Pajama Day

Sunday, January 20, 2013

You would think that Pajama Day would be my favorite day of the year, but for me it's literally living my stress dream.  Each year when I have a lot going on in my life, I have the same dream... I am rushing around my classroom trying to get everything ready for the day but the copy machines are down, I don't have the paint colors I need, all the pencils, and crayons are missing, nothing that I need is ready! In short, I have too much to do and not enough time.  Then, the bell sounds and when I open the door to let my kids into the room I realize that I am still in my pajamas- I didn't even have enough time to get ready for school!

Sound familiar?  I'm sure we all have things that stress us out and you might have your own stress dreams.

Well, on Pajama Day, when I have to spend the day in my pajamas, I am literally living my stress dream.  I try to relax and enjoy the day- just like my Kinders do, but all day long I'm uncomfortable in my jammies.  Even though I'm not enjoying being in my pajamas, the kids love the day and the parents look forward to a stress free morning getting their kids ready for school. We even make pancakes for breakfast so the parents don't even need to feed their children breakfast on Pajama Day!  Seeing the smiling faces of the kids and their parents helps to make Pajama Day more tolerable for me- ok, actually fun, but I do look forward to the moment that I can change back into real clothes when the school day is over.


The Mitten

Monday, January 14, 2013

The Mitten

One of my favorite literature units is Jan Brett's The Mitten.  We can use it as a jumping off point for so many things.  We can learn more about the animals in the story.  We can talk about all the descriptive language in the story.  We can discuss the rich illustrations (which tell the story all by themselves).  We can read other Jan Brett books, like The Hat and compare them to The Mitten.

My kids love to paint on the easels, so I asked them to paint an animal to go into a giant mitten on our bulletin board.  As you can see, the kids were very creative and the animals turned out super cute.

Our next activity will be to act out the story of The Mitten.  I went to Jan Brett's site and downloaded beautiful masks for the kids to wear and I brought in a big flat sheet for us to use as a mitten.  This activity really helps them understand characters, setting and plot.


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