The Three Little Pigs

Another favorite fairy tale that goes along with the farm unit is The Three Little Pigs.  I loved acting this story out so much that we included it in our end of the year program.  My husband cut out 3 house shapes from masonite, and some parents helped me decorate them to be the straw house, the stick house and the brick house.  They were large but light weight and the children could easily carry them and hold them.  They had a cut out window for the children to peek through.

I wrote a simplified script of the play that we used for the program.  The characters in this version were:

Mother pig

Straw pig

Stick pig

Brick pig

Peddler

Big Bad Wolf

Here is the script I used:

The Three Little Pigs

Here are the props I used when I told the story to my class.

Here is a reproducible that children can use to retell this story.

Here are pictures to sequence this story.

Here are printable versions:

3 Pigs printables

3 Pigs project

I made up a song for this story to the tune of 3 Blind Mice

Three little pigs, three little pigs

Each built a house, each built a house

The big bad wolf came and huffed and puffed

The straw and stick houses were not so tough

Only the brick house was strong enough

For three little pigs, three little pigs.

Three Billy Goats Gruff

My class always took a field trip to a nearby farm in the spring.  There are so many wonderful stories and activities that tie into a farm unit.  It’s also a great way to review characteristics of animals, living and non-living things, healthy food, and the jobs people do on a farm.

I loved to have my class act out stories, and there are several fairy tales featuring farm animals that are great for acting out.  Although there are only a few characters in the Three Billy Goats Gruff, I love the language that is used and it is really easy to sequence and retell.

When I introduce a fairy tale I often like to just tell it the first time, instead of reading it from a book.  I just feel like the children are so engaged when I am telling a story, and it is so easy for me to make eye contact when I am not reading.  Here are some props I used to retell this story.  They are double because they fold in half and stand up – that way kids all around the circle get a good view.

I got these pictures from this resource book:

You could easily use just one image and make a stick puppet or put a magnet or sand paper on the back to tell this as a magnet or flannelboard story.

When my children acted out the story – after hearing it a few times, we actually used a classroom table for the bridge, and they trip trapped over the top – on their hands and knees, with the “troll” hiding underneath!

We used these pictures as necklaces for the characters:

I had 3 sizes of stuffed animal goats, and a monster puppet that we used to retell this story sometimes too!  It’s fun to retell in lots of different ways.

These 4 pictures can be used to sequence the story, or to go along with an oral retelling.  I reduced the size of these pictures for a writing project.  The children cut the pictures out and glued them into a booklet in the correct order.  Then they wrote a sentence or two describing what was happening in that picture.

For example -

“The littlest Billy Goat Gruff went across the bridge.”

“The second Billy Goat told the troll to wait for his big brother.”

“The biggest Billy Goat Gruff pushed the troll into the water.”

“The goats went across the bridge and ate the green grass.”

I photocopied these two pages back to back, then cut them in half and stapled them to make a booklet numbered 1-4.

Each child also need one set of these pictures – there are 2 sets on each page.

I liked this project because it gave the children a chance to retell the story, and write sentences, but they didn’t have to create the idea this time.  It was fun to see which children added descriptive language like “trip trap” or “mean, ugly troll.”

Sometimes I just asked the children to write about their favorite part of the story instead of sequencing the parts.  I had lines at the bottom for the children to write, I left them off so you could add the type of lines your children are used to writing on.

Here are printable copies of the props and writing papers.  I hope you have fun acting out stories with your class – hey – you might make a great troll!

3 Billy Goats printables

3 Billy Goats favorite

Bugs and Insects

I always loved beginning a unit with Roxie Heart.

When she visited our class with her new Ant dress she gave the children lots of information about insects.  She even had an “ant egg” in her purse.

She shared facts like – insects have 3 parts to their bodies (head, thorax and abdomen).  Insects lay eggs.  Insects have 6 legs.  Most insects have wings, etc.  I took the facts from a simple information book about insects, and then read the book to reinforce the facts.  After that the children made an insect with all the body parts, and wrote 3 facts in a booklet.

Here is a printable copy:

Insect facts

We spent about a week completing a book about bugs that reinforced facts about insects.

Here are the words to this book:

We Like Bugs words

I wrote these words on sentence strips and put them in a pocket chart.   In addition to making and reading this book each day, we read it in the pocket chart.

Here are some bug clipart pictures that I used for the cover:

bugs clipart

We learned 2 songs that also helped reinforce facts about insects.  The first was from the CD Singing Science by Tickle Toon Typhoon –  it is available on Amazon and has lots of great songs for all kinds of science units.  You could just make up a tune that works for you too!

The second song is to the tune of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.  I taught the songs separately but we usually sang them one after the other.

Here is a copy to print:

Insects

When I began teaching many years ago, everyone was making copy change books based on Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  I made them too – on almost every subject!  I still think there is a lot of benefit using a pattern that the children recognize and using lots of sight words to make a book that the children can read.  So I was always looking for different books that could provide a simple pattern to use for copy change books too.  I used this one a lot:

This text for this book starts out

Joshua James likes trucks.  Big trucks, little trucks.  Long trucks, short trucks.  Joshua James just likes trucks.

We did a remake of this book during our transportation unit substituting ‘We’ for Joshua James.  I have done copy change books for dinosaurs, bugs, and animals (that I remember right now!)

Here is a peek at part of the copy change book for bugs:

I tried to make enough class books for each child to take one home at the end of the year.

Here are all the words I used – I added more pages when I had more children in my class – one or two children illustrated the cover instead of a page.

Here are the words to print if you’d like:

Class book words

SPIDERS  TOO!

I usually talked about spiders at Halloween or sometime in the fall, but if I hadn’t I included spider stuff after insects, to help the children remember the difference between insects and arachnids.  There is another great song on Singing Science about Arachnids!

Roxie has a spider outfit too!

She carried a comb in her purse to reinforce the fact that spiders’ bodies are covered with hairs.

I colored these fact cards to show the children, these are the facts that Roxie shared.

Spider facts

Here is the booklet the children used to phonetically write facts about spiders:

Spider facts booklet

We made spider hats!

We also did a fun remake of the Eensy Weensy Spider.  I used the same spelling as a book that we read in class – who knows how to spell Eensy?  Eency?  Eencie?

Gotta love that glitter!!

I hot glued tiny spiders on the end of a popsicle stick for the children to use as a pointer, and taped a pocket inside the cover for them to keep it.  They loved pretending the straw was a water spout.  I actually brought in a small crook piece of a downspout and a big rubber spider tied onto a piece of yarn so we could pull it up the spout and have it fall back down – lots of fun!!

It is fun to do a copy change on this book too – what other insects might go up the water spout?

The red and black ladybug

The hoppy green grasshopper

The clicking noisy cricket

It is a great way to reinforce a fact about each insect – or you could use different words for small and large -

little tiny, itty bitty,  big huge, large giant, etc.  Always looking for ways to incorporate great vocabulary!

I hope all the stress at the end of the year isn’t “bugging” you!

The Ocean

When I began to put together a unit for my Kindergarten class I usually tried to begin with a few simple facts that I wanted them all to learn about the subject.  Then it was easy to organize the books, projects and activities that I wanted to use, to support these important facts.  My Ocean unit evolved and changed over the years, but basically I wanted the children to learn that ocean water is salty and has waves, there are lots of fish and animals in the ocean, boats travel in the ocean, shells come from the ocean, and there are many plants growing in the ocean.

I put these words into the pocket chart at the front of my classroom.

We read and reread these sentences throughout the unit.  In my files I had lots of different versions of these sentences that had fewer words, or simpler sight words, depending on the time of year I presented the unit, and the readiness of my class.  Sometimes each sentence began – The ocean has waves, The ocean has fish, etc.  Another version was – Waves are in the ocean, Fish are in the ocean, etc.  I was able to reinforce specific sight words by including them in these sentences.  Reading pocket charts like this gave us great opportunities to talk about things like spaces between the words, all kinds of punctuation, using picture cues, pointing to the first letter of each word, etc.

The children each made a book with one page for each of these sentences.  Because we read and reread the pocket chart, every child was successful at reading their book.

To illustrate this cover the children drew a fish on a separate paper, an did a blue paint wash over it.  Then they cut it out – outside their crayon lines and glued it on the cover of the book.  Their books were already stapled with the Title on the top of the cover.

When I typed the words for the book I left 2 spaces between words, to help the children see the individual words.  Every day each child read his/her book to me, one at a time, pointing at the words.  For this page I gave them 3 colors of paper in graduating sizes, they cut the waves and added details.  Along with this we did some experiments with salt water and we made a wave in a bottle – using mineral oil, blue food coloring and water in a large soda bottle.

I picked about 6 types of fish that I wanted the children to be able to recognize and identify.  Roxie Heart helped me teach about them.

I got my information from simple books about fish.  Here are examples of what I taught about different fish:

Zebra fish can change colors

Puffer fish swallow water or air and puff up to scare off other fish

Sawfish cut up other fish into little pieces to eat them

Flounder are flat fish that like to lie on the ocean floor, both eyes move to one side of their body

Lantern fish have lights along the sides of their bodies

Roxie came and talked about the facts and names of different fish, then I showed them simple drawings to reinforce these facts.  After that we read the information book, noticing where Roxie learned her facts.  After reading we tried to remember all the facts Roxie shared with us.  Then I asked them to draw and write about 3 kinds of fish.

On this page of our book we used scrap construction paper to make 3 of the fish we learned about, adding details to show which fish they were, and then they labeled them phonetically.

We live in an area of Michigan with lots of lakes, so we talked about boat safety too.  We read books about different kinds of boats and did activities with float and sink, etc.  This boat opened up to show a passenger wearing a life vest inside.

We read Eric Carle’s A House for Hermit Crab and on the shell page of our book we made a hermit crab, and added all the things that were in the book, labeling with phonetic spelling.

I loved the conversation that went on as they tried to remember all the things the Hermit Crab added to his shell.  If they really couldn’t remember them all they could go back and look at the book.  We talked about how good readers go back and re-read if they can’t remember a fact; but I wanted them to try to remember on their own first.

For the last page of the book we used pieces of crepe paper or strips of tissue paper as seaweed.

Here are the words for this book

new ocean book

I used one of Dr. Jean’s songs to teach the names of major oceans, here are the words:

Here is the song to print:

Oceans song

One of the books I read was Who Sank the Boat? by Pamela Allen.  It was a good story to reinforce characters, I also used it for Writer’s Workshop when we were talking about story endings.

As a follow up to this book we made a simple boat and added the characters to retell the story.  Sorry I don’t have pictures – I gave the children 9 x 12 brown paper folded horizontally (hot dog fold)  They traced a canoe shape and cut it out, then they could hole punch and sew sides, or staple them.

They drew the characters on this paper, then cut out the boxes.

boat characters

Then they each retold the story to a partner, or to me.

I set up our dramatic play center as an Underwater Adventure where the children studied seashells and plastic ocean animals.

We also sang the song There’s A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea.  After the children knew the words we made a flip books.  I cut the verses apart, each part was a different length and I stapled them together into a little book – then the children added the pictures that matched each verse.

We had motions for each verse, and when we sang it we included a wing, on the flea, on the frog …

Hole in sea

hole in sea pictures

Each year I offered 2-3 parent/child activity days when I asked every child to bring an adult to school for a few hours.  I tried to include activities across the curriculum to give parents some ideas about what the children are learning through fun projects, and to give them some ideas of things they could do at home.  Oceans was one of the themes I sometimes used for parent/child days.  I tried to vary the themes different years because I often had repeat parents.  Every year I did one evening activity that was geared more to things Dads might like (I know that is stereotypical but we did get more Dads at night.)  The evening themes rotated between Cowboys, Outer Space and Pirates.  Some of the pirate and ocean activities overlapped.   I am sharing these ideas because you could use most of them as a center or activity in the classroom, most of them don’t require a parent’s help.

Here is the invitation for our Ocean Day.

INVITATION

When the parents and children arrived they got a check-off list of activities.

Here is a printable copy

Ocean ACTIVITIES

Here is a short explanation of these centers:

 

Explanations

I made 3 sided signs that gave directions for each activity to set at each center.  Here are copies of some of the directions that we used.

ocean directions

more activity directions

Blackbeard

I also saved some various recording sheets and masters that I used for these activities.  I hope you might find something you can use.

Sink the ship

more fish clipart

sight words

numbers

List for fill in story

fill in book

fill in story

Estimation record sheet

fish boxes

fish measure

fish words 1

fish words 2

Food chain

For the food chain we made a string of linked paper chains, and glued on increasing larger fish from the bottom to the top, and added this word as the top.

 

The Rainforest!

We know that young children learn best by making connections, so when I was teaching a unit I tried to find ways to tie the new learning to things we had already studied.  It was easy to tie a unit about rainforests to our study of the earth, and ways to save the earth.  When I was teaching this unit I would often use the terms jungle and rainforest interchangeably, but I learned that the main difference is the amount of light that reaches the ground through the trees.  Jungles usually have lots of vegetation and growth on the ground, rainforests are so dense that little light gets through and the ground is pretty bare.  When people talk about the negative impact of losing rainforests, they really do mean rainforests, not jungles.  I did talk with my children about the differences, but I decided to use both terms because so many great children’s books talk about the jungle, and the word jungle is just fun!

We made a book loosely based on the pattern in I Went Walking.

There was one page in the book for each of the 4 layers of the rainforest – I began at the bottom:  the forest floor, the understory, the canopy and the emergent layer.

We made the back of the book from a piece of tagboard that was 18 x 6 inches long.  The pages were 12 x 6 inches and stapled onto the left side of the tagboard.  Then the children cut out large leaves and glued them onto the top of the tagboard, along with the title of the book.

You could easily change this to “I walked in the rainforest”

I created a newer version of this book with an anteater instead of an elephant – which would be truer to a rainforest instead of a jungle.

Sometimes we used oatmeal for scales on the snake – other times we glued on sequins.

I found a song that really taught the children about the different layers of the forest.  We sang it to the tune of  If You’re Happy and You Know It.

I found a poster of the rainforest that was easy to cut into 4 pieces to show the different levels.  As we learned this song I put each piece of the poster onto the magnet board.  After the children became familiar with the song we started using our bodies as the trees.  When we sang about the forest floor we touched the floor – or our toes.  For the understory we touched our legs.  We made an umbrella by overlapping our forearms for the canopy and we reached up high with extended fingers for the emergent layer.

Here is a copy of the song you can print.

Layers of Forest song

As a culmination to this unit I told the children we were going to go on a picture taking safari to the jungle.  But first we had to get ready.

We made safari hats and cameras.

I had a book about the jungle that had zebra stripes for the page inside the cover.  I xeroxed that and cut it into strips for the hat bands.  (I think it was Rumble in the Jungle, but I’m not sure.)

Each child also decorated a brown paper lunch bag with vines and jungle animal pictures.  I put a snack inside – usually animal crackers and a juice box.  They would have to hunt for their snack on the safari.

Most years I created the safari on the Kindergarten playground, but sometimes we had to move it inside because of weather.  I couldn’t really make the layers of the forest going up – so I made the layers in different sections of the playground – or the Media Center – or whatever space I had to use!  I brought in artificial flowers and puppets, and jungle-y fabric.  I made signs to label the different layers.  Then I had to have a safari guide.  The children went on the safari in small groups – so I usually didn’t feel like I could leave the rest of the classroom with an aide or parent, so I “trained” them to be the guide.

The safari guide would shake a maraca to get the children’s attention and make an announcement that a safari was about to depart.  Then she would call a group of children (I divided them up beforehand) and they would put on their cameras and hats, and pretend to use bug spray.  Then they would go out on their safari (it was always out of the classroom and out of sight from our room).  At each layer of the rainforest they would stop and chant

There’s a rumble in the jungle

There’s a whisper in the trees

The animals are waking up

And rustling the leaves

Then they would sing the verse of our song that talked about that layer of the rainforest.  They would pretend to take pictures of the animals, and kept looking for their safari snacks – which I always put in the emergent layer at the end.

Here are directions I printed out for them:
Safari walk

This copy of the song left out the verse about the layers in the forest because they didn’t sing that on the safari.

Jungle song

All the pictures that I could find were of times we did our safari indoors.

When the safari group came back into the classroom they ate their safari snack – then “printed” their photographs by drawing them in a Safari Scrapbook.  Here is the cover I used to make the 1/4 page sized scrapbooks.

SAFARI SCRAPBOOK

I didn’t save the masters for the hats and cameras when I retired, but I did a search for camera clipart and here are a couple that might work:

cameras

The children loved learning about the jungle/rainforest, and they remembered so many facts about the different layers because of the song.  The safari was always a big hit, and created lots of great kindergarten memories.

More Pirates!!

I noticed that a few people have been checking out my post about Pirates and I came across some pictures and a few more things that they might be interested in.  I won’t re-post all the things that are on the previous post.  I already shared a fun Pirate book that my children loved making.  I also talked about a parent/child Pirate Night that we enjoyed.  These parent/child activities were a great opportunity to educate parents about how children learn, fun things they could do at home, and it gave them a chance to see their child in a school setting.  After participating in one of these activities parents often told me that they saw behaviors I had mentioned – like rushing through work, wanting to go and play instead of do projects, etc.  The best part of activities like this was making a special memory for parents and their kids.

I already shared the check-off list of activities that were available to parents and children, but here is another peek.

Here is a short description of some of the activities:
Activity explanations

When the parents and children arrive at school they each find a grocery bag that we decorated ahead of time, and a check off list.

Then they are free to complete the activities in any order they choose, there is no pressure to do everything.  I typed up directions for each activity and mounted them on 3 sided signs for each center.  The same directions were on all 3 sides so they could be read from different directions.  For the Pirate Night I made the signs from red, white and black paper.

 

I don’t have the directions for every activity but I am happy to share the ones I saved:

I had a step by step chart to help children draw a skull and crossbones on the front, we also used this to decorate the bags for the evening.

Again I didn’t save my original chart so I remade it for you.  Feel free to improve on it!!

 

Great hook!!!  He is also holding the kaleidoscope we made!

We did not always cook hot dog octopus for dinner – sometimes I just ordered pizzas, other times sloppy joes – I just tried to give all the food pirate names!  We had flat wafer cookies we called pirate planks.

I cut these directions in half and stood them up on the food table.

Pirate Planks

Octopus

Blackbeard

more activities

Here is the board we made for picture taking:

Here is another view of our hats, and check out the cute envelope shark!

Here is how we walked the plank!

Another favorite activity was using the looking into the water with the masks

They loved making the pirate puppets

 

Here is another note I sent home before our special day, asking for some supplies:

send in stuff

We also read a lot of pirate books, made the Pirate Book that I already described, and did other activities in class.  Here are some of the books we read:

 

Here is a writing activity that we sometimes did after reading Tough Boris and talking about parrots:

I added a box for an illustration and lines for text, to make this look like the paper we used during writer’s workshop.  I know teachers use all different types of lines for HWT, midlines, etc. so I just gave you the basic template.

pet parrot

Some of my clipart was from PC Crafters – Pirate Adventures by Amy Dott Harmer (I love all her clipart!)

There is more very cute pirate clipart on DJInkers – Pirates Plunder

I also have some samples and ideas from a parent/child day on Oceans that I will be sharing later.

I hope you might find something you can use!  The kids absolutely loved this theme!

Animals!

Most young children are very interested in animals, they love going to the zoo, a farm, a pet store, or just noticing animals in their own backyards.  When we study animals we practice sorting and classifying, learn new vocabulary, understand some differences between living and non-living things, and notice how things are alike and different.

We began talking about how animals have different body coverings.  We read informational books, made lists, explored toys and models of animals, and made this book.

I changed this page the following year because technically pigs do have hairs, so they would actually be sorted with the fur covered animals.  I didn’t have a copy of the revised page.

I provided pieces of fur, feathers, shiny plastic from a report folder for the skin, and crepe paper for the rough scales.  I also gave the children clipart animals for them to sort and put on each page.

Here are printable copies:

Some animals have fur

animal coverings

animal coverings1

We also read books and talked about animal habitats.  These little books were folded up and the children added animals on each page, then they phonetically  wrote the names of the animals.

We talked about ways animals move, and practiced moving like different animals!

Finally we talked about how animals are born, and grow.

I struggled with how to label animals who are born alive – you might choose to change it.  Of course the book Animals Born Alive and Well is a great resource for this!

Here are printable copies – just fold them up to make 1/4 page booklets.

homes fold up

move fold up

grow fold up

Here are a few more clipart animals:

Big animals 1

Big animals 2

Big animals 3

The children each created a model of an animal too!  They started out with clay, and I provided lots of art materials for them to add, feathers, more crepe paper, fur, sequins, hole punches, ribbon, etc.  I folded these 3 dimensional triangle shapes that they decorated as a habitat for their animal.  They followed up by writing a short explanation that included what kind of animal they made, what it looks like, how it moves and where it lives.

I’m sorry I don’t have pictures of completed projects but this should give you an idea of the triangle habitat paper.  I cut construction paper into a 12 x 12 square, then folded it corner to corner to make 4 triangles.  I cut on one triangle line up to the center of the paper, then folded it so one triangle totally overlapped another.  I rubber cemented those to form the bottom of the habitat.  They were sturdy enough to hold the clay animals, and easy for the children to add grass, trees, water, clouds, etc.  I showed them how to fold the bottom of grass, trees, etc. and glue them so they stood up on the bottom of their triangle.

We set all of these up as a museum, along with our writing, and invited other classes to visit.

Sometimes we were studying animals around the same time we were learning informational text features.  It worked out great because we read so many books about animals and got a chance to see lots of text features.  Then we made our own information book about animals.  I shared this in an earlier post, but I will show it again.

I didn’t scan this entire book – the children drew animals with different body coverings, different homes, etc. and these were glued on pages in between those with the bold print.

What I loved best about the time we spent studying animals was hearing the children use the terminology when they were talking about animals the rest of the year.  They would talk about different body coverings or habitats when we came across animals in books we read too.  It really gave them a lot of background information, and practice thinking about how living things are alike and different.

Transportation Day!

I think that parent education is an important part of teaching Kindergarten.  Research shows that supportive parents are a vital part of a child’s success in school.  S0 that means that all early childhood teachers need to help parents understand how young children learn, what our curriculum is, and model specific ways they can help their child.  I always believe in show – not tell – so every year we had several parent/child activity days.

A parent/child day might be held during a morning or afternoon at school, or during an evening.  I always tried to include activities from most areas of the curriculum, and included ‘cooking’ our own snack.  The evening activities usually included a simple dinner.  We had many working parents, most were willing to take a half day off school, or found a grandparent, or other adult to substitute for them.  Occasionally we had a child without an adult present, and either I spent the time with him/her or found another adult to help out.  We usually built the parent/child day around a theme – like Transportation, Space, Cowboys, Bugs, Ocean, Dinosaurs, etc. but sometimes we celebrated a holiday with a parent/child day.

Here is an invitation from one of our Transportation days:

The children usually decorated paper grocery bags ahead of time that they carried around with them as they went to different centers.  Depending on the number of Kindergarten classes at our school each year we went between 3-4 classrooms, plus a centrum area in the middle.  The parents and children chose to where to go, and completed activities in any order they liked.  There were usually about 20-25 different activities.

Each parent was given a checklist:

You may have noticed that I was a clipart queen!!

I know I keep mentioning it – but I am sorry I didn’t save more of my files when I retired – the activities I am going to share were from quite a few years ago.  Along with higher expectations, I changed some of the parent/child centers to represent the newer benchmarks and curriculum.  I added more recording sheets, more opportunities for the children to write, and higher math skills.  It was a great opportunity to expose parents to things like counting by 2′s and money  values.  When they played a game during one of these days it gave parents ideas of ways to reinforce our learning at home.

I always liked to begin the day at circle time, and we did a few routine things – like lunch count, our morning letter, the calendar –  to show parents how our day at school usually began.  Then I tried to involve parents in an interactive game or story – to get them in the mood to play and have fun.

For this activity I enlarged lots of different kinds of transportation – skateboards, hot air balloons, blimps, garbage trucks – anything I could find clipart of (you could enlarge some of the pictures I provided with math games.)  I cut red, yellow and green construction paper 9×12 and folded the pieces in half.  I glued the pictures inside the folded paper and put them all in a basket.  Then I passed the basket around and each parent/child took one.  Then we went around the circle saying the poem.  The parent and child would first tell where they would like to go together – then they opened up the paper to show their mode of transportation.  Pretty simple – but it gave each child a chance to talk and got parents involved.

After that I quickly went over the activities listed on the check off sheet.  Ordinarily I always modeled what I wanted children to do – but my goal on parent child days was just to get them interested in the activities and to give them an idea where they might want to begin.  Next I passed out the check off sheets and the grocery bags, and the parents and children were free to go to any center in any classroom.

At each center I posted a sign giving directions for the activity.  For Transportation I stapled together red, yellow and green paper in a 3 sided sign and glued the directions on all 3 sides so parents could read them from different sides of the tables.

Here are some of the activities we included:

 

description of activities

Table signs pdf

I am posting files from a couple of Transportation days – I think there are a few duplicate activities but I am having trouble editing them because I changed from a PC to a MAC since I used these projects, and the files are not cooperating.  I just wanted to give you as much as I could in case you found anything you wanted to use.

sight word pictures

We used these pictures along with sight words to make sentences.

sight words we use

Parent child masters

Please forgive the duplicates!

These parent/child days were quite a bit of work to prepare and set up but during the actual activity I loved just having time to walk around, visit with the kids and parents as they played, and listen to their conversations.  Lots of times I heard parents saying “we could do this at home!”

Sometimes we had parent/teacher conferences not long after a parent/child day.  Parents often commented that they noticed many of the things I was sharing with them about their child, on the day they spent at school.  They got a chance to see how their child sat at circle time, how they contributed to our routines, how willing they were to complete work.  We always had some gross motor activities and some kids just wanted to run and play – that gave their parents an insight too!  Of course there were some parents who wanted to help their child too much, and some that wanted to visit with other parents instead of interacting with their child – but I was usually able to gently intercede.   Most parents told me it was a special day with their child.

Transportation ideas for Dramatic Play

I absolutely love dramatic play.  In fact, I love all kinds of play!  That is almost a radical thing for a Kindergarten teacher to say anymore!   But I sincerely believe that SUPPORTED play is one of the ways children learn best!  I know that Kindergarten has changed a lot – expectations are higher, children are required to reach more benchmarks – teachers are required to spend large blocks of time on academic subjects, we have Reader’s workshop, Writer’s Workshop, sometimes math and social studies are being taught in a workshop form too.  We are responsible for direct instruction, differentiated instruction, small group instruction, interventions and one on one assessments!  I don’t disagree with any of this – we need as many avenues as possible to reach every child and help them be successful.   But play fills a very important role too.

There is a lot of great research on the benefits of play.  One of the most important things children gain is in oral language.  Research shows that children use higher vocabulary, more variety of sentence structure, and in general higher levels of conversation during dramatic play.   Another wonderful benefit of play is that it is a great way to help children develop self regulation – waiting for a turn, sharing materials, asking questions, modifying their own behavior, imitating positive behaviors – positive peer influences.  I think one of the reasons play has lost favor in lots of schools is because some administrators view it as a break for the teacher – when the children are playing they catch up on email or write a note to parents, or prep an activity.  The teacher’s involvement in play really makes a big difference.

There are so many social benefits too – every child is successful during play – and that can be a huge boost in self esteem for children who struggle in other areas.  Children also develop empathy, solve problems, take on other perspectives – so many wonderful skills!!

I will be talking more about play because I think it is so important – but one of the most important things about play is that it brings FUN to the classroom!

During our transportation unit I turned one of my dramatic play areas into a Driver’s Training School.  I posted traffic signs around it – ONE WAY, STOP, YIELD, etc.  Then I spray painted xerox paper boxes and cut a hole in the bottom, attached margarine containers for lids (with brad fasteners) and straps – to make “cars” for the children to drive.

I also supplied visors that I bought from a dollar store and labeled POLICE.  When I set up a new dramatic play center (often chosen by the children) I always modeled and discussed how they might play – but they usually just took off on their own.  The Police Officer’s job was to do safety checks on each vehicle – they had a simple form I laminated to check the windshield wipers, turn signals, headlights, etc.  Then they could issue a Driver’s License to the other child.

I changed this form sometimes to tell the name of our school and they wrote in their telephone number.  I always provided a xerox of their photograph too.

Of course if they had a license, they needed a wallet to put it in.

I copied these on construction paper, the children folded them and stapled the sides.

I really did not have a very large classroom – the children “drove” the cars around the play center in a small space.   The police also issued Safe Driver Awards or tickets.  For safety and sanity I had to restrict speeding tickets and reckless driving tickets – but they sometimes gave a ticket for not stopping at a stop sign, going the wrong way on a one way street, etc.

Tana Hoban’s book was a great addition to this center!

This often led to children creating their own signs to add to the center.  Of course they usually wanted to make money for their wallets too – I encouraged them to look at real money (xeroxed copies) when they were making their own!

Here are the masters

dramatic play_0004

Another dramatic play tool that was always part of my classroom was a long red bench with a steering wheel on one end.  My husband built this for me and I loved seeing all the ways the children incorporated it into their play.

It was long enough for 3 or 4 children to straddle at the same time.   It changed from a car to a bus to a train to a plane… but the best part was listening to what the kids were saying as they played.

When I first added this to the classroom the kids often used the box on the front to carry their “car phone.”  Now, of course they all pretend to have cell phones – and I do have a supply of outdated used ones as props too.

If you have not done much with socio-dramatic play, I would really encourage you to give it a try.  The children love it so much, and there are so many ways to tie it into your curriculum!

Transportation ideas for Social Studies

One of our Social Studies benchmarks was to read and make a simple map.  There are lots of great books that support this.

 

Each child made a simple map using clipart and logos, and adding construction paper features like lakes or schools or parks.

They started with a basic set of roads.

When I first started this activity I had the children glue strips of adding machine tape onto large paper, but just gluing on the roads was difficult, and I found the kids didn’t put much effort into adding the features, so I reduced it to 9 x 12 and simplified it.

Here are the clipart pictures they added.

I also had a ditto of a simple map.

Here are the masters

maps

One of my favorite activities every year was making an assembly line to build cars!  After all, I do live in Michigan!  I told the children a very abbreviated story of how people used to have to walk, ride horses or drive carriages, until cars were invented.  Then I talk about Henry Ford and how he was looking for a way to make more cars and started to use an assembly line.

Before the children arrive I arrange the tables in a row.  I made a simple car pattern and enough parts for each child to add one.

My scanner cut off a bit of the top and front of the car.

All of the pieces are precut (hopefully by parent volunteers!)  I tell them that when they work on an assembly line they have to be trained – I call one child at a time over to the tables and explain what part they will be adding to the car.  Most of the pieces are glued on, using a glue stick.  The hood and the trunk lid have to be stapled on, I choose those kids carefully.  Children add a spare tire before the trunk is glued on, and the engine is glued on before the hood is stapled.

 

The windows need to face a certain way so I also need to pick auto workers who can remember which side to glue!  Other jobs are a little simpler.

When all the workers are trained and in their place I tell them that my job is Quality Control.  I walk around to be sure they are all doing their job well – because no one would want to buy a car with crooked windows, etc.

We wrote down the time the first car started down the assembly line, then noted how long it took one car to go completely through the line – and at the end – how long it took to make enough cars for each child to take one home.

 

Of course I “paid” the workers with a little prize or candy for all their hard work.

This project was kind of flexible depending on the number of children in my class – here are the parts I included, but if I had fewer children or kids absent I would leave off headlights, tail-lights, etc.  We did add the details to both sides of the cars.

4 black wheels

4 white hubcaps

2 front windows

2 back windows

2 doors

engine

spare tire

hood

trunk

2 front bumpers

2 back bumpers

2 headlights

2 tail lights

That covers 26 children – our maximum was 28 – if I needed to add more parts I made 2 doors on each side of the car – making them a little smaller.

It was always fun for me to see how the children reacted to this project.  We talked about how you could not walk away from your spot to go to the bathroom or get a drink unless you had someone to step in to do your part.  It was a great lesson on cooperation and working together too!