Do I Remember How To Teach????

It seems like it's been so long since I had kids in my classroom and actually got to teach!  I think we all have that fear in the back of our minds that we've forgotten how to do our jobs.  Good news--you haven't forgotten!  I was so thrilled to have a small group of students in class last week and we kind of just picked up where we left off!  It felt soooooo good!

Teaching online through Google Meet and having a group of kiddos in my classroom are two totally different things and it felt so good to be back in my element!  I only had about 1/2 of my class in attendance since we are doing small groups, but it truly felt amazing.  We wore masks and socially distanced with our seating arrangement, but we also read stories, painted, did some writing, completed calendar activities, danced along with GoNoodle, and so much more!  

I only had my students for about 2.5 hours, so I wanted to make today fun for them as we get back in the groove of things.  So, I chose one of my favorite fun winter stories to read and we completed some activities to go along with the book.  Today, we read "Sneezy the Snowman" by Maureen Wright.  This is such a cute story and always gives us a good giggle.

After reading about Sneezy and all the ways he melts in the story, we discussed everything and then completed a little story sequencing activity.  We listened to the story again from a YouTube read aloud as we did our story sequencing and completed this together.  I love this version of the story on YouTube (it's also great if you don't have the book already)!

After we finished up our story sequencing, we completed this fun writing craftivity.  The kids each came up with a way their snowman melted to complete the sentence, so they were all unique.  After they completed their writing, we got ready to make the puffy paint to create our own melted snowman!

The kids enjoyed the puffy paint so much and squealed with delight!  I have these huge makeup brushes I got for free somewhere, so I use those as my puffy paint brushes!  They're perfect for all my puffy paint projects and so easy to clean!  Since our snowmen are "melted" there is no need for perfection.  They can put the paint on their paper however they want and then all all the fun stuff snowmen would have such as eyes, buttons, a carrot nose (made from construction paper), a hat, etc.  You can definitely accessorize any way you want!  For this project, I just put all the paint on one plate and let the kiddos get what they needed.

I can't wait to share some of our other fun projects from this week with you, so watch for more fun with puffy paint!