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  

Number & Letter Identification Aid

To support students in naming letters and numbers, I created a number and letter stick.   It's simply a long paint stick with different colors painted on each side.  After the paint dried, using a permanent marker I wrote the alphabet on one side and numbers on the other.  

My students use it as an aid to identify letters and numbers.  Depending on what we are learning, they will either draw a flash card with a number or letter on it.  If they know the letter or number they  will say & find it on the paint stick.  If they cannot label the letter or number, they match it visually to the same letter or number on the identification stick. My paras or myself will then cover up the letters or numbers past that letter or number.  Then, the student counts to the number by pointing to each number as they go or by singing the alphabet song until they reach that letter.  This sounds confusing but is actually quite simple!  Click on these video clips for clarification. 





(A big thank you goes out Miss Oaklye, our speech pathologists' daughter, for modeling the technique.)  

Instructor's Insight: One modification I would make if I made the sticks again is to have a letter stick with upper case letters on one side and lower case on the other.  Then, have another stick to use as a number stick.   On it, one side would have numbers with Velcro to work on one-to-one correspondence.  The other side would have numbers without Velcro.  Currently, I have a different stick for one-to-one correspondence.  (This is actually the paint stick used in the number line video clip above.)

The students simply Velcro items like tokens or counting bears to the stick to work on counting using one-to-one correspondence.

Tour Our Classroom's Independent Work Area

Building from last week's post that detailed our Direct Instruction area, this week we are going to look at our Independent Work area. Students transition to the Independent Work area directly following their time at the Direct Instruction center.

Independent Work is another area in the classroom that was created after I attended a Structure Teaching training based on the TEACCH concept.  The goal of the Independent Work area is to individually teach each child how to sit and attend to activities at his/her level.  This video demonstrates how the Independent Work area is set up in our classroom. 

Please ignore my less than professional, soccer mom attire! The only time I could schedule the video this week was right after Saturday morning soccer ... said this working mom! :).

In the video, I shared that each student has a drawer and contained in his/her drawer there is a task or activity specific to that child's development.  To promote true independent work, the activity in each child’s drawer requires skills already mastered at either Direct Instruction or elsewhere. The work in each drawer always has a clear beginning and end as we want the student to know how much work must be completed and when he/she will be finished.  Some students have work as simple as putting items into a container.  Others have sorting, matching or writing activities.  As the school year advances, the student's work increases based on his/her individual progress.  

Here is a peek into every child’s drawer for next week. I am sharing them in order of lowest to highest skill level.

Drawer One: A simple errorless put-in activity where the student puts the pegs into the same color container and then closes the container by placing on its lid.

Drawer One

Drawer Two: A simple money slot where the student puts pennies in.  This is a great one for hand strengthening as the slot gives little resistance and the student has to push to add the pennies.

Drawer Two

Drawer Three: An errorless sorting activity where the student has to put tokens and bears into the correct holes.  Note: If you flip this task over, there is an option to simply put all the tokens and bears in the same large hole which is an easier skill. It's been a nice feature so I can use the same box for two skills!

Drawer Three

Drawer Four: Another errorless sorting task where the student has to sort circle and square blocks by putting them in the correct holes.

Drawer Four

Drawer Five: A sorting task where the student has to put the bears in the correctly colored bucket.  Notice: I hot glued foam to the top of the buckets so that the items would not fall out when the student puts them in "All Done".

Drawer Five

Drawer Six: Another sorting task where the student puts the pom-poms in the slit in the middle and sorts the pipe cleaners by the correct color around the outside of the slit.  This task is from Second Story Window. 

Drawer Six

Drawer Seven: Is a silverware sorting task provided by Kimberly A Henry’s "How Do I Teach this Kid?"

Drawer Seven

Drawer Eight: The student must use the mini tongs and fine-motor control to place the pom-poms into the ice cube tray.  

Drawer Eight

Drawer Nine: A task from Christine Reeve and Susan S. Kabot’s book "Building Independence: How to Create and Use Structured Work Systems."  (If you are struggling with the concept of how to build independence, take a look at this book. It is a phenomenal resource!) In the task, the student has to simply put a colored eraser top on the correspondingly colored pencil and put them in the "All Done" portion of the pencil box. 

Drawer Nine

Drawer Ten: A size sorting task where the student matches the circles to the correct circles on the Velcro board.

Drawer Ten

Drawer Eleven: This is a task that takes a little more time and effort. The student has to put the correctly colored beads into the approriately marked canister.  You can read more about this one by clicking here as it was featured in my Top 10 Task Box Countdown last winter.

Drawer Eleven

Drawer Twelve: A task that came from my errorless learning worksheets that were shared in last week’s Direct Instruction post.  The task I simply filling each bug in with color. 

Drawer Twelve

Note:  Each drawer is assigned to a morning and afternoon student. Between classes, my staff undoes all the tasks and puts them back into the drawer for the next class.  Which leads me to a really good point....NEVER EVER undo a child’s task in front of the student!! As promoted by the TEACCH model, undoing a task in front of the child leaves an impression that his/her work does not matter.  It would be like your administrator coming into your classroom and deleting an IEP you just completed because your work was not meaningful.  (Maddening thought...but it really drives home the point, huh?)

On the note, I'll share my "Dos & Don’ts for the Independent Work" area. We have this list posted along-side the center to help staff remember how to support students.  

The most important tip is to prompt from behind and use as few cues as possible especially verbal cues as they are hardest to fade.  These tips were given to me by a colleague of mine, Peggy Lawrence.  Thanks Peggy!!

Also as we do at all centers, I have a list of rules for the students to follow at independent work.  

Beside the rules, I also have a Velcro strip that shows which students work at that desk as we have a two work areas. Here to see a video model of my sons using the Independent Work area.  NOTE: In the video, I am the camera lady and the teacher so it is little different but I think you will get the idea. 



This video clip was shared with my students last week to show them how the process should look as some of them were struggling to figure out how to use their time wisely after the task was completed.   

As you noticed in the video, my boys did their work and then sat and did one of the choices for two minutes.  The two minutes was noted by a large sand timer.  We have a 10, 5, and 2 minute large sand timers. They are a favorite in our classroom!!  We use them for a variety of things.  I honestly don’t know what we would do without them!  You can purchase them from Watch Time Pass.  

After the two minutes were up, the boys transitioned to the iPad table.  The iPad table and independent work area are a joint center. Together, they run 10 minutes for my morning students who have shorter attention spans and 15 minutes for my afternoon students.  

From Direct Instruction, some students transition to the iPad, followed by the Independent Work while other students transition from Direct Instruction to the Independent Work then to the iPads.  I know this sounds a little confusing but with all students using an individual schedule, everyone knows where & when they need to be.  I promise to show you how individual schedules work in my classroom in a future post.

Finally, I did want to share a little "extra credit" with you.  On occasion I will have a student who can’t attend all of large group but is very successful with independent work. In these cases, I will have a set of three drawers that that student transitions to in the middle of large group.  The student will then get some much needed downtime from large group by completing the three independent tasks.  When the child is finished, they come back to group with the rest of the class.  This helps to give the student a functional, engaging break from group in a while offering the rest of the class the opportunity to attend to group in a much more relaxed, calm environment.  Here is a pic of what the drawers look like for this process.  

I know this post may seem like a lot of "Independent Work" for the teacher but I promise the success you will see in your students makes it well worth it!  You don't have to do it "independently", feel free to reach out for support or guidance.  It may take some time, but I eventually respond to all your emails.  (In fact, it makes my day to hear from y'all!) 

Wishing you lots of success with your own Independent Work areas! 

7 Day Work Task Challenge - Day 4: Counting & Color Matching Support

As I read through the disassembling and assembling section of the book entitled Visual Support for Children with Autism SpectrumDisorders: Materials for Visual Learners by Vera Bernard-Opitz and Anne Haubler, I found a way to put my husband’s golf obsession to good use!  When you buy a dozen golf balls, they often come in 4 sleeves of three balls each. This packaging makes for an excellent assembly task without much work at all. 

I purchased a bucket of colored practice balls and made one assembly task where my students have to fill all the golf ball sleeves with the same color balls. I added sticker dot numbers to the side of each sleeve so the student can count the number of balls. 

By adding marks to the bottom of the large box, the student can see how to pack the golf ball sleeves when they are finished.

To add a color sorting skill to the task, purchase multi-colored balls and add a piece of colored tape around the outside of each golf sleeve.  Ask the students to match the ball to the corresponding  golf ball sleeve. 

Big thanks to my husband and a family friend of ours for "lending" me your golf ball boxes!! What hobbies or items does your household have that could pay off in the work task department?