The Crazy Pre-K Classroom

   I recently conducted an entrance testing for a 5 year old attending our Kindergarten in the fall. Our testing is truly quite simple and just gives us an idea of who the child is and what their personality is like. I will tell you that my heart was breaking for this child. When I walked up to this child to introduce myself she was alone, no parents with her, and she had a huge stack of worksheets that she was supposed to "study" while she waited for me to test her. I saw that she had a school uniform on and asked her where she went to school. Her reply was devastating to me, "I just got kicked out of school because I wasn't learning good enough."   I have been teaching in my current school for 12 years, Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten. Over these last 12 years one thing is for sure, children have changed! Mostly I believe due to technology but also contributing to this change are the breakdown of families and the lack of freedom to explore our environme...

Hello All,       I know some of you are still in school....hold on you can do it!!!! We are out here in Texas and to celebrate I have started a new series of products AND THE FIRST ONE IS FREE!!!!! I am also giving away my biggest and most popular bundle. "The Ultimate literacy Bundle" is 600+ pages of teacher resources to teach literacy! My new adventure has me creating "Centers for $1.00" These centers focus on a specific concept for the Pre-k, K and 1st classroom. I have listed the first 3 of this series and I have 2 pages full of ideas for more! So grab your freebie and check my store often for many more of these centers to come! Click on this link to go directly to your freebie!!!! Don't forget to scroll down and enter the giveaway! Centers for $1.00- St, Sm, Sw I have listed 2 other centers for $1.00 and added a huge bundle of all of my "go to" resources for literacy instruction. Be sure to check each of them out when you visit my ...

Hello All, This first year teaching Kindergarten has been amazing! I love it more and more each day. This month we are studying the ocean. We are using each day to study a different creature that the children want to learn about. We start by watching a youtube video and completing a KWL (know, want to know, learned) chart and a Can, have are chart. Once we record our information in our science notebook we draw, paint, create each creature. Today we had fun making an egg carton jellyfish. This was so simple yet fun. It took some fine motor skills and a few supplies but the kids were having so much fun swimming their jellyfish throughout the room, they even took a little time to "sting" each other. Not maliciously of course! It was great fun, I hope you find time to make some of your own!

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...

Tonight I reached 500 followers on TpT! I am super excited so I am throwing a Valentine's Day Giveaway to thank all of you for your support! Enter below as many times as you'd like for a chance to win my Valentine's Math and Literacy unit , Valentine's Print and Go Worksheets and my Dollar Store Valentine's Centers unit ! Check them out in my store for more details! The winner will be chosen by rafflecopter on Monday, February 10th! a Rafflecopter giveaway

Hello All! I truly hope you are enjoying your winter. I know many of you have had several snow days, here in Texas we have had 2 ice days, which is unheard of down here! This week my class started working intentionally on addition and subtraction concepts. While I always try to connect simple addition and subtraction concepts to my numbers lesson it is very informal. I am now planning the majority of my number lesson on addition and subtraction concepts.I know my class is ready to begin these concepts when they can count to 50 forwards and backwards, can pattern easily, can put numbers to 20 in order and can easily sort by color. With all of this in place teaching the basic addition and subtraction strategies should be easy! (Well, we will see!) So, we started this week with 10 frames,you can easily make your own or print out free sets through a google search. Each child then has 10 objects to use to count. I start with addition problems to 5. I instruct the children to "place 1 c...

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...

Well school has officially begun here in Texas and it is wonderful to get my family back on schedule and my new little class of cuties into routine. This year I am girl heavy with 9 girls and 5 boys. They are a wonderful group of 4 year olds and I can't wait to get to know them better. I have one student yet to meet who should arrive in the morning but otherwise my group is energetic, full of life and typical four year olds with a love of learning and for the Lord. The families I am working with have done an excellent job with these little guys. So far we have practiced our procedures, learned how to properly play in centers, used our crayons, markers and pencils with success and had fun getting to know each other. Tommorrow each of my kiddos will get their chance to add their name to my new word wall that is why I am revealing it to you today! Since my classroom is also a Sunday school room I have some restrictions on what I am allowed to do, this being said I have gotten somewhat...

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...

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 ...

Hello All, This past week was so much fun. Between creating snowmen, playing in fake snow and having a cotton ball snowball fight we had a great time. One of my favorite activities was a non-standard measurement activity, measuring ourselves against numbered snowballs. I started by taping 30 numbered snowballs from bottom to top on my cabinet and then I hung a graph with each child's name and the numbers 1-30 with the title "How many snowballs tall are you?" Before starting the activity we counted the snowballs and I had each student estimate how many snowballs tall they would be, I also had them guess for me. I was surprised at how many estimations were close or correct. I recorded their estimations on the dry erase board and we then stood by the snowballs one at a time. We recorded our height on the bar graph. We talked about who was the tallest and who was the shortest, which children were close to the same height etc. After everyone had a chance to be measured...

      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...

I have created a great little monster center for my class. They love these little monster images and they are learning so much while playing with them. You can download a free preview of this set on teacherspayteachers.com. There is a link on the right side of the page that will take you directly to my store. I love to start out teaching my patterns to the kids on the carpet in a large group and then having self practice at the table. I use a digital camera with a small name tag to capture each students progress. This makes it so that I only have to print, laminate an cut one set and can use it over and over. I have also prined this set in black and white. The monsters are different enough to tell the difference and we can work on cutting skills. With this set I also included colors and intended this set for beginner pattern students. I have several other pattern sets that would be suitable for students up to 2nd grade depending on level.