A is for Alligator

This year in my class I have a group of kiddos who love the arts and crafts area, and also struggle with letter recognition and phonics. From this was born the idea of our alphabet collage books. This gives the crafty kids a chance to reinforce language skills and kids who struggle with fine motor skills to practice.

I created templates for every uppercase letter and have one letter available in the art area every few days. I give children of all different development levels a chance to be successful by providing the templates for kids who can trace and cut, to pre made pieces for those who are still unable to trace and cut.

Our first letter was a great success, next I just need to encourage the kiddos to embellish and personalize their work even more!

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S Snake

Snakes are a regular occurrence here in the jungle. We see snakes slither across our outdoor hallway with some frequency, so the kiddos have a personal connection to them. This was reflected in lots of patterns, smiles, and familiarity.

Bulletin Board: Room on the Broom

This year for Halloween I had both families who were avid celebrators of the holiday, and those who did not celebrate it at all. To find a nice compromise we did a book study of "Room on the Broom" written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Sheffler. I wrapped the idea around friendship and kindness rather than Halloween and everyone was happy. To make the bulletin board I used the fairy tale printable boarder from Sparkle Box UK, http://resources.sparklebox.me.uk/7000-8000/sb7597.pdf Then I layered construction paper to make the broom and took pictures of the students, teacher, and aides all sitting sideways on a chair against a blank background. The children asked to add in the animals so I simply copied their pictures from our copy of the book. There are so many wonderful resources for this story and I can't speak more highly of the short film that was made in 2012, it is wonderful!

O Octopus

The kiddos in my class are used to seeing octopus tentacles being grilled on skewers in the market stalls, but making a crafty one wasn't too much of a stretch! I'm happy to report that as a class that data for letter recognition and phonetic sounds has jumped up greatly since I launched the letter collages.

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