THE EARTH BOOK

Your students are going to be so proud of this “Earth Book” when they take it home to share with their families.  Yes, it's going to take a few days to construct, but well worth the effort of creating a project from start to finish.

Materials: 8” squares of the following colors:
2 orange, 1 green, 1 blue, 1 yellow, 1 brown, 1 purple

To construct the book place down the orange square for the back of the book. Place the “purple sky” on top of this, then the “brown mountains,” “yellow sun,” “blue water,” “green tree,” and finally the front cover with the circle cut out. Staple on the left side. Younger children can read this as a wordless book. Older children can write descriptive sentences on each page. 

Hint! Your students will be overwhelmed to do this all in one day, so stretch this project out by asking them to just do 2 or 3 pages a day.

Here's a pdf with the patterns.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1SnEagA4jljeDFJVUJzb05xSlU/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-1D8Ns1zqp9yH8z7d9yT4uA




Earth Week Crowns

This is another craft your students will enjoy creating this week.

1st Take children on a walk and invite them to pick up small, light objects from the ground. (Remind them to never pull leaves or flowers off plants.)

2nd  Give them sentence strips, crayons, markers, and glue. Let them decorate their sentence strips with things that they love in nature. Glue the items they collected to the sentence strips and then adjust to their heads and staple to make crowns.

EARTH DAY IS COMING!

Earth Week is April 18-22, so I'll be sharing my "earthy" activities the next few days.

Earth Day
Earth Day, Earth Day! Let’s all come together. (Clap hands.)
Earth Day, Earth Day! To make this world much better.
‘Cause we love our planet Earth, beautiful and blue. (Make a circle with arms.)
We want to take care of it with everything we do.

We can recycle – tell your friends and neighbors! (Pretend to pick up paper.)
Glass, aluminum, plastic and paper.
‘Cause we love our planet Earth, beautiful and blue. (Make a circle with arms.)
We want to take care of it with everything we do.

We can plant a tree or two, to create green spaces;(Pretend to dig.)
Walk or ride our bikes to go different places. (Pretend to ride a bike.)
‘Cause we love our planet Earth, beautiful and blue. (Make a circle with arms.)
We want to take care of it with everything we do.

http://bit.ly/drjean_EarthDay

Earth Day Necklace
1. Give children a small ball of blue polymer clay.
2. Give them a small piece of green clay and tell them to break it into 4 or 5 little pieces.
3. Attach the green pieces to the blue ball and roll in your hands.
4. Make a hole in the center with the nail.
5. Bake in a 275 oven for 12-15 minutes.
6. String the earth ball on yarn or string to make a necklace.

Naturalist Kit
Make a naturalist kit by recycling a detergent box or similar container with a handle. Make binoculars by cutting a cardboard paper towel roll in half. Tape the halves together and hole punch at the top. Tie on a piece of string so children can easily take the binoculars on and off their heads. Add a magnifying glass, field guide, tweezers, film canister (for collecting specimens), paper, pencil, etc. Talk about what naturalists do. Can you be a naturalist? Divide children up into groups of two and let them take turns playing “naturalist” on the playground.

Visit these websites to get other ideas for Earth Week:

children of the earth.org

kidsforsavingearth.org



Here's a great website for your families to get involved:

https://www.aol.com/lifestyle/21-earth-day-activities-kids-190000598.html

WONDER IS CONTAGIOUS!

Our daughter is a poet, and we are so proud of her. However, she's a lot smarter than her parents and we don't always understand her poetry. One time she explained to me, "The beauty of a poem is that it touches people in individual ways." The poem that Holly wrote for Arlington County's remembrance honoring residents who lost their lives to COVID is below. Yet, it also says to me, "It's going to be O.K. no matter what happens. God is good and we'll get through it. Yes, 'wonder is contagious,' and we have faith because JESUS CHRIST IS RISEN TODAY."

I hope this poem speaks to you personally.  Perhaps the seeds will remind you of the children you teach.  Maybe it's a reminder that we often need to "leave them alone" and wait.  Have faith in yourself and our world.  Hold tighter to the ones you love.  WOW!   It's a wonderful world!!!!

The past few years have been so difficult for our community, and last winter (the winter of 2021) was particularly challenging. We were dealing with illness and loss; our kids and families were exhausted from trying to adapt to online learning; and we were also dealing with a general mental health collapse because of the quarantine and social isolation. It felt like the world was broken in so many ways, and in order to combat our despair, my daughter and I decided to plant a garden. I wrote this poem especially for the remembrance today, looking back on my experience a little over a year ago.


Planting

My daughter and I are planting seeds. 
It’s early spring, 
the long Covid winter behind us, 
more uncertainty ahead.
We've stopped numbering our griefs,
started holding tighter
to the loved ones still with us.

I dig small holes with my fingers
and my daughter drops in seeds
then we both smooth dirt on top. 
When she was younger she worried
when the seeds disappeared;
she’d try to dig them up again
to make sure they were okay. 
Now she’s older, patient.
She knows to leave them alone, 
to water them and wait. 

Every day she goes out with the watering can to check
and one afternoon about a week later
she’s jumping by the window, 
motioning for me to come outside and see 
the small green sprouts that will become lettuce or peas. 

Wow, she whispers, 
and because her wonder is contagious 
I allow myself to be amazed, too, 
by how the earth keeps going,
putting forth its tiny seeds 
after every long winter
having faith
some of them will dig in roots and grow.

https://patch.com/virginia/arlington-va/covid-19-losses-arlington-honors-residents-2-years-pandemic

I CAN LAY EGGS!

Are you busy dying eggs, hunting eggs, or laying eggs today? Here's a true story about how I used to lay eggs for my kindergarteners.

In the old days we had a "snack" that we provided. We tried to encourage the children to try healthy foods and so one day we had hard boiled eggs. I think the kids groaned when they came in from recess and saw the hard boiled eggs on the table. While they weren't looking I took an egg, tucked it in my skirt between my legs, sat down on the floor, and started flapping my arms like a chicken as I made a clucking sound. I released the egg, stood up, and they all thought I'd laid the egg. They said, "Do it again! Do it again!" I explained that I was all worn out from laying their eggs for snack, but the next time we had hard boiled eggs I'd do it again. Well, guess what? They wanted hard boiled eggs for snack every day. As time went on they became much wiser and made me turn around to make sure I didn't have an egg behind me...yes, I became wiser as well...but I can't tell you all my secrets!

Here's another funny story about an egg hunt. I was visiting a Head Start when a mother brought in a big bag of duck eggs. They were brown and green and beautiful. The teacher remarked, "They are still warm. Wasn't that nice of her to boil them for us?" Well, the next day the teachers hid the eggs on the playground, but this story doesn't have a happy ending. Apparently, the eggs were not cooked. They were just warm from being under the ducks or in the car. They cracked all over the children, their baskets, their clothes...you get the picture.


Bird Nest Snack
Give each child a Rice Crispie treat to mold into a nest. Put a few jelly beans in the nest and place a marshmallow “peep” on top. (Yeah, I know this is total junk and you probably can’t do it at school, but my grandkids enjoyed making these for our Easter dinner last year.)

            

Lunch Bag Basket

Open a lunch sack and roll down to form a nest.  Staple on a pipe cleaner and fill with goodies.

A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS

There are some things I just cannot part with…such as my favorite books I loved to read to my own children and the children in my classroom. Like anything, the teacher adds the magic to a book. If you love a book, then I can guarantee you that your enthusiasm will make your listeners love it as well.

Kalina is now in middle school, but when she visited the summer before kindergarten I got out my “antique” collection to share with her. I just couldn’t let her grow up and not know about Ping or Sylvester or Sal. The world has changed, but Kalina and I delighted/devoured/enjoyed/savored/appreciated the books as if it time had stopped. Reading these books was like giving her a little bit of my life.

The interesting thing is that as I was reading the books I looked at them through my “standard” lenses. I didn’t realize when I read Morris the Moose books that I was introducing double meanings of words. Chicken Soup with Rice was perfect for phonological awareness and Ping showed what life is like on the Yangtze River. We counted the dogs in Madeline, Sylvester was exploding with vocabulary, and we recalled the sequence of events in The Mitten. It is true that you can still teach children everything with a good book. But, you don't have to TEACH children with the books – they will just learn in a natural and meaningful way.


















Good books are like good friends that you want to visit again and again!

CAN YOU MAKE A FIST LIST?

Recall Fist List
At the end of the day have students tuck in their thumb and then put down a finger for everything they learned or feel good about.

*Can you make a fist list of new things you see in my blog today that you'd like to try?

Rainbow Clap (Kammi O'Hara) 

Start on one side of your body and clap in an arch over to the other side.

 

Spiderman(Jessica Schmidt)

To focus children’s attention in the hall say, “Spiderman.” When the children hear that they need to "glue" themselves against the wall. 

                                      


First Thing on Your Paper(Christine Williamson) 

The first thing I do is always the same. 

Pick up a pencil and write my name!


Word of the Day (Mairin Born)

Put a sight word each week (or day) in a clear nametag pocket. All week the kids must name the word or turn it into a sentence as a "ticket" to talk to the teacher.

Hint! Use shapes or letters for younger students.


15 Minutes of Walking/Exercising
Whether or not you have a Fitbit, try building 15 minutes of walking each day as you count, sing letter songs, say days of the week, months, spell words, and review other information.
                                       



MACARENA BONES

You know, sometimes it's fun to expose children to something that is NOT in the curriculum - just because!  Children are fascinated with their bodies and this is a fun way to teach them the names of the bones in their body.

MACARENA BONES

 

Tarsal, tibia, Fibula, patella.

Femur, pelvis, ribs, Sternum.

Carpal, ulna, Radius, humerus.

Hey, kiss my cranium!

Custom link to Macarena Bones:

https://bit.ly/drjeanMBones

Alex May, my webmaster extraordinaire, even made these cards for you.

Large cards -

https://bit.ly/MBonesLarge

Small cards -

https://bit.ly/MBonesSmall

Note!  These links will be in the description for the video on YouTube, and the cards can be downloaded directly from YouTube.

Want to learn about your muscles.  Well, check out this song:

Head, Muscles, Baby 1-2-3  (Tune:  "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes")
Head, (Touch head.)
Deltoids, (Touch top of shoulders.)
Baby (Clap hands.)
1 (Tap right hand with partner.)
2 (Clap hands.)
3 (Tap left hand with partner’s left.)
Head, deltoids, baby, 1 – 2 – 3.
Head, deltoids, head, deltoids, head, deltoids, baby, 1 – 2 – 3.

Deltoids – pecs (Touch shoulders and chest.)

Pecs – abs (Touch chest and stomach.)

Abs – biceps (Touch stomach and tops of arms.)

Biceps – triceps (Touch tops of arms and then backs of arms.)

Triceps – quads (Touch backs of arms and thighs.)

Quads – glutes (Touch thighs and bottom.)

Baby, please sit down. (Sit down.)


Activities: What are muscles used for? What would happen if you didn’t have muscles? What muscles do you use to walk? Carry your book bag?

Brainstorm what you can do to build strong muscles.

Use other body parts or bones in this song.

Explain that “pecs” is short for pectoral muscles and “abs” is short for abdominal muscles. What are “quads” and “glutes” short for?

Trace children’s bodies on butcher paper and let them add bones, muscles, organs, etc.