The Crazy Pre-K Classroom

Hello All, This week my class was working on color sorting. A few of my little ones struggle with fine motor skills and attention to activities. This activity was awesome, the children were occupied for 20 minutes! This is what I did: I bought these chip and dip trays at the dollar store over the summer. I placed pony beads of assorted colors in the center and gave each child a different color of tweezers. I bought these tweeezers a few years ago from oriental trading and they have been fantastic for all kinds of activities. I showed the children how to grab one bead and place it in their corner. They each had to grab the pony beads that were the same color as their tweezers. Once they found and sorted all of their assigned color they counted how many they had moved. The children who finished early were allowed to move the unused color beads to the empty corner while counting. After 20 minutes I finally had to tell the class to clean up, I think they would have played...

Hello All, Last year I did not hear about Teachers Pay Teachers until November, that is when I began creating my units and started this blog. I used some time in the summer creating for TpT but never thought about having missed creating units for fall. So this week I an hurriedly creating some awesome activities with fall themes. I have done most of these activities in my classroom as a Pre-K teacher for the last 8 years but have now given them cute graphics and compiled them for easy grabbing when planning. My 2 latest units are themed on apples and pumpkins. They are similar units in that they include math, literacy and art activities but the pumpkin unit builds apon the apple unit since it comes after. So for instance both units contain matching uppercase to lowercase letters but the pumpkin unit includes beginning sound descrimination. The bingo in the pumpkin unit uses both letters and numbers to help with visual discrimination. Both units include letter and ...

Hello All, Fall is my favorite season of the year and here in Texas I do not get my fill of fall like I did when I lived in New Jersey. I have to make my own fall experiences and "pretend" fall is all around me. In my classroom I hang lines of fall leaves and decorate with acorns, squirrel stuffed animals and fake apples. I use the whole month of September adding extra "fall" to my teaching. This next week our theme is apples (so early I know). I have so many plans that I am not even sure I will fit them all in. For science we will be having an apple tasting. I will be buying every kind of apple I can find and we will compare and contrast their flavors and features on an I chart. I also make a graph to show which children like which apples the best. (I will post pics once we complete this) For snack we will be making crock pot applesauce, mini apple pies, dried apples, sliced apples and apple cider. For literacy we will read "10 apples on top"...

Hello Everyone, Sorry that it has been so long since my last post but inservice and the first three days of school have kept me quite busy! I am so excited to share some pictures from my classroom with you. The church that I share space with has been very generous in what they are allowing us to do in our classrooms this year. Now my classroom feels like home and has everything I could ever wish for! I have included pictures of my white board decor, bulletin boards, job chart, behavior chart, chalkboard easel (painting easel with chalkboard paint), monkey and bananas counting display, calendar, classroom rules and more. The images in the calendar set, rules set, job chart and behavior chart are all available for purchase in my TpT store along with a free Jungle themed noise level chart. I hope these images will give you some ideas for your own classroom. Till next time! Christine You can find my Jungle calendar set, job chart, supply labels ...

Hello All, Yeah! Today was the first time I had access to me room since the beginning of June!I spent most of my day in porfessional development but I was able to find enough time at the end of the day to hang up me new word wall. I am so excited to be able to put this up and keep it up all year. It goes with my jungle theme and fits perfectly just where I wanted it!!!! I am so pleased with how this turned out, we are only allowed to use mavelous tape on our walls so that is the tape you see around the edges. It is also holding individual cards behind and sticks well to the laminating. You can find this word wall in my TpT store, use the TpT link on the right. Along with the word wall this file includes ABC flash cards, word cards (dolche pre-primer and primer) and an ABC booklet for the children to glue and write their word wall words into. Be sure to open the preview file to see everything you are getting for $5.00. Abc Word Wall, Flash Cards and ABC booklet ...

Hello all, This coming Sunday and Monday, August 12th and 13th TpT is holding their annual Back to School sale. The administrators of TpT will be giving 10% off all products and I am going to match their 10% to give you 20% off of my ENTIRE STORE! That's right everything I have listed will be 20% oof, so will thousands of other products. I already have 15 units in my wishlist just waiting to purchase during the sale. Have fun searching anf finding everything you need for this year! Till next time, Christine

O.K. I hate to gloat and I am surely not the first to think of this idea but I did not see this on Pinterest! In the interest of space I have turned my classroom clipboards into both paper holders and chalkboards! That is right, I decopaged the front with my jungle themed scrapbooking paper and then painted the back with acrylic paint and 2 coats of clear chalkboard paint that I found at Hobby Lobby for $5.99. I am so excited about these! I have a very limited amount of storage space in my classroom so anything that can do double duty in my classroom is great. I think I will also use magnetic chalk paint (also at Hobby Lobby in spray paint form $7.99) on the back of my dry erase boards. Then we can manipulate magnetic letters, dry erase and use chalk, triple duty!!! Can you tell that I cannot wait to get back into my classroom, Monday, I am waiting for Monday! Till next time, Christine