Farmer in the Dell

In my kindergarten reading group a few weeks ago we learned the song, "Farmer in the Dell".  I also read the book Farmer in the Dell published by Child's Play and illustrated by Pam Adams to the little people.

The little people loved this song and book! To practice their sequencing skills, each little person made "a dell" and cutout the characters from the song.  

Each little person took their turn singing or saying the song and adding each character one at a time from the song.  The last little person had some difficulty cutting out their "cat" and "rat".  He cut off the head of his cat and the face of his rat.  So when it was his turn to act out the song, he was perfect until he got to "The dog takes the cat."  This is what he sang:

"The dog takes the cat.  The cat has no head.  Hi-ho the derry-o, the cat has no head."

Well, it was all I could do to keep from falling out of my seat with laughter.  But wait! It gets even better.  He continues with song.

"The cat takes the rat.  The rat has no face.  Hi-ho the derry-o, the rat has no face."

It was the highlight of my day and I will never be able to sing or read "Farmer in the Dell" again without thinking of him and the headless cat and faceless rat.

Until next time!

~P4P

School Paraphernalia

I am going to be getting a new student and I thought I would share my system for organizing the little people's school supplies.  Since I have such a small classroom space, I am always trying to think of creative ways to store school supplies, keep them organized, and not take up so much room! So here's my idea for this school year.

It's an empty French's Fried Onions container with the label taken off.  This is where each little person keeps their crayons, a pair of scissors, and glue sticks.  I labeled each container with the little person's name on the top and the bottom.  Up to six of these containers fit in a basket! 

This has been a wonderful system this year! So much better than last year when each person had their crayons in a Ziploc bag. Often the zipper on their bag broke or somebody poked holes in their bag and crayons would spill out everywhere.  Also last year I had the glue and scissors in one container and each person had to find their own.  Very time consuming.  This year, the only complaint the little people have is sometimes it is hard to find a certain color of crayon.  My only complaint is the number of fried onions I have had to consume! I started collecting the empty containers last year during the holiday season for this school year.  When school started, I was still short several.  So I bought the last few, dumped out the fried onions into a tupperware bowl and have been putting fried onions on everything! I had just finished the last of the fried onions when I picked up two more students and now another new one! 

Now I just need to find some more plastic pencil boxes for the markers.  Why don't Target and Wal-Mart carry those during the year?

I hope this has been helpful! Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

~P4P