The Crazy Pre-K Classroom

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...

In my quest to get organized for next year I have devised a system for differrentiation that I believe will work for me and my kiddos. (If you know me this is a huge step, I am a very disorganized ADHD person!) I am calling this series of blog posts "Organization for Differentiation." I hope you can gleam some insight and share some of your experiences along the way. Also, to kick off this series I will be giving away the biggest piece of the puzzle for me, the drawer tower! This is a $50.00 piece and I will have it sent straight from Amazon to the winner! See the pictures and make sure to enter the giveaway at the end of this post. So, here is the first step for "Organtization for Differentiation" The Tools: 2 drawer towers, dollar store drawer organizers, target dollar spot book bins and center supplies. This is in the very beginning staes and I will be updating you every step of the way. So to begin I have started by deciding what type of books I want on each c...

Hello All, In my neverending quest to fit just as much as I possibly can into my small amount of classroom storage I have found a new Favorite!!!!!!! That's right 4x6 photo holders! Not only are they slimmer than the traditional pencil boxes but shorter and they stack nicely! I managed to fit a classic 8 set of fine tip crayola markers, a full set of crayola crayons, a few pencils, an eraser, scissors and a small gluestick. Everything my kiddos need at their desk, the only caveat is that traditional pencils are a little too long but once they are sharpened a couple of times they fit in just fine. I can think of so many more uses: flash cards, dice games, counters storage, matching cards sets, the list goes on and on! I found these particular ones at Michaels which had them for $1.49 and 40% off plus the everyday teachers 15% discount=$.77 each!!!! Not only practical but cheap when you find them on sale. And I even bought a few extra just because I know I will find ways to u...

O.K. I hate to gloat and I am surely not the first to think of this idea but I did not see this on Pinterest! In the interest of space I have turned my classroom clipboards into both paper holders and chalkboards! That is right, I decopaged the front with my jungle themed scrapbooking paper and then painted the back with acrylic paint and 2 coats of clear chalkboard paint that I found at Hobby Lobby for $5.99. I am so excited about these! I have a very limited amount of storage space in my classroom so anything that can do double duty in my classroom is great. I think I will also use magnetic chalk paint (also at Hobby Lobby in spray paint form $7.99) on the back of my dry erase boards. Then we can manipulate magnetic letters, dry erase and use chalk, triple duty!!! Can you tell that I cannot wait to get back into my classroom, Monday, I am waiting for Monday! Till next time, Christine

Hello All, I don't know about you but I cannot buy enough bins! It seems every year I need to buy more at the last minute even though I have invested in many throughout the years. This year I found 2 types of bins at Target in the dollar section that I intend to use on my classroom tables. The larger purple and gray bins will hold 3 of the small fushia bins. These I will use for markers, crayons, colored pencils and anything else we need during the day. This way I figure there will be less spills and better organization. I normally use a large bucket of each supply for each table and it is just too much, the tables are cluttered and the kiddos end up knocking the little pails over. This way each bin can be stacked and stored without having to make sure they don't spill. These also have handles which will make them easier for little hands to carry. How else might you use these bins? Leave a comment and you could win a free surprise from TpT. Make sure to leave yo...

In my previous post I told you a bit about my organizational struggles and my habit of storing school items at home. I know I'm not the only one! Here is my starting point, these cabinets have not been truly cleaned out since the beginning of school this year and they are starting to drive me crazy. Since we end school May 25th I am just starting to remove items that can go home, freeing up some space for supplies. This is my largest cabinet that I spoke of in my last post. There is not much I can do about the bottom area except add a tension rod with theme bags. I have to be able to put the rolling carts in each week. I will however go through all of the filing drawers and tower buckets to see where the storage can improve. I am hoping that all of the buckets and supplies sitting on top of the towers will easily organize into the theme bags and make more space. In the top section I need to find a better way to store file folder games, my science center suppli...

If you are anything like me you have more in your classroom than you can store so you take the extra home and store it in the attic or garage. Well, my husband has not been so pleased with my school to home storage arrangement and has challenged me to a classroom storage redo before school ends! That's only 5 weeks to revamp my storage solutions and fit everything into my classroom! Yikes, this could be difficult for a person like me! This will require several posts since I started my cleanout today. My classroom has a wall of cabinets, 1/2 mine and 1/2 for the church that uses to room on Sundays. Every Friday I pack up everything I use for the week to then pull it out again on Monday. It is imperative that I put everything back in it's place because if I get lazy I won't be able to find my supplies on Monday. Here are my top tips to start organizing and I will post my progress as I discover more ways to store my classroom supplies: 1. IKEA: I love the Ikea ...

In a desperate attempt to store reading book packets I used binder rings and caribeeners to attach these two file pocket charts to my cabinets. My school requires everything to be packed away every week so I needed something that was functional and easy to pack away. These are working great. Each child has a pocket and the 4 signs have a different animal with the child's names for that group. I then have the classes seat work divided into file boxes be animal group. After their reading group is finished one student is assigned to get their file box and take it to the table for the group to work on quietly while I work with the next group. Our rotations are as follows: Work with teacher Work on seat work Work on writing Read to self Each rotation is about 15 minutes with a movement break of one minute in between. This is working so well for me this year. I hope these ideas can help with your reading groups. Till next time, Christine

So, we have all been there, trying to teach a small group while the rest of the class is causing noise and disruption. I have found that the following procedures and ideas have worked for me. Quiet centers that can be done alone, quickly set up and quickly put away. Wiki Sticks with mats Pop beads in a bag Lacing beads with plastic needles and yarn (patterns) Lego Minifugures, especially popular with the boys, I take them apart after each playtime. Lacing ABC's, great with sight word cards. Number stencils, paper, stamp markers I also use peg boards, rhyming trains, hexabits, bug patterns, magnetic dolls, stencils, sewing cards, patterning beads, classification cards, sequencing cards and file folder games. Anything i think they can play quietly on thier own I will try in my two towers. The kids are really enjoying the variety and most are not choosing the same center over and over as I had expected to have to address. I think this system is encouraging even more concepts...

The small orange table houses my writing center. To begin I have my dry erase boards with markers and erasers. I then added thin line markers, colored pencils and the pencil sharpener. there is a file holder attached to the side of the drawer cart that you cannot see that holds construction paper, coloring sheets and dry erase practice books. Since the table is so small I have the students take the supplies to the nearest table that is reserved for the writing center during our rotations. I will be rotating different supplies in and out of the writing center each week. My students love tape and staples, while i would normally reserve these for the art center I find that the children write more when they have access to these tools. Crayons, dot painters and q-tips with paint are also frequent fliers in my writing center. The children know that writing needs to take place and art is for another time. Till next time, Christine p.s. don't forget to join and enter the giveaway

I finally have pictures of my new reading group setup. I have completly rearranged my classroom for the second half of the year in order to put my new system into place. Because my school requires I put everything into cabinets at the end of the week (we share our classrooms with the church) my system had to be portable and storage friendly. I purchased 2 towers with 10 drawers each. Everything else I already owned. Picture 1.: The back corner of my room houses the two towers, they are filled with quiet centers such as letter and number stencils, wiki sticks with ABC mats, pop beads, stringing beads and more. Picture 2: Closeup of same area Picture 3: Early reader buckets, classification center, word work tiles, Popcorn words (Unit found on TpT) and a bucket with the students handwriting workbooks.  Picture 4: Classification center with letter and word tiles for word work. This is a standing center that allows movement and keeps ctudents from having to sit for ...

Well, I have finally put together the two towers I purchased for my learning centers and quiet play centers. I am using these as stations during my reading group time. I also saw at Mardel's that they hung a small file pocket chart off the side so I purchased those too. The pocket chart on the quiet center tower will be filled with fun worksheets and coloring sheets and the one on the learning centers tower will be filled with assessments and learning papers that the children can choose to complete. I am sooooooo excited to put this in my classroom tomorrow! I purchased these book bags to put in the drawers, I suppose a ziploc would do the trick but these seem a bit more sturdy. I will use these to hold all of the counters and small pieces that go with each center. In my quiet play center drawers I have several of these Melissa and Doug magnetic dolls. My class loves these and I found the boy set of three different sets on clearance at Sam's Club after Christma...

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...