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The best clothes for preschool teachers
Teaching preschool is not an easy job. While I absolutely love my students, they can drain me emotionally and physically, and they wreak havoc on my wardrobe! Washable paint is not always washable, and more often than not, I really have no idea where that stain came from or what it is – and sometimes it’s better not to know. I’m really lucky because I’m allowed to wear jeans to work – we’re expected to be participating in activities with the children, which often means on the floor, or outside making messes, so it is expected that we will get dirty. Thank goodness that this is understood, but this means…
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Preschool Teacher Wardrobe – Summer Edition
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Friday Freebie
It’s Friday, which means it’s time for a freebie! This one is a great idea from Courtney Keimer. It’s a sensory alphabet book, each page has an upper and lowercase letter outline, along with a sensory material that begins with that particular letter. Students use glue and the suggested material to fill in each letter outline. I love this because it gives children a concrete example for each letter sound. Instead of drawing a picture, writing a word, or gluing in a magazine clipping, children actually get to handle the object that is associated with the letter sound, giving them a tangible example. I think that this is an awesome…
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Easy Alphabet Match Activity
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The ultimate list of tools for the sensory bin
Yesterday I shared my huge list of sensory bin ideas (see the list here). Today I’m going to give you a list of all of the awesome tools that I like to add to the sensory bin alongside these materials. Kids love to explore with their hands, but introducing additional tools can add to the learning and help children make meaningful connections, especially when they use the same tools with different materials. This helps children to learn basic scientific concepts like texture, states and properties of matter, making and testing hypotheses, and mass and weight. Again, it is important to remember that sensory play should be supervised to ensure that…
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Ultimate list of sensory materials
I have a love/hate relationship with the sensory table. I fully appreciate the awesome educational opportunities that sensory play encourages, and I love that children will spend FOREVER exploring these materials. On the other hand, there’s the mess. It doesn’t matter how deep the bucket is, somehow, whatever is on the table will end up on the floor. In the end, the mess is always worth it. Exploration and discovery always win. I like to switch out the materials in the sensory table often Sometimes I change the actual sensory materials, and sometimes a remove the tools and put in a different kind of tool to see how the children…
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Back to School Boost
I’m not quite sure what it is this year, but I’m not really feeling like it’s time for Back to School quite yet. Yes, the weather is quite a bit cooler, I’ve definitely picked up a few school supplies (who doesn’t love brand new Sharpies?!), and I’m itching for college football season and some high school football games, but there seems to be something missing. Maybe I’ll get my Back to School boost tomorrow, because Teachers Pay Teachers is having a special one day Back to School sale. This is super special because TPT already had their annual Back to School sale, but being smart like they are, they totally…
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Off to Kindergarten (update)
My big kids are all starting kindergarten this week. These are kiddos that have been in my class since they were 2 years old, so this is a bittersweet week for all of us. I wanted to do something special for them as they started a new chapter, and I shared some of my ideas a couple of weeks ago, but I wanted to take some time to share the final product! This is the cute kit that I put together for each family to use on the first day of kindergarten. Each kit has a small pack of tissues (for Mom and Dad’s tears), chocolate hugs for a little…
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Freebie Friday
Happy Friday! That,s all I’ve got – Happy Friday, I am so glad that it’s here! Today’s freebie is something that I created that is basically the most useful convenient thing I’ve ever made (if I may say so myself). Have you every seen any of the great ideas for projects using paint chips that are floating all over Pinterest? If not, then I’m sorry, but you must be living under a rock. I love these cute craft, frugal ideas, but I have a couple of fundamental issues with the paint chip craze. #1 I have a guilty conscious, I know those paint chips are free, but I cannot bring…
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Back to School Tips and Freebies
I know that I generally do freebies on Friday (don’t worry, I’ll have one for you tomorrow!) but this is even more awesome than one freebie, so I thought I’d give it a little extra special attention. I have to tell you about the Back to School Ebook from TPT. This book is jam-packed with tips from seasoned teachers and freebies from their Teacher’s Pay Teacher’s stores. There are a ton of great ideas here (140 pages!) so please take a minute to download the free ebook and click through the links to all of the free resources, I’m sure that you’ll find some great items for your classroom!
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August Currently
Yes, I realize that August is halfway over, the beginning of the month was a bit of a whirlwind for me. Just because I’ve been super busy, that doesn’t mean that I want to miss out on a currently! Here’s mine for August, you can check out the others at Oh Boy 4th Grade. Listening: It never fails, my husband chooses a show to watch and then promptly falls asleep on the couch and I end up listening to a show about cars that I neither understand nor care about. It’s probably better this way, when I’m not paying attention to the show I get a lot more work done!…
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Extending a Portrait Project
Yesterday I shared one of my all-time favorite back to school activities – creating self-portraits. Today, I want to share some ideas for extending the learning that you’ve begun with this activity. If your students really enjoy this activity, pay attention to how they are working, and which aspects of the project seem to draw their attention. If the children are especially interested in inspecting their own features in the mirror, then you might consider taking close up photos of their facial features. You could then print these photos and explore them in a few different ways. First you could encourage the children to figure out which features belong to…
