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, 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!

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 ...

Today we had a surprise day with no chairs. Our tables and chairs were moved out of the way from our flower project the day before so I just left them there. I had floor toys out when the children first came to school and had taped bulletin board paper to the floor. After circle time we all gathered around the board paper and created a garden which I will hang on my bulletin board for the rest of the year with the addition of their picture and some embelishments. I will post pictures of that when I am finished with it. It happened to be a rain day so we spent our playtime completing our garden and completing a plant parts worksheet on the carpet. We used our clipboards and yes this involved glue and scissors. I am lucky enough to have a class that can handle those tools properly on the carpet. After lunch we had or Math groups so while I was working with one group the other children completed a read the room activity quietly and once they were finished worked on their seat work whil...

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, 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, I found these super cute ice cube trays in the Target $1 section. I bought 4 of them to create a center with. I am going to place letters/numbers in the bottom of each space and have the children bounce a small bouncy ball into the tray. Whichever space it lands in the children identify the letter/number and write it on a recording sheet. This can be done with animal pictures, rhyming pictures, vocabulary words and spelling words. For the beginning of the year I will have tweezers with pompoms in a center and have the children fll the ice cube trays with them. I will move this activity up to patterns when my 4's are ready. What would you do with these cute trays? Leave a comment and I will give away a surprise TpT unit to the person with the best comment in 24 hours. Don't forget to leave your emsil so I can send you my freebie! Till next time, Christine

Why are sensory activities so important for Pre-K kiddos? Exploration is the key to learning at this age. Kiddos need to feel and manipulate objects in their environment, when they are allowed to play in what I call "controlled chaos" children are engaged, happy and learning! Here is a list of my favorite sensory bin fillers, yes I get into the mix too! Shaving cream (great table cleaner and makes the room smell fresh!) popcorn kernals with farm objects mixed beans (think sorting) packing bubbles (bare feet!) packing peanuts (did you know the newer ones dissolve in water, awesome!) cotton balls with winter wear (think snowball fight) slime (fabric softener, glue and water in individual cups, stir with popsicle sticks, then play away) Tinsel with popcorn/cranberry rope and Christmas items Rocks and Sea Shells (once again think sorting and collages) WATER and funnels, ladels, sand sifters, buckets, shovels, water toys etc.! I know this could be       ...

Spring is almost here and it is time to start planning those fun activities that we all love when the blanket of winter lifts and the sunshine of spring arrives. The following ideas are from my new TpT unit named "Spring is in the Air!" Spring Math and Literacy Unit Extension Ideas Sensory Play: Use the snail cards or number cards in a pot of dirt, have the children find the words, brush them off and then record them on paper. Allow them to have small plastic shovels, gardening gloves and a small empty watering can for pretend play. Silk Flower Colors and Counting: Have some silk flowers on a table, all different colors, have the children match the flowers to the color word card. Have them draw the flower in the correct color crayon and then write the color next to it. Large construction paper works well for this center. Then have them count the number of petals on the flower and write the number next to the word. You could also count and pattern with these flowers usi...