The Crazy Pre-K Classroom

Numbers-in-the-Ocean-1-10-booklet We started our Numbers in the Ocean booklet today with great success. I was a little worried that there would be too many instructions to follow but my kiddos did great! Here you can see that my children were able to follow 10 directions with a sample hanging on the board that they could see from their seats. 1. Trace the number. 2. Trace the number word 3. Read the sentencs and circle the number word. 4. Write the number word 5. Write the number 5 times 6. Color the correct amount of boxes to represent the number. 7. Color the correct box on the number line 8. Tally the number. 9. Color the objects. 10. Using small movements, color the bubble border!    This was so amazing to watch! They were so intent on doing each task and doing it neatly, I was so proud! My-Sea-Life-Sentence-Building-Booklet-Ocean-animals We also started our ocean themed sentence building booklet today. I used this as a literacy center d...

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...

Now that I am more than half way to 100 followers I figure it is about time to announce my giveaway! Now brace yourselves this is going to be HUGE! Once I have 100 followers who leave their email address in a comment attached to this post I will email EVERYMEMBER a unit from my TpT store. As a default I will send my Insect Invasion unit, however if this is not a unit you could use or you already own it leave a note of which unit you would like. If you are already a member please leave your email in a comment linked to this post!!! So now you are wondering what the catch is (at least I would be at this point): 1. Leave your email, blog address and name in a comment on this post with your desired TpT Unit 2. Follow me here and on TPT 3. Download a free TpT file and leave a comment 3. Post on your blog about this giveaway, spread the word to coworkers, homeschoolers and Moms of Pre-K kiddos That's it, this is my way of saying Thank You for being wonderful followe...

In my previous post I told you a bit about my organizational struggles and my habit of storing school items at home. I know I'm not the only one! Here is my starting point, these cabinets have not been truly cleaned out since the beginning of school this year and they are starting to drive me crazy. Since we end school May 25th I am just starting to remove items that can go home, freeing up some space for supplies. This is my largest cabinet that I spoke of in my last post. There is not much I can do about the bottom area except add a tension rod with theme bags. I have to be able to put the rolling carts in each week. I will however go through all of the filing drawers and tower buckets to see where the storage can improve. I am hoping that all of the buckets and supplies sitting on top of the towers will easily organize into the theme bags and make more space. In the top section I need to find a better way to store file folder games, my science center suppli...

I was able to finish my Under the Sea:Ocean themed math and literacy unit last night, it is jam packed with hands on learning fun for the class. With a teacher big book and 2 student completed books the literacy aspect of this unit is great. My students especially enjoyed completing the "what lives in the ocean" student book where they were able to write the name of the animal and then spell the name in stickers. You could also use small letter die cuts, stamps, magazine cuttings, foam letters and other letter supplies you may already have. I have/who has ABC, 1-50, 5's, 10's, 100's, sight words. 18 read the word pictures with 3 recording sheets. Page from the teachers 16 page big book. My ocean spelling book: write the word and use stickers, die cuts, stamps etc. to complete. Starfish sight word worksheets. Find the correct nubmer word cards. Can be done with clothespins or bingo markers.   Counting by 2's. 5's. 10...

I have just started putting together an Ocean themed unit and thought I would offer the first part as a freebie! This read the room download comes with 18 cards and 3 recording sheets. Look for my Under the Sea Math and Literacy Unit later this week on TpT and Teachers Notebook. Click this link to download for free from Teachers Pay Teachers: Under-The-Sea-Ocean-themed-read-the-room-freebie

If you are anything like me you have more in your classroom than you can store so you take the extra home and store it in the attic or garage. Well, my husband has not been so pleased with my school to home storage arrangement and has challenged me to a classroom storage redo before school ends! That's only 5 weeks to revamp my storage solutions and fit everything into my classroom! Yikes, this could be difficult for a person like me! This will require several posts since I started my cleanout today. My classroom has a wall of cabinets, 1/2 mine and 1/2 for the church that uses to room on Sundays. Every Friday I pack up everything I use for the week to then pull it out again on Monday. It is imperative that I put everything back in it's place because if I get lazy I won't be able to find my supplies on Monday. Here are my top tips to start organizing and I will post my progress as I discover more ways to store my classroom supplies: 1. IKEA: I love the Ikea ...