My Tooth Book (Dental Health)

Here is an easy project to do with your class. Make a tooth book.  I googled tooth images and found one that I liked for the front of my book.  I popped it into power point, made it the size I wanted and then added the title of our book.  Each subsequent page has a sentence at the bottom which describes what the child was asked to draw. 

Prior to letting the children work on the book make sure that you have talked about whatever concept is on each page.  A child might have a hard time drawing foods that are good for their teeth if you have not had a discussion, read books, had a visiting dentist etc...

I always write the words for whatever the child has drawn. This helps Mom and Dad when they don't recognize whatever the object is and it also is one more way to expose the children to print.  They know what their picture is, so they can tell Mom what the word is too.

The little boy who drew this picture made me smile when we were doing some egg experiements (another post soon) and I showed them how soda and coffee can discolor teeth.  I asked the children what color teeth they wanted and most said white but this little boy said "gold".  I told him we need to work on the white ones first.  Anyway, I think his picture reveals a quest for gold teeth. He's quite an artist.

We talked about the items we can use to take care of our teeth and I showed them little flossers. I loved all the floss depictions after that.

And the last page is a storytelling/imagination question.

I love writing down stories the children tell.  This little girl has such an awesome imagination.  She has an answer for everything and it is always entertaining. 

So, there you have it.  An easy book that you can make using whatever questions or ideas you want.  The children love working on the books and parents get a good idea of what the children learned this week.

I hope you have fun making books in your classroom.

Graphing

Let me start by saying: "HAPPY GROUNDHOG DAY"... now on to the post!

I love to graph in the classroom.  We often keep graphs up for the children to refer back to for as long as they seem interested. When teaching children it is important to be intentional in almost every aspect of the school day.  Children under 5 are soaking up everything and the best part is they don't know they are learning, they are just having fun through play (if we are doing our job correctly).

Graphing encourages prewriting, math, language and much more.  Here are a few simple graphs to show you what I'm talking about.

The above graph is "What's your favorite color?" We usually do this graph at the beginning of the year.  It gives us opportunity to talk about colors and then to make everyone feel special because they get their names written up there for all to see.  It's also the beginning of them recognizing their own name in print and before long they recognize the names of all their friends too.  The chart below is another example of this.  It's imortant for children to get comfortable talking in the classroom in front of the other children.  Talking about their pets or a pet they would like to have always gets the talking started.  For some children this is very easy but for other children it can be almost painful.  Talking about pets draws these latter children out and they begin to feel confident in sharing.  Notice that the chart does run left to right just like reading a book. That's intentional.

We also do a lot of cooking in the classroom and often times we'll chart yes and no answers.  For instance, in January it was cold and we used Maurice Sendak's book Chicken Soup with Rice and made some chicken soup with rice to warm up on a chilly day.  The chart just asked "Did you like the chicken soup with rice?" and the children made their mark under "yes" or "no".  We then tallied their marks to see if more or less people liked the soup.  This time it ended up being most.  We usually always add up responses and ask the "which is more, which is less" question. 

Today is Groundhog Day so yesterday we graphed whether or not we thought Phil would see his shadow.

 This graph did not run left to right but top to bottom and there is a reason for that.  I had each child write their own name on the white board and had they run left to right they would have most likely rubbed another child's name off.  It was important for that not to happen but equally important for the children to feel confident that they could write their own name for everyone to see.  They all worked slowly and carefully and were very proud of their results.  We finished off the activity by adding up both sides and this year we have a tie.  The children did a super job and I could not have been more proud!!

I hope that you are having fun graphing in the classroom.