Posted by Teacher Ria in Arts and Crafts, Classroom Escapades, Lesson Plans, Preschool | 2 Comments

The Seniors Tie Dye Project

For our discussion on clothing (as part of how we take care of our body) and colors, I decided to let the kids experiment on tie dying this week I started out the week with a discussion on primary and secondary colors, particularly how primary colors can mix together to make a new color. Since then my kids have been calling red, blue and yellow “magic colors” because they can become something else when mixed.

We also discussed the different types of clothing we wear and for what purpose (i.e. raincoats, aprons, gloves, socks, costumes and so on and so forth )

For a culminating activity, we made rainbow shirts!

The kids had a blast! So did teacher I was a bit worried at first about how this would have turned out, mainly because my past experiences with these activities were not very good. Luckily, my partner, Teacher Joy, had experience in this and did great in mixing the dye. I usually put too much water and I used to use vinegar instead of salt in the mixture. Plus I used to “cook” the shirts. Apparently, that was wrong! Haha!

This time, what we did was to prepare the different colors of dye then tie up the shirt and dye it section by section. Plus I squeezed out the excess dye before moving to the next color. Success! For the shirts that kinda had extra white spaces on it, we decided to use the stampers to add some flair

Again, the kids exclaimed “this was the bestest day ever, Teacher!”

We did the shirts yesterday and today, before heading home, we tried it on!

Posted by Teacher Ria in Arts and Crafts, Teacher's Corner, The Library, Tips and Tricks | 2 Comments

My Concept Wall

It’s been over a month since classes started and I realized I still have not posted what my classroom concept wall looks like. With no further ado, here it is!
The caterpillar is actually a recycled one from my Toddlers days but I love it so much I decided to keep it, even if my students don’t really need it. For the calendar, I decided to up the ante by having the kids master the concepts of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

My favorite feature, however, is the reading train. My co-teacher painted that over the summer There are a series of pockets which currently hold our various word lists. An alternative I was thinking of is tracking titles of books we read throughout the month. Fun idea, huh?

Join in and jump aboard the reading train!

Posted by Teacher Ria in Arts and Crafts, Classroom Escapades, Lesson Plans, Teaching Resources | 0 Comments

What’s Inside My Body?

Today was a super fun day with the Seniors of Playschool! Thanks to a friend of mine who suggested making one of those cut-out standees, I was able to make learning about the body a more enjoyable and meaningful experience for my preschoolers.

Because my students are Seniors, and especially since most of them were from my class last school year as Juniors, we have progressed from naming the visible parts of our body to the internal parts.We also talked about what it does for the body. For example, we talked about what happens to food when it goes to the tummy and how our body gets rid of excess waste. As a follow up, we will be reading Taro Gami’s book “Everybody Poops”.

So today I tried my best to make a replica of a human body. Pardon me if the dimensions and locations are not 100% accurate, but I used one of the school books to guide me

After creating the model, we took photos with our standee

Posted by Teacher Ria in Arts and Crafts, Tips and Tricks, Toys and Playthings | 0 Comments

Learning from scraps and household items

During the summer, it is customary in the preschool I work in to do a general cleaning where we get rid of all the old junk and make room for the new stuff that will come in for the upcoming school year. However, every year we seem to find more and more bits and pieces of scraps that we teachers can’t seem to let go off because we transform them into learning materials. We have a shelf-full of all sorts of odds and ends, from toilet paper rolls to old party hats, scraps of cloths and buttons, as well as all kinds of things you wouldn’t really think of keeping! Even old office papers find a home in our school. See that tall stack of white papers just waiting to become artworks?

Although it may look like a mess, this is a source of endless fun, adventure and learning, not just for the kids but even myself as their teacher! Teacher-made materials are excellent learning tools because you can design it to cater particular themes or needs your students have. Plus it can come out more cost-effective, especially if you teach in the Philippines where educational toys are quite expensive.

Here are some fun things my students and I have done with scraps and household items we’ve used as learning supplements in class:

Toilet Paper. I use these to measure my kids’ heights by taping to to the wall and counting how many squares tall they are. To further extend the lesson, we compare the number of each student then we put it in order from least to greatest. This teaches them sequencing, comparing greater and less than, and other math concepts

Gumamela flowers to make bubbles or other fallen flowers and leaves for drying or incorporating to handmade paper.  To make our handmade paper, we’ve used old window screens for straining and draining the paper pulp pressed together. Sometimes the paper comes out quite thick so we end up using this to make picture frames or other crafts.

Old water bottles are big favorites for kids! Whether its filling them up with colored water, stones or whatnot, they love shaking it around and are quite fascinated by what goes on inside the bottle! If you’re lucky, you can find those little connectors that allow you to put together two bottles to make one of these tornado bottles It works best though if the water bottle is the thicker kind of PET bottles.

Making Christmas crafts from leftover paper plates and cardboard is also a good way of harnessing a child’s creativity and fine-motor skills.

Wondering what to do with old tires? Make them into playground swings! A word of advise though: be careful when cutting the rubber because there are a lot of steel wires on the inside. We had this done by our school carpenter and he sanded down the wires and we wrapped them up in protective sealants before painting it.

Old egg trays or cartons can also be great ways to teach kids colors, one-to-one correspondence, matching and classification. This also helps stimulate a child’s thinking skills. For older kids, instead of using just colors, you can integrate other concepts to it. Ive also used old egg trays as 3D tic-tac-toe frames

Old newspapers and scratch papers are great for paper maché projects!

These are just a few things I’ve done (and have pictures to show of!) but there are so many other ideas to explore. One of my other favorite household trash items I love to use are toilet paper rolls!!! They’ve become musical instruments, bahay-bahayan toys and even presents made by the kids for mom and dad.

So, whenever you have trash at home, think twice about what can be done with these. Just be crafty!

Posted by Teacher Ria in Arts and Crafts | 0 Comments

Green Eggs and Ham Story Stretchers

One of my favorite beginning reading books in class is the infamous Dr. Seuss story Green Eggs and Ham. Even though it doesn’t really tell a story per se, it’s a fun read. I use the story a lot when trying to teach position words or spatial concepts. It’s a great way for me to also build the kids’ vocabularies.

The story doesn’t end there, though. More often than not, I make sure I find a way to stretch my stories to other learning areas. For the story Green Eggs and Ham, here are a few of my favorite story stretchers:

1. Yummy Green Eggs and Spam

For a fun cooking activity, prepare scrambled eggs with the kids! To make it green, add a few drops of green food coloring. Add in some chopped Spam (or sweet ham if you’d prefer) and some grated cheese to make it yummier. The activity helps teach sequencing, rote counting and similar math skills. Save the egg shells for an art activity.

2. Our Green Eggs and Spam Story

Prepare a sheet of paper with a big box drawn on the upper part of the page and several lines underneath it. Have the children draw a picture about where they would like to eat their Green Eggs and Ham. For the independent writers, let them write the story in the lines provided. If not, have them recite it to you. If you do this after the cooking activity, ask them how they liked it and let that be the theme for drawing.

3. Green Egg Mosaic

Have the children decorate a shape/picture with eggshells that have been dyed green.

Posted by Teacher Ria in Arts and Crafts | 2 Comments

The World is my Oyster.

I don’t think I’ve been mum about how much my world has changed since I discovered the blogosphere. It has enhanced my life in many aspects, as well as been detrimental on occasion. Nonetheless one big lesson I’ve takes from this thus far is that truly, the world is my oyster.

Posted by Teacher Ria in Arts and Crafts | 0 Comments

Unleash Your Talent!

The Filipino Youth as a cesspool of great talent. As a teacher of these individuals, I have been fortunate enough to see what potentials they have. With that said, allow me to share this invitation with you:

Marc Ecko in cooperation with Ms. Clavel magazine invites you the Ecko Unltd. Art Battle event at 5PM on May 30th, 2009 at the Cinema Lobby of Trinoma, featuring live art installation by Weewilldoodle and Pilipinas Street Plan.

Ecko Unltd. is driven by a simple belief: that no one needs to be corralled into a single aesthetic viewing the world with a voracious curiosity, finding inspiration at every turn.

With sales around the world in countries full of youth with artistic talent and passion – the time has come to open our apparel collection to new artistic palettes.

If you have the talent – This is your chance to take part in the first Ecko Unltd. Global Art Battle. Marc Ecko will select winners from each country and their art will be featured in the Ecko Unltd. Spring 2010 collection.

Posted by Teacher Ria in Arts and Crafts | 6 Comments

My Classroom Window.

I love painting on glass windows because it gives the transparent, boring glass life. However, because I had no poster paint on hand I had to find an alternative. Then, chancing upon a pile of scrap cut-up colored papers, I decided to used these! I cut the shapes individually then glued them to the window Unfortunately, because the glass is hit by almost direct sunlight daily, the colors of the papers have faded. Nonetheless this window became inspiration for many class projects for the kids. We sure used a lot of recycled paper and scraps for art projects!

For this year, maybe I’ll go with a city theme. Or maybe a zoo. Suggestions?

by the way, I wanna share this glass window with the rest of the readers of Window Views, a weekly meme featuring, yup, you guessed it, windows.