I was recently introduced to the Spriggles Motivational Books for Children series. I have used many different character education and nutrition programs in my classroom over the years and they all seem to have one thing in common, they’re B-O-R-I-N-G and the kids don’t like them. However, Spriggles seems to have broken the mold; their books are very engaging and memorable for young children. There are currently three titles in the series: Health & Nutrition, Inspiration, Activity & Exercise.
The topics of Spriggles books are so important, especially for young children, these are things many of them are no longer being taught at home. As a Title 1 teacher I have worked exclusively with at-risk populations for more than 15 years and I can attest to the fact that character education, health, and nutrition must be taught in the classroom now to ensure our children become productive members of society in the future.
Each page features a different animal and a catchy rhyming phrase that helps the students remember the concept being taught.
Some of my favorite phrases from the Spriggles series are:
Play in the park shark.
Go play blue jay.
Keep on tryin’ lion.
Aim high butterfly.
Get a good night’s sleep sheep.
Try a carrot parrot.
Take a bath giraffe.
These key phrases taught in the Spriggles books would be great paired with stuffed animals, puppets, or Beanies. I suggest making a poster to go with every page in each book. Focus on one poster per week and read the phrase every day to springboard a discussion with the students. Introduce the students to the matching stuffed animal, puppet, or Beanie. After you have introduced the poster to the students and reviewed it for a week place it on the wall around the room. Place the Beanies, puppets, or stuffed animals in a basket and add a new animal to the basket each week. During center time the students can interact with the animals in the basket by removing each animal and reciting the motivational phrase that goes with it and matching it with the posters.
Spriggles is offering readers of this blog a reduced price of only $5 per book! Click on any of the links here to Spriggles books and during the checkout process enter “prekpages” in the “special instructions” field.
I have updated the pictures on the Word Wall and Classroom Library pages. My new classroom theme is “Growing Readers” and is done entirely in a garden motif. I transformed my classroom library into a garden, I was inspired by an idea in Debbie Diller’s latest book, Spaces & Places: Designing Classrooms for Literacy. You can read all about the items pictured below and ideas on how to implement both areas on the Word Wall or Classroom Library pages. The large banner above the word wall that says “We’re Growing Readers in Pre-K” is from Vista Print.
I was at Barnes & Noble recently browsing the shelves for good read alouds for preschoolers. One of the first books I saw when I entered the children’s section was If I Were a Lion
by Sarah Weeks. If you teach preschool or kindergarten or you have a child between the ages of 2-6 they will adore this book! If I Were a Lion ranks right up there with the ultra-popular No David! series by David Shannon. I always wished there was a female version of David because it is so stereotypical that the naughty child is male, well my wish has come true because the main character in If I Were a Lion is female. The story is about a little girl who misbehaves and is sent to time out. It has all the elements of a great read aloud for young children; the text is written in rhyme, the illustrations are very well done, and the story is told in first person by a little girl who uses her imagination to tell the reader who she really is. When I read this book aloud to a group of preschoolers in my model classroom they were enthralled by the wild antics of the naughty little girl. They made spontaneous parallels between the main character in If I Were a Lion and the main character in the No David! series. If I Were a Lion is a must have for every preschool teacher and parent.
Another book that caught my eye in B&N was The Marvelous Toy by Tom Paxton. The illustrations are spectacular and grab the reader from across the room. This book is actually based on a song written by Tom Paxton which I had never heard before. I was looking for a book that would fall into the memoir genre to read aloud to my students. After reading The Marvelous Toy it definitely qualifies as a memoir, the story is about a young boy who receives a very interesting toy from his father. The toy does many interesting things but you never know what it is, this was fantastic because it led to lots of great discussion with the students about what they thought the toy might be. The end is also very touching, I won’t give it away but it leads to even more great discussion. The book comes with a CD so you can listen to the song and play it for your students. I have included a video of Peter, Paul, and Mary singing The Marvelous Toy, apparently John Denver also covered it.
I will slowly start posting pictures from my new model classroom here. Above is the writing center, you can read detailed explanations for each item on my Writing Center page.
Dramatic Play Center
Above you can see the Dramatic Play center, I LOVE the compact kitchen unit instead of all the big pieces. You can read more about this center and the items found there on my Dramatic Play page.
Some of my favorite ideas that appear in the book are pictured below:
Mystery Letters I usually do this activity very early in the year to introduce students to their names. They look great on display in the classroom and the kids enjoy making them.
Image from Pre-K Pages
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Tree I made this tree several years ago using two tin cans and wood grain contact paper. This is always a HUGE hit with the kids at the beginning of the year after we read the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.
Image from Pre-K Pages
Bang Games I use these games for every theme, the kids love them and never get tired of it since you change the icon and sound each time. You can add a recording sheet for added hands-on engagement.
I recently had the opportunity to listen to the new Little Songs for Language Arts CD from HeidiSongs and I was so impressed I just had to share my observations with you! What I like best about this CD is that there is a nice mix of songs that you can use throughout the year, not just during one unit or one half of the year. There are 9 songs that address specific literacy skills such as the difference between letters and words, rhyming, syllables, beginning sounds, and making sentences. I can see how I would use the song about the differences between letters and words at the very beginning of the year, then move on to the rhyming song and so on as my students progress. We use the Reading and Writing Workshop approach to language arts in my district and we have a whole sequence of lessons we teach that address the parts of a story (characters, setting etc); I was so excited to discover that Heidi has created a catchy and fun song to teach this difficult concept to young children!
There are also songs that address math skills such as counting, shapes, and addition. But the best part is that there are fun seasonal, thematic, and holiday songs that you can also turn into class and individual books. People are always asking me if I miss the classroom and I very rarely say yes, however this new CD makes me miss the classroom because I want to sing the songs and make the books with my own class!
I had planned on posting the videos to a few of my favorite songs from the Little Songs for Language Arts CD, but I like them all so much I don’t know if they’ll all fit! Here goes…
I have a long-standing love hate relationship with the Lakeshore store. If you’ve never been to Lakeshore it’s the Mecca for early childhood teachers everywhere. Their never-ending aisles of high-quality (and high-priced) toys and manipulatives draw teachers like moths to a flame. The smell of lamination in the air is like perfume to a teacher’s nose. I get light-headed just walking through doors and anticipating all the great stuff I’m going to find, but then comes the big let-down… As I walk the aisles picking up every item and examining it like I’m shopping for fruit, the inevitable happens, I discover a new Lakeshore product that is EXACTLY like something I have been making myself and using in my classroom forever! This leads me to the conclusion that Lakeshore spies are lurking among us on the internet. I’m convinced they are watching my every move and every time I post a new idea on my website a little red light starts blinking and a siren starts blaring somewhere deep in the bowels of the Lakeshore headquarters in California. I imagine the employees in their royal blue jumpsuits emblazoned with the Lakeshore logo on the breast (very Dharma Initiative-esque) jumping up from their desks and running over to the blinking red light to make a new discovery. As they stand over the computer monitor saucer-eyed they record my ideas in their little notebooks with their cute Lakeshore pens that have the multicultural kids on the end. The rest is history, they spend months turning my cute and inexpensive ideas into products that they charge $24.95 or more for. See examples to prove my point below.
Counting Books
O.K., so they’re not identical but they’re close enough. With the Lakeshore gems game you roll the dice and then put the corresponding number of gems into your treasure chest. In my 1:1 games you roll the die and put the corresponding number of items on your FREE, printable mat. I like my idea better because students are learning number sense, counting, and 1:1 correspondence, in the Lakeshore version they are just getting number sense and counting.
In the Lakeshore math stamping activity the students are just stamping and then writing in the number. My number books require the students to actually stamp each item on the page which is more engaging than just stamping once. My idea also turns this activity into a book which the students can put in their browsing boxes and read, this gives the activity more purpose and meaning for the students.
Beep, Beep, Beep…what’s that? It must be the siren going off in Lakeshore headquarters again, all hands on deck!
P.S. If the Lakeshore spies are reading this I am open to offers to become a product developer. Operators are standing by to take your call now!
P.S.S. Yes, I know I am addicted to Lost and yes, I know I sound like a paranoid conspiracy theorist, it’s part of my charm, get over it.
There are so many ways to use Vista Print products in the classroom I don’t even know where to start. For those of you that are Vista Print newbies allow me to explain, Vista Print is a website where you can order personalized items for FREE plus the cost of shipping. I used a wide variety of Vista Print products in my classroom, most of which were for enhancing parent communication. Here is a list of some ways you can use Vista Print in your classroom:
Personalized Note Pads: From the Desk of Ms. ___ (how cute is that?)
Personalized Refrigerator Magnets: Another must for giving to parents
Personalized Postcards: The possibilities for these are endless! See several different examples below
Personalized Post-It Notes
Personalized Rubber Stamps: These are great for a myriad of classroom situations, homework, sign & return…
Personalized Labels: I use these on the front of our Parent Orientation Packets/Handbook as well as our Parent Coference folders
Personalized Mouse Pads
Personalized t-shirts: Many teachers make these with their classroom theme to wear themselves and others have made “Star Student” shirts, the possiblities are endless.
Personalized Banners & Signs: Put your class motto on one, ”Welcome to Mrs. ____’s Class”, or “Welcome to Kindergarten!” and hang at the hallway entrance. Parents would LOVE that!
It’s about this time each summer that you begin to smell the panic of teachers everywhere in the air. Veteran teachers don’t want to go back to school and new teachers are terrified of the unknown. Experienced teachers know what to expect and how to prepare for that dreaded first day, but in the interest of helping the newest members of our profession I’ve come up with some tips to prepare them (and the students) for the first days of school and beyond.
Any pre-k or kindergarten teacher will tell you that nametags are a must for the first day. There’s nothing worse than having a lost child who can’t or won’t tell you their name on the first day of school. I’ll never forget the time that a pre-k student stepped off the bus on the first day of school unidentified. He didn’t have a nametag and when asked for his name he replied “Phat Daddy”. It didn’t help matters that he had braids down to his waist and the face of a cherub so we weren’t sure if he was male or female. He sat in the office all day until somebody came to pick him up at the end of the day. His real name turned out to not be Phat Daddy- I know you’re shocked.
Another must is to have a parent orientation BEFORE school starts. Most schools in my area prefer to have a “meet the teacher” event two weeks after school starts. That might be fine for a 4th grader who is burned out on school and already knows the drill, but for a child entering school for the very first time it’s a recipe for disaster. If your school doesn’t hold an orientation for pre-k or kinder students and parents before school begins, start begging for one NOW. Better yet, just pretend the principal okayed it before school let out last year and start planning for one. You will save yourself huge amounts of stress and headaches if you take the time to answer all the parent’s questions up front and explain every little nuance of school life to them. Here’s the video I made to show my parents at our parent orientation.
I was recently introduced to the Spriggles Motivational Books for Children series. I have used many different character education and nutrition programs in my classroom over the years and they all seem to have one thing in common, they’re B-O-R-I-N-G and the kids don’t like them. However, Spriggles seems to have broken the mold; their books are very engaging and memorable for young children. There are currently three titles in the series: Health & Nutrition, Inspiration, Activity & Exercise. 
. You can read all about the items pictured below and ideas on how to implement both areas on the 
by Tom Paxton. The illustrations are spectacular and grab the reader from across the room. This book is actually based on a song written by Tom Paxton which I had never heard before. I was looking for a book that would fall into the memoir genre to read aloud to my students. After reading 
by 
I have a long-standing love hate relationship with the 
