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

For quite a while now I have been looking for a Guided Reading system that worked for my classroom. I needed something that the class would get excited about, kept the parents informed of progress and was easy for me to maintain. After looking through various blogs, products and polling other teachers I realized I had to create my own system. There just wasn't anything that met enough of my needs out there that I could find. So for several months now I have been piecing together what may be the best thing I have ever made for my classroom. INDIVIDUAL GUIDED READING BINDERS!!!!! Here is a view of one of the front cover choices: I had always used simple folders with a reading log and the weeks books. There was no space to send home more literacy building resources that the children could work on. When I would send home extra resources in the kiddos backpacks I would either never get them back or they would get lost in the child's home for a while. I also wanted everything for...

Hey all, It was good to get back to work today but I am exausted! It is amazing how just 2 weeks can get you so off schedule! Anyways my class and I had a great time starting our Snowman Theme today that I just had to share! I started by reading them the teacher book, "How to build a Snowman" from my TpT Winter Snowman Unit This sequencing book starts with building the body of the snowman and identfying the top, middle and bottom. The next page has the arms going in on the left and the right. From there we dress and put a face on the snowman. The last page of the book says, "Can you draw me a snowman?" The kids had so much fun drawing their snowmen and i am going to add them to the end of our book and place it in the library. Here is a picture of the snowman my lowest student drew, youcan see that she was able to draw three circles and sticks for arms. This was a huge accomplishment for her: This next picture is a representation of the typical snowmen that w...

Hello All, Are you ready to go back to school tomorrow? I have enjoyed my 2 weeks of late nights and sleeping in but it will be nice to get my kiddos back on schedule! This week we are going to be studying snow and ice. Here in central Texas we sometimes see ice a couple of times in the winter and rarely see snow. So here are some activities that I plan on doing this week with my kiddos on top of my new TpT Snowman Unit. (1)Fake Snow Sensory tubs: Lakeshore learning sells a polymer based "snow" that you add water too and it feels cold and can be played with safely by kids. I plan to put this on trays and allow the kiddos to play but also write letters and numbers in it. (2) Ice coloring: Place ice on a tray and drop food coloring on top, watch as the ice melts and the colors mix. (3) Ice and Oil experiment: Make colored ice cubes with food coloring. Drop them into a container filled with vegetable oil and watch what happens! (4) Borax snowflakes (borax is toxic so make sure t...

Hello All, Today our curriculum (Handwriting without tears get set for school Pre-K) called for sentence building. Each child was supposed to dictate a sentence and we were to count the number of words in the sentence. This is a simple activity that would only take a few minutes had I not put my own spin on it. I decided to turn this into a sentence building, sight word, graphing activity! WHEW! Literacy and numbers in the same lesson, I love double duty lessons! We started by choosing a picture from a bucket. Each child took a turn and made up a sentence. We counted the number of words after I wrote the sentence on the large graph paper. Once our sentences were finished we identified and found each of our sight words. We circled each sight word and counted how many times we had used each word. I wrote the word and number on the right hand side of the sentence sheet. Once we finished counting each sight word we made a bar graph to compare how many times we used each word. The ch...

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