The Crazy Pre-K Classroom

This week has been a whirlwind of fun apple activities. I think my favorite new apple activity is the apple fraction stamping we did on Tuesday. I sat everyone down at the table and showed them whole, half, fourths and eigths. They were amazed that you could cut and apple like that and put it back together. After each cut I had the children stamp that section on a piece of construction paper where I had written the different fractions. I was amazed at the amount of critical thinking this activity produced. My four year olds had the best questions like, "So if you cut it again what do you get?" and "Why does the apple have a stem and 5 points on the bottom?" Our last stamp was the 5 points at the bottom because it looks cool and reinforces the 5 section "star" in the middle of the apple that holds the seeds. One little one asked me, "Mrs. O'Donnell if the seeds are stuck inside the apple how do we get more apples?" So then we had a talk about ...

Hello All, I am holding a short giveaway (9/14-9/16) for my newest unit: Scissor Skills: teacher book, cutting practice+. Please visit the giveaway section at www.teachersnotebook.com to enter and while you are there please check out all of the new items in my store! Check out the following pictures to see a sampling of what is in my Scissor Skills Unit Thank you for being loyal followers, good luck! Christine

So, you want to use the Daily 5 with your 4 year olds but you are not quite sure how you are going to get them ready or if they can even do it. I can tell you after implementing the Daily 5 in my Pre-K classroom for the past 3 years I am confident that not only can you teach it but they can accomplish it! Not sure what the Daily 5 is? You will want to get your hands on the book "The Daily 5" by: Gail Boushey and Joan Moser. My school used this book and accompanying videos as a professional development study three years ago and my classroom has never been the same. Tailored to elementary students who can already read I had to tweak it to meet my classrooms needs. I wait until the class is acclimated to school before even thinking of teaching the 5 areas of the Daily Five. Each day the children are supposed to: Read to self, Word Work, Read to someone, Listen to reading and Meet with the teacher. I always start with teaching read to self. I have the whole class bring one book t...

Have you ever encountered a parent or teacher who thought thast worksheets were just a teachers lazy way of keeping children busy? I have had my share of people refer to worksheets as "busy work" or "time wasters." I wish they knew how valuable worksheets can be for learning and assessment; especially when they are used in conjunction with a full lesson. Often times worksheets are given after a lesson is taught to help solidify learning and assess understanding. This week I had the opportunity to start with my worksheet and bring it to a lesson. We completed this shape worksheet together at the table, copyright goes to Teachers Helper. This is my copy, trust me my 4 year olds don't color this well yet but they are working on it! Anyway, after completing this worksheet we all brought our own copy to the carpet and proceeded in making a graph to compare the number of shapes there were on the page. I also took the opportunity to reinforce shapes and colors during ...

So, we all know little ones these days love technology but we can't afford to put an ipad in each childs hand for school. As much as I wish we could it is just not feasable for most schools. While a classroom might have 1 or 2 tablets that is just not enough for a class of 20+, so I have decided to fake it! For my four year olds this year we will be studying our word families on "tablets" printed on cardstock. I have used a tablet graphic copyrighted by scrappindoodles.com to create word family posters, worksheets and word work centers. I have also used this graphic to create a beginning sounds unit, multi-sensory ABC mats, and am currently working on EIOU word families and numbers. I have printed the first set of "tablets" and my 5 year old has not stopped playing with them. He even used a blank sheet that I have provided and made his own word family tablet: It is a litle hard to see that he has written the name of each picture in pencil on the page as well. I...