National Geographic Website

My school is inundated with caterpillars right now. With so many natural, incidental learning experiences available, this is a perfect time to implement our life cycles unit.

National Geographic Kids has many great resources to also support this theme. Of course, in addition to bugs and butterflies National Geographic also has many other topics addressed too. Check them out!

Creature Feature: Monarch Butterflies

What in the World: Bugging Out!

Visiting Kindergarten: Social Story

It's the time of year when, in pre-k special needs classes, we begin to think about the process of transitioning children to kindergarten.

This year, there is a little girl in my class with an interesting combination of strengths and challenges.

She has a good cognitive skills and a good ability to learn vocabulary and concepts through incidental learning. She has a solid base of kindergarten pre-academic skills (she knows all of the letters of the alphabet upper and lowercase, she can count to 15, she can identify 11 colors and 6 common shapes. She knows many beginning consonant sounds, has an awareness of rhyming words, can read all of the names of the students in class and reads approximately 10 sight words.)

She gets overwhelmed with new experiences and has difficulty transitioning to new activities (especially if it is in a different location on campus). She still needs staff support for potty training. Her fine motor skills are significantly delayed and she still needs staff support for many tasks that include visual motor planning.

We have decided to try to specifically address an area of strength with an area that is a significant challenge for her while she is still in pre-k. She is going to start going to a shared reading and phonics lesson with a kindergarten class for approximately 20 minutes a day. Since she has good cognitive skills and she does not need any staff support in our pre-k large group circle time, we are going to try to balance this with the challenge of accepting a new experience. We are hoping that she will become familiar with the kindergarten building, the kindergarten classroom and the larger group of kindergarten students. We are also hoping that our pre-k staff can go with her for a short period of time and then fade away so that we increase her independence and comfort in the kindergarten classroom.

To help her prepare for this, we have drafted a simple social story (you can download a generic copy here.) about going to the kindergarten classroom. She has a copy at home that her family has read with her for the past week and there is a copy at school that classroom staff have been reading with her too. We have also started walking past the kindergarten room and having conversations about visiting kindergarten on Monday.

We're hoping by layering in the staff support and also building on her strengths, she will begin to feel comfortable and be able to learn new skills in the kindergarten class.

Cheap! Dinosaur Measuring and Science

In the current economy (and as far as being frugal and financially wise at any time!) I am always interested in lessons that can be enhanced as cheaply as possible.

My class has been involved in a inquiry based unit on dinosaurs for the past week. It seems to me that there are always easy ways to integrate language and literacy lessons in every unit, but sometimes it is more difficult to integrate math and science. Since this unit focuses on dinosaurs, science is not a problem either, but how can we integrate math concepts? Here's one idea we used.

I found these dinosaur figures at my local Dollar Tree. (Yes, it cost a whopping $1 for this lesson.)


I explained to my students that these dinosaurs were supposed to get bigger when we put them in water. We decided to measure them with a ruler, predict how big we thought it would get and then measure it after it grew.



Since I wanted to focus on some math skills, we made a big deal out of measuring the dinosaur. I left my finger on the number 4 after we measured and reminded the children that he should get "bigger." I asked them "How big do you think he will get?" as I ran my other pointer finger across the top of the ruler (showing them the most logical choices across the ruler.) They made their predictions as I recorded them and then we observed. The pictures show you where we are so far!



After we measure our dinosaur again tomorrow, we'll take him out of the water and predict what will happen. It will be interesting to see if any of the children will predict that he shrinks back to 4 inches (remember, that's where we started at our first measurement!)

"Post It" Graphs

Here's a simple strategy that we use a lot in my classroom. I write each child's name on a post it. Then I write a question on a piece chart paper and usually add visual supports for each column of the graph. Below is a picture of our most recent graph:



I like to use the post it graphs for lots of reasons:

1) They help children learn literacy skills by reading their name and their peers' names.

2) They help children develop language skills by answering questions and making choices.

3) They help children develop task related skills and focusing skills because they are actively involved and then they physically get to place their own name on the chart.

4) They help children develop social skills by learning how to take turns and wait for their own turn.

5) They help children develop math skills as we count the number of votes in each column and discuss concepts of more, less and the same (equal).

6) They help children develop literacy skills by becoming part of our environmental print in the classroom.

7) They are quick and easy to prep for! That means I don't spend more time preparing the materials than it takes the children to actually engage in the activity.

Positive Behavior Support: Solution Board

Throughout my district (as with many others) there is a large push for the implementation of school-wide positive behavior support (PBS). I am also fortunate enough to work in a community that has received a large grant to support strategies that increase mental health for children in early childhood settings. One of the initiatives funded through this grant is PBS training and materials.

Our early childhood PBS training is based on the pyramid model and training modules from CSEFEL.

One of my favorite strategies that I learned from my PBS training is the "Solution Kit." The solution kit is a strategy that teaches young children the options they may try when a conflict or disagreement arises. It helps them to learn how to independently (or with less prompting) solve problems.

You can watch a video of a teacher modeling the "solution kit" here.

Two years ago, I started using the solution kit with my pre-schoolers. I had a small plastic suitcase very similar to the one in the video and housed the kit at child level near my circle time area. While I loved the concept of the solution kit, I found the implementation to be difficult for my students. The suitcase with the clips was difficult for some of them to manage with fine motor deficits and the solutions all in a pile became quickly disorganized and overwhelming for them. I didn't want to give up on the positive aspects of using the solution kit, so I had to figure out a way to make it work for my population. Our solution kit evolved into a "solution board."


I simply printed and laminated the visuals from the solution kit and then taped them to the side of my desk. They became a permanent fixture in the classroom. The board allowed me to organize the solutions in a manner that was easier for my students to track visually and also eliminated the need for them to be able to open the kit. Towards the end of the year, for many of my students getting ready to transition to kindergarten, I could be across the room and just verbally prompt them to try using the solution board. I even had two parents who saw us using the solution board in the class and asked for the visuals to use at home!

I think the power of the solution board or solution kit (however the concept evolves for you) is that it teaches the children skills for managing their own conflicts. It gives children a measure of control over the resolution to the conflict and does not require an adult to intervene and "fix" the problem. And, ultimately, that's what we want.....for children to independently be able to come to a peaceful solution to a conflict.