Victoria's
Classroom Pictures
September 29, 2000
As explained last week,
I've decided to use this area on the website as a photo-journal of the
2000 - 2001 school year, since I never seem to have time to write my In
My Room column these days. I'm going to try to add a few pictures
with comments every weekend, to stay up to date with what we're doing in
my classroom.
Here are some things we've
done during the past week:
Fire Drill
We
had our first fire drill of the year on Thursday, after "practicing" once
a week during the first month of school. In California, we're required
to have a fire drill once a month.
This
is a picture of me with my class Fire Captains, wearing our firefighter
hats from the dollar store. No one else is quite as goofy as our
class -- i.e., they don't wear hats to firedrills -- but the kids enjoy
it and it puts them on their best behavior.
Only
the Fire Captains, myself, and my instructional aide wear the hats, but
I'm thinking of getting enough for the entire class. We don't have
a dramatic play / dress-up area in our room (no time for it in our schedule,
due to stringent academic requirements), and I think the rest of the class
would like wearing the hats, too.
October
is national Fire Prevention month. Here's a fun song from my Fire
Safety thematic unit:
I
Am A Firefighter
(tune: I'm A Little Teapot)
I am a firefighter, dressed
in red.
With my fire hat on my
head.
I can drive the firetruck,
fight fire too,
And help to make things
safe for you.
For more fun songs, poems,
and activities, visit my
Fire
Safety Thematic Unit
October Quilt
We
do a monthly quilt project, and this October it's spider handprints and
a black-and-orange bowtie pattern variation. Most months we make
a thematic/seasonal handprint, plus a geometric patch that gets more difficult
as the year progresses. The geometric patches show me how well the
children listen to and follow directions, how good their spatial perception
skills are, and how they're doing in terms of fine motor skill development.
In this picture, the children
are holding up one of the two large black squares used on their patches.
I always ask them to "show me ____" so that I can see that they're listening,
watching me, and have the right piece before I give each direction.
Holding something up in the air while slower students finish keeps them
from working ahead or playing with the glue and scissors.
This is a close up of
the completed geometric patch. The background is a 9" x 9" square
of white construction paper. There are two 4 1/2" x 4 1/2" black
squares, and the 4-patch sections are made from orange and black squares
that measure 2 1/4" x 2 1/4".
This student is concentrating
on getting her patch in the right place, so that none of the background
paper is visible around the edges. Behind her, you can see the children's
Spider Handprints drying. We did the handprints first thing in the
morning, and I was fortunate to have my aide and a parent volunteer (who
comes every Friday!) get the handprints done in just over 30 minutes.
In past years, I've made
an Elmer's Glue spiderweb design over the handprints, then sprinkled it
with glitter. This year I was impatient and didn't want to wait for
it to dry, so we have plain handprints.
The spider print was made
by painting the child's palm and fingers (but not the thumb) black.
The second hand is painted and the palm laid directly on top of the first
palm print, so that only the finger part is new. My aide figured
out that she could paint just one hand (instead of both) and turn the paper,
and still get the desired effect.
The spider eyes were made
by dipping the eraser end of a pencil into magenta paint, and touching
it against the dried spider print. Last year I used self-adhesive
ring reinforcers (the ones you use on notebook paper that goes in binders)
in astro-bright colors, but today I couldn't find them.
We made 2 sets of prints
for each child ... the one above (on 9" x 9" yellow construction paper,
for the quilt) and a second one on 7" x 10" white paper, to go on the October
Homework Calendar, which is mounted on 12" x 18" orange construction paper.
