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We all need to play
This amazing quote has been on my radar since I found it on Pinterest a couple of weeks ago (have you noticed my obsession with Pinterest yet?!). I finally tracked down the original source, it is from U46 Early Learners Curriculum Blog. I teach preschool, so these words are not news to me, I experience them every day. The understanding that young children need to move, try new things, be loud, explore new places, and use their entire bodies to learn things all play a role in my lesson plans. I would, however, love to print this out and send it home to parents at different times throughout the year.…
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Spring art project
I found the idea for this extraordinary art project at De tout et de rien (talk about seriously amazing ideas for children!) Occasionally I come across a project that I want to do as much as my students do. They love it when I join in. We started this particular piece of art by making rainbows on 12″x12″ sheets of cardstock with oil pastels. Now I know that I’ve used oil pastels with my class before, but for some reason they were absolutely amazed with them this time around. This could be because I was smudging them into my paper too. Their rainbows were works of art, seriously, they looked so…
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Let’s talk about guidance…
I’ve spent the last hour on Pinterest looking for the perfect quote to go along with this post, or at least, that’s what I told myself I was doing. I’m pretty sure that what I was really doing was putting off writing this. I’ve been thinking about this post for the last week, and I’m still not sure what I want to say, or how I want to say it, but I will get the thoughts out of my head, I promise. Classroom management. Those are two words that can strike fear into even the most seasoned teacher, because the way that you manage your classroom works for you, but…
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Friday Freebies
Who doesn’t love Friday?! Seriously, I LOVE Fridays! In honor of the awesomeness that is the weekend I am making every Friday officially Freebie Friday here at Preschool Ponderings. Some weeks I will share freebies that I have created, while others will feature amazing freebies from all over Teachers Pay Teachers. I’m going to start it off with the most popular freebie in my own TPT store, my Preschool Classroom Labels. These are great for promoting literacy in the classroom, and children can be active participants in helping you to label all of the items that they know. If you love these as much as I do, and have a…
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Tape maze!
Oh. My. Goodness. My students absolutely loved this new game, and it is so easy that we may just make it part of our regular rotation. All you have to do is tear long pieces of masking tape and place them at varying levels across a hallway (if you don’t have a hallway I’m sure that you could set up some chairs that would work too). Then the children have to get through the tape without getting stuck to it. My kiddos pretended to be spies, they didn’t want to get caught by the “laser tape.” They rolled underneath some strips, tiptoed over others, and stretched to get over some…
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What’s in my Writing Center?
Here it is, another installment of “What’s in my Writing Center?” We are really focused on rain and the weather. My kiddos are obsessed with tornadoes, and I am trying to build a foundation for general understanding of the weather through our project work so that they can form a better foundation for what makes tornadoes. To me, this means giving them the vocabulary to use to talk about weather phenomena. I also love that I can use their interests to attract them to other activities! Here’s what in my Writing Center this week: Rain Boot Letter Match. This was one of my small group activities last week, but I…
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What’s in my Math Center
This is the first installment of “What’s in my Math Center”! Can you tell I’m just a little excited about this post?! When I was growing up I HATED math. I was not good at it, and it was not fun for me. Because of my own personal experiences with math, I have vowed to make sure that math is fun for my students. I do everything that I can to make sure that the activities I have available in my math center are hands-on and really engaging, so that my kiddos can see what numbers and quantities look like, and so that they have every opportunity to build real,…
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Science is art
I’ve seen this experiment on Pinterest a million times, I actually remember doing this same experiment in my 8th grade science class. I could tell you a lot of things about that class, but I couldn’t tell you why we did this experiment. The idea is simple, you pour milk in a shallow bowl and drop food coloring into the milk, then use a toothpick dipped in dish soap to swirl the colors. The concept that the experiment teaches is surface tension, and the idea that the soap glides through the milk, swirling the colors without actually mixing them. This was all over my kiddos’ heads, but they loved it…
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Announcing a Giveaway!
Hi everyone, I just wanted to let you know that I am participating in a great giveaway. You can check it out over at Schroeder’s Stars, Kristen is celebrating 200 Teachers Pay Teachers followers with over 50 freebies to give away. The drawing will be done next Sunday, so get over there and sign up, you could win my CVC Word Family Mats!
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Don’t mind the mess… the children are learning.
We’v all seen that quote right – “Please excuse the mess, the children are learning” (or something of that nature). This is so true in my classroom. At home, I am a neat freak; everything has a place, and it should always be in its place unless you are using it. I learned early on that this does not work in the classroom, nor do I want it to. Not only do I have far too much to do to worry about each and every item staying in it’s correct spot, but children learn best when they experiment, when they use different materials to create new items, or make up…
