Light Box

Hello!
Okay, so I did not take as many pictures as I wanted to in what we did with the students the three weeks between Thanksgiving and Winter break...but I will give you some ideas without pictures!
Since we had 3 weeks, we decided to celebrate a holiday each week. We started with Hanukkah, then Kwanzaa, then Christmas. Here are some of the highlights we did for each week, like I said-sorry no pics!!
Hanukkah:
-We traced the students hands with their thumbs together in the middle, looking like a menorah. Their thumbs were higher up together in the middle and their four fingers were spread out on either side. They used number stamps to count each candle and then used a bingo dobber to light each candle.
-We made Star of David out of popsicle sticks we counted out 6 of them first using a 6 frame I made, then painted them and adults assembled and they identified the two triangles that made the stars. We added glitter in the end-glitter was everywhere.
-I did a felt board counting game where I made a menorah, candles and flames and read a poem I found online in which we counted each candle and put them up. The kids absolutely loved it and caught on very quickly.
Email me if you want any ideas...since I got a lot of them from other people I don't want to re-post and take their ideas without giving them credit and I am not looking them all up again!
Kwanzaa:
-We made a Kinara and had flames with each of the principles written on them, talked about each principle and glued them onto our Kinaras.
-We made Kwanzaa plates where we sponge painted paper plates in the colors red green and black. I made some easy sponge painting brushes by cutting cheap sponges into 1 inch squares and then adding a clothespin on the end for easy grabbing. We practiced stamping instead of painting with the sponges, and identified the colors and made a connection to Christmas colors.
-We made Kwanzaa mats with marble paint (box lid, dip large marbles in the paint, put the mat in the box lid, add the painted marbles and let the kids shake and roll them to make designs on their mats) Once the mats dried, they practiced cutting slits in either end to make it look frayed at the ends.
-Once again I did a similar felt board story with a Kinara, candles, principles, and a counting song.
Christmas:
-We made ornaments out of pine cones with glitter, they liked this :-)

-We made Christmas trees out of different sized strips of green paper they had to put them in order from biggest to smallest then they could decorate their tree.

-We made Christmas cards with Santa handprints: paint thumb and top of palm red, inner palm skin tone and fingers white and upside down it looks like Santa and they wrote to whoever they wanted to about Christmas (some wrote to parents, some wrote to Santa, etc)

-Another felt board story with color identification, counting and predicting (opening gifts under the tree)

And Merry Christmas to me! My husband got me a laser printer so I can make tons of color prints without having to constantly buy ink! It can do like 1600+ color copies on one toner, which is exciting. I have already been printing away...

Now the project I have been working on this week: a light box for my students! Light boxes are beneficial for various reasons for students with disabilities but one reason I wanted one is because my secretary recently gave me all the letters from our old sign outside (similar to a gas station sign with individual letters) so I wanted to be able to use them because they are so awesome! I found this idea blogging around...

So I got a plastic container, an under the counter light, white duct tape, spray paint (white and silver), painters tape, construction paper, and the saran wrap that clings really well (it's kind of foggy looking)

First, I attached the under the counter light with duct tape to the lid of the box which will be the bottom of the light box. I cut some of the duct tape that was covering the light because I didn't want it to look "stripe-y".

Here is the light off and on.

Then, I covered the bottom of the box with construction paper and painters tape and spray painted it white first, then silver after. I think the reason they said this is so the light will reflect better off the metallic color. I messed up the white spray paint :-( I am not good at spray painting.

Here is the lid once it dried and I took off the paper.

Here it is completed! It looks great but I have one suggestion which is why I needed to use the cling wrap...It was TOO clear, you just look down and see a light. It's supposed to be foggy and just illuminate the surface in light. So, I would suggest buying a box with a foggier bottom (which they had but of course I was like, "I want it to be clear!" and it ended up being a mistake). So, I ended up taping in some cling wrap to give it the illuminated foggier look and it turned out great. I might end up using duct tape around the frame of the light box because I really messed up the spray paint but just a personal choice. A good choice when choosing the plastic tub is finding one like this one that has an edge along the bottom so things will stay on the light box portion and not roll off. 

Also, you need to cut a hole for the cord to come out so it sits flat. My husband has yet to do this part of the project, haha. 

Also, here is a little something I did at school for headphone storage. I bought a cheap tension rod because we have this window frame between the two classrooms near my student computer. It was a good idea! I probably got the idea blogging around, or maybe this was an original from me. Oh well, it works great and frees up space. I am thinking of other suction ideas for storage around the computer area but have not come to any conclusions yet.

Finally, one last idea, sorry I did not take a picture, I will take a finished product picture, I bought a dish rack for my dry erase board storage. The boards fit in each dish slot and then the cup for a sponge will hold the pens. I also bought infant mittens as erasers for my kids little hands. I will probably hot glue some pom poms on the ends of the markers as erasers too. 

Have a great rest of break, I will post more pics once we get back to school-I am off to Vermont to go skiing for a week :-) 

Winter Fun

Hello! It has been a long time since I have posted...and I have some new ideas for the classroom so I should be putting up a new fun post with lots of pictures once Friday rolls around and I have some time!
So...IEP season is OVER!! (unless a new student comes or something like that). I have been very busy trying to write IEPs, hold meetings and create new data sheets for new objectives as well as lesson plan, and make time for all the fun holiday activities.
I thought I would write a quick post including the winter fun packet I am sending home over break so maybe you won't have to spend as much time as I did coming up with one!

I wanted to send home some academic worksheets for parents to work on at home but only if they have time. The last thing I want to do is make parents feel obligated to do paper and pencil tasks when they are spending time with families. So, I made up a little winter fun packet and explained to the parents it is just for fun, if there is time and if the children want to work on anything at home!! Some of the worksheets I made myself but a couple others I found online:

http://www.allkidsnetwork.com/worksheets/winter/

This website had some good ones, but my students aren't able to do a lot of them yet, but if you have higher kids, this has some good worksheets with pictures. Very fun theme

http://www.kidsparkz.com/winter-letters-literacy.html#.UM3qVY5j7zI

This website I printed the alphabet snowflake cards and told parents the kids can trace them with their fingers, color them in, sing the abc's and touch each one, and the parents can even cut them out and play games with the letters. My students aren't able to do a lot of paper and pencil tasks so I wanted to send home some educational resources that can be disguised as games and the kids can show what they know at home!

http://www.theholidayzone.com/winter/Winter_Word_Wall.pdf

I printed these words out because they had pictures and then I modified it for my students, only cutting out words they have seen or are concrete items like a hat and made 2 pages of 6 words to send home in the packet, telling parents they can put the words by the objects in their house and go over them, cut off the picture and play memory, etc.

I made some prewriting tracing horizontal, vertical, diagonal and V worksheets with snowflakes (if you want me to send you the word doc, email me at mfdemski@gmail.com). I also made a simple counting worksheet with pictures and a number line on the bottom.

I hope this helps! I know that my next post will be too late to do the activities in the classroom, but we had a Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Christmas week so I will be posting some pictures of what we did in the classroom as well as some of my new ideas that I am planning on doing to organize my classroom for when we get back in January.

I also wanted to post some gifts because...well, tis the season. My heart was melted when I received my first ever present from a student so I wanted to share:

Also, a Pinterest idea combined come to life...so I have been seeing those dry erase frames that you can put a class list behind or even just a piece of scrapbook paper like these: 

http://classroomcollective.tumblr.com/tagged/Classroom+Organization/page/3 

see bottom picture

And I recently saw this one using rubber bands so it can hold objects like a pen...

http://www.momastore.org/museum/moma/ProductDisplay?storeId=10001&catalogId=10451&langId=-1&categoryId=11526&parent_category_rn=26674&productId=14285&keyWord=Barbara%20Flanagan%20Snap-It-Up%20Organizer&purpose=crawl

and I wanted to combine both ideas and it came out SO CUTE, and it was super cheap and makes a great teacher gift, as you can see I made one for a coworker of mine...I just used some stickers and scrapbook paper I had at home and made these:

I am showing you how it holds a pen...don't use sharpie just dry erase marker. It is a dry erase board/note holder/desk organizer! How cute :-) The Mrs. Flowers frame I got for $3 and the one below was like $1 clear frame (didn't know if the black one would hold rubber bands and still close but it does). I got the jumbo rubber bands a long time ago for less than $1. I think thicker ones would be better but I couldn't find any...the good news is you can always upgrade the rubber bands anytime you want so if I find more I may change them out. 

Hope everyone has a great last week (or however long you have) before break and be checking over break for another post!!

De-bogging

Hello readers :-)

This weekend my goal was to de-bog myself...I make too much work for myself and I need to make it EASIER! My weekends are spent with lesson planning, planning fun hands-on activities, and creating brand new data sheets for my students each week, finding the activities to go along with it, decide what I was going to take data on for each kid, each day...and it was just TOO MUCH. The worst part of it all was...even though it was too much work, I would continue to do it if I felt it was truly beneficial...but I am looking through these data sheets, not getting much accurate data, it wasn't really telling me anything besides..."you're doing too much work and not seeing anything from it"

So... I decided to come up with better systems for things.

Starting with lesson plans.

my super cute cover

I (used to) make a lesson plan for each day and write the same things over and over again, so I downloaded an editable lesson plan format, downloaded a cute font for free, and make a very cute lesson plan that I am going to copy and bind at school. I know you're probably saying "duh, this is so simple" but for me, I was being too much of a control freak-wanting to write down everything each day to make sure I got it all right-but it's just too much work! Then, I'd have to flip through pages to see what we're doing Thursday on Monday. It was chicken scratch, not useful for anyone-even myself...

Here is the editable lesson plan document I found online:

http://www.livinglaughingandloving.com/2012/08/cute-lesson-plan-template-free-editable-download.html

and here is the font I downloaded:

http://kevinandamanda.com/fonts/fontsforpeas/

I did pea ellie bellie, it turned out really cute

Then, for reading and math, we do a lot of repetitive activities each day of the week. So, I color coded a sheet to match the colors of the days of the week in my lesson plans so  I knew what activity we were doing for reading and math that day. These don't change I just have to remember what activity we do each day.

Now that I think lesson plans are working (we shall see how it works) I needed to update my data system. What I was doing was I made data sheets for my students IEP objectives, but some of them are not realistic or they have already mastered them and the data was not even worth taking, so each week, I was making new activities to work on and take data to help me write future IEP's and see how they are doing on work tasks. Each student had a clipboard with the data sheet on it and I would highlight what we were taking data on for each day because it got to be too much doing a lot of data each day. This kind of helped, but then if students were absent, I just had a lot of blank spaces and to see how they were doing on the goal I'd have to flip through weeks of data sheets and none of them looked alike and it was time consuming and not worth it. So, I decided, I am going to make more basic data sheets that can be used for a task numerous times by just putting the date when you do it and not making it so specific.

So, I started making basic tables and created (I'm sure it probably already exists-it's just folding paper but I like to think it was my original smart idea) FOLDABLE DATA sheets! I am in love with this idea and excited to see how it pans out. For this particular student, he is working on two letter words and a few CVC words. I want him to say the word when it is shown to him, spell the word when it is said to him, and identify the word that is dictated given a field of words. So, I created one column with the words down the left side, then two rows at the top with those three skills listed and under that, a date row. I split the cells so that under each skill, there are numerous data boxes where you can just mark the date. Then, color code each skill, fold and viola! Foldable data to measure many skills at one time without a bunch of paperwork. Best part is, all the data is on one sheet-easy to track and see progress/areas of concern.
Check out the images and let me know what you think:

This is the entire sheet, as you can see there are three colors for each skill (saying word, spelling word and identifying word), the words in white along the side, and a pink row up top for the date.

This is how it looks when you fold it to see one skill at a time, and always be able to see the words

second skill

third skill

Not all the data sheets I made are foldable, a lot of them are simple (numbers 1-10, ABCs) but I did this for colors and shapes also (identify by name, match and sort).

So, I made pretty simple data sheets (some specific for certain objectives) for each kid. I put them all on one clipboard, divided by student, and I am still going to have them working and practicing their skills and I am going to come around to probably 2 kids a day and take data on a few skills-not all of them, just a few. I can quickly see which skills I need to take data on because the sheets are so simple and comprehensive. I think this will work better and be a huge weekend time saver. 

Let me know what you think and if you want me to email any resources to you :-) 

Happy November

Pumpkin Season!

Hello! I was trying to get this post done earlier to give you some pumpkin activities that we are doing in Room 5 but here it is:

We have color themes each week for the beginning of the year and this week was orange. It's also the perfect time to do some activities! Here is a great book that I found at the library that I suggest using with this theme:

So here is a pumpkin versus apple measurement activity: 

The students can measure themselves (saw this idea on Pinterest) and then they fill out a sheet I made on boardmaker..how many pumpkins tall am I? how many apples tall am I?

Then we talked about which one was bigger? A pumpkin or an apple? And use our alligator to show bigger and smaller, then see since apples are smaller how many apples can fit into a pumpkin?

I also made a sheet on boardmaker where they measure using yarn, around a pumpkin, apple and their head and then attach the string to the correct picture and color which one was the biggest around.

With measuring a pumpkin we were also newspaper reporters that were assigned to report on a pumpkin. I made a sheet for each problem and then we solved the problems and put together one large newspaper article to hang in the hallway about what we observed as reporters on the pumpkin. Here is the large newspaper I made: 

If you can't read it the prompts were: how many cubes is it tall? How many links around is it? Does it have a stem yes or no? Our pumpkin is ____ and _____. The outside feels like ____ the inside feels like _____, We think there are ____ seeds, we counted and there were ____ seeds. Identify: pumpkin, seeds and stem.

They had a lot of fun with this because we cut it open and put all the insides on a tray and let them feel it, some were scared to put their hands in. I took the seeds home and counted them and then baked them. They got to estimate (given 3 choices) they thought there were 100 seeds in there but actually more like 500. They got to taste the seeds. They actually liked them! 

We also did 5 Little Pumpkins. We read the book from Boardmakershare.com on the Smartboard and then we read this one that Mrs. Flowers colored. Then they got to color their own and I bound them (by making two holes, using a rubber band connected with a paperclip). We re-read the story and then on the felt board I made 5 pumpkins and the numbers 1-5 they got to identify that first means one, second means 2, etc. and re-tell the story that way. I also made 5 brown paper bags with the numbers 1-5 and have pumpkins from the dollar tree in a bag. I told the story and took out one pumpkin each time and then had them play a game where they got assigned a paper bag and had to put that many pumpkins in the bag. They liked throwing them inside the bag, but did count them out!

Here is another activity that I found on pinterest (sorry I don't actually "pin" them I just go to the website so I don't have it saved but maybe you can search for it). This is a cute 5 little ghosts story that I made into a felt board story of ghosts that their mom goes to the store and tells them not to eat anything until she gets back because ghosts can only eat vanilla ice cream but they don't listen and each one eats something and turns that color, so they hide around the house when mom gets home. This has food identification, color identification, sad/happy identification counting and also a healthy versus unhealthy snack component. Also, it's fun and you can measure comprehension by having them identify the characters, what happened first, second and last, etc.

I added velcro to attach the food they ate to their body, then when you flip them over they turn that color and they are sad faces.

I made the places they hid on library pocket cards and added felt to the back, that way I could just stick the ghosts inside the pockets to hide.

Now this activity isn't halloween themed, but it is something we are working on, counting by 10's. I made these out of toilet paper rolls and I closed the bottoms with paper and tape and rubber band, then gave them colors to put colored sticks in. To make them stay in the muffin tin and not flop over, I added a sticky magnetic dot to the bottom. Now they can count out 10 colored sticks, and stick them in the spot, then we can count by 10's to 50. It's a great visual.

Here on sentence strips I made the 10's in the color that corresponds so they can follow along and point to each one as they count.

Hope you enjoyed! If I take more pictures of the boardmaker sheets I made and the pumpkin felt board I will upload them next week!

Happy October, Happy Halloween :-)

Receptive Identification

Hello!
I promised a post about receptive identification and here it is (with a lot of pictures)! I have a few non-verbal students this year and I am trying to find more ways to hear their voice.

Let's begin with our morning meeting

Here is the board behind our circle time. You can see the stoplight behavior plan (new) the temperature graph, a rainbow thing which is a ring of cards for the weather each day, our color paint buckets and the calendar. When we get to the weather part of our circle, the students identify the weather first by condition, then we look up the temperature and count by tens up our thermometer to see what our temperature feels like. Then, I have students identify numerous things:

Here is the file folder I made to go along with our temperature. They can find what color our temperature is in, they can determine what that feels like and what you wear in that particular temperature.

Also, we do the calendar. I have a bound book that I cannot take credit for, another teacher used it last year and gave it to me. It is awesome. Here you can see they can identify the month...

Then the day....

Then the date....

And the weather condition (then we would do the temperature).

I have also made another version with colors...

numbers.. and I didn't take pictures but both upper and lowercase letters. This helps when I ask a question and forget that a student can't just give an answer...this helps them choose the correct answer so I know they still know and I am not just giving them one choice and saying "good job"

We also make our names each day in circle with the song "there was a boy/girl that came to school and ____ was their name-o...then we spell the letters in the name" to the tune of "B-I-N-G-O". Some students are working on their last name, some students are working on just uppercase their first name and not grabbing the throwing the pieces, etc. It is differentiated.

We also do other activities throughout the day and here are some ideas on how I am using receptive identification.

Here is the greater than/less than alligator. He looks the same on the back too and is laminated. Right now my students are just working on me showing them how the alligator is hungry and always wants to eat the side that has "more" but eventually I am thinking they will be able to position the alligator to show me they know which one is greater and which one is smaller.

Here is a big ABC identification book that I also cannot take credit for because the same teacher gave it to me (She is amazing). It has each letter of the alphabet that has a big page like this (poster size) where the kids can pick the letter of the week in different sizes and fonts and put it up on the yellow strip so they are differentiating not only from other letters but getting exposure in different fonts and sizes.

I have one student who is GREAT at matching colors, shapes, animals, objects, letters and numbers, but we are not introducing words. He only looks at the first letter and gets frustrated with new things...this task is hard for him. I have created him a book of words. We began at matching letters (a task he knows) and have now introduced two letter words using those letters (a, s, n, and t) so that the first letter always remains the same and he has to look at the last letter to match the word. We will keep increasing the difficulty and are always pairing this with the verbal word so that he begins to hear the word with its written form.

I am using the common core extended standards to guide my instruction as one of the various tools and one of the standards is to differentiate day and night so I made this with day and night activities and they can determine what side they go on.

There is more receptive ID pictures down below but I also wanted to share a few activities we have been doing so far. We did an "All About Me" unit and we traced their bodies and painted them, stamped our names, and now we are moving onto "Family" theme. We read a really cute book by Todd Parker (I can't remember the title!) I think it is just called "Families". Then, we made this graph to determine how many boys and girls are in our families. The kids were shocked that I knew who was in their family and just lit up when we were talking about them! We also tried to make our people look like "Mat Man" because we have been working with him lately (Handwriting without Tears)

Also in the family unit I have made this activity where they can color a house and write their name and then glue colored squares on their house depending on who lives in their house with them (see the key). This was an idea I saw on Pinterest!

I have a numeracy board that we do each day for the number of the week. It has a 5 frame, counting pennies, a number line to find our number compared to other numbers and beads for pattern making. The kids get excited to do this. I will add to it as our number gets larger (10 frame, using nickels, etc)

Here is a receptive piece to identify the author and illustrator.

I made all 4 of the cards on velcro so the kids don't just memorize what side they go on but really think about who writes the words and who draws the pictures.

From my last post here is how we are using those touch number cards in action (a few ideas)

Also, we study a color each week and this week is yellow. We made suncatchers. We pained a paper plate then I cut out the middle. I put contact paper on the bottom and they tore up tissue paper and glitter in the middle. Then, we put contact on the top as well. They painted their hands as the rays. They look neat!

And finally, I have students working on saying yes and no appropriately and asking what they want. Breakfast is a great time to work on this because food is such a good reinforcer (unfortunately). I have also borrowed this from the teacher who gave me a lot of things to use!

Hope you enjoyed seeing what Room 5 is up to! Please leave your comments! What is your classroom looking like this far? What has worked well? Any family unit ideas??