Valentine's Day Themed Lessons

Children love having 'themed' days in school and Valentine's Day offers a brilliant opportunity to link a wide range of subjects under one big theme. Here are some ideas that I have tried out in the past!

English: Creative Writing/Reading

I made out a big card for the class with the word 'love' on the front in a heart. I left it out on the morning of Valentine's Day and told the children that it had arrived in the post for them. First of all, we predicted what might be inside the card. We then opened it up and played a game of I Spy. We spied words with capital letters, words starting with ___, the word love, etc . We then read the card together. Following this, I covered the words on the card with blank sheets of paper. We had to match some words written on flashcards to the card, where they were missing/covered. We wrote a new card as if we were writing it to Mammy and Daddy, as a class (LEA). They children then created their own cards using our class card as an example (To ___, I love you. Love Mary.) 

English: Sight Word: Love

We learned this song during the week leading up to Valentine's day:

                        
We also used the word in our writing and read stories with the word in it.

Maths: Counting to 20 and Estimation
I gave the children out little bags of sweets and they had to estimate how many sweets were in the bag. We then counted them all together emphasising moving them to one side as they were counted. When we counted 20 sweets, I asked them to eat one and tell me how many they think they have left and then to check this number. I then got them to make me little groups of sweets: 3, 5, 10, 15, etc.

I handed out a template containing various heart shapes (see below). We looked at each heart on the IWB and talked about how many sweets they thought would fit into each heart size. We noted them beside the hearts on the IWB. They had to test how many sweets would fit into each heart after this and they wrote the number underneath the heart. We compared answers with estimates.

Art: Jim Dine Hearts:

I chose this activity as the children could complete it in a short time without much help, perfect for a mini theme based art lesson! We looked at some examples of Jim Dine's heart art and talked about the colours he used. We discussed words to describe the marks he used and the shapes of the colour blocks. They drew a big heart on a piece of paper. They coloured inside the heart with warm colours (using similar shapes) and outside the heart with cool colours. They then painted the pictures with a little olive oil to create a stained glass effect. I blotted them before leaving them to dry. When they had dried I added paper borders (using mounting paper that I had measured and cut into a border with a blade). I rolled them up and tied them with a ribbon. I attached a little heart shaped pink notelet to the ribbon on which they wrote a message (to their Mum or Dad).

Religion/History: The Story of St. Valentine
We looked at this video and talked about it afterwards. They each recreated a scene from the story on a piece of paper. I selected some pictures to display along with sentences about the story, on the wall.

Happy Valentine's Day!

First Day Jitters...

Often teachers, especially NQT's and teachers who have not taught in a particular class level before, can be slightly apprehensive about the first day back at school after the summer holidays. Here are a few practical ideas for planning out your first day back:

1. Toys: 
The first thing that any infant teacher should plan for their first day is to have adequate toys/jig saws/lego available for the children to play with as soon as they come in. Having toys ready means the children are occupied if any parents want to have a word with you and it also gives you the opportunity to make observations of the children and how they interact while also giving you a chance to interact with them one on one before formal class begins. It is up to the teacher whether they want to leave toys on the tables before the children come in, or whether they prefer to leave them on a set of shelves and get children to choose their own from the shelf to bring back to their seat.
(The later may be easier to introduce later in the week (especially with Junior Infants) as you can take the opportunity to train them as to the correct procedures for doing this: pushing in your chair, going back to your seat straight away, bringing back your work when it is finished, etc.) Personally, I like using a play rota system once the first week has passed, where I name each group and put a picture of a toy beside their group on a chart, changing it daily, ensuring every child gets a chance at every play station. (I will post an entry on structured play rotas soon!)

2. Getting To Know You is VITAL!
Teaching infants is slightly different to other class levels in that they can be anxious on their first day with a new teacher, so the first day is a careful balance between setting rules, establishing discipline and then putting them at ease with a new environment and teacher. This is where getting to know you games come into play. You can find so many games online to suit the class level you are teaching. There are some great ideas on http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/ice-breaker-games for younger children.

http://goo.gl/wqWx8L

Often however, keeping it simple can often be just as effective. When I was teaching as a Substitute I used one game frequently as a less time consuming, simpler option which led to very few discipline problems with older and younger children alike. It involved giving the children 30 seconds to tell a partner their name, a favourite film, band and food (you can make this simpler for Infants!) and then asking random children to see if they remember what their partner told them. I may ask four children to tell me what they found out and after I have asked them, I would ask random children to see if they could remember a specific child's favourite thing. Repeat the game as often as concentration lasts. This gives a good opportunity to build up some group points at the start of the day (Another reward system I like for building team work!) and get the children's brains working. It keeps the children's attention and children love the competitive element. It also gives the teacher the opportunity to 'see can I remember all the names', which can be a good crowd pleaser (especially if you stall/mix up names!)
If anyone would like some examples of some other subbing ideas/games leave a comment below and I will post some!

3. News: 

jhan-camp.blogspot.com 

A good first day back oral language activity is talking about and writing about their news. It may seem obvious, but sometimes it's good to stick with tried and trusted activities when it is the children's first day back and you want to make the day go as smoothly as possible! It can also be the case that many of the children may not have all of their books yet so is important to think of activities that you can do with them if this scenario arises. (Colouring/drawing are other simple activities for this purpose!) When writing the children's news with them, write up the generic: 'Today is Monday. It is raining' and then add a sentence from one of the children's news. Get them to draw a picture to match the news also. I like to encourage them to try writing a sentence of their own at the end of their news and while at the beginning of Senior Infants, children may not be competent enough to do this very successfully, it is important that they make an attempt, even if it is just a word/few letters.

4. Writing time:

tx.english-ch.com 

I love to use a door hanger sign on my door when the children are engaged in writing activities. The sign I use has a picture of a child writing and says 'Sh, quiet time'. When we are about to start writing or any other individual work, I go over to the door, pick up the sign and slowly bring it to the handle, while counting down from 5, getting quieter each time until 1 is only a whisper. We have agreed that once it is on the door, no one, not even me can speak above a whisper. It really works wonders!


5. Big Books:
Read them a big book! Question them, get them to make predictions and any other activities you can think of! Maybe discuss what happened at the start, middle and end of the story. Get them to draw three pictures of the start, middle and end events in the story.

6. Maths:
Begin the lesson with a Counting Chorus, where you get the children to count as far as ten/twenty, getting different groups to call out different numbers in the sequence when you point to them. For example: the blue group call out one, the red group call out two, etc.
You can easily organise some kind of counting activity where they have to put the correct number of cubes or counters in the correct template/container (1-10). I have some good counting activities in my Maths Centers' post which you could use for this purpose! This is a good opportunity to see what children remember from last year and observe the children who struggle with counting.

7. Songs:

Have some easy to learn action songs ready for the children to sing on the first day. I personally am a big fan of:
Dr. Knicker Bocker:

Open and Shut Them:

And of course Nursery Rhymes, Jolly Phonics revision, etc.

8. Sight Word Games:
Using a word wall of words from their Junior Infant readers (or Dolch words or even Senior Infant words if you want!), you can use a teacher pointer to play some word games. Tic Tac Toe is a game where you keep pointing to different words while chanting with the class:
'Tic, tac, toe, here we go, where we land, no one knows.'
The card that you land on is the card you want them to read for you. You can start out by getting the class to read out the word you land on and then you can pick confident children to read words by themselves. You can vary the game by speeding up/slowing down the rhyme and starting in different places each time.

9. Have a Reward System in Place:
I like to have all the children's names on a separate board/laminated chart and at the end of each day, I give them a smiley face for good behaviour. I explain to them why they may not be getting one if I decide not to give them one and tell them what they need to do to get one the following day. If they get twenty faces they get to take a prize out of the 'Lucky Dip' bosca draoíochta. If a child is behaving in a way that is particularly impressive, I will give them a smiley face during the day or if they do something that is particularly unacceptable, I will take one away.

10. Rules of the Classroom: 
This is something which can be done later on in the day as an SPHE lesson before the children go home. Get them to suggest some rules for the classroom and talk about why each is important. I usually guide them to suggest these four rules:

I also tell them that I will be giving a sticker to four children at the end of the week who are the best at keeping each rule, reminding them constantly during the week of the rules and praising the behaviours when I see them. This carries on every Friday until each child gets rewarded.

channelnine.ninemsn.com.au

11. Rules in the Line:
I like using the High 5 method of preparing the children to leave the classroom. When they are all in the line and paying attention, I call out High 5 while putting up my hand. We chant while pointing to the relevant body parts: 'Looking eyes, listening ears, hands to yourself, walking feet and finger on your lip.' These are the behaviours I am looking for in the line and if I see a child who is carrying out these behaviours, I praise them in a whisper (It is always important to keep the noise level down as they will mimic your noise level!).

I hope you find some of these tips and lesson ideas useful! Above all else, remember: don't think too big for the first day back! Keep activities easy and short and try to make it as fun as possible! Don't forget how much children love nature walks/Art/P.E. and simple games like Simon Says (or Deir Ó Grádaigh) and I Spy, so don't forget to include some of these things in your first day back!

Best of luck!

Maths Centers in the Morning!

Finally, I'm back to school after the summer hols and back to the blogging after a long hiatus!

http://jeps.edublogs.org/files/2011/04/76881213math-image-gif-sqq9sg.gif

For the last two months before the holidays, I began trying out maths centers as an alternative to literacy and play/oral language centers. While the centers did not involve as much 'exploration' of the room as my literacy centers, this almost suited the mood of the children at the end of the year, as they can get quite hyper as the year comes to a close and the weather gets finer. I felt that these activities were still very enjoyable for the children but involved less classroom management issues as the children completed them all at their desks.

Here were the centers I chose (some of these I got off this site: http://www.kidscount1234.com/mathcentersandgames.html where you can find loooads more maths center ideas - colours, shapes, tessellation etc):

1.) Counting counters:

Each child at the table had one of the above sheets with different numbers on it. There was a bowl of counters in the middle of the table. The children put a given number of spots on the butterfly/ladybird, they put counters in the bag and 'apples' on the tree using counters. These sheets could be made using the numbers 1-10 but I felt at the end of the year that my students were well able to use numbers 1-20.

http://ithinkmaths.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/counters1.jpg?w=500

2.) More or Less Cubes:

The children were given a bowl/bag of cubes each (with two colours of cubes in the bowl). They wrote the two colour names at the top of the sheet over each column. They had to close their eyes and pick a handful of cubes out of the bowl/bag. Then they wrote in the amount of each colour they picked out under the colour name on the top two lines. They circled the colour number there was more of on this go. They repeated the exercise until the sheet was completed.

(Trust me, its easier than it sounds!)

http://www.thinktonight.com/v/vspfiles/photos/LER4285-2T.jpg

3.) Making Number Necklaces:

I gave each child at this table a sheet of the above sample and a jar of beads. They had to line up the beads around the shapes to make a 'necklace'. I would also consider having the children thread spools onto string for this exercise if you have the resources to do this and can label the strings with numbers!

                                                                                         

http://www.craftsuppliesforless.com/images/pearlized%20pony%20beads.jpg                                             http://www.bababump.com/

4.) Piggy Banks:

The children at this table each got one of these sheets of piggy banks each and they had to fill them with coins left on the table. We made quantities of 2c-10c using 1c, 2c, 5c and 10c coins.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/business/03/euro_cash/currency/img/5_2_1.jpg

5.) Race to Ten:

This is my favourite station as it is so brilliant to use as an informal way of introducing take away and revising addition with infants. Each child gets a game board and each of them take turns around the circle to roll two dice. One dice has numbers 1-6 on it and the other has a mixture of + and - signs on it. If they get a +3 they put on three counters, if they get a - 4 they take away 4 counters from the board, etc. The first child to ten is the winner.

These stations could definitely be changed and added to throughout the year especially with other bought maths games/shape hunts/number hunts/colour hunts etc, but I found these to be a good start with my Senior Infants. I may get a bit more adventurous with them as time goes on! 

Happy Teaching!

Water, water everywhere!

Water as a theme offers lots of opportunities for learning - here are some of the lessons I taught based around water last week!

1) Geography/Science/Environmental Awareness and Care: Water Collages

We talked about why water is important and whether we could live without it. I then got them to come up with ways people use water. The children who answered correctly chose the picture on the table that best suited their answers and stuck it on the chart until all pictures were used.
The following day I posed the question of whether it was only people who need water to live. We discussed where we might find fish in the town I am teaching in - whether there is a sea, river or lake nearby. Following the discussion of the differences between these, we identified our local river and nearby lakes. They suggested animals that live on a river or a lake. They chose the correct picture from the hidden table and stuck it on another chart. 

We then talked about how litter affects people and creatures living in the lakes and rivers and how we could stop them littering these. We decided to create posters/signs to leave by the river to encourage people to stop littering. We talked about what pictures they could include and what words they would need to use. We then mounted these around a large river chart on the wall outside the classroom. (Lesson idea derived from Greenschools website lesson plans).

2) Science: Floating and Sinking

We identified the terminology of floating and sinking and we talked about objects they felt would sink and which would float. We tested various objects in pairs, estimating and giving reasons for their choice first and then marking this in in crayon on the worksheet. We then tested it and talked about why it floated or sank based on weight, materials, etc (Floating objects were identified as being light, made of wood or being filled with air for example). We marked the answer in in pencil. We checked out the BBC website for a revision concluding activity. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/digger/5_7entry/8.shtml

3) Music: The Little Mermaid
We listened to the Little Mermaid songs 'Under the Sea' and 'Part of Your World' and discussed whether the songs were happy or sad and why. We picked suitable actions to match the sad/happy quality of the music and used these to respond to the music through movement.

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes.

4) Maths: Capacity

Compared various sized containers and whether they would hold more or less water than each other. Tested it out by filling one container from another.

We estimated and then tested out how many egg cups or spoons of water (and sand) would fill the containers.

We chose which method of measuring we would use: cups or spoons depending on the size of the container.

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

5) Gaeilge: An Aimsir

We described the weather every morning. We learned actions to accompany the weather elements (ag cur báiste, an grian ag taitneamh, an ghaoth ag séideadh, etc) and mimed these, getting others to guess what we were showing. We picked pictures from the mála draíochta and described the weather shown in the picture. We sang the song: "An bhfuil cead agam dul amach?":

One half of the room sang: 'An bhfuil cead agam dul amach, dul amach, dul amach, An bhfuil cead agam dul amach, dul amach ag sugradh?' The other half of the room replied with ' Níl cead agat dul amach, dul amach, dul amach, níl cead agat dul amach, tá sé ag cur báiste/tá cead agat dul amach, dul amach, dul amach, tá cead agat dul amach, tá an grian ag taitneamh.'

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

6) Religion:
There is also ample opportunity to integrate water into religion as Alive O2's term 3 lesson 1, 2 and 3 are all based on the theme of water, however we have not progressed this far in our Alive- O programme!

Let's go shopping!

The theme of shopping and food could have lasted for two months never mind two weeks as there was so much scope for integration! Here are some of the shopping centered activities that were undertaken by senior infants!

 1) Oral Language Development: 
We added a play shop area to the classroom for use during structured play and put price tags on all the items in it from 1c - 20c. We used real coins in the play center to pay for these items.
2) Maths: We learned all about money (1c up to 20c). 

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

• We talked about the different characteristics of all the coins and played 'what's the mystery coin' games as a class and in pairs (they listened to the characteristics of the coins and told me which coin I/their partner was talking about). 
• We played feely bag games for identifying coins without seeing them (using size recognition mainly). 
• We also played bank and exchanged 1c coins for a single coin. (To make them aware of the value of each coin.)
• We sorted coins in terms of value.
•  They used coins to buy items from a shopkeeper in their groups. 
• We added coins to solve problems and see how much money we had in our wallet. (Put dots on coins to remind us of their value and aid counting of money).
• We kept a class piggy bank to make use of our new skills in adding money to see if we could buy a new item for the class shop at the end of the day (during the day I would ask them to put in a 2c or a 1c or a 5c coin until we had a number of coins in the piggy bank to add up at the end of the day).

3) Creative/functional writing: Writing a shopping list. 

We read the story of 'Wallace's Lists' (see: Wallace's Lists book preview) and talked about all the things we could make lists about. We then used words from our food word wall in conjunction with our sounding out skills to write our own shopping lists which we later used in the play shop.

(Apologies for poor quality picture)

4) Gaeilge: Ag siopadóireacht. 

We found food items for our siopa in our mála draíochta. 'An maith leat ___?' was asked of some of the children after each item was removed from the bag and placed in the shop. We learned the vocabulary of 'cheannaigh tú' by trying to guess what each pupil had bought and hidden from us. They also described their actions by saying 'cheannaigh mé___' or 'níor cheannaigh mé ' when a guess was given. We sang and acted out the song 'Cheannaigh mé ___, cheannaigh mé ____, cheannaigh mé ____agus d'ith mé é.' (To the tune of Polly Put the Kettle On). We later changed this song to 'Cheannaigh mé ___, cheannaigh mé ____, cheannaigh mé ____agus chaith mé é' when we were discussing an siopa éadaígh the following week.

5) History: Shops in the past.

We named and discussed grocery shops, pharmacies and sweet shops. We matched items sold in each to the correct shop. We then looked at pictures of what these shops looked like in the past, guessed which type of shop it was and spotted the differences and similarities between the old version and the new version. 

Images do not belong to me. They are used for educational purposes. 

6) Geography: Mapping the Monster's Shopping Trip.
We talked about places and things that you would see if you took a walk through a town. They listened to the Monster's Shopping Trip on the British Council Website: 

They noted the journey the monsters took and the shops they visited. We then discussed making a map of this journey. I showed them how they would start by drawing the monster's house and then the road. We discussed things that might be around the road, buildings, bridges, lakes, trees, signs etc and added the shops mentioned in the story. They then created their own version of the monster's journey.

7) Art: Class Bakery.
We talked about things that you might buy to eat in a bakery. We looked at pictures of these foods (cakes, buns, croissants, pies, doughnuts, biscuits, pastries) and talked about different cake designs. They then created their cakes and pasteries from clay. The only downfall of these creations was that when they dried they were quite brittle to handle and to paint. I covered them in PVA glue to harden them a little before we painted them to minimise damage. If I were making them again I would consider making them from homemade playdough in various colours and then bake them in the oven to harden them, meaning they wouldn't have to be painted. I would also have gone over them myself making sure all the little decorations they had stuck on were merged properly to the piece before it dried. Other than that, the kids loved this and they looked quite impressive on display in our class bakery (which the early finishers created a banner for)!

8) Music: Let's Go Shopping song

"Let’s Go Shopping,

Put on your coat and hat,

Carry your little bas-ket,

Over your arm like that,

And we’ll go walking, walking, walking, walking,

Walking down the street.

Shopping, shopping, shopping, shopping

Shopping for things to eat!

Good morning Mr. Grocer man and how do you do?

(Talking)A very good morning Madam

    What can I do for you?

Id like a dozen new laid eggs,

a pound of butter too,

A nice jar of honey (Doe, doe doe, doe, doe-me)

Here is my money (Doe, doe doe, doe, doe-me)

Good day, (me-doe) (pause)

good day

to you

And we’ll go walking, walking, walking, walking,

Walking down the street,

Shopping, shopping, shopping, shopping,

Shopping for things to eat!"

Infant timezone!

So for two weeks in January I was in a classroom 'timezone'. Taking on the idea of developing their sense of time and the language of time was a much wider topic than I had originally thought!
Here are some activities Senior Infants got up to during that...time... (excuse the pun!).

1) We sang some songs I nabbed off youtube to teach the sequence and names of the days of the week and months of the year... only problem with these is that they are so catchy I found myself singing them to myself for the whole fortnight!
Days of the week:

Months of the Year:

 So we played games with these songs like lining up the months/days and telling me which month/day is missing. 

          

2) We made a class outline of what we do on each day of the week to refer to each morning and also to end the questions of 'when are we doing art??' etc. I got their ideas at the end of each day of what we should include and drew pictures beside each to aid comprehension of the chart. 

                                 

3) Rhymes: Hickory Dickory Dock: 

                                 

 Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes:http://www.nursery-rhymes.org/images/rhymes_images/hickory-dickory-dock.jpg

We said the rhyme and talked about parts that rhymed and parts that didn't. We then composed a version as a class so that the whole rhyme... rhymed! 

Our rhyme:                                                       

                                           Hickory Dickory Dock,

                  The mouse ran up the clock,

                  The clock struck one,

                  The mouse was done, 

                  The clock struck two,

                  The mouse bit you,

                  The clock struck three, 

                  The mouse ran up a tree.

4) We made clocks! And they looked so good we turned them into a class mobile when we had finished the unit on time, by sticking them along a piece of string and hanging them from the ceiling. We made them from paper plates. I had stuck on address labels onto where the numbers would be to give them some guidance as to where they should write the numbers. I added hands to the clocks and they used them to tell me various times throughout our maths lessons. They loved decorating them to look really colourful!

5) We played 'What Time Is It Mr Wolf?' in PE. See here for details of how to play the game: http://www.littlesteps.eu/?/getting-active/running/What-time-is-it-Mr-Wolf/

6) Read the story: My Great Grandpa for history. Got this book from Amazon for an amazing price and it was worth every cent because the kids loved it! We talked about young people and old people and the concept of generations. We used our bodies to show the difference between old and young and where we might place people on the family tree (at the top: standing on our toes, in the middle or crouching low down for babies.) We made family trees of the characters in the story, placing the older characters we drew at the top and the younger ones we drew at the bottom. 

                        

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51SXAZFJ9NL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

7) Listened and responded to the 'Syncopated Clock' piece of music.

8) Learned about Ta and ti-ti (the timing of crotchets and quavers) in music, by telling them the story of Ta the deaf cat and her baby kittens (ti and ti). 

9) We also started timing ourselves in terms of how long it would take us to get ready to go home every afternoon. I would put a line on the time we started with a whiteboard marker and then we would count the minutes that had passed when we had finished. This helped us get out quicker and also informally instilled in them the length of a minute or 5 minutes verses the length of an hour which we also timed one day.

                            

                                                                 Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes.