Seasonal Handprint Painting Ideas for Pre-K Children

Hello Everyone!

I am in the process of putting together a post about our classroom art center. Well, ladies and gentlemen, you will have to wait at least one more week for that post.  In the meantime, I want to share this seasonal hand painting book idea before I miss the next three holidays!

The kids painted one page of this book every week from mid-October to Christmas break a few years ago.  It was a fun counting, art and sensory project as the kids had their little hands painted with a brush to make the following designs.

So without further ado...I give you "Look What My Fingers Can Do!"

The Cover:  Look What My Fingers Can Do!  

By:______________

Page 1: One finger makes a pumpkin, 

Page 2: Two fingers make a candy cane, 

(on 3 by 4 inch construction paper)

Page 3: Three fingers make a ghost, 

(on 3 by 4 inch black construction paper)

Page 4:  Four fingers make Santa, 

(on 4 by 4 inch green construction paper)

Five fingers make a turkey,  

Six fingers make a tree, 

Seven fingers make two Native American Indians,  

Eight fingers make a spider,

Nine fingers make a Christmas tree,

and ten fingers make a reindeer!

There you have it...what 10 little fingers can make!  

To download the pages of the book click here.  A few housekeeping tips for making this ongoing project:

1. Store the finished pages in a file folder system by the art center.  I got mine at Wal-mart a few years back.  It has been a lifesaver.  Label a hanging folder for each student.  Then, as the students finish each page, you can file them in their folder for easy book making at the end of the project.

2.  At the end of project, have the book making scheduled in your lesson plan as an art activity so you or a staff person do not have to take extra time to put it together.  The students will love helping and it adds a numeracy and literacy activity to their day, making them have more ownership of the book they made so they will go home with excitement to read it to their families!  

3.  Have a plan for what students will do when they are not painting their page.  For example in our classroom, the staff person who is doing art will set all the kids (in her small group) up with open ended art activities from the art shelf such as markers, watercolors, bingo daubers, or play dough and then have each student paint their page one at a time.  This eliminates down time by giving the students something to work on while they wait.    

It also offers them choices by allowing them to choose an art activity either verbally or with an aided language board.  

Tip:  If you put the aided language page in a plastic frame you can use 

a dry erase marker to mark off art materials that are not a choice for the day.  

Choices make the world of special education a much better place.  By offering two choices you are okay with, the students feel they have some power and we are not giving up too much power.  For our reluctant painters, just saying, "Do you want to paint first or do (play dough) first?" Helps their anxiety toward painting go down as they have a choice!!  

We will get into this more at a later date.  For now I am going to sign off to work on the BIG Art Center Post that will be coming out SOON!  

Until then, happy painting!  -Lindy  

A Special Look at Data Collection from a Guest Teacher, Ms. Stephanie Kramer!

Today, I am welcoming Ms. Stephanie Kramer as a guest blogger to discuss a very important topic and one I am not very strong in...DATA COLLECTION!  

Ms. Kramer has come up with an excellent method to assess all her students in all developmental areas three times a year.  I could not be more proud and excited to share this post as Stephanie was my student teacher four years ago.  She is a phenomenal teacher, and wonderful friend & colleague who so passionate in her work with children.  So without further ado, it is my pleasure to share Ms. Stephanie Kramer’s expertise.

As a new teacher, I needed to create a progress monitoring/data collection system that was quick to administer.  I wanted it to provide valuable and reliable information that was easily read and understood by parents. I was really fortunate to have many, many resources to work from as I pulled my data collection forms together.  I utilized materials from college, the state standards, and various curriculum's that we use: Handwriting Without Tears, Read it Once Again, ZooPhonics, and some aspects of: Creative Curriculum, and High Scope, my Mom, past teachers, co-workers, and anywhere else I get my hands on data collection forms and ideas!  

Initially all of the many, many documents I collected were very overwhelming, but I slowly began to condense, combine, and reformat the stacks of pages to create an organized system that is teacher, student, and parent friendly.  The system works well in our classroom and the best part is it is included in our daily routine. 

First off, the three and four year old Curriculum Based Assessment (CBA) forms. If I had to select one part of my data collection process that I find most useful, this form would be it!  

                                           

Click here for the pdf of the three year old CBA form.

Click here for the pdf of the four year old CBA form.

To gather the data needed to complete each 9 week CBA, we have all the items and manipulatives in a small tote.  Below you can see what types of items we use. 

We have a tote for each quarter so that we know the students have generalized the skills and are not learning to the test. 

As you may have noticed on the CBA forms, all 4 quarters are listed at the top.  We use a new form for each quarter and simply mark which quarter the form is being used for.  This allows my staff and I to quickly compare data and note any changes in student performance, making for very parent friendly forms to share during conferences and meetings.  The goal is that by the end of the year, students will have been exposed to every concept on the CBA form and current levels of performance would be evident based on the students performance and data collected. 


So how do we keep it all organized and provide students with an opportunity to work on target areas on the CBA each day?  We have a morning and afternoon class so we use our school colors to designate between classes.  The morning class has yellow folders and the afternoon class has blue folders.
 
Each folder contains a sheet protector with the pages only the teacher should write on in the sheet protector.  These pages are our CBA forms and another set of forms I will get to at the end of this post.   


  

As the students complete their work samples/data collection forms in their data collection folders, we file them  into their portfolios so that the data collection folders stay very organized and student friendly.  In the page protector section, we also have the following forms to collect data in regard to gross motor, fine motor, personal information, body part recognition, name writing, self- portrait drawing and other specific things we track related to the curriculum and programs our district has choose to adopt. 

 

Click here for the pdf of these forms.

Click here for the pdf of these forms.

The front pocket holds pages for the student to work on. They are denoted with a green light as a visual prompt for student to know they need to work on the items in this pocket. 

                                 

The back pocket is labeled with a stop sign and contains pages that are to be completed within the quarter when a teacher moves them to the front pocket and the students are ready for them.  This system has been adapted and modified so that every student in our ECSE classroom participates and does so as independently as possible.  

                                 

We complete the data collection packet by doing our "folder jobs" as part of our opening routine.  With each student's name and/or photo on their folder, the students are responsible for locating their folder and pencil in our pocket chart and then getting to work.

                                                      

Choice time is the following activity, which proves to be motivational when implemented in conjunction with our classroom behavior management system that encourages students to always do their best. It also provides my staff and I some time to help individual kids when needed while other students move on to choice time.  

NOTE: Some student worksheets require more one on one time with teachers than others so we'll only place 1 or 2 of those forms in the front pocket each day while other students work on independent forms.  We also support students in working on various concept worksheets during arrival job time, small group centers.

Then as students progress, we incorporate some folder work into our independent work time.  Here is what that looks like in the classroom. 

                                    

We have 3 drawers that contain a job for each student and if they need to do a folder job, we simply place a photo of a blue or yellow folder in the drawer.

                                                  

Please feel free to ask me questions about this system at skramer20@gmail.com!  I've learned so much from reading blogs, observing, and listening to other professionals.  Although this system may not work for you exactly as I've explained, tweak it, make it your own and if you have time share the changes you've made with us.  We would love to hear your ideas! 

Now if you're still reading this, I'm done rambling.  I am incredibly humbled and honored to share my ideas with others and want to leave you with a huge THANK YOU for the infinite and invaluable time, endless dedication, and unrelenting passion you spend preparing and working with young children!  I wish you well in your data collection journey! 

Sincerely, 
Miss Steph

Personalizing Communication Supports for Individual Success

In the past couple month, there has been a lot of interest and excitement around the mini communication book and aided language boards as featured on the blog in October of 2013.  I contribute their success to a presentation I heard from Linda Burkhardt regarding Pragmatic Organization Dynamic Display (PODD).  She made me think about language in a whole new way! 

As I began thinking about our limited language learners in a different light, it was time for me to give them the opportunity to communicate more than just requests.  They deserved the right to communicate their needs, wants, and opinions.   And thus, PODD books and aided language boards were born.  

At first, my own insecurity and inexperience limited my use of the PODD book. As much as I learned at the training, I still felt silly navigating the book and fumbling through the words.  But just as a baby or a toddler experiments with language, it was important for me to do the same with PODD books.   

I owed it to my limited language learners to get into their worlds and start communicating in a way that they could see and eventually start being a part of themselves. 

I say "eventually" because as you might remember from my October 2013 post, we speak to typically developing children for at least 12 months before they respond in a verbal fashion. It takes 12 months of modeling and speaking to them and not getting anything in return! And even when we do get something in return, it is inconsistent at first and in little one or two word chunks like "mama", "dada", and "bye-bye". 

So long story short, I was going to have to be patient with the process.  Patient with myself and my staff as we learned to communicate using the PODD books and patient with our students as they watched us model its usage and started to dabble in the communication process themselves.   

For those of you who know me, you know that patience is not my strong suit.  I want to see progress and I want to see progress quickly.  There is no time to lose!  So as my staff and I started dabbling in communicating with the PODD books, we also began carrying a core word sheet in our aprons to support our kids in communicating. 

We were much more fluent in using the sheet than the PODD book so our students were able to pick up on using it pretty quickly.  By December of our first implementation year, we noticed the kids needed more. They were acting out and behaviors were off the charts!!  

In that moment, I had to reframe the behavior.  I remembered from early trainings with TASN-ATBS that behavior is communication.  The kids were trying to communicate but they didn’t have enough words to do it so as you might remember from my earlier post, we created a 5 page mini-communication book.

Page One: Core Words

Page Two: Manners & Action Words

Page Three: Greetings & Feeling Words

Page Four: Food & Hygiene 

NOTE: Page five is not available as it is the people page 

with specific photos of staff and students.

Page Six:  Colors & Shapes

You can access the mini-language book in the Boardmaker Online Community.  NOTE: Boardmaker has recently changed it's look and features a bit to better meet the needs of educators.  Feel free to use and change this template under Boardmaker Share to meet your students' needs. You can get the coil spiral binding at Binding Depot.  If you do not have access to Boardmaker and/or you are interested in the updated version check out this product on Teachers Pay Teachers.

You may also remember that from the 5 page mini-book came a little language cuff for one of our little gals.  She was in love with the 5 page mini-book and would try to take it from our staff aprons as she jabbered and pointed.  At first this made my staff and I reluctant to keep the mini-language books in our aprons as her behavior was such a distraction for herself and others, but then as my speech path and I were talking we began to reframe her behavior.  She was trying to COMMUNICATE and we would be doing her an injustice if we took her voice away.

So we changed our perspective.  We often reminded ourselves that although she had limited verbal language, her behavior of grunting and pull on any and all language boards she could get her hands on was a bit disruptive...However, it was her way to communicate! She had soooo much social communication in her just bursting to come out!  She was and still is a little social butterfly. She just needed a way to get it out.  And lucky for you, her parents have given me permission to share her journey with aided language supports. 

It's my pleasure and pure delight to bring you...Miss Lilly!  

This video is of Lilly the first time she attempted to use her language cuff.  Notice the cuff was Prototype 1.0. It was a toilet paper tube and in hindsight not the right fit.  It was not flexible enough for her little arm and it got wet every time she washed her hands. 

After recognizing the concept of the original language cuff was good but not functional, we moved on to Prototype 2.0, a very high-tech cutoff tube sock with the words hot glued to the outside. 

This version was function for communication purposes but did not fit Miss Lilly's very fashionable style so one of my fabulously talented paras, Miss Molly, created Little Miss Lilly this very high fashion cuff.  She knitted it with a plastic pocket insert in which we could change out the words as needed.  

It was such a hit that her mom asked Miss Molly to make her two more as Christmas gifts.  What a great idea, Mom!  There is no better gift than the gift of communication! :)  

At first, the words on Lilly's language cuff were just enough.   She used it to communicate she wanted to be "all done", wanted more, needed help, or was sad, happy or mad.  But in May behaviors returned, Lilly communicated with all her being that she needed more words.  She would touch sad or just continually tab the cuff in frustration with no functional means.  Lilly wanted and needed more words!  

To make the added words functional and purposeful for Lilly, we incorporated her interests and strengths.  Lilly's has a strong interest in interaction with others.  She likes to greet people, interact socially, sing, and go on functional walks in the hallway.  So purposely, we added communication pages to her cuff that would be motivating for her to use.

We added a social page in which Lilly could greet people, ask how they were, what their name is and tell them what her name is.

And then a page in which she could communicate her need to be all done, and move onto preferred activities such as delivering tools to the janitors room, delivering mail, or singing with teachers.

These additions are pretty specific and not necessarily general enough for her cuff at home.  They were created to motivate her to use her communication device and turn pages to get what she wants. As she starts to get the hang of it, more words will be added and then eventually she will move to a full PODD book as the language cuff is set up in the same turn-the-page fashion as a PODD book.  

As you can see by looking at page one of the language cuff, it has colored tabs for turning and a "more to say" icon in the upper right corner.  

The pages are ziploc name badge holders. (I purchased mine for $0.70 a piece at a local office supply store.) Then, I punched tiny hole punch circles on the sealed side of the holder to spiral bind together that way I can slide new communication pages in and out as needed.  

Note:  That my staff and I continue to model the PODD book alongside Lilly's language cuff so when she is ready to manage more words we can move to her own PODD book.  

In the beginning, we granted any request she communicated with her cuff but as time went on we set limits using the later and time to work icons on her cuff.  For example, if she communicated that she wanted to sing during direct instruction or small group learning rotations, we would honor her communication by saying you want to sing, then we would point and say "sing later, work first."

Here's Lilly in action again the first day she was given her cuff with more pages and words. 

WOW!  Right?? She is a rock star!!  And you haven’t seen anything yet.  On the second to last day of school (last May), Lilly surprised me with this amazing play session.  


For specifics about the play kit in this video click here.  

What a great way to end the year!  And for me who moved on from the classroom over the summer it was bittersweet.  I know that her amazing family and teachers will continue to help her grow and expand her communication skills but I am totally sad that I won’t be in the frontlines to witness her greatness.  Her love and enthusiasm to communicate and be social are contagious.  I would like to thank Lilly's parents for allowing me the opportunity to share her enthusiasm with all of you!!

Take her enthusiasm and run with it in your own journey with verbal and aided-language communication!

Best, 
Lindy