Bugs, Bugs, Bugs!

One of the things I worked hard to fully implement the last month of school was a study, or project, approach to my curriculum. I took a class with a national trainer in April and was immediate inspired to make this approach a part of my classroom. The coolest thing about it is that the children determine everything. They really have a chance to take some ownership of their learning, which makes it much more meaningful to them.

We studied bugs for the last month of school. The students spent one week exploring. We went on nature walks to find bugs, spent time touching, watching, and documenting our findings about worms, and observed bees (which were safely kept in baby food jars) and boxelder bugs. It was amazing watching and listening to them as they explored; they came up with so many cool ideas and excellent questions.

Next we created a KWL chart. The students came up with questions they would like to investigate about bugs and discussed what they already know. From this chart, I picked questions for us to investigate - questions like, "what do worms eat?" and "what is the difference between spiders and bugs?"

Then we spent two weeks doing these investigations. We did experiments with different foods to see what our classroom worms ate. We watched short clips from the internet that helped us learn about how bees make honey. We charted similarities/differences we noted between spiders and bugs. We measured worms. We read about bugs and wrote about bugs. It was the most fun I had had all year.

At the end of our study, we celebrated everything we learned about bugs by writing a classroom book about bugs. The students had so many things to add to our book and loved illustrating their pages.

Having come into preschool with no experience with preschool, I feel like I have finally found my groove! I'm so looking forward to continuing this next year!

Long and Good Week

It's Friday!!!!!! It was a struggle to make it through this week. Christmas break spoiled me, so getting up early and working all day was a challenge. The white-out conditions I drove the 36 miles home in this afternoon didn't help either. I officially gave up Facebook this week, so I've been venturing into the blog-o-sphere to find something else to occupy my internet time. It has been beneficial in so many ways. I've found so many excellent blogs with great ideas for the classroom. I'm currently working on building a board game called Race to the Finish that I'm basing off an idea from The First Grade Parade's Race to the Snowman. It ties in nicely with our transportation study and encourages one-to-one correspondence and number recognition.

The study has been going well so far. I've been introducing map skills during this study too, and it's fun to see the kids using the vocabulary and making their own maps. On Wednesday, I had them work as a group to make a map of our town. They did a superb job building their houses, the preschool, the pool, a couple of restaurants in town, the grocery store, and the library out of blocks. I even had them create labels for their buildings. When they were done building and labeling, they had fun driving small cars (and even airplanes :P) to the different places in town.

Today, they drew maps of their bedrooms. It was funny to see how detailed they got. One make sure to draw the exact number of Barbies she had and exactly where they were in her room. Very detail-oriented.

The week's funny: One of my three year-olds has been calling me by just my last name. He leaves the Mrs. off. It cracks me up every time. Also, one of my four year-olds was building a tower today. When he accidentally knocked it over, he exclaimed, "Oh nuts!" Hilarious!

Goodbye Christmas Break :(

So, Christmas break has come and gone and it's back to the trenches tomorrow. I enjoyed the time off and I feel relaxed and ready to go back. Does that mean I'm clicking my heels about going back? Not necessarily. I'm excited to return to preschool. I have missed my students and I'm looking forward to hearing all about their Christmases. I'm just struggling with going back to the elementary school. The little guy I work with (who deeply struggles with ADHD and the effects of poverty) has probably lost a great deal of what we gained before break, and it's going to be tough to teach it all again. I know he can do it; it's just going to be a struggle. I'm also not excited about returning to that classroom...so much negative energy and yelling...it shouldn't be that way.
On the bright side, I have nothing planned for tomorrow - at least nothing on this computer. I left all of my plans at school. Oops! It'll be alright though. My biggest plan for tomorrow and Tuesday is just to review the rules of the classroom and some of the things we learned before break. We're going to start a study on transportation. I'm excited to bring a little science into this study with ramps and cars. My students have shown a pretty big interest in going places, so I think I'll pull in some basic map skills - really put the block center to use.
Also, I had a genius idea over break (meaning I read about a really awesome idea in the manual for my brand new laminator)! I laminated plain sheets of white paper to be used as whiteboards! I have attached them to clipboards, so I have enough for each student. Ahhh! The possibilities! Number and letter practice! Pattern practice! Write around the room! They'll be a great addition to the classroom.
I also received my first issue of The Mailbox. So stinkin' awesome! February and March are going to be pretty sweet thanks to this magazine.
Yet another also - I think I'll be able to get a hold of the credit card to order some supplies for the classroom this week. We're out of paint, and I've gotten the okay to get new dress-up costumes and books for our listening library.