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Monday, October 16, 2017

We're Going Green!

Bottles and cans, just clap your hands! It's time for a post on reusing materials!

Can you tell this is one of my favorite concepts to teach? And I'm so glad we decided to focus on it early in the year instead of spring, like we did last year. I think this will set the stage for some great projects and STEAM ideas throughout the year. My only regret is not taking some more pictures.

You can find the lesson plan for this unit here.

Let's dive in!

I added some pictures to our memory book from when we made paper. They're included below so you can see the process. The paper we made last week was finally dry this week, so we observed and described it.



I forgot to take a picture of the finished product, but here's a piece of it that we sent home with the students. It was very thick, a lot like cardboard.  

We started the week with a giant box full of objects like bottlecaps, bottles, boxes,etc. I called their attention to a comment a student had made on a KWL chart that we could reuse objects. We held up several objects and asked the students what they could make with them. Responses were sparse; they hadn't really thought about it before.

The next day we made a junk band. I invited the students to pick an object that would make music, then we just played and had fun. We talked about counting to 2, to 3, and to 4, then we counted out loud as we played. The students copied rhythms from each other. We went around the circle and added instruments one by one. I didn't get a good picture, but here's a music video featuring people making music with coffee cups:


A few of the students took their "instruments" to the Music center and continued to play.

Wednesday, I set aside some cardboard and asked the students what they wanted to make for Dramatic Play. They colored a sign and said they wanted to make a shop, but it didn't really take off. I didn't devote a lot of attention to it because we made these instead:



Those are the 3 Little Pigs houses. The students have loved that story this year. One morning, a student grabbed a box from our junk collection and said, "I want to reuse this!" I asked him what he wanted to make and he said, "A house!" I suggested the 3 Little Pigs and with most of the students, we got to work wrapping the boxes and painting them. The brick and sticks house still need some work, but the straw house is finished. If you look closely, you can see clouds, windows, and doors.

We worked on some paper mache, which has so many great skills. Tearing, crumpling, painting, planning. The best part about these and the houses above is that they were multi-day; in the picture above, you can see our sign that says, "Work in Progress." I love encouraging students to come back to something to work on it some more.


The highlight of the week was our Maker Day.  We invited parents to come in and make something out of junk with their children. We stayed back as much as we could and asked a few guiding questions if the parents seemed to be struggling. We also had some questions in English and Spanish on the table. Look below for our setup and creations.




One student said that she wanted to continue learning about recycling and I told her, "Don't worry. We'll reuse parts all year long!"

If you want to learn more about loose parts, I've included some links below:
What are loose parts?
Loose parts Toolkit
Loose parts on Pinterest
Find a reuse store near you! My hoozits & whatsits (like the green bottlecaps & black cylinders) came from Scrap Exchange, which also offers fantastic workshops. I encourage you to look near you for similar resources.

Happy Teaching!

Amy

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Why Didn't I Do This Earlier?

Hello all!

This week, there's a lot of slapping my own head and wondering how I ever missed doing something so obvious. Have you had those moments? Let's dive in!

Way back when I taught fifth grade, I had a lot of classroom management issues. My mentor told me, "You have to be a little mean. But it's just not in you, is it?" And it's not. My style tends to be more nurturing; I use lots of positive commands and do my best to use praise effectively. The problem is that some children don't respond to that as well as someone who's a little more firm.

This week, I tried something I hadn't before: I taught children the difference between a command and a question. I always tell my students that if I ask whether they want to do something, they can say no. We played "Question or command" a few times, where I asked them silly things. "Do you want broccoli for breakfast?" "Put your hands on your head." "Did you ride a unicorn to school?" "Stand up." I explained that my role is to keep them safe and their job is to help me keep them safe.  If that sounds familiar, you're right; it's straight from Conscious Discipline.
They responded well to it and it gave me a springboard to use for the next week. "You're not cleaning up; why do you think I would tell you to clean up?" I also plan to incorporate bucket filling as soon as I get a copy of the book.


Something else I wish I'd done earlier was to put storytelling elements in Blocks. I got this idea from the NCAEYC Conference this year and instantly fell in love. You might remember from last week that we read "I Stink" and the children loved it. We didn't have a dump truck, but the children had lots of fun making this:


They were involved in the process as far as how we could make the shape of the truck and cutting. There was a lot of guiding, but then it's their first attempt. Here's the completed project with wheels:


I put that and a copy of the book in Blocks, then modeled how to look through the book and pretend to be a dump truck. Some of the students were interested in storytelling, but most had fun seeing how many blocks they could fit inside the hopper. I will definitely continue storytelling in Blocks any way I can.

Finally, I have to give my co-teacher all the credit for this one. She put a recycling center in Dramatic Play so the children could sort objects. 

She also made a conveyor belt, which I don't have a picture of. The children loved dressing up and learning to sort by material, which is a great way to incorporate real-world math!

This next week, we'll be extending the topic and encouraging children to make more with cardboard and junk.

How do you teach about reusing and recycling in your centers? Do you have a recycling bin?

Until next time, happy teaching!

--Amy