After leaving teaching two years ago, I am already returning to teaching! I left the classroom to be the Director of Education of a daycare center, and this year we added a Kindergarten. I am teaching half day and I am super excited to be teaching reading again.
As part of our curriculum, I have chosen Letters Alive from Alive Studios. I am so excited to be using such a multi- sensory approach to reading and science! The kids love the curriculum and studying about the animals and their habitats. I have had so much fun decorating my classroom as a zoo and changing our dramatic play area each week that we study a new habitat. My students loved fishing, bird watching, and milking a cow on the farm. Here are some pictures so you can “see” what we have been up to !!
Habitat Of The Week
Each Monday, the children come in and our dramatic play area is set up as the new habitat we are studying this week. The habitat includes our animal of the week as well. The “zookeeper” (me) introduces the animal and the habitat to the class, and the students’ excitement is contagious! We check the mailbox in the morning, and inside is a stuffed animal to go with the letter of the week. Next, we explore our new habitat and animal through our Letters Alive program and begin our research!
Our Farm
Our first habitat in our dramatic play area is a farm, to go with the letter Cc for cow. In our habitat, the children discover the animals on our farm and plant and harvest the crops. The favorite part of the week, is when it is time to milk the cow. The students are so excited to milk the cow, which is simply a clear rubber glove attached to our cow.
The next habitats we visit are the Jungle and Rainforest. These were super fun to set up with vines and trees. We study about monkeys and tropical birds. The kids love creating animals for our habitat and looking for birds through binoculars. Watch out for snakes !!!
Another habit we cover is the Savannah. The students loved this one, they go birdwatching with their binoculars and keep track of the birds they see in their journals on their clipboards. They loved standing next to the giraffe and measuring themselves.
The Swamp was one of our favorites! We have to watch out for alligators, but fishing is a blast! I set up a campsite in our reading corner to go with the fishing theme and the kids love it ! They begged to go camping and loved to read in the tent! After they caught fish, they brought it back to the campsite to cook!
Our Swamp
The last habitat is the ocean. I had a lot of fun setting up this one. In this habitat, we worked on vocabulary, I had pictures near the animals with their names and I did a mini “write the ocean”. The students collected shells that I had put out and then sorted them by attributes.
This is a really fun way to engage your students in both science and reading. Animal of the Week has been a huge success in our classroom and the children look forward to Monday when they come in to see what is new in the habitat corner. Try it and have some fun !!
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