Month of May Flower Theme Ideas for Inspiration as Kindergarten Year Ends

 Welcome to Becca's Early Childhood Education blog! I was a bit surprised that a kindergarten teacher posted in a Facebook group that her and her students were bored, that class days had been dreadful. Shock! I was sure that all kindergarten teachers and kiddos would be wrapped up in a whirlwind of activities. 

So with May starting this weekend my response was to create an alphabet review based on flowers. Yes, make sure to chant "April Showers Bring May Flowers" or even use as the title for a wall display. Can't you just picture a huge basket overflowing with flower cut-outs that each feature a letter of the alphabet?

Build your basket as you progress or reverse it--start with a full basket and work backwards to make A on your last day or close to it. Whether you start with Aster or Zinnia, there are many choices for each letter. 

Several websites have lists with or without photos to help you plan. This is one site:

https://florgeous.com/types-of-flowers/

Also use technology with the students like a virtual tour of Keukenhof Gardens in Lisse, Netherlands that have hundreds of tulip varieties along with grape hyacinths, jonquils, daffodils, and more. Very beautiful!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLg3YuPBps8

This next link will put you in the middle of a spectacular slide show from the area around Brenham Texas known for the amazing Bluebonnets:

https://visitbrenhamtexas.com/wildflower-watch/wildflower-photos/

These are a few clipart images to help get your May Alphabet Flowers Theme Unit started:

Years ago as a daycare lead teacher with preschool age children in February and a few days in early March, I liked to present the alphabet as LOVE LETTERS. I had 26 red hearts that each had an alphabet letter on them and I presented them in order. As our love letters, there were several activities within the day that started with that day's featured letter rather than staying focused on a flower theme. So on "D" day we had dads invited for morning doughnuts, we had some dancing, dinosaurs were added to the sensory table, dot art with bingo daubers, and several more. 

Lots of preschool and kindergarten teachers do an alphabet reversal in May and early June, but either way, reviewing the alphabet can be fun and engaging. 

Unifix cubes arranged in different floral shapes would be a good table time activity. 

Early word work cards in a variety of formats with help students find what works for them:

a. photo of flower matched to starting letter

b. photo of flower matched to its word

c. photo of flower with starting letter matched to the remaining letters

d. starting letter card matched to remaining letters on card

Examples for suggestion 'd'=

A   =>  ster

B   =>  luebonnets

C   =>  arnation

D   =>  aisy

and continue on or separate into 5 or more sets so that children don't get overwhelmed. 

Set up a garden and/or flower shop dramatic play center. Have some small silk flower arrangements for your students to interchange on the kitchen table in your housekeeping center. Placemats with flowers would be another way to reinforce the theme. 

Make new cubby tags with floral shapes.

Put the children' photos on flower die-cuts for an easy bulletin board for the hallway. 

File folder games for easy addition problems can be easily made using flower stickers. 

Place a vase with cut flowers in the science center for children to smell and examine closely with magnifying lens. 

Make sure to buy some white carnations and have colored water in 2 or 3 hues for the children to see the vascular tubes work in transforming the white petals to whatever color(s) you selected. And let the children see the carnations going into the water so that they remembered that the flower(s) started as white. 

Have fun in the merry month of May. Hopefully these ideas will inspire you to brighten your teaching time in the crazy hectic last weeks of the school year. 

And 1 more idea...do you know that celery bundle will closely resemble a full open rose? Shown in the photo is the bottom section of celery kept together and stamped on a red ink pad and then onto white paper. The vascular tubule structures in each celery stalk help absorb the ink and add details to the 'rose' image. Kids think this is a magic act! They will love seeing the transformations! Children can draw green leaves next to their inked stamped blooms to add to a hint of realism. Having real or silk roses nearby in the science/discovery table will also help you and the students on "R" day: 

With a love for learning and making teaching fun and engaging,

Becca S

M. Ed. in Elem Ed with ECE emphasis

Certified in Illinois:

*Birth to Grade 3

*FACS grades 6-12

*general science grades 5-8 (short-term approval)

Humpty Dumpty Nursery Rhyme Lesson Ideas

 Welcome to Becca's Heart for Early Childhood Education blog! Making early learning activities fun, creative, and interesting for children gives my teacher's heart such joy!

This post is full of phonemic awareness as well some math and science connections to give you at least 1 day focus about Humpty Dumpty.

Rhyming sets include:

humpty

dumpty

wall

fall

all

men

again

Letter sounds to emphasize are:

H for Humpty and horses

hard C/K for king, couldn't

Words separated into letter 'tiles' for building word practice=

H

U

M

P

T

Y

D

U

M

P

T

Y

W

A

L

L

F

A

L

L

M

E

N

A

G

A

I

N

Math and Science connections that I am focusing attention on Humpty being an egg--

Eggs are oval-shaped.

Some animals reproduce by laying eggs.

Ask children if eggs are circles or ovals.

Animals that lay eggs include:

Chicken

Turtle

Fish

**************************Social Studies connection would be cultural traditions related to dying and decorating eggs.

****************

Additional topics to expand upon with this rhyme would be:

horses, communities, countries, types of rulers and leaders of countries, safety warnings about falling,

horses

The End! --from Mrs. S

ECE Level Word Work Activity Sheets Part 2

Welcome to Becca's Heart for Early Childhood Education blog! Make sure to read the previous posting to help this one make better sense because I'm going to be brief.

Differentiation is a key assessment and evaluation approach in today's classrooms. Over 20 years ago, effective outstanding teachers were doing this practice without using the specific term "differentiation". Effective teachers knew if they wanted every child to succeed and learn concepts and skills, often activities would need to be tweaked in order to accomplish the goal of learning.

Yesterday I revealed my version of a word work activity that had written clues with the intent that the teacher would read those clues to the children at the start of the day, week, or before the ELA station/center activity time started. Decoding skills are extremely helpful in learning spelling rules and with so many variations in the English language, our youngest school learners need different ways to practice decoding. Scrambled order and rearranging of letters is 1 approach to try.

For the 4 letter words that I picked for the word/letters in WATER, I was able to find clip-art images. I still have some partial typed clues but now there are image clues for each word puzzle:

My blogging and sharing classroom ideas are for inspiration. I'm not a TpT or have a company website where I sell my resources. At this point, I just want to share and inspire aspects in my own teaching journey with readers in blog-land.

As I mentioned in the previous posting, the very first word work activity took the most time to construct; however I had brainstormed a bit in thinking how I would format my version of "JUMBLED WORDS". For this pictured activity sheet with answer key, I already had the full written clues made so it was a matter of using the 'make a copy' and then deleting a few clue words to make room for the pictures. I also had to adjust font size in order for it to still fit on a half sheet.

REVIEW:
1. "tear" off the gift wrap
2. to "wear" an uniform
3. a "wart" on my hand
4. a 5 letter word suggestion is the title word "WATER"

Kids love puzzles and they will feel very empowered when they successfully complete each word work activity sheet. So far I've made activities for "WATER", "FORUM", "FLOWER", "HEART", and "PARTLY".

Have creative learning fun making your own word work activities for primary level students.

Key words:
a. word work
b. ECE
c. decoding
d. differentiation

Loving learning and teaching,
Becca S/Mrs. S

M. Ed. in Elem Ed. w/ ECE emphasis
Illinois certification in Birth to Grade 3/ECE self-contained classrooms

ECE level Word Work Activity Sheets Idea Spark

Welcome to Becca's Heart for Early Childhood Education blog! Oh, my creativity learning heart has loved what I've created this week! And the idea was sparked by my new cell phone games of "Cross Word Jam" and "Word Trip" along with seeing lots of word work activities by a dozen or so teacher/author/bloggers during the past year or so.

I think I've made about 7 sets using either 5 or 6 letter words that have three puzzle words with 4 letters and three puzzle words with 3 letters! I formatted this on landscape view so the activity is just a half sheet and the answer key is the other half. After making the first one, the rest have been easier using "make a copy" and deleting the parts that need to be switched out.

Here's what I did for the letters in "FLOWER"--

What's fabulous with this activity is that it can easily be differentiated! The clues can be left off. The reason why I added was I plan on sharing these when the station or activity is introduced. That I would read the clues to the kids and have them repeat back to me at least twice and hopefully they'd remember the order or could figure out a word or two within the clue words to get things figured out.

A picture clue can be used instead of the typed ones.

Children who are struggling could attempt the 3 letter ones and can come back in a month or so when they've made some progress and try the 4 letter then.

Advance students can try to come up with additional 3-letter, 4-letter, and/or 5 letter words if it's possible.

Note: Separate the answer keys and place them in a special reference binder that you can decide whether or not the children can access if they are stumped in the midst of center rotation time. You will need to decide if not being interrupted with your small group is more important than giving them a bit of assistance when they're struggling.

Fine motor and literacy skills can be expanded by having the children draw pictures of the words on the reverse side. They may not be able to draw a wolf but they can sketch a simple dress and a simple owl.

Word work in a variety of formats is very important for primary age students to develop the decoding skills and learn all the spelling deviations in the English language.

This post's key topics would be:
*letters
*word formations
*decoding

With a love for learning and teaching about ECE and with ECE-aged children:
Mrs. S/Becca S

M. Ed. Elem Ed w/ ECE emphasis; UMSL; 2003

Using Trading Card 9 Pocket Page for Primary Word Work

Welcome to Becca's Heart for Early Childhood Education blog! My artsy-crafty heart got inspired from an item used now for scrapbooking! Using a baseball/trading card pocket sheet protector page has been a variation for scrapping for a couple of years now. About the same time, artists and crafters came up with the mixed media or paper-crafting version of a baseball card called Artist Trading Card or ATC for short. The pocket openings are about 2.5" wide and 3.5" deep/long.

Last night I got busy sorting through some environmental print and photos repurposed from magazines and managed to get the total of 6 phrases made with the combination of cut-out text and photos.

Word Work for short phrases and/or sight words SIDE A=

Above: row 1= made with love
row 2= stand by me
row 3= save the plant

I penciled the words in lowercase letters unless it was a command sentence like "Save the plant." For now I'm going to leave that in pencil as if it is a subtle suggestion for the children. At some point in the future, I might go over that in marker.

Target age group: Kindergarten to Grade 2
Target subject: English Language Arts/ELA
Target concept areas within ELA: word work, sight words, starting grammar usage of nouns, verbs, prepositions, or article/adjectives

Target ELA focus: environmental print, picture identification to help prompt word choice

SIDE B=

Above: row 1= bake a batch
row 2= right at home
row 3= the new lamp

The trading card pocket pages are usually sold in sets of 10 or 25 and can be found in the office supply and/or scrapbooking craft supply sections of stores. I know teachers are using the full page sheet protector pages but may not have thought about how to use these 'bubble gum' cards-size 9 pockets for classroom use. (There is a slightly smaller version in the size area of the pockets known as the business card holder sheet protector pages. Take a look at those and see which size fits your class needs best.)

The sheet can be added easily to a 3-ring notebook binder or for a 3-prong center pocket folder.

Easy-peasy for adding to or taking away as students' needs change and need to be challenged!

Hope you like this activity idea and let it spark more re-purposing to think smarter and not work harder for your teaching needs.

From the USA heartland,
Becca S

B.S. Secondary-Home Economics
M. Ed. Elementary Ed w/ ECE emphasis

certification endorsements in IL for FACS grades 6-12 and Birth to Grade 3 (ECE); and approval for general science grades 5-8

Grade 1 or 2 ELA words ending in letters lf that change to plural ending of letters lves

Welcome to Becca's Heart for Early Childhood Education blog! I want to share a quick post this afternoon for an ELA activity sheet that I've made this past week. It's really crazy how a person's creativity gets sparked from reading words from someone else! What's more amazing is that I actually followed up on that spark to create this activity sheet that leads off with 1 elf and 2 elves!

I just kept picturing having columns with the numbers and word endings changing! I've got a few ideas for altering and providing more practice so hopefully time will open up in the next couple of days to make those into extra activities. Our English language has many different rules and exceptions to rules, so teachers at the primary level need to help children make sense of spelling and grammar rules through a variety of word work activities.

Elves, Calves, Shelves, Wolves, and Selves:

For student use I print everything in black and white, so this would appear differently to them. And since I was using clipart images, locating a single shelf image was very difficult and felt best using the mirror with an attached shelf photo for the singular. Then a 3-shelf bookcase clipart image is used for the plural.

I hope this inspires you to create something similar for your students!

With a passion for helping little ones,
Becca S

Illinois certification endorsements:
Birth to Grade 3
FACS grades 6-12

and approval:
General Science grades 5-8

ECE weather symbols and name alliterations

Social-emotional development= check

Sounds and letters with alliterations= check

Weather unit for early science learning= check

Another idea from my daycare employment years about 17-21 years ago that is still brilliant and super easy to implement. I did this with 4s and this simple idea was such a treat for them that they spent the rest of day wanting to be re-introduced to everyone with their new names! So here were a few weather symbols that were creatively used:

Lightning Lucas

Sunny Sara

Windy Will

and then for me

Rainy Rebecca

There were more children in the group, so more weather symbols to adopt and name tags to make. Self-images and confidence blossomed right before my eyes. The children's chatter centered around weather terms and symbols led to interesting discussions and expanding the theme for a few extra days due to their enthusiasm. Hurray for science! Reviewing some of the alphabet through the first letters of each child's name plus mine was cleverly achieved with the alliteration. Win. Win. Win. 

New ECE classroom to get ready for 2017-2018 school year

Hired 4 days ago!!! very small Christian elementary school as PK3-PK4-K5 room teacher!!! I've been teaching FACS to middle school and high school level students for most of the last 9 years; however with a M. Ed. in Elementary Education degree with an ECE emphasis and previous teaching and work experience in daycare preschool age classrooms and a Christian school kindergarten classroom about 20-25 years, this is a refreshing change!

Yes!, so far total enrollment is 7 possibly an 8th child and the options will keep me busy keeping lesson plans and their curriculum organized. I have one 3 yr. old coming on Monday A.M., two 4 yr. olds coming all five A.M.s, one 4 yr. old coming 2 days per week on Monday A.M. and Wednesday A.M. and so far three 5 yr. olds coming all full 5 days per week (possibly one more kindergartner that the office is aware of). Crazy!!!

In order not to go super wacko in the next 3 weeks, I decided to keep the bulletin board décor that was already up. It would not have been my pick, but I'm going to make it work and also see what I can find in storage to fit the "animal"/jungle theme. I've found a frog theme weather chart kit in the closet. A lion! Lots of dinosaurs. Monkey cut-outs and a monkey piñata. Zebra print and jungle leaf bulletin board paper backing. And bulletin borders in cheetah, leopard, leaf, and African print.

I've worked in the classroom on Monday which was mostly assessing the room's contents and today/Wednesday with my husband to use his brawn to move furniture around and some of the wall décor items. I'm going to do my best to show similar sections of the room with the 'before' photo and the 'after' photo. Keep in mind this is still a work in progress:

Area 1: across from entrance door, looking at coat hooks and teacher desk area=

before (I felt the coat hook/backpack area was too crowded)

before (also I believe the ABC rug needs to be moved to the alphabet/writing/pre-reading area; AND the 2 tables right in front of the teacher's desk--ugh!)

after (cleaner look already! hubby moved big blocks and the covered up Lego table to a new spot and the games and puzzles on the light blue bookcase got moved into the storage closet with the bookcase getting a new location...and this section already looks more accessible--yea!!!)

after (the easel used to be at the other end near the alphabet/writing/reading zone and the kidney table was over in front of the "math" board; I'm going to use the easel to place a morning greeting but it will be used by children throughout the day and the kidney table is covered with stack of items that need to be laminated and others that need a home. The big brown item is wood grain contact paper on the side of a filing cabinet that used to be just inside the entrance. It is now topped with dinosaurs and a globe.

before (these desks were close to the teacher's desk and will be moved about 2+ feet to the right as shown; notice opposite up on the metal there are shape cut-outs and color crayon cut-outs! These are getting moved to the math/calendar zone.) Oh! We found out about a free couch with 3 toss pillows that had to be moved out of someone's garage, so my husband asked for it to be used as a new student reading spot!!! Hubby and one of his buddies loaded it up last night and we cleaned it up and moved it into the classroom today!!!!

after (Here's the couch! Doesn't fit the jungle animal theme but the unstuffed lion pillow 'pet' was found folded up and got a new home. Maybe one of these days I will buy a tan throw or piece of fake fur to put under the lion to cover up more of the blue plaid. And notice the new home for the light blue bookcase that use to be over by the student coat hooks. I've already put science theme books on it like "I Spy", Eric Carle's "The Grouchy Ladybug", "The Very Quiet Cricket" and "The Hungry Caterpillar".)

before (alphabet zone in background will get a new look--yellow tables get moved to the math/calendar zone and the kidney shaped table in the foreground got moved near the teacher desk. Notice the corner of a student desk because remember those are getting shifted over more to allow room for that free sofa!)

after--sorry, I just realized that I didn't take a better placement photo of the 4 student desks or the new home of the ABC rug. I will have to take those photos on Friday and make it the next blog post. OKAY--this divider was originally about 2 feet perpendicular from this location and had nothing on either side. I found more of the jungle leaf bulletin board paper in the storage closet along with 4 new packages of borders and recruited my husband for additional help today to use his staple gun and get this new created bulletin board to cover about 70% of this side of the divider. Student desks are in groups of two perpendicular to the divider and then also to the sofa.

Now we will shift to the other side of the divider and some of the before and after:

before (alphabet zone on left; Bible zone on right; behind the easel is a cabinet filled with writing supplies like student size dry erase boards, erasers, pencils, glue, and more as well as phonics charts; there is also a big book rack behind or to the right of it. Remember the easel gets a new home down by the teacher's desk and those yellow tables are going to shift about 4-10 feet away in front of the math/calendar/science wall.)

before (panning more to the right of the Bible area--the rug gets moved by the new kidney table and easel area by the teacher desk; the black corner chair and lion get moved to the free sofa area in order to move the overhead cart [not shown yet] to the corner and the sensory table [also not shown yet] gets a new home in front of the science/calendar board areas)

after (science/calendar/math boards are on the right with the sensory table, 2 yellow tables, and 1 of 2 tables that had it's old home in front of the teacher desk! Now I can have all 7-8 children in this area or options to have all 7-8 on the ABC rug or grouped within the student desks, sofa, and black curved chair area. Lots of options! Even the kidney table isn't that far from the student desks, so I can work individually or with a pair while the others are engaged nearby!)

The blue pocket chart is getting moved. The magnet board only moved about a foot from where it was. (to the left of the edge of the blue pocket chart and sort of hidden behind stacked chairs).

after (I'm not thrilled with this arrangement yet, but I wanted to get the shapes and colors moved over to what's going to be the calendar/math section of this wall. Items on table have to find new homes. Again, still a work in progress. Oh! I was excited to find in the teacher desk labeled photographs for the AM  schedule. I placed them in order across the bottom of the board. The previous teacher had magnets on the back of  all these items so relocating them was very easy!!!)

Next will be the last photo showing the new location from the Lego and plastic blocks:

after (this area by the entrance used to have a filing cabinet and sensory table; now it is a building center!)

The birthdays are still posted with last year's group, so that will have to be updated before August 16. The wall space to the right is vertically narrow with the storage closet door just to the right of what's the photo edge. I would like to put some inspirational photos of monuments, towers, bridges, etc. on that space and change them every 2 weeks or so to keep the students' interest fresh for this aspect of STEM.

Hope you didn't get bored with this super long post about my new home away from home! It's already exciting for me to see this over-full room and closet find new invigoration and creativity in use of the physical environment. I still have lots to do--lots to sort, organize, maybe toss, maybe recycle, etc.!

Teaching in the heartland of America,  Becca