A New to You Post



So.... I started this post last weekend... UGH.... Life..... You. ALWAYS. get. in. the. way. So I hope you enjoy. I have lots more to chat about, but this will do for now. :)

This week was a short one for us, only three days, but felt like a normal 5 day week. :) Probably because I was at Urgent Care with our youngest on our first day back until midnight. :( Yes, you read that right... midnight. Poor girl... hacking her brains out and couldn't sleep. So... a breathing treatment, amoxicillin, and a steroid later, we were on our way home. She's MUCH better now! UPDATE... she wasn't better.  By Tuesday she was coughing again, by Thursday we were back at the Asthma Doc and put back on a steroid.   More breathing treatments. DOES.IT.EVER.END?

Back to business. :) Our kiddos came back super excited and ready to get learning! We had decided before break that I would teach prepositions because that was in our instructional calendars and my friend Karen, who teaches reading to all our firsties, had so many super fun Pete activities planned that she ran out of time to fit this in, so I gladly accepted the challenge. :) I knew that I wanted to use this great book. I L.O.V.E. this book! Do you use it in your classroom? BEAUTIFUL illustrations and many prepositions. I quickly made this not-so-beautiful chart below. It's in need of some SERIOUS color! I opted for the Post-Its so I wouldn't have to make three of these charts. :) I'm getting smarter as our year goes on. I will probably add the words directly onto the chart (and TONS of COLOR) a little bit of color when I go to work. UPDATE... this chart has color!!!!! :)

I used this chart and added a gesture for the words spacial relations. :) We said it often and used our WBT of Teach/OK, and Mirror. On Day 1, our firsties followed my instructions and drew a scene on their papers, then used a snowman and listened to the prepositions I said to move him around the scene. For example, "Walk your snowman THROUGH the woods TOWARD the house." "Place your snowman underneath the sun." The kids had a GREAT time and in the end were allowed to glue the snowman wherever he/she wanted.

On day 2, I have to admit I had one of those "teaching moments" when I was driving to work and in the midst of my autopilot being on, I had an idea! This turned out to be PERFECT for our firsties! What I love is that it was simple, kids were engaged, and I could use it for ALL THREE CLASSES!!!  Unfortunately.... blogger will not let me put an image of the directions, sorry!  Just click the link to grab a copy for yourself. 

Link for Snowman Preposition Directions

 

Here are a few pictures of how they turned out.  :)

 

   

 Next, we used this poem that Em found in a Highlights magazine.  :)  She's always looking out for us.  It was PERFECT and had lots of prepositions, so she drew the scene that you see below.  Then, we read the poem several times, practiced drawing the tracks, and finally used paint and our pinkies to make those great blue tracks! Our firsties were so excited that they dug their pinkies in up to the knuckle gently dabbed their pinkie into the paint.

 

How do you teach prepositions to your kiddos?