Is Everybody Happy (after seeing Dr. Jean)?

Is Everybody Happy (After Seeing Dr. Jean)? YES!! Dr. Jean is one of the best presenters for early childhood and primary educators EVER! Her ideas are fun, engaging, meaningful, and wonderfully practical. Everything she does is backed by research and experience-she's all about teaching the WHOLE child and having fun! If you have never seen Dr. Jean in action, make that a lifetime goal!! Here's some of the awesome ideas she shared at the Central Florida Association for the Education of Young Children's Spring Dr. Jean Conference. These are posted with full permission from Dr. Jean-there are several other links at the bottom of this page with great pictures from her other phenomenal workshops. Dr. Jean Rocks!
This is an activity using homemade alphabet vests. She printed each letter in upper and lowercase form and mounted them on tag board. Attach them together with string and wear them over your head. Here she is doing an activity using her song, "7 Little Letters" (the tune of "5 Little Ducks"). The letter wearers go around in a circle and she calls a letter by sound. The person who has that letter vest leaves the circle, gets a hug, then stands with the teacher. Then she did some Making Words activities with the vests too.	This is one of her famous story props for the "The Little Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly". It's made from poster board, a Ziploc bag, and pantyhose! She feeds the picture props of each character into the old lady's stomach (the Ziploc) as she sings. She also taught us the sign language movements to accompany.
She showed us how to make paper bag pom poms and use them with some of her songs (among other things!). You simply tear from the open side small strips down to the flap. Then put the "flap on your lap" and roll it into a handle. She recommends drawing lines for younger kids to cut-older kids can tear. You can cheer names and sight words too, i.e. "Give me an J, Give me an E, Give me an A, Give me an N! What's that spell? JEAN!" Our favorite song to cheer: "Who Let the Letters Out?"!	This was a rousing rendition of "Home on the Range". She used a class illustrated book and asked 3 volunteers to come up and howl like coyotes while we sang. She had the best class books! She recommends telling kids, "Use as many colors as you are old"-her class books were beautifully illustrated!!
These are two things she does with Nursery Rhymes and other traditional songs and poems. The children create a class book of nursery rhymes (she used grocery bags for the pages) and also have copies that go in nursery rhyme notebooks. You can use 3 ring binders, spiral pads, pocket folders, etc. The children read the rhyme all week then it goes home on Fridays for the weekend. There's a place for families to write comments and compliments for each page too.	This is a book made from deflated and laminated Mylar balloons. She also had books made from gift bags-just cut the bottom off and staple pages in between. Another idea was taking dollar store photo albums for books too. I am going to use these in my take home bags!!
These are other examples of books you can make with every day materials. The Cracker Jack box was used with a writing prompt of, "What would you like to get in your Cracker Jack box?". The animal crackers book was an animals book. The Ziploc bags book was for anything and everything! She shared a "bathtub" book-kids write and illustrate pages, seal in the Ziplocs, staple at the seals and take home to read in the bathtub!!	This is a book box to use in the classroom or at home. Perfect for storing take home books from Dr. Jean's Scholastic reproducible books-you can see/order them at www.scholastic.com. I own and love them all and my kids do too!!
This book accompanies her song, "Who Let the Letters Out?" She also shared a doghouse pattern with magnetic strips you can attach to your chalkboard for the kids to use magnetic letters to sing with. I made one on Print Master that you can tape inside a cookie sheet for an independent or teacher small group. Click here to print your own in color!	These are several examples of teacher and child-created alphabet frieze pieces. For the "Pp" card the children had to go on a scavenger hunt to find something for each letter. They glued it down and used interactive writing to write the object's name. The sign language piece was made by a teacher with die-cut felt hands he glued to form the sign for each letter. The "Mm" card was a take home project where each kid had a letter and they had to find environmental print from home that started with it. She also shared examples of friezes made with the kids' names.
This is a neat flap book to build vocabulary. There are tons of other ways to use it too-categorizing, a kid dictionary, etc...	This is a lunch sack book, sort of a "Guess What Letter..." book. Who knew brown bags could be so useful?!
This is an Alphabet Memory Book with events alphabetized. Another version had one page for each letter with pictures. Click here to see our Alphabet Memory Book from last year...	This is an "Oreo" book for two letter sight words to accompany her "Oreo" cheer. You lick (just pretend!) one hand and say the first letter, then lick the other hand and say the last letter. Then you clap your hands together and say the word!
This is a peek book created about her "granddogs". She used it to model how to read with excitement and engagement-the "rabbit trap" to catch the "rabbit"-in other words, inspire children's love of literacy!	This book had wonderful ideas to use with the alphabet. I wish I could have photographed more pages! The first page is the body letter page, where you use your body to make the letters and the second page is using a cardboard magnifying glass to find the matching letter.
One of my favorite ideas-a Mother Goose Jukebox! Use old CD's with the words to a nursery rhyme taped/glued on. The children choose a CD from the jukebox to sing!	This is another version of a flap book using animals.
The pictures below were shared by Ms. Michelle Vela, a teacher who traveled from Tampa to see Dr. Jean! She was gracious enough to send me her pictures and allow me to post them. THANK YOU MICHELLE!!
This is a personal PC used for writing, talking about stories, etc..	This is another page from the "Let's Get Wild with the ABC's" book shown above. It's all kind of textured letters for tactile learners.
This is a wonderful book, "What's Your Sound?" to the tune of "Where is Thumbkin?". Click on the second page to see the words. Dr. Jean stressed how powerful names can be for developing literacy!	These were all ideas for Predictable Books-Click on any picture to see a larger version.
MORE COMING SOON!