Puppet Fun

In the spirit of creating educational activities for our own children I found this interesting book Finger Tales by Joan Hilyer Phelps http://www.amazon.com/Finger-Tales-Joan-Hilyer-Phelps/dp/1579500730.
I am always looking for ways to engage my one year old in creative play.   I came across this book that that has glove puppets and finger puppets that you can make along with rhymes, stories and plays.  When I create my first one I will be back to share photos and let you know what a one year old thinks of Finger Tales.
Olivia
Two Tangled Teachers

Summer Fun!

     So what do teachers do in the summer when they don't have a classroom full of eager students? We subject our own children to our educational creative genius, of course :).
     This was a quick and simple activity that I did with my three and a half year old to reinforce letter recognition and sounds.  It could easily be adapted to numbers, word families, colors, math facts or even used for animal habitats.  The materials you need are a pen, dot stickers, and a smooth surfaced ball.  Decided what skill you want to focus on and fill in the dot stickers.  In my case, I wrote the uppercase alphabet.  I had a few open spots on my soccer ball so I made smiley faces that were used a a free choice.  Once your dots are all filled  in simply place them on your ball.
    To play just toss the ball back and forth.  For each catch, look to see which sticker their right thumb is touching.  My son doesn't know his left and right yet, so we just went with what ever sticker either thumb was touching.  I had him identify the letter and the sound it makes.  For more fun, we tried to think of a word that started with that letter.  I hope you have as much fun with this as we did!


Happy summer,


Julie
Two Tangled Teachers

Happy Mother's Day!  Mother's Day is coming upon us quickly.  We are going to be making recipes for a Happy Mother's Day this week.  It will be a two-sided recipe card.  The students will use fractions to create their recipe.  You can either use the cut outs in the unit our have each child write their own ingredients.  On the back of the recipe the children will write the directions for how to make their recipe.  For an extra special touch you could have each student bring in a cookie cutter and attach it to the recipe with a ribbon.  If you would like to create this craft with your class visit our store at  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Two-Tangled-Teachers  for the templates.

Here is a picture of the sample:

Recipe for: A Happy Mother's Day

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!  We are having a sale on out Teacher's Notebook store through Friday, May 11th, everything is 10% off.  Also, visit us on TpT for our 10% off sale plus an additional 10% off through Tuesday, May 8th!  Just click the links on the right side bar to be linked to our stores.

Fraction Flowers

In honor of spring we made some fraction flowers.  As the end of the year approaches we have been reviewing many of our math skills.  Fractions happens to be one of our favorite topics to create learning centers for and practice activities.   This idea came from Ed Emberley's Picture Pie book.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316789828/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1/186-7134785-1515622?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_r=1PT5EZEWBG0P0MYK4AEF&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_i=0316234265


The children used circle templates (the inside of a masking tape roll works great as a tracer) to make the number of circles they wanted to use on white paper.  Next, they colored the circles their favorite colors.  Then, they folded their circles into halves, fourths, or eights to make equal parts.  You might have to do a mini-lesson on folding.  They cut the circles on the fold lines to get their fractional pieces.  On a white background, they laid out their pieces to make a fraction flower and then glued their pieces in place. On the back of the paper they had to write the fraction for each flower (1/9 blue, 2/9 pink).  I think they turned out to be pretty cute!  I was thinking that they could also be used for a Mother's Day card.  

Carried Away

Our class had a ton of fun learning prefixes and suffixes!  As an informal assessment students had to create a bundle of balloons (a parent volunteer used the die cut machine and had them prepared in advance) to show a prefix, a root word, and the new word they had created.  On the back of the balloons they did the same thing with suffixes.  To make it a little more exciting I took their picture to attach to the bottom of their balloons.  I think they were a huge success!

After a long drum roll... I am finally going to share our Dr. Seuss pictures.  The students had such a fun time deciding what they would protect if they were the Lorax.  We even got our administrators and specials teachers to join in the fun and take their pictures with "the mustache".  I made truffula trees after seeing a post from Mrs. Lodges's Library blog http://mrslodgeslibrary.blogspot.com/2012/02/truffula-trees.html.   The students also got to make their own truffula pencil toppers for the celebration.  This idea would be natural fit for Earth Day in April.  Visit our store at teachers notebook (http://www.teachersnotebook.com/shop/twotangledteachers) to get the graphic organizers we used for free.   As the Lorax teaches us, nothing will change UNLESS....