The Silly Pirate Song

We have been enjoying singing some pirate songs to go along with our Pirate theme! One of our favorite songs is The Silly Pirate Song! We decided we needed to make our own version. We all took turns taking pictures for the song so you can sing and sign along with us!

Jack Hartmaan is the singer of the Silly Pirate Song and you can see him on his YouTube video here.

Ahoy! I see me some pirate vocabulary!

Ahoy mateys! We began our pirate unit this week!

We have spent the last week turning our classroom into an adventurous pirate ship! We have been  enjoying going on a swashbuckling adventure to find treasure!

In our pirate ship we have:
-a boat we made
-a pirate flag with a Jolly Roger on it (skull and cross bones)
-telescopes (made out of paper towel tubes)
-gold doubloons
-jewelry
-gems
-a treasure chest
-eye patches
-hooks
-hats

Here are some of our vocabulary words from this week:

Here are a few pictures from our class:

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You can check out a cute video on youtube here:

Up, Tall, and High AND Building

 Last week we read the book Up, Tall, and High several times. 

This book won the 2013 Theodor S. Geisel Award.

Do you know who Theodore S. Geisel is?

Dr. Seuss!

Back to THIS book....
The book is about some birds who show off being up, down, high, low, tall and small. As we read the book, we each had some toy animals in our hands. We practiced moving them around to match the words in the story. And we practiced saying and using all the words!

Also, after the Up, Tall, and High pictures, you will notice that we did a building activity later in the week!



Check it out:

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Singing Pete the Cat

One day recently, as we were cleaning up from the centers and moving to the Circle Time rug, the kids spontaneously started singing Pete the Cat. I quickly grabbed my camera and got part of their spontaneous rendition on camera!

Click here to see the video of Miss Erin and me reading and signing it!

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Valentine's Day

Yes, this post is a little late!

But we did have a great day on Valentine's Day!

We all brought valentine cards for our friends. Many of us worked really hard at home to practice writing our own names and our friends name. To pass them out, we sat in a circle. We each looked at our valentine's and practiced reading and saying our friends' names. Then we passed them out and practiced saying "thank you" each time! We were SO SO SO excited about this. It was more exciting even than getting presents!

You can see the sign for Valentine's Day here.

Valentine's Day signs from Signing Time here! We use the sign for "Valentine's Day" like the Signing Saavy one above.

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What do we know about penguins?

During two of the small groups today we did a Smartboard activity reviewing what we know about penguins.

The Smartboard had a picture of an egg, baby, penguin eating, and group of penguins to help us categorize what we said. 

We came up with as many facts about penguins that we know off the top of our heads. Then we looked at some of our non-fiction books and the pictures helped us think of other facts. 

We were very excited to print off copies of this and bring home to share with our families!

Snowmen at Night in Sign Language

Because it is winter and last week we had QUITE a bit of snow, we thought Snowmen at Night would be another great story to share with our students.

What do YOU think snowmen do at night!?!

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus in Sign

We love the Pigeon books because we love to yell, "No!" at the book when the pigeon asks to drive the bus! Here you can see Miss Erin and Miss Stephanie reading about that silly Pigeon!

Llama Llama Red Pajama in Sign

Another favorite in our class is Llama Llama Red Pajama. We had a Red Pajama day last year and you can read the post here.

Here is the story:

Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons Story in Sign

Back by popular demand!

More YouTube videos!

Though Miss Stephanie and Miss Erin get a little embarrassed about reading and signing for the video camera, we know our students love these videos!

For other posts about how much we love Pete the Cat, click here!

Presenting....Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons!

Counting Fish

We did a counting activity this week with penguin numbers and little blocks. We pretended the blocks were fish. We counted out blocks and then fed them to our penguins!

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You can check out this penguin counting song on youtube here:





Stay tuned!
Miss Erin and I videotaped some new stories this week. They will be posted to our YouTube Channel soon!

Also, if you aren't following me me on other social media yet, check it out!

What do we know about Penguins?

Do you want to know how to sign Penguin? We know how!

You can see it on "Signing Savvy" here: http://www.signingsavvy.com/sign/penguin

Or....
You can see JTT signing it here!

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What do we know about penguins? The M-F kids talk about some of the things they know here:

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Here is a cute video from YouTube if you want to sing a penguin song with your child!

All About Social Media

In December I went to a technology presentation with Miss Erin and we left even MORE excited about technology than we already are! We saw Chip Donohue from the TEC Center and he was awesome!

Since then I have created:
a School Facebook page as a place to share links, information, posts, and to have a group where all of my parents can get to know one another
http://www.facebook.com/MissStephaniesClass

and a professional Twitter account as a another place to share great resources, articles, and talk about being an early childhood teacher
https://twitter.com/StephKHopkins

In addition, I am involved in the U-46 Give Me Five birth to 5 initiative and we have some super awesome social media sites! Give Me Five partners with families, child-care providers, schools and the community to ensure that all children are prepared for learning in kindergarten.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/U46GiveMeFive
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/U46GiveMeFive
Pinterest http://pinterest.com/u46givemefive/

Come visit me at all of these sites!

Penguins and Letters

This week we started learning about penguins. We have had a lot of fun looking at some really neat YouTube videos. We also have some great books about penguins. We learned what sounds a penguin makes, how they walk, and what they eat.

In the following slideshow, you will see pictures we drew of penguins. Then you will see us making penguin sounds and walking like a penguin!

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We also did a letters activity this week with a penguin paper. We rolled some dice that had letters on them. Then we had to find that letter on our paper and use the BINGO dotter to mark it off! Some of us used capital letters and some of us used lower case letters.

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Our favorite video of what a penguin sounds like. We thought it sounded like a donkey!

This one made us laugh!
 

 What 500,000 penguins sounds like! We thought they sounded like birds!


 We also loved this cute penguin being tickled!

Playing Teacher with Ling Sound Check

Almost every preschool student plays teacher at one point or another! Today during Work Time, some of us decided to play teacher and practice the Ling Sound Check!

In the second video, you will even notice that one of them practices doing the "silence" and the student being the student catches on right away!

I posted about the Ling Sound Check here last year. You can print off your own copy at home!

We use the Ling Sound check every day at Circle Time to make sure all of our hearing equipment is working properly.

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More resources:
Ling Sound Check Flashcards from Cochlear
Some notes about the Ling Sounds from an SLP blog

Notes from Cochlear:

What is the Ling 6 sound test?
The Ling-6 sound test was developed as a quick and easy test that parents and professionals can use to check their child has access to the minimal amount of sounds required to hear, understand and learn speech. 

The test checks that your child can hear the sounds (detection) and in time, identify what the sound are (identification) across the different speech frequencies. 

The test checks that your child’s entire auditory system is working correctly – from the sound processor microphone to their brain


Why These Six Sounds?  
The Ling-6 sounds are the particular sounds that occur at particular speech 
frequencies or pitches. For example: 


m  /m/ is a very low frequency sound and if your child cannot hear this sound it is likely they will not have sufficient low frequency information to develop speech with normal prosody (tune) and without vowel errors.  

oo  /oo/ – [u] has low frequency information. 

ee  /ee/ – [i] has some low frequency information and some high frequency information. 

ah  /ah/ – [a] is at the centre of the speech range. 

sh  /sh/ is in the moderately high frequency speech range. 

s  /s/ is in the very high frequency speech range.

San Diego Zoo Safari Park Slideshow

Over Christmas break, I was lucky enough to be able to go to California with my husband, parents, and even my sister (who came from Egypt) to visit my grandparents.

One day we visited the San Diego Zoo Safari Park and it was a GREAT experience. It is about 45 minutes from the San Diego Zoo and set up more like a Wild Life Preserve (it used to be called the San Diego Wild Life Park). It was really neat to see the animals in a really life like habitat. It was REALLY spread out and included a lot of walking, but also a lot of neat animals!

One of the neatest experiences was looking out over a huge area and seeing giraffes, rhinos, and antelope roaming free together. The second neatest was the Cheetah Run. Once a day they do a Cheetah Run where EVERYONE gathers around and watches a cheetah run full speed! We didn't realize how early people start gathering, so we are pretty far back. I found another video on youtube so you can see it better!

We have watched the slideshow several times this week! The kids love the animals!

Here it is:

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Close up of cheetah run:

Run! Run! As Fast as you can! You can't catch me! I'm the Gingerbread Man!

This week we finished up reading different versions of the Gingerbread Man! We took turns retelling the story with some pictures on the flannel board.

 JTT

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GT

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MM

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ES

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JT

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JTT Reading the story with the book

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Check out the Venn Diagrams we did comparing two versions of the story.

And here are some other pictures of the fun we had this week! When we saw it was snowing on Tuesday, we ran outside to take some pictures in the snow. On Thursday when Mr. Rich stopped by, we got to wear his silly singing and dancing hat. Have a fabulous and fun 2 week break!

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Helping Children Deal with Tragedy

In light of the events of today, please visit Miss Erin's blog here 
http://misserinsclass.blogspot.com/2012/12/helping-children-cope-with-tragedy.html
to check out some links that can help parents talk to young children when tragedy hits. 

There are some other links here: 
http://www.naeyc.org/content/coping-school-shooting

This article gives some specific examples of what you can say to children when they ask about what happened or why the adults are sad:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/family/2012/12/elementary_school_shooting_how_to_talk_to_your_kids_about_the_connecticut.html

One of the most important things is to limit what young children see on the TV. It is hard for young children to understand what they see and hear and we don't know how they rationalize it in their heads. 

Also, though we want to share information with kids, make sure what you share is developmentally appropriate. Your children of different ages may need to be told different things. You may want to warn older siblings to watch what they say to younger siblings. 

My thoughts and prayers are with all those touched by today's tragedy. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help you and your families.

Below is a message Dr. Torres sent today to all our parents and staff:

Dear U-46 Colleagues and Community,

As I'm processing the shocking news about a shooting in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, I was struck with a phrase I heard from a reporter, "this sort of thing doesn't happen in our town, in towns like these." My heart is aching for the 

I have informed the Governor’s Office that our flags will be lowered to half-mast in all of our buildings in U-46 effective immediately. The Governor’s Office granted permission pending a statewide order to lower all flags across the State of Illinois.

These kinds of events can remind us of trauma that we have experienced in our own life. If you an employee of School District U-46, please check your email for information on how you can access help through the Employee Assistance Program. If you are a community member receiving this message, please access counseling as needed from community social service organizations or your faith community.

My prayers are with the victims and their families, who will not have a normal holiday season this year.

Respectfully and with a very heavy heart,

Dr. José M. Torres

Puppet Pals Storytelling App

We had a lot of fun with a new iPad app Puppet Pals HD this week!

It is a free app (clink on the link above for information), however, if you upgrade for $2.99 you can take pictures of people and they can be puppets in the story as well! We thought that was a lot of fun!

We took pictures of each of the kids and therapists and the kids took turns creating their own stories. It can be hard coming up with a plot line all on your own, it is something that we are having fun practicing!

Miss Stephanie's Example (even though she dislikes hearing her voice!)

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JTT

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ES

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HG

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MM

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JT

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GT

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We also started playing with the Toca Boca apps. We made clothes for some characters and then took pictures with them in the Toca Tailor app!

Gingerbread Man Baking

We have been reading various versions of The Gingerbread Man over the last couple weeks. Our House Area has new baking supplies added and we have been having fun "baking" during Work Time every day. We have even been bringing the playdough over to the House Area and rolling and cutting out Gingerbread Men! And girls! 

One day we sat together and used the supplies to "bake" Gingerbread Men.

Adding ingredients to a bowl and stirring them. 

Rolling out the dough 

Using a cookie cutter to cut out a shape

Putting the tray in the oven and then waiting.

Using hot pads to take the tray out of the oven.

Using a spatula to move the cookies to the cooling racks.

Trying to catch our delicious Gingerbread Men as he ran away!

In the Science Area (messy table) we have corn meal and oats so we can pretend to bake and stir. Flour is far too messy and gets in the air! But corn meal works well!

You can see other pictures of some of our activities below:

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We had our Gingerbread House Family Activity on Wednesday night in the gym. We had a BLAST decorating our Gingerbread Houses. Check out some of our creations below!

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Here is a fun song about the Gingerbread Man: