue this theme with a sand and a gravel bottle so the kids can watch how different materials act differently in water.

For more information please see science bottles #1

Science in a Bottle #1

I mentioned before that I have been reading Wonderful Rooms Where Children can Bloom by Jean R. Feldman PhD.  I found in this book a wonderful idea for “science in a bottle” activities. So I have decided to make a number of these (I am not sure how many, that will depend on the children’s interest and how many bottles I can amass) I will put them on here as I create them . . .

Number One:

Wave in a bottle:

This is a pretty basic one. You put about half coloured water (I went with Blue this time) and half with oil (any kind will do) in a bottle. I than hot glued the lid shut since my kids would have it open in a minute! You can wave it gently back and forth or shake the spit out of it. The kids in my class seemed to like watching me gently move it back and forth but when I handed it to them they would shake it like nothing else and then watch as the oil and water settled back into their layers. I can’t wait to make a whole collection of these!

Note: I am using the bottles from Bolthouse smoothies as they are something I like to drink but more importantly they are a good size, sturdy and they have a wide mouth that will allow me to be more varied in what I put in them. I am super particular about the bottles looking the same so I needed a kind that would work for more of them.

Duck and Goose Activities

The children in my class have become addicted to “the orange book” which is in reality Tad Hills’ Duck and Goose find a Pumpkin and they have also been enjoying a game I call “Where is the Fox?” which involves hiding a picture of a fox under pieces of coloured felt (This game was introduced to help with colour recognition) so I decided to combine the two.

For those of you who don’t know the book the duck and the goose travel around trying to find a pumpkin. My kids like it because it offers a chance to for them to answer back on each page as one character asks the other if their pumpkin is in the water or in the tree etc.  So I made this . . .

 

Each felt figure represents one of the places the character’s looked in the book so the kids can take turns hiding their pumpkin and finding it.

To continue the theme I made these . . .

 

So that we could hide our pumpkins all around the room. Before I introduce these games to my class though, I am going to introduce them to a real pumpkin. I gave them gourds to play with this week and it had been great despite the fact that many of the littler ones are having some problems saying the word gourd.      

Pumpkin Playdough

We have needed to make play dough for a couple days now (the last batch was not great since for some reason it ended up very oily so we couldn’t wait to get rid of it!) so we decided to make it a science/cooking experience for the children and get their help. To add to the playdough experience I decided to add some pumpkin spice to the recipe since it is between Thanksgiving and Halloween this week! We needed to try out a new recipe since I usually do a cooked version and I wanted to so one that the children could be present for all of the making. So I gave this recipe a try . . .

Ingredients
2 cups flour
1/2 cup salt
2 tablespoons cooking oil
2 tablespoons cream of tartar
2 cups boiling water
1 teaspoon food colouring

Mix all dry ingredients, add oil and boiling water with food colouring, mix well.

Store in an airtight container.

To add interest you can add glitter for a textural change, some aromatherapy scented oil for smell.

With some shaped cutters, rolling pin and some imagination your set for hours of fun.

It was great!!! I will defiantly be using it again! I was very happy it worked especially since 2-4 year olds are not known for their exact measuring skills! However once again the kids proved that you can’t plan for their reactions all the time! After mixing in the spice (Which I thought smelled good enough to eat) there was a chorus of “Yuck” “Disgusting” “Awful” and “Gross”!! I couldn’t believe it! Oh well you can’t win them all! I am hoping that when I put the playdough out again their opinion will change since I think (hope?) that their reaction was the fault of one of two who loudly voiced their objection right at the start and may have swayed the rest to object just to follow the crowd. We will have to see or I fear I will be making playdough again sooner that I hoped!    

   

Gravity on a rainy day!

Today we were stuck inside for the day and so I was looking around for activities for the kids to do in what would normally be our outside time. I didn’t want to make a big mess since I have cleared an empty space in our classroom for the kids to dance in one area, go through our tunnel in another area and play with a large exercise ball in another. With all the kids running around I wanted them to be able to play with some toys but I was worried about tripping hazard! So I thought I would set up the PVC pipes I use as car ramps for them to play with in a corner. One problem: I left the pipes outside and it was raining and they were now muddy and I didn’t have time to go wash them. So I went looking around the center for another option for our cars. This is what I came up with. . . .

 

Yup a long storage bin hung over a chair! It worked pretty well except for the moulding at the bottom that stopped some of the cars which annoyed the kids (I used this as a problem solving opportunity and encouraged them to figure out how to get their cars over the lip on their own. They figured out that some of the heavy cars could make it off the ramp)

And then one of the kids decided that they needed to take it up a notch (I tried to get a picture but I didn’t get the camera out in time!) and rolled the exercise ball down which he found would roll to the other end of the room . . . . much better than the couple feet the cars went!!    

File Folder Game - Veggie Sizes

For this game I wanted the kids to look at each group of items and look at their sizes (small, medium and large) so they could be sorted in the board. They can also sort them into the three different types of produce.  This is what the finished product looked like . . .

These are the templates I used . . .

File Folder Game - Who's House? - Farm

I thought I would share some file folder games I made for the fall with you.

Part One:

The children in my class have been playing with the farm animal puppets recently so I wanted to make a game with that kind of theme. This doesn’t really follow the fall theme that we have for the month (Yes the center I work at is still theme based. It is a system that I am constantly fighting with! Lucky for me I am able to make broad themes, I can justify almost anything, and my boss doesn’t care if I stray a little bit.)  but I figured if pressed I could do a fall- harvest- farm thing! Anyway . . . This game asks the kids to figure out where each animal lives on the farm. However because it is basically a farm scene and I just put it on the table and let the kids go I find them using it to act out scenes with the animals, making animal noises, and learning new words and facts. They do use it as I intended but as usual they take it further than I thought!

Here is what the finished product looked like. . .

Here are the templates I used . . .

I should note that my preferred way to make file folder games is to print out black and white images and colour them in with markers. This is just because I am picky about colouring and I find that when I print off colours the tones and shades are all different. All my pictures come from Google!       

S'mores

So afternoon snack at our center had been a little bit interesting this week as the person who does the shopping was away until today. So while the cook was picking up things for lunch no one seemed to remember about afternoon snack until we were looking at the menu and saying “hmmm, well we don’t have that . . . “ So it became a little bit of a cleaning out the cupboard week (which I always think is a good thing as it helps keep waste to a minimum.) So yesterday we noticed that there was a box of cake mix in the cupboard and went “okay let’s make that tomorrow.” However we discovered that at some point this idea needs to be communicated to the person who would actually make the cake . . . FAIL! So once again it was just before snack time and we are scratching our head going now what? When genius happened . . .

Our cook found this is the cupboard . . .  

It was donated by a parent and neither the cook nor my supervisor know what it was or what it was for (my supervisor had never heard of s’mores and thought it was a box of marshmallows.) And I got really excited! So I quickly made this . . .

And we had an impromptu cooking experience.

The kids in my group are very young so we needed to read out the instruction and there was a lot of hands on help from teachers. We also had to convince them that eating the chocolate and marshmallows right away wasn’t the best idea and that it would get better. But in the end the kids seemed to like following the steps written on the paper (one child wanted even more steps!) and in the end they all had a great time getting all gooey and covered in food (some got more on their face than in it!!) and because we had the kids making snack and there was a little bit of cooking/ cooling time (which we filled with songs) snack ended up lasting almost an hour instead of the normal 15 minutes! Great way to fill an afternoon!

In the end the kids requested more cooking experiences like this and I can’t wait to comply! I have also decided to laminate the recipe I made and when we get enough I will make a cooking book of stuff we made so they can look at it whenever they want . . . I think I will post a copy of our s’mores recipe in the house center for now so they can discuss it, I will have to see where it goes from there!   

Window Decorations

Recently I have been reading a wonderful book by Jean R. Feldman, PhD called Wonderful Rooms Where Children can Bloom! I have found it to be very inspirational and I am sure that there will be further entries inspired by her work in the weeks to come! I will warn that it is meant for grades k-2 so not all the ideas are appropriate for my preschoolers! I was inspired by her pages on decorating the room with fabric. In these pages she suggests using strips of fabric to divide areas of the room. I loved this idea but because of the layout and the fact we have a flat ceiling it is almost impossible to do this so I decided to blend the idea with her idea of hanging beads in the window and created . . .

All I did was go buy scarves at the dollar store (they were $1.25 each and I used two for the two windows) and sticks from our parking lot. I had a co-worker help me cut them up and tie them to the sticks. I then had the kids help me hang them up. They wanted to feel the scarves and the twine before I hung them on the window so we took a couple minutes discussing what each item felt like, how it looked and why I was hanging it from the window in the first place. Then they helped me by offering suggestions about height and placement while I taped the whole contraption to the window. When we were done they declared it “beautiful” and went back to their other activities.

Stain Glass Leaves

I made these stain glass leaves with the kids I had last fall but I am using them again this year to decorate. We attempted to make new ones with the new batch of kids but these ones are a lot younger and they just wanted to play with the glue, oh well. So I reused the ones from last year cause I love how they look hanging from the ceiling.

These leaves are super easy to make. You just glue tissue paper to wax paper. You will want to make sure that the tissue paper is slicked down with glue (I mix some water in with the glue to make this easier!) and if possible try to keep the layers of tissue paper thin (One is best if you want lots of light to shine through but more is okay.) When I did this with the children I gave them a piece of wax paper that was much bigger than I needed for each leaf. That way I could position the outline where there was the most tissue paper covering the paper. 

Next I cut an outline of a leaf out of black paper and glued it to the dry wax paper/ tissue paper. I used this maple leaf pattern . . . I traced it onto black paper and then cut out the center of each one.  

I then cut around the outline and there you have it . . . stain glass leafs.    

Halloween Calendar Numbers

So here are the numbers I am using on my calendar this month . . . I know there are no actual numbers on these cards. I hand write the numbers in after I print them. This is so I don’t have to mess around with formatting. I just print off three copies, write in the numbers and laminate them. Then I attach Velcro to the back so it will stick to the calendar.

 I make these sheets so there will be some left over. I do this because then I have extras if any of the numbers go missing (Since I work with two year olds and some of them will eat literally anything!) You will also notice that I only used two shapes for this sheet. That is because in addition to number recognition I also use calendar numbers to help teach my kids about patterns. Since I currently have a newer and younger batch of kids I only use two pictures to teach them the basic concept. When this becomes too easy I will move to more pictures per month.  

When I do calendar every morning (or to be honest most mornings . . . when the kids are feeling it and we aren’t doing something more interesting) I sing this song . . .

Seven Days (tune of Found a Peanut)

“There are seven days,

There are seven days,

There are seven days in the week,

There are seven days,

There are seven days,

There are seven days in the week,

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday,

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday,”

And we talk about what number and picture will come first. 

Sensory Bin - Fall

I love to fill the sensory bin in my classroom with different things. I usually leave them for about a month (give or take based on interest . . . both the kids and mine) some of the things I do turn out to be really messy or annoying for various reasons so these ones tend to not last as long. However for the most part I leave it until the kids stop playing with it or I come up with an idea that I have to try RIGHT NOW!! Lol

This one is a fall bin and the reason for it is that it is fall and the kids are loving playing with the leaves outside.

Inside the bin I put . . . .

-          Cloth leaves I got from the dollar store

-          Felt stuffed leaves I sewed

-          Shiny metal disks that I found in my dad’s basement (I was thinking frost . . . and no I have no idea where to get them, what they are supposed to be used for etc.)

-          Wooden beads

-          Orange and yellow plastic beavers (just cause they were the right colour and I thought they were cool . . . again found in the basement so I have no idea where they came from or why they were there! Dad’s basement is great that way!)

-          Wooden bowls – (my kids like to fill bowls with stuff, they don’t seem to care what the stuff is just stuff) again found Dad’s basement but I know they were at one point part of a salad set.

-          Laminated leaves – I laminated a bunch of leaves from our playground and through they in there. The reason for this is that I wanted the leaves to last more than a couple days!

-          Black foam puck shapes – these were purely about the texture of them . . . again the basement.

So far this bin has been out for a week and the kids love it. They seem to enjoy sorting the different items into the bowl, using the leaves as hats and making birthday cakes out of the stuff in the bowls and singing happy birthday over and over again!  

Where to begin. . .

 

Hello (always a good place to start I think!) As the title suggests I am an RECE (for those not in the know that is a Registered Early Childhood Educator) and I work in a small center in Ontario, Canada. I work with kids between 2 and 6 and I have been in the field for a little over two years. I love to look on line for ideas for my classroom but I often find that the things I find are meant for parents (therefor they need to be adapted to more than a couple children using it), for school teachers (so it is for children much older than the ones in my class) or they are just really expensive which we don't have the budget for! so I thought I would share my ideas and adaptations for others to use! I got the name from a favorite song in my classroom about monkeys swinging in a tree. There is also a song about five monkeys jumping on a bed. Both these songs would make a good comparison to the environment in a daycare. You have chaos, some scolding, some hurts, some teasing, lots of fun and laughter and . . . . a crocodile (hmm maybe not that last one! Lol) Anyhow, hope you enjoy reading!