The Crazy Pre-K Classroom

Hello Blogging friends, can you believe in just a few short hours we will be in 2015? Where has the time gone! I know I have not been as present online as usual so I put together a little freebie as a thank you for your following. I also have my entire store on sale (20% off everything!) from January 1st-January 4th, just in time to stock up on resources for the second half of the school year. Click the links below to go directly to the freebie and to my store. Thank you for a wonderful 2014! Snowflake-Slap Freebie: Dolche Primer Sight Word Games The-Crazy-Pre-k-Classroom TPT Store Have a blessed 2015! Christine

Hello All, I am now back to working on my goal of organization this year after a 2 week whirlwind vacation. While away I was able to create 2 differentiated spelling centers that I am focusing on organizing this week. I have organized these centers for those who do not have the money to invest in all of the fancy organizing tools that I have been gotten for this upcoming year. This weeks drawer is simple using plastic bags and binder rings. The real organization comes in differentiating these two centers. Lets start with The Jungle Drop , this is a CVC word practice center. I have placed all of the working mats, bags of pictures, bags of letters and flashcards in the drawer. I have printed all of these on cardstock and laminated each. The flashcards will eventually make their way onto a binder ring for easy self checking. To start differentiating these units have the children match the lowercase letters to a print out of the uppercase letters. For those that are ready give a bag of pi...

First for the freebie! Download a free sampler of my new Fall themed ABC and 123 worksheets here: Fall Themed ABC and 123 Worksheet Freebie Scroll down for more images and info on this entire set! You know it is a wonderful day when a teacher is recognized for their talent. Georgia kindergarten teacher, Deanna Jump, has earned $1,000,000.00 (yes a million) on Teachers Pay Teachers and is still teaching in the classroom! I think it is a wonderful time to be a teacher, when collaboration and technology can impact our classrooms for the better. Congratulations Deanna! Now onto my newest endeavor! I have created a set of Fall themed worksheets for my class to practice their ABC's and 123's with cut and glue, writing, matching and more. I have found that my group of fours this year needs worksheets that have a kinesthetic element. They are successful with the academic element but seem to be missing some of the basic skills necessary to succeed past Pre-K. Cutting skills, glue...

Hello All, With my last minute trip to Atlanta I only managed to get one new activity listed on TpT but it is a good one! Digging for Dinosaurs is a fun word work and sentence building activity that can be played by partners, individually or at a center. Full instructions and color graphics make this a fun time. I plan on placing a tub of sand with the words buried on the table with sifters, shovels and dinosaur skeletons. Click the above link to check it out! Use this 17 page activity to teach sight words, how to build a sentence and parts of a sentence. A bulding mat and poster with sentence parts is included along with 5 pages of word bones and a journaling page. Enjoy, Christine

Clothespins come in handy at home for this or that but in my classroom they mean serious business. This week I am using my new clothespin center to reinforce color recognition, color words, counting and addition/subtraction concepts. First I printed and laminated the color word cards on cardstock. I cut them out and used them for our read the room activity. I used wood clothespins and colored on them with markers, for white I used white tape that I had. I intentionally did not make any blue clothespins to practice adding/subtracting zero. This seems to be easy for some and hard for others. We then matched all of the clothespins to the correct card and counted them. We recorded how many clothespins were on each card. After recording the numbers we moved onto adding 2 cards together and filling in the addition problems on the recording sheet. The students did so well, I was impressed by how much attention they paid to the counting and recording sheet. For my lower students I know thi...

This week my class is talking all about winter, here are some ideas you could use in your classroom: 1. Winter Garb Day: Have the children come in with all of their winter dressings, make a graph with a picture of each on the bottom. Fill in a square or have the children write their name on the graph. Count how many of each item you have, which do you have the most, least etc.? 2. Discuss the concept of pairs with mittens and gloves, things that go together, bring in some summer items and see if the children can distinguish between which belongs and which doesn't. 3. Hide small plastic winter animals in a large mitten, have the children feel and guess then pull the animal out anf tell you the name, discuss beginnig and ending sounds, whatever literacy concept your class is working on. 4. Hang signs around the room with a designated amount of each item on them, have the children read the room, counting and writing the number of each item they saw. 5. Make vocabulary cards ...

Well sadness abounds in my house since Christmas is over and the excitement has worn off. My one saving grace: GEARING UP for the return to school on Monday! I have been racking my brain to try to figure out a system to help me with reading groups and general center organization. My school requires that just about everything goes back into cabinets at the end of the week so my system has to be streamlined. Last year I used a Carson Dellosa 12 pocket chart and this worked great with 9 students because I used the nine lowest pockets, one for each child and then used the top three for assessment sheets, homework sheets, pens and rewards. All was perfect until I ended up with a class of 14 this year. DILEMA! There are only 12 pockets and 14 kiddos! 2 could share, maybe, but I think I will try something different. I have connected 2 file pocket charts together which gives me 24 pockets. So that handles the daily books. Now what to do with the others while I am working in small reading...