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 have just reduced all of my theme units to $5.00 or less on TpT!!!!! As a way of saying thank you to all of you wonderful teachers out there! I thought a little extra savings and the ability to stock up on theme specfic resources would get your school year rolling in the right direction. This is not a sale I will leave these and all future theme units I make at $5.00 or less with the exception of mega units and combo units. Please visit my store to check out everything from Farm to Hibernation to Ocean and more! Thank you for investing in our young children! TPT STORE LINK And don't forget to download all of my great freebies! Please leave feedback and follow my blog and store. Till next time, Christine

     This week my class is studying insects. One of my favorite activities to do is to go on a bug hunt with magnifying glasses and exploring live and deceased bugs in the science center. I use test tubes I bought from oriental trading that come with stands to store my bugs. I try to work my theme into every aspect of my day so in addition to my science center which will have rolly pollies, chicadas, an ant farm, plastic bugs, magnifiers, insect word cards and clipboards with recording sheets, I will also be using my Bug-Jar-Math Unit  to reinforce math skills with an insect theme. This unit is 39 pages long and is on sale for $3.50 on teacherspaypeachers.com.      Today my class had fun counting the correct number of bugs for each mat (1-10) and sorting the bugs on the sorting mats. I had each child draw the bug, tally the number then write the number. I simply drew 2 lines down a blank sheet of paper to make three columns for them to...