Community Helpers

We are dedicating two weeks to learning about all of the jobs we could have when we grow up and are focused on the theme of Community Helpers!

 

This is a great opportunity for all of the parents to share their jobs so don’t forget to open up this theme to the parents to see if they want to share what they do all day. If you think about it, almost all jobs are community helpers in some way J

 

We began our week by exploring all of the different types of Community Helpers there are with the help of a great Lakeshore Theme Box!

This had a lot of great resources and with it we rolled its themed dice and talked about what Community Helpers we saw and looked at the drawings included and talked about the different jobs within each drawing. We had tons of fun!

 

Afterwards, we sorted through our people and transportation box and found a lot of great Community Helpers and their cars and played on this great City Rug.

Our first Community Helper focus was on Police Officers! We read a book about the job of Police Officers, and then did some fun Police Car Track Painting!

We love to dress up so I found some Community Helper outfits in another classroom and borrowed them for the next couple of weeks.

 

 

 

 

The next day our focus was solely on Firefighters. I had a great time dressing up in a Firefighters hat while reading the story today! It kept everyone’s attention and was fun, I have to admit J We looked at fire engine’s I had printed in different colors and played a color recognition game. With multiples you could extend this to patterning, grouping, play memory, and older students could even play a version of four square with this!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I set up some books about firefighters on one table and some Community Helpers and their vehicles on another table for the children to explore.

 

 

For art we water-colored a fire and decorated a fire engine using dot art markers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the afternoon I had their engines cut out, their fire bunched and a splash of blue water cut out. The children added glue and placed their engines at the bottom and decided where to put the water to help put out their fire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had the children dress up and played the song, “Hurry, Hurry, Drive the Fire Truck," originally from Barney. Here is one of my students “spraying the water,” during the song.

We couldn’t talk about Community Helpers without bringing up Teachers! After reading a story for Circle Time I gave each child a chance to be a teacher! Here is one of my munchkins pretending to read the book to the class. Everyone got a turn!

We painted apples for ourselves because the children were the teachers that day!

Librarians are a great Community Helper to highlight. On our focus of librarians we actually took a mini-fieldtrip to our school’s library! We got to borrow a book that the children picked out themselves. Here is the one they picked!

For art we designed our own books. We talked about the different book parts and their names, and then decorated our own! I reminded the children, while they were decorating, to think about what their story is about. Each one told me a great, original idea and I wrote it on the back of their book.

 

So far we have had a blast! Check back next week to see the other great Community Helpers we will be talking about!

 

Healthy Bodies Week!!

We just had a fun-filled week full of healthy bodies themed activities in my classroom. Here are a few things you may want to check out:

On Monday we ate a healthy snack and talked about things that are healthy and things that are unhealthy. We each shared a healthy food that I drew up on the board.

We read, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” by Eric Carle and afterwards talked about the healthy foods the caterpillar ate and the unhealthy foods he ate in a “walk-through the book.”

We water-colored a lunch:

The class picked out their lunch, I helped them cut it out (because they are two and scissors aren’t in our skill-set yet), and they pasted the items into their lunchbox. 

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! I am excited to share my ideas and experiences in a preschool classroom. I have been teaching for the past five years with munchkins ranging from one and a half year olds to six year olds. I never thought early childhood education was where I would end up, but now I can't imagine anything else!

Hopefully you will enjoy the creative art projects and stimulating activities. My aim as a teacher is to help my munchkins explore the world one theme at a time and have a lot of fun doing it! If you have any great ideas to add, please don’t hesitate to comment. I love and live by the mantra, “beg, borrow and steal,” that most teachers follow. I also promise to be brutally honest and also include blooper posts of ideas that went wrong. What’s an early education classroom without changes of plans and projects gone wrong?