Monsters!

Today I am linking up with Deanna for her wonderful Let's Talk About Books Linky. Thank you, Deanna, for hosting!

We had so much fun with monsters last week that I wanted to share some things that we did.

These first books are some oldies but goodies.  They're simple stories and great for letting the children retell by acting out the stories. I choose a few different children each time we read the story. They go to their "places," and they act out the story as I read it.  These stories also great for reminding the children that monsters are silly and fun, not real and scary!

The children also loved Glad Monster, Sad Monster.

This book by Ed Emberly is all about feelings. It's great for vocabulary, and for discussions or turn and talks  about why you sometimes feel a certain way and have different moods.

Glad Monster

 Silly Monster

The book has a little mask to go with each monster.

I had my children create their own monsters around the eyeballs on this paper.  Last year I bought a roll of eyeball stickers (because OF COURSE I did...), and that has been one of my best purchases.  I used to use googly eyes for projects, but they never really stuck on.  Somebody's always fell off and projects were missing an eye here or there. It was sad.  These little stickers are great.  

I made papers ahead of time for the children to create monsters around.  The children had a ball creating their monster during an independent center, and then they wrote a story about their monsters later in the day.

This little guy has come SUCH a long way!

My friend across the hall wanted to do this activity, and I started to put eyeballs on papers for her, when I realized that I could make one paper and COPY it.  (Don't you just want to say, "duh!" here...) Why didn't I think of that when I was making mine? Anyway, that's exactly what I did for her, and HERE are the papers if you would like some of your own.
I made two versions- depending on your mood- two or three monsters... hmmmm?!

My friend Dan (Rocking Dan Teacher Man) has a great descriptive song about monsters!  He has so many great songs that the kids just love!

We also had fun with math addition and subtraction word problems using different size googly eyes. I did this with a small group during our math lesson.  They loved using the eyes as counters to figure out our monster word problems.

 Here is a picture from the beginning of the year when I used the googly eyes for counting on this great monster freebie called Monster Mash from Rowdy in Room 300.

I wrote a post HERE  ALLLLL about monsters with lots of TPT monster freebies if you would like some more fun activities to go with this theme.

I can't wait to see what other fun books everyone is sharing this week!
Thanks for stopping by! Don't forget to link up one of your favorite books with Deanna.

Our Colorful Week!

I always look forward to our first two weeks of school.  We review a color each day while I take pictures to make our Colorful Class and Crazy Colorful Class books. This gets us feeling like a class family and off to a great start.  We spend a lot of time these first two weeks , like you all do, establishing classroom routines and rules, writing names correctly, working on being kind friends, reviewing letters and sounds, learning our computer/lunch number, and singing and dancing, of course! I have already introduced many sight words, and this group just seems excited to learn. 

We were drawing and "writing" ideas about being kind friends yesterday,  and one little boy came up to me as they were drawing and said, "I really hope you know- I can't spell ANYTHING!"   (This is when that fabulous word 'YET' comes in, right?)  

This made me think of another sweet thing today.  One of my little guys came up to me with bright red, chapped lips,  and said, "Can you help me?  My lips are slowly burning off."   Poor thing.  As someone who is totally addicted to Blistex- I completely got that ever-so-accurate description!

Here is a glimpse of our colorful days!

Red Day:

After we read Ten Apples Up on Top, I had the children put ten apple stickers up on their heads.  This was a quick little activity to show me who could count to ten with one to one correspondence. 

Then we used Rebecca Stone's Apple Picking Emergent Reader on the Elmo to count how many apples we saw on the different pages.  This is a great activity- free at her store! 

We  also made our Number 5 bracelets.  I had the children put 5 red beads on a pipe cleaner which I turned into a  bracelet.  We counted them and even added and subtracted with them.  This was a good introduction to our 10 bead counter bracelet we make later.  The children had lots of fun making and playing with these, and then by the time we make our 10 bracelet, they are more ready to use it for our adding and subtracting questions.

 This is my extra red day bonus: 

YELLOW DAY:

The class loved reading How Will I Get to School This Year?



This was a wonderful book to introduce the word "illustrator" because the illustrations are so vibrant and fun.  The children are already used to saying, "The author writes the words.  The illustrator draws the pictures."    We had a great discussion about different ways to really  get to school-and the different ways she thought of to get to school.

Next we made our buses to put over our lockers in the hall- with our bus numbers on them.

We read In My New Yellow Shirt, and each child drew a picture of what he/she would pretend to be in a yellow shirt.

(This example is NOT the norm in my class, by the way, with all that detail and color- I felt I needed to add that disclaimer.  I would like you all to just imagine that I had them all this far along in these 6 days, but ... nope. NOPE.  ;) 

Kristin, at A Teeny Tiny Teacher, mentioned using a music box to get the children's attention.  I have this bus that I got at a garage sale a few years ago. It is a Little People bus, and plays "The Wheels on the Bus"  if you touch a button on the top.  It stops the kids cold for some reason when it starts to play.  Last year, however, it would just play randomly, out of the blue, any time it felt like it.  It was so creepy.  I thought the batteries were getting low and changed them, but it still did it.  It has since gotten its act together and is playing only when I tell it to. I am sure it was a little wire that was off or something, but there is something very eerie about "The Wheels on the Bus" starting to play when you are in line to go to lunch and that bus is on the other side of the room.  The first time is funny. Then it gets real.  Real creepy. 

The Haunted Bus

Since it is YELLOW DAY, I have to share this beautiful clipboard my friend Leslie from Color, Cut and Glue made for me.  We drew each other's names for the Back to School Blog Exchange, and I couldn't be happier that I did, because I got to meet such a sweet person!  She made me this clipboard which is just perfect of my bus rosters that I use each day. It makes me happy every time I use it!

I love using the things I buy from your TPT stores, and the ideas I borrow from all of you.  I see your names or think of the blog post where you shared an idea, and it just makes me happy to think of you! 

BLUE DAY:

(This is a scene from our CRAZY COLORFUL CLASS book... They are really good at these.)

Cookie Monster returned with some Cookie Crisp cereal for some math work. 

We read Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons.  Then, we watched a couple Pete the Cat stories.

These are all on my Character Education Prezi, which is FREE at my TPT store.

We made our own Pete the Cat to hang up in the hall.  I found the pattern on April's Chalk Talk blog, and she got it from Hooray for Kindergarten.  The pattern is here.

 I hung them up outside my door.  We aren't allowed to put ANYTHING on our door- inside our outside, so they are hanging around outside.

 

Green Day:

Green Day  is always one of my favorites, because I absolutely LOVE this book:

There are SO many activities to do with this book.  I made these necklaces for each of the children:

Someone had put out their old calendar pattern pieces on the "give away" table at the end of the year- and I snatched them up!  I have also made these by cutting cellophane circles.  The children love to hold these up to the light and look at everything blue, then yellow, then green. 

We also mix the colors with water.

I had the children mix the colors.  It is fun to do this on the Elmo,  too- and see it on the big screen.

This was my all time favorite, though- from my sweet friend Sandy at Kinder-Gardening.  I think I actually gasped when I saw this idea on her blog! 

 (I found it worked better for the mixing to make Little Blue a little smaller-otherwise the blue sort of dominated.)

This is what happened when they hugged.



I put these right in Ziplock baggies and into the mailboxes so they made it home!

And of course, color mixing with paint!  Suzi has this  FREEBIE at her TPT store ready to go for mixing colors! I use cotton swabs and the kids have a ball.

Of course my other favorite for Green Day is this book!

I gave each child a paper and the crayon colors of the monster before I read the story.  They had to listen and draw the monster as  I read- but NOT see the pictures. 

After we did this, I reread the story and showed them the pictures.  Then, we shared our monsters. 

Cathy Stoecker has a cute Go Away Big Green Monster Take Home Bag FREEBIE at her TPT store with lots of different activities to go with this book.  Here are the activities-

And I can't wait to use my Monster Manners FREEBIE from Growing Kinders tomorrow. We ran out of time today. This  is a great activity for the beginning of the year!

Tomorrow is PURPLE DAY.   I love sharing Harold and the Purple Crayon with the children.  I have the treasury book with lots of stories in it.  I have both pre-made, stapled, blank books and big paper folded in half that the children may choose to use to write (draw) their own purple crayon stories.  We have fun with this, and it is actually their very first "book" they write.

I hope you all had a colorful week  ( with all the very BEST colors!)