Twenty round dots, 3.75 inches in diameter have revolutionized my classroom.

Line ups were always a bit of a gong show, with kids squished, not knowing where to stand (despite me telling them 482, 983 times how to do it!), and generally causing mayhem.


No longer.  (well, at least a whole lot better)


At the beginning of school (seems like a REALLY long time ago now), My Happy Rainbow had a post about the 2 favourite things in his new room.


Light bulb time.


How simple is that.  Put dots on the floor where the kids are supposed to stand.



the dots keep going - I know that 11 does not follow 6!

Matt's dots are really cute, but the monster theme did not really work with my classroom.


So, I figured that I would make my own.  I looked at digital wallpaper, trying to find something that I liked, would work with my class and was within my self-imposed really cheap budget.


Then, the second light bulb moment (I was on a roll!).


Scrapbook paper.  My kindergarten teacher buddy had told me that she had lots of scrapbook paper, and that if I ever needed some for a k project to let her know.


We found paper that we liked, printed off the dots.  Laminated them. I taped them on the floor with packing tape.




Kids know where to go.  Line is more organized.  Teacher is happy.

Sometimes it's the little things.


Hate to keep the revolution all to myself.


Click [here] to download your own magic dots. The printable is 6 pages.  If you want an ABAB pattern with your dots, the first three pages need to be the same scrapbook paper colour/print and the second 2 pages need to be the same.


The calendar says that it is fall, even though our weather is uncharacteristically warm and sunny.  I'm loving it!

Our leaves are beginning to change colour   -  we even found some lovely dry yellow leaves on the ground to throw up in the air and let rain down on our heads.


It was time for a fall sensory bin.



This week we have eaten our way through an orchard of apples.

Apple chips, (dehydrated apples), apple sauce, apple juice and today, apple crumble.


Not only have we eaten apple, we have also been reading a bushel of apple books. One of my favourites is Ten Red Apples by Pat Hutchins. It qualifies as a Perfect Picture Book for Friday.




Ten Apples
author and illustrator: Pat Hutchins
publisher:  Scholastic (2000)
juvenile fiction
suitable for ages 3 - 7
themes: apples, counting, farm animals

opening lines  
Ten read apples hanging on the tree. 
Yippee, fiddle-dee-fee!
Horse came and ate one,
chomp chomp, chomp. 
Neigh, neigh, fiddle-dee-fee.
"Horse!" cried the farmer.
"Save some for me!"

synopsis
A concept book that blends rhyming, counting, repetition and animal sounds into a charming, folksy story.  Hutchinson's trademark wooden figures ... populate this delightful tale in which the farmer watches the animals eat bright red apples from the tree... When there is just one apple left, he picks it. Then along comes his wife who finds "No red apples to bake in a pie".  The farmer saves the day when he finds another apple tree and they fill the basket with "More red apples hanging on the tree".
from School Library Journal


I like this book because ...  
Ten Red Apples has a lovely rhythmical text that bounces along from apple to apple, animal to animal. It's fun to read aloud.  And the kidlets love to join in.  

The fun and cheerfulness of the text is reflected in the illustrations.  The gouache paintings, framed bright red, depict brightly coloured hinged wooden characters.  


My kidlets liked seeing the collection of apple consuming animals increase on the right side of the book. Then one observant little kidlet saw that the next animal to visit the apple tree was hiding behind the farmer.  That revelation demanded some careful re-reading of the pictures.  


The School Library Journal summed it up well:  A delicious selection from a master of simplicity.


resources ...


Kelly from Little Wonder's Days put together this Ten Red Apples tray for her 4 year old twins.  Love the Cheerios for the apples.




Laura from My Montessori Journey sewed these beautiful apple bean bags to go with animal cards for retelling the story.   




Michelle at Hubbard's Cupboard created the animal cards as part of a unit on apples.  Scroll down through some other wonderful apple activities to find the animal cards pdf.



Prekinders has a Ten Red Apples flannel board printable set to download.  I have printed flannel board sets on t-shirt transfer paper and ironed them onto white felt, or I have printed them on paper, laminated and used them for story re-telling as is. 



The farmers wife made pie with her apples.  We did not make pie, but we did make apple crumble today.  Pretty yummy!


If you were to make apple pie like the farmer's wife, this one from Testado, Provado & Approvado  looks pretty fun. 


happy apple reading, story telling,  counting, baking and eating



This week has been all about apples.



We dehydrated apples.


The kidlets LOVE them.  We can't dehydrate them fast enough!  And I don't like to tell the kidlets not to eat healthy apples, so we keep the dehydrators going.  Luckily it was a fabulous apple harvest this year and we have lots of apples from backyard trees.


We made apple juice. (This was the inaugural run for this juicer - we were honoured!)


And we made apple sauce.

Our apple sauce recipe is really straight forward.

Take an apple.


Cut it up.


Put it in a pot.


When you taste it you will find it's apple sauce you've got.


We have been singing our recipe all week (the tune is Yankee Doodle).  And you can too.  

Click the recipe for your free download.  


Tomorrow is apple crumble ...  yum.






I have become quite partial to sunflowers in the last few years.

Pictures like these sent to me by a friend who grew them in her southern Alberta garden



and painting Mr. Van Gogh sunflowers with grade one kidlets, have given me a renewed appreciation of sunflowers.  Now, if I could just get mine to grow tall and glorious!

Last week the most ginormous sunflower was brought to school.




One morning, E came to school with his dad who was carrying the tallest sunflower I have ever seen.  It was so tall that we had to put it in the highest part of the room.


It was so tall that we had to write a story about it.  E and the Sunflower (rather than Jack and the Beanstalk.


The story (without all the details that the kidlets insisted were necessary goes like this:  Once upon a time A boy named E was going to his friend's house with a pair of froggie slippers.  On the way he met an old lady who traded some magic seeds for the slippers.  E planted the seeds and they grew up to the sky.  Being an adventurous lad, E decided to climb the sunflower. He climbed all the way to the top where he found a castle.  E knocked on the door and a troll answered. E climbed up to the roof and went down the chimney. Inside the castle he saw a prince painting a treasure map.  E grabbed the map, and ran out the castle door, dodging the troll. E found the treasure, and brought it back to the king of the castle who made cookies and shared them with everyone.


The sunflower was so tall that we had to measure it.  It was almost 4 kidlets tall.




A sunflower that tall has a lot of leaves.  We made smart guesses - the biggest guess was 1000!  It was less than 1000 - less than 100, less than 50 - but not by much!  We counted 42 leaves on our sunflower.  That's a lot of photosynthesis happening!


After measuring the sunflower, I removed the head from the stem (I had to bend the stem in half and have part of it sticking out the back window of my car to bring it home to compost!) We are observing like scientists and checking out the head of the sunflower.  The petals and the florets are falling off, leaving the seeds showing.  Right now the seeds are all white and a bit soft.  We wonder if they will turn black and white and hard. 


We want to save the seeds for planting in the spring.  Then the school yard and the town can be full of ginormous sunflowers.




            

Pete's back for a return engagement with a new audience.

Do we love him?  GOODNESS YES!




He's singing, he's dancing, and he's rocking our classroom. So we are singing and dancing and rocking our school.


First we rocked Pete's shoes.




We needed something beginning-of-kindergarten friendly.  I found these fabulous Pete shoes at  April Larremore's Chalk Talk.  Gluing (let's get those lids on kidlets), following directions, spacial relationships, two groups of two, and putting names on the back - all good September skills.


Then we rocked our own school shoes.




I took pictures of all the kidlets (and a few adults) wearing their school shoes and we made our first class book.  A lift-the-flap book at that!  The kidlets glued their school shoes pictures onto the photo box and printed their  "best" names on the line.  Then we stapled a "guess who" strip on top of their names. Click on the graphics for your free download.





Can you guess which shoes belong to the principal, the custodian and the kindergarten teacher?


Pete has a great attitude.  I love that he wears cool shoes, that he does not cry over the small stuff, how he reminds us that whatever we step in can wash off and that "it's all good".

But the biggest reason that I love Pete is that he brings the joy of books and reading to kids.


He rocks my world.







Looks like we will have to read Pete's Four Groovy Buttons soon! 

Here are some more Pete printables that you might like...






It's a new school year, and it's all good.



            

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