Energizers….Transition Activities

Planning structured transitions is an important, and often overlooked classroom component.  During my first year teaching transitions often became hectic and tended to be the most challenging part of the day and I used to try and white knuckle through them.

Nowadays, my transitions are much more structured and therefore require more planning…..and scouring the internet for different motivating activities for my students.  We do each activity and excuse 1 or two children and repeat.  Here are some of my favs:

There are simple activities in the responsive classroom approach Energizers.  Some of these activities are intended for older students, but here are some good ones for younger kids.

Welcome to the Jungle….We’ve got fun and games

 

Jungle theme

Books

http://www.amazon.com/Rumble-Jungle-Giles-Andreae/dp/1589253671/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311712878&sr=1-1

Songs

I found most of these songs on itunes, some from amazon mp3. 

 

Jungle Song & Props

These are props I created to use with a jungle song for our jungle theme this week.  I found the foam animals at walmart and made the tin using a coffee jar (always handy) and foam and felt scraps.  Each child comes up and chooses and animal from the “jungle” as we sing the jungle song. This song is helpful in promoting word retrieval related to theme and it also promotes turn taking.   Using the props really held the children’s attention, and we used them later on to act out characters from jungle themed books so they’re a bit of a 2for1 special!

 

The Jungle Song (Sung to the bear went over the mountain)

_____went to the jungle

_____ went to the jungle,

_____ went to the jungle,

what did he find?

(Child takes out an animal)

____ found a ____, ____found a _____, ____found a ______, and he took it home.

Insert the child/animal name, you get the picture.

“A” is for Miss Ashley

This is my first ever blog and I am SO excited!  I currently work as a special education teacher for a self-contained preschool classroom.  I wanted to start my blog to share all of the ideas, strategies, activities & so on that I’ve stumbled across in my first 3 years of teaching.  I think I spent 90% of my time off from work combing the internet for ideas, products, strategies and anything I could find and I think a blog is the perfect place to store and share it all.

I hope ya like it!