growing, learning, laughing

BEST DIGITAL STORYTELLING, FREE E BOOK

2012-01-17T17:52:00.000+04:00

I am a big fan of the blog Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne. Here in Dubai we get very limited opportunities for professional development (particularly in the ICT field) so for me, Richard's blog has been a technology lifeline. Richard has created a few helpful (free) e-books and recently he asked for submissions on digital storytelling in order to create a new resource on the subject. As my class had just presented a great assembly that included a digital story, I forwarded my submission. You will find it in the e-book alongside some fabulous ideas from other educators. Or go to Free Technology For Teachers and have a look at the other great publications too.

Open publication - Free publishing - More early years

CHRISTMAS ACTIVITIES: MAKE A SNOWMAN & XMAS TREE ADVENT

2011-12-12T18:32:00.001+04:00

Very simple activity from Kent NGfL. Drag items on the sidebar to make a picture.

The Christmas Tree Advent has some cute easy games for young children.

FUN ADVENT CALENDAR ACTIVITIES

2011-12-09T17:24:00.001+04:00

More fun online games for little children in the advent calendar format. From TES

CHRISTMAS FUN

2011-12-06T20:47:00.001+04:00

My class and I are loving the CBeebies Advent Calendar.

EDUBLOG AWARDS

2011-11-22T18:11:00.001+04:00

I follow so many amazing blogs. This is an opportunity to acknowledge the blogs that I have found to be particularly useful in one way or another this year.

My 2011 nominations for the Edublog Awards

Best individual blog Childhood 101
Best ed tech/resource sharing blog Free Technology for Teachers
Best teacher blog Irresistible Ideas
Best free web tool Pintrest 'pin it' button
Best educational use of a social network Let the Children Play
Best Individual Tweeter Teach Pre-school

DIWALI ACTIVITIES FOR CHILDREN 2011

2011-10-21T21:28:00.000+04:00

We are going to spend the week on Diwali this year with an assembly at the end of the week. I am going to us a lot of my previous ideas and add a couple of new ones. I will be updating this post over the week as I finish off projects with the children.

* Story of Diwali and related activities for technology and language.
* My Favourite Day - Diwali.

* Elephants of India pattern focus and pingerpainting.

* Clay diyas.
* Jewellery making using coloured pasta tube pasta.

* Reading stories of Diwali.
* Making an Indian sweet. Perhaps stuffing apricot halves with cream cheese and coconut.

* Trying on Indian clothes including the jewellery and bindi.
* Powerpoint with the children's recall and pictures created after hearing the story.

* Making sparkly paper lanterns.
* Rangoli patterns for our maths focus.
* Colouring in for those children who can't get enough (ugh)
* Learning some Hindi words. 'Namastae' - hello, 'Shukria' - thank you

BACK TO SCHOOL - sites for creating great classroom displays

2011-08-29T17:50:00.002+04:00

Mrs Pancake

Mrs Pancake has the loveliest visuals. This site is great for themed alphabets, and numerals, letters and numbers for making banners, posters, calendars and cute ideas for things to make and do.

Mrs Pancake's letters to print out and create banners.

Teachers Pet is a relatively new and growing site packed with fantastic resources from displays to worksheet and all sorts of teachers support. I printed out this lovely visual timetable snake (below) last year. Every morning my helper for the day would stick on the 'activities' in the order they would take place. A few o the children found our 'what will we do today' snake very reassuring. We included ordinal number labels later on in the year.

Visual timetable snake from Teachers Pet

Communication 4 All is choc block full of gorgeous display materials to print, including borders and posters. I find something new everytime I look. The powerpoint displays are amazing.

Children border

Twinkl is another great site full of displays, photos, games and worksheet. I give each child an alphabet strip at the beginning of the year.

Twinkl alphabet strip

Enjoy and happy decorating!

PINTREST LINKY PARTY

2011-08-20T04:53:00.000+04:00

Thank you to Michelle at Michelle's Maths in the Middle for setting up a Pintrest Linky Pa rty

I discovered Pintrest a couple of months ago and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it. Is the perfect application for keeping ideas I find on the web organised, creating fantastic visual reference. It is so fast! I do have a bit more tweaking to do in terms of linking ideas to my blog for others to use, but for my own teaching it is an amazing tool.

Check out some of my pins.

kids spaces and places blog
Edit
my teaching blog
Edit
children and creating
Edit
children's topics
Edit
children and cooking
Edit
children and science and sensory play
Edit

RAMADAN and EID AL-FITR

2011-07-15T19:15:00.003+04:00

Ramadan is almost here so here are some classroom/home activities for children to find out about Ramadan and Eid Al-Fitr.

BOOKS:

The collage illustrations in this book are SO gorgeous they are reason enough to get it. It also would be a great book to have when looking at the phases of the moon.

Simple and easy to understand for younger children.

WEBSITES:

The British Council has some great little animated stories.

Ramadan Lanterns

Ramadan Chant

Eid Al-Fitr

DATE TASTING:

There are many different types of dates and last year I bought in a selection for the children to sample. They discussed the taste and texture and which they liked the most. They plotted their favourite on a graph that also had an option for 'I don't like dates!'

Muslims here in Dubai fast during the day for the month of Ramadan - no food, no drinks, no water. Restaurants are closed all day. Sunset is the time for 'Iftar' - the breaking of the fast. A traditional way to break fast is to nibble on dates and take water. The dates provide energy without being too difficult to digest. Dates are also a popular gift to give at this time of the year.

At home we tried a new type of date every day before our evening dinner. Our favourite was the orange peel filled date. Yum!

LANTERN MAKING:

The arabic lantern is called a fanoos, but the children made simple paper lanterns. Last year we did this activity at the beginning of the school year. The activity was excellent for allowing us to get a good idea of where each child was at in terms of fine motor development and the ability to follow simple instructions.

MAKING GREETING CARDS:

Popular illustrations in the cards in the shops generally feature pictures of stars and a moon, or mosques at sunset. Stars with 6 points should not be used. In English the cards usually say 'Ramadan Kareem' or 'Eid Mubarak'. We created silhouettes of mosques or palm trees with darker paper on lighter paper and a touch of glitter to the moon.

GIVING TO CHARITY:

Last year at school we asked the children to donate a shoe box gift for the very poor workers who live in working camps here. School families were asked to put together a collection of useful items such as disposable razors and shaving cream, socks, sweet treats, soap, toothbrush etc. into a shoebox. The shoebox was then wrapped and were taken and handed out to the workers for Eid Al-Fitr. My daughter loved putting together items in the shoebox and it was a great way to get her (and the other children) thinking about the hard life that others live and how fortunate we are.

SOME GREAT BLOGS/WEBSITES WITH IDEAS:

Ramadan Joy Kit

Our Seeds

WHAT IS RAMADAN?:

Ramadan is expected to start on the 1st of August this year although the official start cannot be confirmed until the sighting of the crescent moon. Ramadan lasts for a lunar month and is followed by a three day celebration - Eid Al-Fitr (the festival of fast breaking). As Ramadan is based on the lunar calendar the date changes each year.

I am not Muslim, but have been living on and off in the Middle East for a total of 8 years. Each year I learn something new about Ramadan. I suspect that in each culture, and probably family, there are variations in how Ramadan is observed, just as there are different approaches to celebrating Christmas and Easter in the Christian (and even non Christian) homes.

As I understand it, Ramadan is a period of personal reflection and spiritual renewal. Cleansing the body, mind and spirit. Fasting is observed during the daylight hours. The act of fasting cleans the body but also reminds one of the suffering of those less fortunate. Fasting is about patience, perseverance, self-discipline, sacrifice, compassion and sympathy. During Ramadan there is a focus on reading and listening to the Qur'an. The mosques holds special night prayers - a sort of a "sounds of Ramadan" that we don't hear every day. Doing good deeds and refraining from doing anything harmful as well as giving 'zakat' (charity) is an important part of the observation of Ramadan.

Ramadan is followed by Eid Al-Fitr. Families come together to share meals. Children often get new clothes and are given presents or money.

DINOSAUR ANIMATION

2011-07-03T18:19:00.006+04:00

* This has changed colours in the upload. Can anyone help? :( *

We all loved creating our dinosaur animation.

We started with a large sheet of paper and painted our backgrounds. Independent to this the children made some cut out dinosaurs.

In pairs the children placed their dinosaurs on their painting and took pictures, moving the dinosaurs each time. Our parent volunteer used these photos to create the animation with a demo version of i-stopmotion. We had a great credit at the end with the children but I have not included this for privacy reasons.

UNDER THE SEA DIORAMA - mermaids and yellow submarines

2011-06-30T22:06:00.002+04:00

The children LOVED, LOVED, LOVED this activity. Our theme was the 'sea' and the children had enjoyed watching the music video to the song 'Under the Sea' and singing along to 'The Yellow Submarine'. We read books and talked about what we might see under the sea in the real world and in fantasy worlds.

The first step was for the children to draw their design on a piece of paper and write down the materials they would need.

Next they all painted a shoe box (or similar). We started with a base colour and added details the next day.

The children were given clay to create a sculpture for their diorama.

This mermaid was particularly beautiful after being painted.

As were the jellyfish. Next time I would use plasticine instead of clay as too many of our creations lost limbs.

We added hanging fish some ripples.

Viola!

Handmade Fathers' Day Cards

2011-06-17T18:00:00.001+04:00

This is a very easy and fast old favourite that has been around for a while. I have seen it on a few websites and in books but I like this link.

I took some fabric swatches and photocopied them onto A4 card. A checkered tea-towel created a great effect. I think it would also be nice to glue fabric on, but time was an issue so this worked better.

This is one of my husbands favourite shirts that after many years of wearing made its way into kindergarten dress ups and then into the collage box. Now it has been photocopied onto card and my daughter will make her card from it when we celebrate Fathers' Day in September.

We used buttons instead of sequins. If the children wanted buttons on the collar they had to choose a button and then find it's pair.

The cards are nice but of course (as always) the children mostly came up with the most special part :)

DINOSAURS - display / erupting volcano / jelly fossils / collage / role-play museum

2011-03-18T16:52:00.000+04:00

The children are loving our dinosaur theme. They have created their own collage dinosaurs.

They love visiting our Dinosaur Museum.

Piecing skeletons together has been challenging but fun.

One child brought along some dinosaur sweets, so we covered them in jelly lava.

They took them home to excavate them :)

We created a volcano from a mold, painted it and added it to our dinosaur park.

The children loved the vinegar and baking soda lava.

MINIBEASTS TOPIC - addition ladybugs and minibeast creations

2011-03-15T19:21:00.000+04:00

The children enjoyed creating a garden for our minibeast display. We filled it with butterflies with symmetrical wings, and various other minibeasts.

The children painted wonderful ladybirds for practising their addition. Some students were ready for more challenging calculations so were encouraged to add more spots.

The children designed a 'Magical Minibeast' and we wrote out a lits of materials they would need to create their individual works of art. They are 'flying' across the front of the display.

BULLETIN / NOTICE-BOARD DISPLAYS & ROLEPLAY AREAS

2011-02-15T10:53:00.000+04:00

Lifecycle of a frog. Paper plate frogs and potato print tadpoles.

I have created so many displays that I haven't photographed. I really must remember to keep records of my displays and role play areas to remind myself the next time a particular topic is covered.

Animal habitats role-play area.

Chinese New Year Display. Mandarins in a bowl still life and papier mache dragon with knotted fringing.

Rainbow Fish plasticine modelling.

Fruit and flowers collages.

Self portraits.

The land before time. Dinosaurs.

Creating a display from the childrens leftover unnamed 3D creations.

VALENTINES DAY CARDS

2011-02-13T21:38:00.000+04:00

I am absolutely in love with the cards my little guys created today. I was inspired by the hearts at Painted Paper.

We are calling them our 'I Love You' cards so they work just as well for those families that do not wish to 'celebrate' Valentines Day.

We started with a heart template and the children did their own thing from there.

I love how they are all different.

I hope the parents really love these cards because I would so love to keep them all.

GOLDILOCKS - 'All About Me' topic inc. our senses and healthy eating.

2011-02-12T17:39:00.002+04:00

I didn't really realise the importance of teaching the traditional tales to children until I started working with adult migrants. In English, there is so much reference to the classics - and often the reference is implied. For many of the children in my class, English is often a second or third language, sometimes fourth. So I generally try to include some of the traditional tales throughout the year.

I love using Goldilocks because it offers so many teaching opportunities. This year I used it alongside a topic on 'ourselves'. The main focus was healthy bodies and our 5 senses, but Goldilocks crept in to most of the curriculum areas (as the little miss is prone to do).

Here are some snapshots of related activities that the children particularly enjoyed:

We created the 3 Bears Health Food Cafe. The children bought in menu's, takeaway containers, chopsticks etc from home. The waiter checked off sizes off portions of big, medium and small on her order pad. The children made some delicious looking 'observation drawing/paintings' which became posters to decorate the cafe wall.

We learnt the action song, 'When Goldilocks went to the House of the Bears'. This song supported nicely our focus on the sense of sight. We went for a walk around the school to see what shapes our blue/brown/black eyes could see, and took photos of the shapes we found to make a poster on the wall of the different shapes.

We checked out the ingredients required to make porridge and them made a pot. We tasted the 3 bears porridge - too salty, too sweet and just right. Mama Bears porridge was a hot favourite despite being ridiculously sweet.

We made fruit salad for the 3 Bears Cafe, but first we explored the fruit through our senses. The leaves of the Cape Gooseberries made a delightful rustling sound.

We talked about Goldilocks' behaviour (I was thinking of including Roald Dahls version of Goldilocks from Revolting Rhymes, but didn't in the end) Goldilocks wrote a letter of apology to the 3 bears and we discussed what she could do to make amends. Mama and Papa Bear soothed the distraught baby bear with 'Rock-a-Bye Your Bear'. Some of our kind souls modelled new chairs for baby bear from recycled materials. We created a skit from the song which we performed in assembly. The children made their own head bands to represent their role in the skit.

And of course we did the usual sorting, size and sequencing activities along with an online story and game.

INDIAN ELEPHANTS - animals and Diwali topic + colour mixing and pattern making.

2011-02-11T13:10:00.002+04:00

UPDATE: FOR 2011 DIWALI IDEAS GO HERE!

Diwali was celebrated this year during our Animals topic. As an introduction I found some fantastic photos on Google of painted Indian elephants to inspire us and the children enjoyed dancing to Bindi Irwin's, Elephant of India.

We experimented with colour mixing to make grey by mixing the colour straight onto a template of an elephant.

It didn't matter if the elephant got lost in the process. The children decided upon the degree of 'greyness' for their individual elephant.

Next came the 'painting' of designs on the elephants. We used pastels. Check out the pattern making on the toes :)

We finished with a decorated cover for our elephants and glued the picture onto a larger piece of coloured paper for our patterned border.

Some children added 'googly' eyes.

Others preferred to make their own.

We continued with our colour mixing by creating some hand print (wings) parrots.

And then put them together for a colourful display. We hung a couple of parrots from the ceiling just in front of the display to give more of a 3D effect.

Thanks to Laura at Painted Paper for the great idea.

PAINTED CLASS PORTRAITS - ALL ABOUT ME TOPIC

2011-02-08T19:37:00.001+04:00

Several members of my gorgeous class.

We started with a photo projected onto A3 paper. This gave a a great opportunity to identify facial parts, nostrils, ear lobes, eyelashes, eyebrows etc.

We had to mix colours to find our skin tone. We used photos of ourselves to guide us

Then we filled in other details, like a chadar.

We discovered our hair isn't just one colour.

And we remembered important features like eyebrows.

We painted in the main areas.

And added the details with crayon.

We cut around the outline of our portraits and pasted them onto brightly coloured backing paper.

Thank you to Epsom Street Kindy for the inspiration.

Handcrafted Christmas / Holiday / New Year Cards

2010-12-19T22:52:00.000+04:00

As a few of the children in my class do not celebrate Christmas we talked about other reasons that we might give a card at this time of the year. We came up with "going on holidays" and "new year". I modelled the 'greetings' for these cards and asked each child to identify the greeting for the card they would like to create. After writing their greeting inside (which was not compulsory but something they all wanted to do - yay!) they moved onto printing.

There were 3 tiny potatoes cut in half and one cut into a square shape. 1 large potato cut in half and another into a long triangle shape. I made stamp pads out of sponge cloths and paint. The children started with a scrap piece of paper to work their design out on first.
After the paint had dried they added detail with markers, coloured crayons and glitter glue.

Some were Christmassy.

Others had a New Years party theme.

All were gorgeous, original designs. I hope the children's parent appreciate them as much as I did :)

DIWALI DIYAS or FESTIVE TEA-LIGHT HOLDERS

2010-11-07T20:06:00.000+04:00

UPDATE: FOR 2011 DIWALI IDEAS GO HERE!

Our school recently held an Diwali Social and we made 'diyas' to decorate the rooms.

The children were given a lump of clay, which they rolled into a ball (about the size of a large golfball), flattened a little, and then pinched into a little pot big enough to hold a tea-light.

Although I demonstrated the process, I love how they all turned out different. We used fast dry clay which hardened overnight (it is still VERY hot here in Dubai).

Next we painted the pots with acrylic paint and finally, glazed with pva glue and a pinch of glitter.

The children's diyas looked fabulous framing a rangoli design (made from coloured powder and glitter)

...and the floral rangoli

They even went up the stairs.

They took us 3 days to make but it was worth it.

Now they are ready to go home and I expect that many families will use them as Christmas decorations.

http://foundationteacherindubai.blogspot.com/2011/10/diwali-activities-for-children-2011.html

RECYCLED 'LOST' ART

2010-11-01T18:23:00.001+04:00

We needed to replenish our collage/modelling supplies, so I sent a request home to parents for recycling material. I got a great response and the children who brought stuff in were particularly enthusiastic about creating. The flurry of (independent) activity resulted in an enormous pile of un-named pieces with only a few being claimed. I hate throwing out the childrens art work so I decided to make a display with them.

I glued all the pieces onto two sheets of foam board with a hot glue gun.

The following day I set the boards up on a table and put paint, glue, glue sticks, sequins and other collage material on another and let them go for it.

The result was a lot more restrained than I had expected and has given us lots of examples of 'patterns' for us to find this week as our maths focus. I wonder though if the two panels might look better together to give the illusion of one big panel?

FOOD ART & LANTERNS - EASY PEASY FAST FUN

2010-10-07T23:15:00.007+04:00

Food Art

I saw a cute idea in an Australian Woman’s Weekly kids cookbook some years ago. A face made from a rice cake with olive eyes, capsicum mouth, and alfalfa hair. I decided to give it a try. Rather than have the children replicate this though, I thought I would give them ingredients and let them create their hearts desire. They had rice cakes, cream cheese, capsicum, cucumber and cheese slices. The alfalfa would have been fun, or even cress, but neither were available.

Most of the children chose to make faces, but we had a few abstracts and patterns too.

The children took their own photos (these are just some). They might choose to make a recipe book and this would make a great front cover!

A fast and easy activity.

Lanterns

At the end of the first week back, the school put on an Eid celebration social. We had very little time to prepare decorations. Lanterns were the perfect choice as Fanooz lanterns feature in Eid celebrations. They are fast to create, and gave us a snapshot of how well children are able to use the scissors and follow instruction. It is also a fast and easy way to add some pizzaz to the room (especially at the beginning of the year) using the childrens work. Very popular also, only a couple of the children weren't interested in making one.

A few weeks later a teacher of the younger children asked for the template to make some. They decorated them before folding and cutting the paper so they look much more interesting and creative than our 'made in a hurry' ones.

p.s. I know most people will have made these but just in case you haven't - I have a 1 page A4 template for the lanterns. Happy to email it if anyone wants it. I just photocopy the template straight onto coloured paper and the children do the rest.

MY CLASSROOM

2010-09-16T23:57:00.001+04:00

I love checking out other teachers rooms for ideas and inspiration. Although there are many things I would like to change about my room (but can't), I do like it very much.

The reading corner is comfortable and cosy. I had a few tired little poppets fall asleep in it this week. The base is constructed from three foam slabs and sold as a folding mattress. It can be folded to create a very simple sofa shape. I will do this on days when I want to create a bit more space for other activities.

I have decided not to give the children their own tray this year. Instead I am going to fill the trays will exciting bits and pieces for creating and encourage the children to become creatively independent. Over the next few weeks I will photograph the contents and then create a label to stick on the front.

The role play area is very bare. I want the children to have input on how this space develops , so they will take it from here.

I am not a fan of loads of colour in the classroom. I have tried to keep the room looking as tranquil as possible by trying to limit the colour palette.

I love adding plants. I like to hang some streamers around the class as sometimes with all the low chairs and tables the classroom can look a bit bottom heavy.

GOING ON A BEAR HUNT

2010-08-20T20:00:00.013+04:00

We love Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. The children particularly love acting out the story. Last year I tried an new activity related to the story and I think it turned out really well.

I have the book and dvd set. We read the book and watched the dvd on the interactive whiteboard then recreated the story ourselves. I took photos of the children during various stages of their re-enactment.

Each day following this we focused on certain parts of the story. The first day was 'swishy grass'. I introduced the session with a powerpoint of several pictures featuring swishy grass. We looked at all the different colours and used lots of words to describe what we saw. Then the children created a collage of swishy grass.

The following day we looked at various pictures of rivers, again eliciting descriptive words. The follow up art activity involved creating wax resist river pictures.

The third day followed the same format. The art activity was to finger paint with dirt and water (and glue) and smear it over black paper to make mud.

The fourth was a powerpoint on forests and woods. We looked at how the trees in the foreground looked bigger than the trees in the background. This was quite a challenging concept for most of the children.

Finally we looked at snow and talked about snow flakes looking the same but all being different. The children folded and cut shapes from paper doilies to create snowflakes.

To create the display I placed the individual art pieces together to form panels (and represent each child) and added the cut out photos. Text was added using some of the descriptive words that the children came up with.

This year I am thinking of encouraging the children to create their own individual collage panel (from their various pieces of work as well as take responsibility for taking the photos and which photos they choose to put on their art. I think they might come up with some really interesting ideas :)

ETA Some great ideas to go with the story from Sun Hats and Wellie Boots blog.

SIR KEN ROBINSON

2010-08-14T13:06:00.006+04:00

Sir Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson at TED 2006

It was great to see Ken Robinsons TED talk on a blog the other day. I don't have crushes, but will give in to one just this once. And it has nothing to do with his looking like Kenneth Branagh.

RAMADAN KAREEM

2010-08-12T00:10:00.009+04:00

Update: go here for a 2011 post on Ramadan and Eid Al-Fitr Today is the first day of Ramadan. Ramadan lasts for one month and is followed by the Eid celebration which is a public holiday over a few days. This year the Ministry of Education has decreed that the schools will remain closed for the Holy month of Ramadan which makes the summer break 9 weeks long for the teachers and 11 weeks for the children. As Ramadan and Eid will be finished by the time the children start school, I won't be covering any Ramadan activities, however, I thought I might add a few of the ideas and links from last year.

RAMADAN MOON by NA'IMA ROBERT & SHIRIN ADL

is an exquisitely illustrated book that simply and clearly gives a child's eye view of Ramadan. I was planning to use the illustrations this year to inspire the children to create paper collages. It would also be a great book for supporting a topic on the phases of the moon.

Almost all of the Muslims here in Dubai fast during the day for the month of Ramadan - no food, no drinks, no water. Many of the shops don't open until 12 noon and most of the cafes, restaurants and fast food eateries are closed during the day until sunset. Sunset is the time for 'Iftar' - the breaking of the fast. A traditional way to break fast is to nibble on dates and take water or tea. The dates provide energy without being too difficult to digest.

DATE TASTING ACTIVITY
There are many different types of dates and I bought in a selection for the children to sample. They discussed the taste and texture and which they liked the most. They plotted their favourite on a graph that also had an option for 'don't like dates!'

FANOOZ LANTERN CRAFT

Lanterns seems to be a feature of so many cultural celebrations and events and Ramadan is no exception - the arabic lantern is called Fanooz. The children made simple paper lanterns. It was the beginning of the school year and the activity was excelletn for allowing us to get a good idea of where each child was at in terms of fine motor development and the ability to follow simple instructions.

INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARD

The children really enjoyed this presentation from the British Council on the interactive whiteboard.

FOOD ART

2010-08-08T22:26:00.002+04:00

My daughter came home with these lovely 'cakes' from art class the other day. They look fabulous. I am not sure that this would be a project that I would try with my 4-5year olds (my daughter is almost 7), but I thought I would post anyway as I might get inspired. Maybe as props in our 'family corner'. Vegetables would be fun.

Yum!

a larger sheet of paper wrapped around scrunched up paper and painted with iridescent paint with tiny bead 'topping'.

same process only the paper has been rolled.

halved dish scourers, painted and topped with cotton wool and a pompom

BACK TO BASICS - PLAYDOUGH

2010-08-01T20:29:00.007+04:00

A salt dough photo frame made by my 4 year old daughter. A sea theme with a mermaid on the left :)

My initial teacher training was back in the days when there were specific colleges for teachers - Teachers' College. We went to college 5 days a week from 8-4. Along with lectures it was a very hands on experience. In the first week of college we looked at playdough.

We made playdough. We made simple salt, flour and water versions, we made microwave and stovetop versions. We made playdough with cornstarch, and with varieties of other flour like wholemeal and soy. We used different oils and even glues.

dough with a touch of glitter

We scented out playdough, with essences, oils, custard powders and jelly crystals, coffee and mint leaves to name a few.

We coloured our playdough with food colouring, and paint and food-dyes like beetroot. We left it "raw" and we swirled colour in later.

We textured our playdough. We added sand and glitter and sawdust and dirt. Pasta and 100's and 1000's.

We experimented with our playdough, with too much water, or flour or oil. We mixed two different doughs together. We tried pushing it through different utensils like sieves and garlic presses and egg slicers and graters. We dried it and made beads. We froze it.

We manipulated our dough. We rolled and cut and squeezed and slapped and imprinted and moulded and kneaded and pinched and threw...

And then we talked about our dough. We talked about all the benefits of playing with dough. Science, maths, language and literacy, fine motor and social development. And how calming it is.

My 7 year old daughter recently hosted a tea party for friends and making a batch of dough with them reminded me of the importance of playdough, and the simple joy.

I have recently been wondering how I can stress to my new parents, the importance of play - perhaps I should let them play with playdough just like I did in those early days of my teacher training.

kneading and chatting

serious 'work'

INTERACTIVE WHITE BOARD LIST

2010-07-23T23:39:00.015+04:00

We use the interactive white board a lot, and over the coming [new] year I plan to share my IWB resources - I just need to make them first! I have grand plans for all sorts of things.

In the meanwhile, I want to create a list of all the websites that we have enjoyed using over the past year, both for presentations and as part of a choice in independent play.

A huge winner is Poisson Rouge . There are so many areas of interest that I do not think I have exhausted them all yet. We love trying out the different languages too.

Here are some other links for great IWB sites.

LOOKING BACK OVER THE YEAR

2010-07-19T23:29:00.011+04:00

I didn't take nearly enough photos of my students work last year Some art and craft did get captured though...

The children created some amazing Rainbow Fish out of plasticine. We had been looking at and discussing different fish and parts of a fish and had also read the story 'The Rainbow Fish'. I had sheets of blue paper (would have been nice if the papers were different shades of blue), plasticine in many colours, glitter and pastels on the table. I had planned on adding sequins for that special rainbow fish touch - maybe next time.

All the children loved learning about Chinese New Year. They worked co-operatively to create a papier mache dragons head and we made a body out of polar fleece. I made hundreds of small cuts in the polar fleece towards the bottom and the children tied strips of fabric and ribbon. I was surprised at how well they worked together when 'dragon dancing'. They also did some fabulous still life drawings of mandarins in a bowl and lanterns.

This display is unfinished but when finished represented the life-cycle of a frog. The frogs feet were hand prints and the tongue either zigzag folds or curled with the bug each frog has just captured. The tadpoles in their various stages of development were created using potato stamps and then drawing features on afterwards.

Easter and the Iranian New Year celebration, 'No Rooz' fall around the same time. We made the eggs for our NoRooz display table. It was nice to be able to make something that was symbolic in both the Muslim and Christian tradition (Pagan too!) The children chose rubber bands, leaves, crayons and stickers to decorate their eggs. The colour bath was food colouring and salt.

Mothers Day was a last minute rush as they celebrate in the UK on a different day to we Antipodeans (oops). Although these were very rushed projects but they turned out nicely. Each child made a picture frame by tearing up and sticking tissue paper onto card with a photograph size hole cut out of the middle. I had some photocopied black and white photos of each child which they stuck to the back along with a contrasting border.