I am very excited about an ice cream themed set of printables that I have posted on my new Teachers Notebook store.  The clipart is from

KPM Doodles. The set includes a class book cover, a black and white class book page, a color class book page, a pocket chart graph question, a number 1-10 puzzle, a pocket chart for shared reading, a set of color word matching cards, and the numbered ice cream cones pictured below. The set is available HERE The ice cream bowls and spoons pictured came from the Dollar Tree.  The "sprinkles" to count are tiny pom poms.

This week the kids really enjoyed A Color of His Own.  I wanted to come up with an extension activity for this sweet story of a chameleon who is tired of changing colors to match his environment.  This is what I came up with.  The kids enjoyed it so much that several did extra pages so they could take some home (since I was keeping their first ones for a class book).

Here's the printable: http://www.growinginprek.com//A%20Color%20of%20His%20Own.pdf

The clipart is from creepycrawlyroadshow.com

Look what my teaching partner did with this idea:

I have a new idea to list under Emergent Literacy - Names.  We read the book A My Name is Alice and then created our own pages using the formula ____ My name is _________ and I like ___.  We have lots of names that start with C and L, so we had candy, cupcakes, and lots of lollipops.  One little boy who needed a word that started with H (since his name started with H) was stuck.  He didn't want to choose hamburgers, hotdogs, hats, or helicopters.  We put it down to think about for a while.  In a few minutes he was "helping" me, which he very often does.  We both loved the idea of him choosing "likes to help."  He then looked down at his own school t-shirt and copied the letters (mirror image) to go on his picture with two characters he drew.  Every year I laminate and selfishly save one of the class books we make.  I think I know which one it will be this year....

I'm having a fun week doing pizza related things with the kids.  Check out our dramatic play and the class book we made under Themes.  http://www.growinginprek.com/pizza.htm