Outdoor Learning: Dance Party Fun

One of my favorite activities to engage our students during our outside learning is to have a dance party. It doesn't matter what time of the year it is, the children all love to dance and have fun together!

I have found that some students simply like to join in by dancing on their own but most of our students enjoy exploring their creative expression using ribbons. They create their own routines together, often explore beat and rhythm or have fun exploring different ways that they can control the ribbons through various movements and the wind!

We pull out our stereo player and let the kids choose what music they want to listen to or sometimes we have a predetermined song list that we play from. In order to have the music have more of a stereo effect so that it will carry further, we put the music player inside a cheap styrofoam cooler from our local grocery store which we always keep in our outdoor storage shed throughout the year with the ribbons. Ribbons are stored in a bucket which is easily pulled out to set up for the activity. We always make sure at clean up time that all the ribbons face upwards so that they do not get knotted at the bottom of the pail.

When dancing with our ribbons we have 3 simple rules:
1. Make sure you don't hit a friend with the sticks (dowels).
2. Ribbons stay off of the ground (so we don't step on them).
3. We never play with them in the rain or in puddles as it makes the wood moldy and destroys the ribbon.

How to make the ribbon wands:

You will need:
1/2" diameter dowels
long ribbon strings - ensure there is no metal so that it won't rust.
dowel caps so the ribbons will not fall off

Instructions:
Cut the ribbon into long lengths all a variety of different sizes.
Tie them onto the end of the dowels as tight as you possibly can so that it shouldn't move around easily. I vary the lengths when I tie them so it is uneven.
Sometimes I'll mix up colors or I'll choose to stick with a color theme. Often times during our outdoor learning our students will change up which ones they use purely based upon the colors available!

How do you engage students in dancing activities during your outdoor learning time? I'd love to hear from you!

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Welcoming Families To Kindergarten

Including parents in their Childs education is extremely important. Children feel more comfortable sharing about their school day when they know that their family understands what they area talking about! Parents feel more involved with the school and it becomes a more welcoming place.

I wanted to make a list of activities to invite parents in on a regular basis. Having something fun or exciting makes the activity a bit more engaging for families to want to participate. Our first invitation was for Stone Soup and we did not invite siblings as we knew the participation was going to be huge. Our suspicion was correct and our classes were bursting at the seams! In the future I will consider inviting younger siblings to help ease their transition into kindergarten!

The following is a list of the ideas that I would like to use in my classroom. Several of them I have used in my classroom already. I hope you find this list to be useful. As I come across new ideas I will be adding them.

Play Invitation

Invite parents to learn along with you as a natural part of the day. Some teachers do this quarterly, monthly or weekly. I know colleagues who have invited parents for the last 45 minutes of the day. Others invite them for the last block and I have even heard of a "drop in" style where parents are invited any time of the day to stay for 30-60 minutes at a time. "Welcome Wednesdays" and "Family Fridays" are two coined phrases I have heard of over the years to help parents remember when the visit days are scheduled.

Stone Soup

This is the very first family visit that we had in our class. Students bring in a vegetable and we made a soup together. During the last learning block, families were invited to eat with us and learn with us as we shared our soup! Click here to read about our stone soup experiences!

Games Day

Who doesn't love playing a game? Children love to play and harnessing this energy makes learning fun! Most games have many math concepts which support the math curriculum. Plus, the extra bonus of social/emotional development. Have families bring their favourite to play and swap for the afternoon with other families to learn a new game!

Puzzle Day

Families bring their favourite puzzle to school and build it together with friends. Share/swap with other families for a new challenge.

Math Event

Provide a variety of math games for parents to participate and learn along with their children.

Reading Invitation

Provide a wide variety of books from the library and invite parents to come in to read with their child a wide variety of books!

Baking Fun

Students bake something that they all can enjoy (we have many allergies in my classroom) and share with their visiting family members!

Class Concert

Practice a song or two and put on a concert for your families! Children love to perform and what can be better than an intimate concert? If you've already presented for an assembly, perform the same activity for the families!

Class Play

If your students have created a play, shown an interest in puppetry or love nursery rhymes this is a perfect opportunity to put on a show!

Inquiry Celebration

After an inquiry, students can show off all they have learned to their families!

Multicultural Food Day

Have families bring in a special food from their culture to share with others. Make sure they bring an ingredients list if there are allergies.

Build a Community

If your students have an interest in community helpers, 3D figures, maps or even treasure hunts this might be a big hit in your classroom! Have students create a community and show it off to others. This can be done with Lego, recycled materials or even as a mural that they create together. The options are endless!

Gingerbread Traps

The gingerbread man is on the loose in the school! Challenge parents to make a trap with their child in order to help catch him. When parents come the children can share how they created the trap with each other.

St Patrick's Day Trap

St. Patrick's is on the loose in the classroom! Challenge parents to make a trap with their child in order to help catch him. When parents come the children can share how they created the trap with each other.

Teddy Bear Picnic

Invite parents to a teddy bear picnic with their child. Bring your own food or make it a special event to share food.

Create Gifts

Teaching others to reach out to the greater community is a valuable lesson to teach even young children. We have hosted parents coming in to make crafts that we have donated to local senior homes in our community. Parents and children love to be a part of this and the seniors love to decorate their residence with gifts from our class! In the past we have made wreathes with patterned paintings of our hands and door hang decorations for during the holiday seasons.

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Planning for Outdoor Learning in Kindergarten

I love collaborating with my other team members in our Kindergarten team and love that we can plan together for our outdoor learning. We have a team of 14 staff members so this is a big collaborative effort!

Our Outdoor Learning Schedule:

40 minutes of outdoor learning first thing in the morning with staggered entry for small group instruction.

40 minutes of outdoor learning at the end of the day.

This schedule provides less transitions in our day for students. They only have to undress once during the day and get dressed to go outside at the end of the day. We do not go outside for a recess but have two 40 minute nutrition breaks where students eat and then often do gross motor activities to help keep them focused for the day.

During outside learning each teacher has a "role" where we sign up for specific learning centres to engage students and others are floaters who help with runners, behaviour management and any students who may need bathroom breaks etc. All classes have two teachers, so we usually ensure that one team member is at a centre and the other is floating.

As a team we collaborate on a learning template very similar to what we use in our classroom. We try our best to ensure we hit as many learning opportunities that we possibly can based upon the interests that we notice while we are outside learning together. The following freebie shows a basic template that we use in our classroom and what we try to purposefully uncover while we are learning together. Click on the image to see it!

Learning Centres on our Plan

Science & Discovery

Math

Language

Paint & Visual Art

Music

Gross Motor: Field vs. Tarmac

Fine Motor

Water

Sand

Blocks & Building Materials

At first, one team member took minutes and we documented what learning activities were being provided and which room was responsible for it. This member would print the page and post it in our shed as well as post it in our school conference for all the team members to print.  We found this very purposeful but often found that we ran out of time for deeper collaboration together.

Google Drive To the Rescue!

In response to this need, we found it valuable to create a shared google document and all team members bring an iPad to add their ideas during our planning. This has allowed all of us to input our contributions quickly and we can all glance at the activities quickly and then are more purposeful in our discussions. Our meetings have been able to be more focused and we are all happy that we can go home quicker at the end of the day!

How does your planning differ? I'd love to learn how other teams collaborate together!

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Stone Soup: Inviting Parents to Our Learning

This year we invited our parents to come and learn with us! It was a great experience and a way to build community.

We had read Stone Soup recently and decided as a class that it would a lot of fun to do this together. We ended up having so many vegetables donated to our class collection that we ended up making two soups. One was a potato leek soup and the other was a mixed vegetable soup. We made two versions to accommodate our students due to various allergies in our classroom.

I ended up borrowing my mothers food chopper. All hands were on deck to help out. From cleaning, chopping and adding the vegetables to our pots! The teachers cut the vegetables up into small manageable chunks and then students were able to press them into the chopper. 

We have three learning blocks in our classroom. Parents were invited to our third learning block. Students were learning at various learning centres and parents joined in. When they were ready to eat, they came and sampled our soup. 

The children were extremely proud to show off their learning. They showed of their learning portfolios and many included their parents in their play! Several students showed off how we do math talks to their parents, pretending to be a teacher as their parents participated in the learning as a student. 

Students and parents both enjoyed the experience and many parents were happily surprised to see their child eating and enjoying vegetable soup. We cannot wait to have more learning opportunities like this on a regular basis as we plan on doing this monthly!

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Affordable and Engaging Building Toys and Provocations

Simple is best. My mom and my grandma always swore by it. Now I believe it!

Despite "knowing" this for my life (aka being told this) it has taken years for me to fully embrace a simplistic understanding of play. My children grew up with us not always ever getting the "latest and greatest" but they were never lacking a variety of toys, often colourful and plastic. Mostly these experiences were thanks to great local thrift stores and a mom who was never willing to pay full price for anything!

As I have delved deeper and deeper into understanding play, watched and learned along with them, I have developed a deeper appreciation for simple items. I see the richer experiences and their imagination grow. As a result, I prefer open-ended activities which allow children to decide where to take their play.

My students have shown me their love for all things simple. One of our biggest hits has simply been cardboard roads with real photos of our local community. They can take any shape, design and students can add to their play in an unlimited way.

This is the aftermath of an afternoon of creative building. You can see a lake in the background, a green carpet as the zoo in the foreground and the "remains" of roads where there were different buildings from our community. There were six students who collaborated to make this. 

I printed each photo twice, put them back to back to each other and then laminated them together. Super easy, affordable and relatable for the students in my class as it is relevant to their personal lives.

Ideas for pictures in your community to laminate:

aerial view of an airport
apartment buildings 

aquarium museums

bakery

banks

baseball field

car wash business

car dealerships

coffee shops

Costco

CN Tower

dollar store

farm

farmers market

fast food chains

fire station

football field

forest

gas stations

grocery stores

Home Depot

hotels or motels
ice rink

Lego store

movie theatres

Niagara Falls

park

pet stores

police station

race track

random houses in the community

restaurants

roundabout
aerial view of a ski hill

soccer fields

swimming pool

townhouses

train station

Toys R Us

zoo

No more worrying about which expensive toy is going to be the new "thing" in my classroom. A simple gift for which I am grateful for!

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Anti-Bullying Videos and Books for Primary Teachers

I am always looking for quick handy resource lists for special occasions or hot topics that occur in my classroom. I hope you find this list of anti-bullying videos and books to be helpful. It's a great resource list for teachers looking for ideas for pink shirt day!

Videos

Invisible Isabelle

This is a children's book about bullying. She has a unique style and her friends bully her because of it. She changes her appearance so much to fit in that she becomes invisible.

Pickles and the Bully

What do you do when you are very smart and cannot talk to solve a bully problem?

Sesame Street: Don't Be a Bully

An engaging video which kids can relate too.

Don't Laugh at Me

This is a song about how special and unique everyone is.

Sockhead Smith: Anti-Bullying Song

This has a short lesson and song to hep make children aware of what bullying is and how to react when being bullied.

The Meanest Girl in Second Grade

Zoe wasn't just mean, she was REALLY mean to others. A good lesson in bullying.

McGruff: Anti-Bullying Film

McGruff is on the hunt to solve a mystery.

The Playground is for Everyone

These kids learn how to take a stand against a bully who doesn't want them to play on the playground and it is an important lesson in sharing.

Books

Goose On A Roof

Goose has low self esteem due to being bullied by the other geese.

Bad Astrid

Astrid is unpleasant to others. She eventually reveals why she isn't nice to her neighbor and a friendship is born. This is a great conversation starter for young learners.

Clara and the Bossy

A story of what can happen when a friend becomes bossy.

Eddie Longpants

This story is great for sharing a story of acceptance and will start a great discussion on teasing with your students.

Fancy Nancy and the Mean Girl

Fancy Nancy faces a realistic problem and solution to a problem regarding a race. Teasing, bullying and sportsmanship are all covered in this simple book!

King of the Playground

Kevin faces a bully at school. After discussing it with his dad, he discovers a variety of strategies to solve his problem. 

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Co-Created Class Schedule

Whenever possible, I am learning that my students like to use real photos of our day for our daily schedule. I like a consistent look and was looking for something that provided lines and boundaries for my kids to be able to add their own text in a differentiated way.

I looked around and couldn't find what I was looking for, so I ended up creating my own! If you want real life photos and children to print the environmental print in your classroom, this may be something you are interested in. It looks great printed in color and in black and white.

One thing that I love about this schedule is that all of the schedules are the same size (4.5" * 11"). I can print off different pages for different students based on their writing skill level and if they need to trace letters, I know that other students will be able to read their writing!

There are three different schedules that I included in one product to allow for differentiation! Tracing allows my youngest students, who often are non printers, to be able to participate in creating our schedule. The blank option allows for students to print all the words based on their own printing ability.

1. Insert photos & trace wording

2. Professionally print photos & trace wording

3. Insert photos and students individualize wording

If you're interested in checking this schedule out, click on this image to check it out!

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Teacher Tips for Writing Report Cards

I don't know about you but there are a few things that I need to consider before I am in the right frame of mind to start report cards. Many teachers do not need to do all of these activities, but I find them to be beneficial for me. I hope you find something that helps you in your journey through your report card writing!

1. Have a good drink readily at hand. 
What I drink varies depending upon the time of day. Often my drinks are of a coffee early in the morning or an iced tea in the afternoon.

2. Have a  snack to keep me focused.
Although I don't like to admit it, a good snack helps to keep any urges to wander to the fridge due to boredom. Sweet peas and blueberries are my favourite to snack on.

3. Have a comfortable place to kick my feet up.
I don't know about you, but I need to be able to relax and write at the same time. Some need a good desk or table to write but I am not as productive as I am looking out my front window, enjoying the view to stay motivated.

4. Good Music
I think I use this as a deflection so I cannot always hear everything that is going on around me in the house. It helps keep me focused!

5. A general house clean up.
I do this because if I don't I'll stop writing due to the distractions all around me.

6. A clean classroom.
Yes, I did clean my whole desk this week and I did tackle my art closet in my classroom. Sound crazy? Yes! But a good purging also declutters the mind! It also is a nice reward to walk into your class in the midst of the stress, and after reports are done, knowing you don't have a mess to greet you.

7. Supportive colleagues who are willing to share ideas.
Don't be an island! Find colleagues who are willing to collaborate with you and share ideas. Writing report cards can be very stressful, especially if you are having to change how you write them. This term we have decided to share our comments on our Google Drive at work. It has worked fantastically for generating new ideas and different comments and allowed us to collaborate from home!

8. Find something to distract you.
Every once in a while you'll need to take a break. Find something that you'll find distracting enough to be a little lure for a brain break but not too distracting to totally disengage you from writing your reports!

Yes, I will admit, I wrote this post in the middle of writing report cards this year! Yikes! This was one of my "good" distractions! I hope you've found it helpful!

Good luck! You've got this!

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11 Jobs for your Parent Volunteers

Looking for ideas for your parent volunteers? There are many ideas that they can help out with and they don't even have to enter your classroom!

Over the years I have noticed that I have had many parent volunteers who would like to help but I often have not have tapped this potential just from being unaware of what they could do and not being prepared for when they enter the classroom.

At School

Art Master
If you have a creative parent who is available during your art period and would like to help out with art activities you can always have them come in. They can collect the art materials, cut out what is needed and even help supervise. They can clean up the art materials at the end of the day, after the activity or during your lunch period (when you may have other supervision duties).

Home Reading Helper
If you have a volunteer who is willing to come in daily, this is a huge support for classroom teachers. There are many ways it can be organized.

1. They supervise the primary students exchange of books, ensuring that cards are returned to the correct book and books are placed back properly into the cart.

2. They bring the cart to each class and quietly call students in small groups at a time in each class to exchange books so the cart is never overwhelmed by too many students.

3. If your volunteer can only come in weekly or once a month, have them sort through the books to make sure they have been returned to the bins properly (e.g., in the right bin, with the right card and facing forward for students to see the cover).

Homework Helper
Having someone to go through the homework bin to check off who has completed their work is a huge time saver. If desired, they could check through the work and make a list of names of students, who still needs support in learning the concepts that were covered in the activity, in order to plan next steps and small group instruction.

Pencil Patrol
When you have young students it can be very tedious time consuming task. A volunteer could come once a week or daily to sharpen your pencils and pencil crayons quickly for you!

Portfolio Patrol
Many classes have student driven or teacher driven portfolios. Often the items inside the portfolio are contained in sleeves which need to be stuffed. Items often need to be sorted and organized. If these items are not "graded" and thus not confidential, volunteers can help organize these!

Reading Buddy
Lots of families do not have time to support their child with reading their home reading nightly for various reasons. Having a volunteer who is willing to come into the school and sit down with your students and read their book daily is a huge support to students and families.

At Home

Home Reading Book Repair Service
Create an Ziplock bag filled with a laminated instruction page for how to repair books. Send a small number of books home to parents with all the tools they would need to repair the broken books once a week. Ask for them to be returned by the end of the week!

Lucky Librarian Repair Service
Just like with the home reading book repair service, send home classroom library books that need some TLC. Send the books home with the required supplies and detailed instructions for how to fix them.

Budding Photographer
Know a parent who is a photographer and is willing to come to events to use your school camera to capture events like class trips or special assemblies? It is extremely hard for many teachers to add this task to their duties during the day and the end result would be appreciated by many families!

Skilled Skyper
Know someone who would love to be read to by your students throughout the day but cannot come to school due to mobility reasons or because they live far away? As long as you have the ability to use Skype or a similar technology, children can take turns read to them live them during your language block!

Super Slideshow Maker
Know a volunteer who loves to make slideshows? Having someone do this for assemblies, special school events, and even end of the year gifts would be appreciated by many parents in the community!

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10 Elementary Truths

I hope you enjoyed this humorous reminders some of the everyday joys of teaching in an elementary school!

If you want these images as a powerpoint to share with your staff, it is offered as a freebie by clicking here.

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