A week or so ago, I blogged about the use of puppets in the preschool classroom. At that time, I showed you a very plain puppet stage - all white with no bells and whistles. Now I want to illustrate the potential use of a display board once you get it all fixed up!
I am a big user of stick puppets in preschool. For every song or fingerplay that uses a character, I make a stick puppet. To go with my stick puppets, I have made this stick puppet stage.
I bought a yellow science display board from the local school supply store and added bulletin board borders around the edge. I also glued little pockets along the bottom and sides to hold the stick puppets.
Everything has a purpose
You will notice along the bottom of the stage are apples in the pockets and number stickers placed below the pockets. The apples are in an AB pattern - yellow/red. The numbers help with counting when we are singing a song or fingerplay where numbers are involved. Everything on the board has a purpose!
Keeping organized
The top pockets are holding little frogs and fish that I will also be singing about. I can rotate the puppets as often as I rotate songs. When I am ready to sing thefrog songor thefish song, I just have a few children come up, get a puppet and jump in behind the stage to sing along.
Making a big opening
This is the other stage that I still haven't decorated yet - something I hope to get done this week. But you will notice thatthe opening is large and low enough for Wy to see through. What I find, is that the younger children are happier when they can see the action or their friends on the other side. They rather look through the window and hold the puppet. The older children may duck down low to only show the puppet, but they like to take a peak too just to see everyone laughing and singing along.
Choosing a board
The thing you need to know about the yellow stage is the back of it is brown cardboard. So the sides have to face out towards the audience. The white board is white on both side so I can pick which side to decorate and which way I want the edges to point. So just keep that in mind when you are choosing a board for yourself.
Teaching Tool
I rarely leave the boards that I make out for free play although you might decide you want to. I use them as a teaching tool in circle time. They are easy for me to fold up and tuck away when I don't need them and when I do use them, the children are delighted. I use the boards as one approach (of many) to invite interaction and play-fullness during circle time activities.
What kind of toys do you bring into the classroom? What you have on the shelf for children to play with can promote learning.
This is a little box that I found at a garage sale one year and it is one of my favorite toys. It has little doors and locks all around it. I bring into the classroom every once in awhile and the children love to fill it up with just about everything that will fit in the little doors. This toy allows young children to work those fine motor skills and promotes a cognitive interest in the workings of locks and doors.
This is a stack of plastic bowls that I bring in to the classroom to let the kids play with. Not every toy will be labeled as a "toy" by the "toy experts" but I find that children love to play with everyday household items. Something as simple as a stack of plastic bowls and a wooden spoon promotes dramatic play, cooking, measuring, stacking, and can even make a nice drum too.
I have a doll house that has been refinished more than once. Every once in awhile I will load it up and take it to school for the children to explore. They love to rearrange the furniture more than actually playing doll house. From this experience, children can express their ideas through conversations and role play. Children also work on their organizational skills by rearranging the furniture. We talk about the different rooms in the house and I encourage the children to tell me about their homes. A great toy for conversational starters.
I love to keep a variety of carpenter tools in the classroom. I always have them in the block area but we also use them as musical instruments, in the dramatic play center, and often incorporate them in creative art projects as well.
Do a toy inventory: walk around and make note of what kinds of toys you have in your classroom.
Check to make sure toys aren't broken or missing pieces.
Set toys out on the shelf rather than hiding them in the closet.
Rotate the toys to keep then fresh and inviting.
Have enough toys available in interesting areas for everyone to always have a choice of something to do.
Observe the children in their play and think about what children are learning and what else would be fun to try.
Use toys throughout the curriculum content - music, art, math, language, circle time, centers, and so forth.
Be selective in choices of toys and don't have so many that it just becomes clutter central.
Circle Time:
I once observed a teacher who always kept a little shoe box filled with small toys for circle time. If she were introducing dinosaurs, the box would be filled with toy dinosaurs. She would take the dinosaurs out one at a time and talk about their features. Then she would pass the dinosaurs around the circle. With each new theme, the she changed the toys in the box. I have always imagined that her closet at home is lined with shoe boxes that say "dinosaurs, bears, cars..." and wondered where she put all the shoes!
Safety Concerns and Age Appropriate
Safety and age appropriateness must always be among the top considerations of choosing any toy for the preschool classroom. Here are a couple of links that do a good job expanding on safety issues you should keep in mind.
Making big or small books with children is not a novel idea; in fact, all you need to know about this is included in the wonderful series of books listed at the end of this short post, with some new ideas which include digital storybooks.
Children will love making various types of books whether they can write or are still at the pre-writing stage. Some Objectives:
To retell and illustrate a favourite story or fairy tale, e.g. Cinderella, or other favourite
To share information from a science lesson or series of lessons – for example, a book about snow, a book about saving water
To copy and illustrate the lines of a poem and chant or song they learnt recently
To showcase their own imaginative stories, dialogues and poems or rhymes
Even if they cannot write yet, they can always dictate their story to their teacher and by the process of watching the written word emerge on the page or by looking at it afterwards, they begin their road to reading.
The children will be using their fine motor skills for cutting round shapes, colouring in pictures, gluing shapes in place, as well as their artistic abilities and imaginative, creative thinking; there is value across many levels, language development and literacy being of prime importance.
other materials, e.g. pieces of fabric, dried flowers, very small objects, etc..
How?
With children who are still at the pre-writing stage
you can ask them to tell you their story and you can write it for them
you can give them the words written on card or paper slips and guide them to glue them in the right place and order
With early writers, you can help them by asking them to
trace words or even whole phrases
fill in some words or phrases in gaps you have created and later copy them into their book
copy a familiar story or fairy tale into a book they have made
More independent writers can
write their own stories in rough first and then copy onto the book after the teacher has helped ‘fix’ any mistakes
write their own poems or other type of text – song lyrics, rap or short descriptive paragraphs
Digital Story books
Online tools like Storybird can make the children’s efforts look very smart and professional and I am very fond of those as well, but I also believe that making their own hand made versions has got great educational value for the children.
After the children have finished, you can leave their book on the server, go for the paid version if you want to print their book, or if you want to do it for free, you screen capture all the pages and print them as images.
But even a simple powerpoint slide show story can be great! Here is one I made with my nephew when he was about 5 years old using summer snapshots on the beach.
A Day On The Beach
Picture this: A teacher is holding up a big book.
A group of children is gathered round her looking at the illustrations, listening to a story, acting out parts of it, involved in the telling and retelling, noticing small details, repeating new words, learning new concepts.
Getting children to develop a love for books means spending time with books, reading them and making them. Whether you are teaching children in their mother tongue or in a foreign language, you will notice the great boost to language acquisition in the children.
Making their own books is the next logical step and early literacy teachers can apply everything they know to these enjoyable and memorable to children reading and early (or later) writing activities.
For Pop up books, you can visit here to watch and show the children short little movies of how Dave Carter, an author of popup books made some of his pop ups and the same page leads to some wonderful shapes in pdf format that you can copy and print out for your pupils to make their own books.
ThinkQuest – A wonderful site where you can find illustrated instructions for many types of book shapes
About Marisa Constantinides
Marisa Constantinides is the Director of Studies of CELT Athens and is responsible for the design and implementation of all the programmes offered by CELT.
Marisa's main qualifications related to teaching are the RSA Diploma in TEFLA (DTEFLA), a precursor to the Cambridge DELTA Diploma, and an M.A. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Reading in the UK. Her involvement in Teacher Development Programmes started at the Hellenic American Union where she ran workshops for colleagues and State School Teachers, then with Longman Publications running numerous training seminars for them all over Greece.
Marisa Constantinides has written materials for children (Basic Grammar Workbooks 1, 2, & 3 published by English Schoolbook Publications), activity books for Cambridge Exams set texts, and numerous articles on Language, Foreign Language Teaching and Education. You can follow her English blog at http://marisaconstantinides.edublogs.org/
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A huge thank you goes toMarisa Constantinides for sharing this wonderful post with us! Please leave your comments for Marisa below....
I recently saw the cutest picture of a mailbox purchased and displayed on the Tired, Need Sleep blog. This reminded me of my own little mailbox that I have had for over 20 years (just like my laminator) and always use in every classroom that I teach in.
It isn't a cute little red mailbox like Tired, Need Sleep posted but it is a really cool red, pocket quilt made and given to me by one of my assistant teachers back in 1990.
When I am teaching, I like to do a week on The Post Office in my classroom and I hang the quilt down low so the children can reach it. I also place it near the writing center. I then place a name tag on each pocket, including my own name, so the children can give each other mail.
I often put little notes in the pockets too and I get tons of mail on a daily basis. Everything from little scraps of paper, little cutouts, little notes, and little pictures with hearts:)
I usually hang the quilt up close to February and leave it up through Valentine's day. Some years we deliver our Valentine cards to the pockets and other years I let the children make Valentine bags instead. And when the month is over, I can easily fold it up and put it away. This keeps the novelty from wearing off.
What can children learn?
Name recognition: One of the greatest learning experiences is name recognition. Children are learning to recognize their own name as well as the names of their classmates.
Name writing: The children will often go over to the name tags and then back to the table working diligently to write each other's name on their notes or envelopes. The children want to draw and write so they can put something in a pocket.
Motor Skills: The children also love to fold their notes. They have to if they want them to fit in those pockets. Keep in mind, I find many little notes on the floor throughout the day and try to help sort it out, but most of the time it was the writer who just enjoyed the experience and the receiver doesn't always know when the note never made it to their pocket.
Social/Emotional: Getting mail can give a big boost to one's self-esteem and feelings of acceptance in the classroom. If I see someone is lacking in mail, I encourage the children to write them a note and the children love to do it. They like making their friends feel good and they love giving and getting mail.
For Younger Children You could put pictures along with their name on each pocket so they will be able to identify their own pocket. The youngest child loves stuffing things in pockets:)
Let's face it - laminating posters, file folder games, and bulletin board pieces can get expensive. I wish I could offer up some great alternatives to laminating but all I can tell you is that in the long run, laminating produces the best results.
In the old days, I used clear contact paper to laminate my resources but this was a difficult task. If I wasn't sticking the contact paper to a table I was putting it on crooked or leaving huge wrinkles down the center of my pretty posters - ugh! So eventually I invested in my first laminator. I actually still have the same one today. It is about 20 years old and I have had to disassemble the whole thing a few times to make it work but it does still work!
My laminator is an Ibico PL - 260 IC. It is very heavy and can only laminate paper up to 8.5 inches wide. I have bought a few newer laminators over the years but they all broke down. This exact model may no longer be available but it is my old faithful.
I usually purchase my laminating pouches from an office supply store like Staples or Office Depot but there are suppliers online as well. There are also different thicknesses but I find the 3ml does just fine for my purposes.
The problem with a small laminator is that you can only laminate small projects. One of the schools I work with has a large laminator that handles posters and large displays but let me tell that the price of that baby is up there. The other option for large pieces is to go back to the office supply store or a school supply store and have them laminate for you.
When you go to laminate small pieces, cut the pieces out first. If you laminate first then cut, the seal around the edges gets broken and chances are your pieces will start to be exposed or just slide out. ALWAYS use the cardboard pouch cover when laminating small pieces and flimsy paper or the paper will get wrapped around the roller inside the laminator. That is what I discovered the hard way but I am now quite proficient at taking my laminator apart and putting it back together again. I rarely laminate just plain pieces of paper. I only use card stock or paper with a heavier weight for best results.
If you are getting big wrinkles or tiny bubbles then your heat may be set too high. If the laminating paper isn' sticking well to the paper, then your heat may be set too low. Read the directions that come with the laminator for more info. Always put the closed end of the laminating pouches through the laminator first!
Is it worth the investment?
I think it is in the long run. I still have many of those same games and bulletin board pieces I laminated back in the old days. I also think laminating makes everything so much more shiny and pretty. Avoid laminating photos though - especially ones you value the most. Better to try that out on ones you really don't care about.
What else can be laminated?
I laminate home-made books that my preschool students have made together as a class. Then I put the book in the reading center for the children to view at will. I also laminate journal covers and name cards for the kids to use all year long. When the children need to see their name card, they just whip it out and use it. Most crayon and some markers can be wiped (or scrubbed) off of a laminated piece of card stock but not all.
There are many tools teachers can use to introduce educational concepts during circle time to their preschool students for example…
Puppets – puppets are a great way to capture the attention of preschool age children. Preschoolers of all ages love to interact with and watch puppets.
Children’s books – a well selected book can kick off a thematic unit with a bang. Age appropriate books help to create interest in ideas by introducing them in a way children can relate to. Using “Big Books” can make it easier for each child in a large group to see the illustations.
Flannel Boards – some teachers use flannel boards to retell stories or to display shapes, numbers, and letters.
Easels – many teachers have an easel placed strategically in their classroom. Easels are a great way to introduce new concepts and to involve students in creating graphs, making charts, and sentence starters.
Projectors – technologically savvy teachers will use electronic devices such as overhead projectors and laptop computers attached to projectors to capture student’s attentions and introduce new concepts.
Display Boards – much like the boards used in science fair projects, display boards can also be set up to introduce concepts and provide opportunities for student participation. Display boards are also nice because they can be folded up and put away. Some teachers create a series of display boards to introduce ongoing concepts throughout the school year.
Using a variety of teaching tools can help capture student interest and keep students engaged in circle time activities.
