Horton Hears A Who

With it being Dr. Seuss week, I came up with different activities to do with different books. We started out with Horton Hears A Who. My students absolutely loved this book. Throughout the book they were coming up with ideas on how they could save the speak. Once we got done with the reading, we talked about character traits with Horton. This is what they came up with....

Once we got done talking about the character traits, it was time to get them up and moving. I took words out of the story and made a hop scotch game out of it. I couldn't get them to stop going through the game. Some of my students I had to help with the words. This activity also worked with gross motor skills.

Another activity I did with them is I took two shower curtains and cut them apart, taped them together. Once that was done I had made pockets in them to be able to insert cards in them. I took words from the story and the kids got to walk like elephants across the curtains.

The students loved it! Tomorrow we are working on The Sneetches!

Happy Learning!
Shannon

The Lorax

Even though Dr. Seuss week is not until next week, I like do reading units with my reading group. For one of my units I started with The Lorax, because it had a movie to go with it and it's awesome to make the students do a compare and contrast between the two. With this one I started searching a website called www.bookpagez.com and found a teacher's guide. From there I went to www.teacherspayteachers.com I found this awesome small unit from Mimi B. that had cause and effect worksheets and a memory match game for rhyming. With working in a self contained special education classroom we will complete the worksheet together.

Here is is what I did for the start of Dr. Seuss week outside my classroom!

Frankenstein

So, I found this awesome art project on Pinterest which of course lead me to teacherspayteachers. I believe the activity was free, but not only did it have an art project that came with it....it had writing it too!!! I started out by reading the two recommended books and comparing theming.

My kids adore the art project and we started that yesterday and today we are doing that today. With being in a self-contained special education classroom, when it comes to writing it's a lot of doing it together and some on there own. I will share when we are done! Here is how their monsters turned out!

Happy Learning!!
Shannon

4th of July Art Projects!

With the treatment facility the kids never leave, so I go in and complete art projects with the kids, watch movies, picnics and have water fights!  For 4th of July we did projects that pertained to 4th of July.  Once again with the treatment facility, you cannot take pictures of the kids nor their names. There are 3 pictures in here which have my 2 MHA's helping me and one has names which are my kids names.  We also, made an American Flag with their feet and hands.

We used Elmer's glue then sprinkled salt over it.  Once we had salt on it we shook it off.  We took water color paint and got it EXTREMELY wet and lightly touched the glue and salt to let it bleed on the glue and salt. 

MHA

My son and daughter

Straw painting.  Take 7 bendy straws and rubber band them together and put one color on them and paint on the paper, then the next color.  Never change straws.

Feet painting time.  Another MHA.

My very proud Art Wall!!!

Happy Learning!!

Shannon

The Lorax

So.....it's been since May I believe since I've posted and a lot has changed.  I've went from a treatment facility to now a school district.  I have learned a lot working at a treatment facility and I am very grateful for that.  With that being said, when I was at the treatment facility, there was no curriculum provided and in which I had to come up with my own reading, writing, math, science and social studies.  I was kind of shocked, but in the end it left me with endless possibilities.  In the unit that I ran, I had different age ranges and different learning abilities.  We did different units and I tried to incorporate all the different learning subjects into one, so it made it more fun for them and interesting.  One of my units that I did was, "The Lorax."  We did writing activities, an art project and math.  With the art project, I searched around the web for some ideas, but then kind of came up with my own and went from there.

I started out reading the book to the kids and no matter how old the kids are, they love being read too. Then we went into compare and contrast activities.  Since I worked in a treatment facility, I was not allowed to take pictures.  The only thing I took pictures of was the end art projects with nobody around.  So, with the compare/contrast projects you can pick different characters and compare them. You can do journal prompts from the story or ask the students how they would change a part of the story.  The ideas are endless with this unit.

Here is how the art project turned out!

Happy Learning!!

Shannon

Name Graphing

It has been a very long time since I've posted, but a lot has changed as to where I am at in my life.  Since the last time I posted, I am no longer in a school district, but a all behavior classroom in a treatment facility.  Let me tell you that I crave behaviors.  We all have a passion and something that drives us with our teaching and with me it's behaviors.  I resigned early from my last position early due to the last school not following special education laws and I have worked way to hard for my license.  So, anyways I am now in an all behavior classroom with ages 9-14 year olds and I absolutely love it!!!  Everyday is something new and brings a challenge.  It's like being in a special education classroom, because the students are all at different levels.

Anyways, with math I wanted to do a class activity with graphing, because not all the kids understood the concept and so I began my search online.  I found a picture of a worksheet where they took the names of the students in the class and tally how many letters in the upper top of the worksheet.  So, if they had 3 letter's they put one mark in that box...if they had 6 letters in their name they put a tally mark in that box and so on.  Once they completed that, they went to the bottom and started to graph it.  The student's really enjoyed this activity.  My next project I want to do with my students is with M & M's and then something with the presidential election and the state's they been going too.

I am going to link up the worksheet and feel free to use it.  Also, there is a cute book you can read to your class called, "The Great Graph Contest" by Loreen Leedy.

 

Name Graph Worksheet

 

Happy Learning!!!

Shannon

Funny Farm Number Recognition Game

      Yee HAW!!!!  How's everybody doing on this snowy day!  Well, it's snowing here in Montana and it's COLD!!!!!  So, as you can tell today it's a "Funny Farm" type of day.  In my room, I'm always looking for new ways to make it fun for my students to learn.  Having them sit at a table or on the carpet is not only boring to me, but to them.  So, I'm putting a twist on teaching student's to recognize numbers 1-30.  With this game, there are "funny farm" cards and "boom" cards.  How this works is you have all the students either stand up in a line or in their carpet squares and you go around presenting a number to them.  If they get it wrong they sit down.  If they get it right they continue to stand.  There are the two cards that say "boom" and "funny farm."  If the student get's the "Boom" they automatically sit down...BUT...if they get "funny farm" the people sitting down stand up and the people standing up sit down.  There are no real winners in the game. Head on over to my TPT store and rope up this game!!! Click on the "Funny Farm" picture to pick up your copy of the game!!

Happy Learning!!

Shannon

CVC Activity

In my room I do not like to keep my kindergarten students sitting for a very long periods of time. This group I have are very "antsy" and have to be up and moving and switching around a lot. We are working on first sound fluency and being about to sound out three letter and four letter words and form them together. I found a set of letters on Pinterest and printed out four sets of them, so that I could have smaller groups. I gave the students a word and they had to sound out the word and then find the letters to the word.

Once they had found the letters, they had to stand up and determine how to arrange them. This seemed to be the most challenging part for them. They seemed to be unsure which way the letters were suppose to go. We practiced it a few times and some of the groups caught on and some still struggled. The students had fun with this activity.

Not only was it working on sound out words and forming them together, but teaching them to work in a group and as a team.

 

 

 

I had the students hold the letters at their stomachs, so the other students could compare.

I would recommend printing your letters on card stock and then laminating for durability.

 

Happy Learning!!!!!

Shannon

 

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New State....New Room

So....it seem's like it's been a very long time since I've been on here and well it has been.  A lot has changed.  My husband and I moved our family to Montana and I am now teaching in the Anaconda School District.  Here is a sneak peak in my classroom.  I will post pictures with the final outcome!  For those of you who have started school, I hope your year is going great and those who haven't started school...I envy you!!!

The other part behind the accordion wall is the Title Teacher's room.

I'm hoping the student's like my crate chair's I made!

Happy Learning!!

Shannon

Mr. Potato Head's Follow Direction Activity

I'm always looking for activities that provide student's fun ways to learn how to follow one and two step directions.  This Mr. Potato Head's Activity is a great and fun way to help the students.  I printed them in color using cardstock paper for durability, and then laminated them.  Once they were laminated, I cut them out, and put magnets on the back of them.  Something different besides a file folder or velcro.  I picked up cheap cookie sheets in order to complete the activity.  I will tell you there are a lot of pieces.  It's nice, because there are two potato heads and you could play with two people and give each person a card or you can play with one person and they work on both potato heads.

The different directions

Here are the different parts.  As you can tell, there are pieces to make a girl and boy potato head.

Happy learning!!!

Shannon

Positional Words

I'm always looking for different activities for my younger students.  We have a wide range of disabilities in our classroom.  I have found when I give directions to my student's they don't always understand what it means to put the object under the table, or beside it, etc. I found this positional words book on teacherspayteachers and my little boy with down syndrome loves it!!!  It's really nice, because the first few pages are not as long so you can see all the objects that they are requesting you to place on each page.  You do take them off as you go, because you use them on different pages. The speech teacher always comes and borrow's the book too.

Front of the book.  You can kind of tell how the pages on the left are shorter then the back page.

An example of what the book looks like inside.

This is the last page.  It is a full page that includes the velcro pieces.

Happy learning!!!!

Shannon

Four in a Row Addition and Subtraction

My son love's to play games at home and believe it or not he likes to play educational games.  I think it's more, because he think's it's the coolest when he can beat his mom!!!  This game is a spin off to me of connect four, except with a different name and concept.  Of course...you can guess that I got it off of teacherspayteachers!

How this game is played, is you have once dice and two different markers.  We just used pennies and nickels to cover our spaces.  You have to roll the dice, and then whatever number is on that dice you find a problem in that row and solve it.  Once you solve it you cover that space.  The object of the game is to get four in a row along either vertical, horizontal, or diagonal with making sure you block your opponent too!

Here are some pictures of my son and I playing.

There are different levels with the addition and subtraction boards.  

I wish the picture of him winning wouldn't have turned out blurry!  It was so cute how excited he was to beat me!  Believe me, I don't try to lose either!  He get's being competitive from his mom!!

Happy Learning!!!

Shannon

Update on Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Hello!!!!!!!!!!

Awhile back I posted about a new theme that I was working on in my classroom.  If you are new to my blog, here is the link: Nursery Rhyme Unit 

Anyways, we have finally filled the tree with some letters, and now it's time for them to fall down the tree.  I wanted to show you how it looked now.  Remember, every nursery rhyme is based off a letter of the alphabet.  The kids really seem to work on the activities and then complete the art project at the end of the week.

Happy Learning!!!

Shannon

My Joy!!!!!

We all have our moments in our classroom that are just a big joy or put a smile on our face. Everyone one of my student's in my classroom are near and dear to my heart.  I was having one of those day's that nothing and I mean nothing was going my way.  This little boy is the sweetest little boy and I had every power to try and not smile when he was teasing his paraprofessional with a bean bag chair not to laugh.  So, I decided to take pictures.  Everyday, when it's rough and you just don't know what to do, I'm going to come back and look at him. Take a look....

He didn't want to give up the bubble wrap, so he decided to slide the bean bag chair away from us and continued to pop it.

His grin made me laugh the whole time.  Eventually, we had to pull him back into the classroom as he giggled the whole time.

Ok...so back to my post about movement....in a previous post I talked about how movement in your classroom is a good thing and it get's your students up and moving.  Well, once again this little boy decided he was going to play drums with me.  I finally was able to get him video taped on the ipad. Normally, he can be a stinker and stop what he's doing if you are watching him.  GUESS WHAT!!!  I got him!!  LOL

So, everyday he knows what time we get up and do movement activities and he uses two markers for his drums, and everyday the kids hand him his markers and he is ready to go.