The Crazy Pre-K Classroom

As a Mom of 2 dyslexic kiddos I know it can be heartbreaking to watch them struggle to read and learn. It has been especially difficult with my 2nd son who is 7. He is repeating Kindergarten so that he can go through Dyslexia therapy without missing new concepts at school. He has already given up on reading, hates it and cries over every word. To say he is a severe dyslexic is an understatement. So a few weeks ago we had a talk about how to make reading easier, he loves to color, cut, glue etc. With that in mind I made a few worksheets after searching for some to buy and coming up empty. We did one worksheet a night for the last month and he was happy to do them. Little did he know he was truly learning how to see b,d,p and q without reversals. I think using large type with a very simple font also helped. I know there are specific fonts out there that SLP's feel are best but I wanted to use a different one to see if it truly made a difference. I personally think the simpler the fon...

As a Mom to two boys 11 and 6 and as a Pre-Kindergarten teacher I have seen first hand the successes and failures that children experience based on their early childhood experiences with language. My oldest son was diagnosed at 4 with receptive and expressive language disorders, he spent over a year 3x per week in language therapy to build his language skills. Receptive language disorder is the inability to keep words that you have heard and expressive language disorder is the inability to retrieve and say those words. You can see where we had a big problem on our hands. Not only could Conner not retain words but he also could not find them in his brain to say them. If you think of the brain like a filing cabinet it is as if his words were filed in the wrong drawer and were lost when needed. There was no specific language in our home, objects were described as "things" and this often lead to frustration for Conner when he could not describe what he was trying to say. His lack...

It used to be that schools catered to the way typical girls learned, sitting quietly, listening and "still" learning. Well, we know these days that this type of learning sets boys up for failure. While some girls can still handle the old school way of learning I am seeing more and more girls that are unable to learn this way, now setting them up to fail as well. So what do we do? We as teachers have all had training on the three musts of learning: auditory, visual and kinesthetic. We are supposed to put each of these into every lesson, but how easy is it to make sure every lesson has all three? And how often are our kinesthetic aspects just moving around manipulatives on the table? We need to realize that children, even up into the higher elementary and middle school ages need to move to learn. We are so used to sitting children at desks for long periods of time and then wonder why we have such behavior problems? This year my 4th grader was part of a rotation system like thos...

So I need to address a hot topic at the Pre-k level. We all know what bullying looks like in Upper Elementary, Middle and High School but did you ever stop to consider it can begin much sooner? I am fully convinced that the roots and beginnings of bullying starts much sooner than Elementary School. Up until 4 years old children are mimicing appropriate and inappropriate behaviors borrowed from those they see the most; parents, grandparents, other family and family freinds. The child sees a behavior and believes it is appropriate and copies it to gain approval. Kinda like the first time you hear your three year old repeat the curse word you just said because you cut your finger cooking dinner right? Now add the fierce need for independence that comes with becoming a Pre-K aged child. Not only is the child going to be copying behaviors at home but now adding their own personality into their behavior. Anything can contribute to the bullying mentality in a young child, we already mentioned...

Hello All, I just wanted to share some ideas for teaching addition to the four year olds we all love. I like to start out by using manipulatives for the children to count. Today I used paper hearts because the paper we were working on was left from Valentine's day. As we read through the story problem I had the children circle each number. They then identified the number for me. We counted enough hearts to represent each of the numbers and then counted them all together. Seems simple right? But in the brains of 4 year olds putting two groups together is not always that easy. First,there can be a color divide, getting them to continue past the first color set fluently into the next color set is a challenge. Second, they are used to rote counting without manipulatives in front of them. So to get around these problems I broke my groups up into small groups and placed their papers on a clipboard. We worked together on the rug to get through 2 word problems. After circling the numbe...

Have you ever looked through your curriculum and thought an activity would be great for learning but really boring? Sometimes I wonder who is thinking some of this stuff up? For instance I had an activity to do today to teach positional words where the children were supposed to use a plastic cup and a bottle cap to show me they understood my directions. I just couldn't do it! How boring to sit on the carpet and move around a bottle cap so........I changed it! I happen to have a class set of small bug jars and plastic spiders. Well, my kiddos know I am totally afraid of spiders so I told them that at the end of the activity they could "attack" me with the spiders. This made the boys especially happy! The class loved using their bug jars and spiders to complete the same objective. Here are some other ideas to help engage 4 year old minds with fun in mind: (1)Add a song: the best songs for learning involve movement and are ideally written on large chart paper for tracking wh...

Here is a picture of my little 5 year old, Collin, he is definatly a wiggler and a kinesthetic learner. This is how he likes to stand when we go over flash cards and when he watches TV! OK so I know that there is a difference between being a kinesthetic learner and a wiggler but if you take a minute to think about it the activities you plan for your kinesthetic learners will also help the wigglers get their wiggles out. WIN! WIN! I have had great success in my classroom using the following techniques, most not costing me anything! 1. Take a shake break (you tube has several great 1-2 minute videos for the kiddos to shake to!) 2. Use clipboards to write instead of sitting at the table, this way the kiddos can spread out on the floor and get comfy. I find their work is much better when they get comfy. 3. Use songs with motions to teach, there are many songs out there for everything under the sun like days of the week, months of the year, ABC's and numbers. 4.Seek and finds: hide ...

I just came across a post form Mrs. Trayer at Teaching Gifted Kinders that struck a chord with me. She was expressing some frustration with the current state of teachers being evaluated upon test scores and not having time to reach their gifted students. I have to say that I agree and would add that we are doing a disservice to all of our children by "dumbing down" instead of setting high expectations. I teach in a private school with an advanced curriculum. We are approximatly 1 year ahead in curriculum standards of public schools. Which means I truly teach Kindergarten just to 4 year olds. I see many advantages to setting high standards even with young children. I believe in making my lessons appropriate for all through small group instruction and differentiated instruction which I know those of you in public school do as well. However I see one difference that I can make that many of you do not have the opportunity to. Planning challenging, high level whole grou...

O.k. so I have to admit that everytime I sit down to my computer I go straight to pinterest. I can spend hours just looking through pictures and getting ideas for school, home, everything! I have some crazy 2500+ pins and plans for each one of them. So this summer I am going to redo my classroom, my house, my garden and make over my kids! Life will be busy, hehe! I don't know about anyone else but pinterest is my newest obsession, anyone else? So here is my challenge to you pin, pin, pin! Make education collaboration a top pinterest goal and resource. Whenever you see a blog or idea that a teacher or parent could use pin it, share it and we can improve classrooms together. I love to hear new ideas and have found so many great activities on pinterest, every teacher and parent should be a member, let me know if you need an invite to join, I will gladly send you one. Click on the pinterest button to the right to see what pinterest is all about!

So yesturday I went with my 3rd grader to the Maybourn Museum on the Baylor University campus, this is a very nice museum and worth the trip if you live within a couple of hours of Waco TX. While going through our guided tour I came across this sign on the wall. I could read it without trouble but it got me thinking about a few things. My first thought was "Is this what it looks like to try to read as a young child, just a bunch of letters with no meaning?" My second thought was "Is this similar to what text looks like to children with dyslexia and dysgraphia and other learning disabilities?" Granted I know that dyslexics reverse letters and dysgraphics flip their letters but I am just thinking of the confusion these issues would cause during the crucuial points in which we learn to read as children. So, this is when I got to thinking about the importance of decoding words and letter/sound recognition. Without these two skills even reading this jumb...

Food allergies have become an every year, every class occurance in Pre-K over the past few years. We have all seen children with peanut or milk allergies, maybe a latex allergy here or there, but I would like to tell you about a little girl in my class who is anaphalactically allergic to 5 of the big 8! My Pre-K team and I have been able to keep her safe, with her parents permission I am sharing her story with you in hopes that you don't give up on Pre-K for your child because of food allergies. Any school worth attending will do everything necessary to accomodate your child no matter how severe the allergies are. My student is a 4 year old sweet, loving and intelligent child. She makes me laugh everyday and I can't imagine my class without her. She is deathly allergic to: milk, eggs, gluten, latex, all nuts and wheat. I know you are asking yourself what does this little girl eat? I will get to that, but first let me explain the safeguards my team and I put into place before ...

      I have met many people who do not believe children who are 4 can or should be taught academically to read well and fluently. If you met me 7 years ago you would find a person who agreed, but I have to say over my last few years of teaching my mind has been changed. The Pre-K program I work for used to be play based and then very decidedly went academic based. A huge change for the better of our children, here are 10 reasons why children need an academic pre-Kindergarten program. 1. Don't let your local public school tell you that your child needs to know nothing when they get to kindergarten, most children are loosing invaluable learning time if teaching is postponed till they are five. Developmentally children should know their letters, sounds, numbers and some words before they go to formal school. Plus, those who attend an academic pre-kindergarten ar more likely to be given a chance in the gifted and talented program in the public schools becasue the...