A tour of my PreK Classroom

So if you're anything like me... You LOVE seeing pictures of other people's classrooms! Today, MNPS gave teachers a planning day. Because I finished my plans before break, that gave me all day to clean and rearrange my classroom. We dusted all the shelves with pledge (and it smelled amazing), moved the furniture around and swept underneath all the shelves (the floors never looked better!) and I organized our huge closet and my drawers. It looks fantastic now!

You'll notice my PreK room is not AS bright and colorful as my Kindergarten room. (This is not my choice. lol) We are "encouraged" to keep bright colors to a minimum and keep with neutral colors with some blues and greens. But my rainbow loving heart has an extremely hard time with this OBVI. 

So here's your tour....

My pathetic word wall to the left. It has housed my student's pictures and name's all year. (And nothing else. Definitely an area of improvement.) The library center and cozy corner. The cozy corner offers my students an area where they can go to calm down, be alone or read a book. I've made it a rule that only one student is allowed in there at a time all year, but thinking I may start letting 2 friends as long as they are reading.

Here's a view of the coolest hanging lamp ever. (All the classrooms in my building have them!) Below is our dramatic play center. We are in the middle of a music-making study, so my para is a creative genius and made a "Center Stage" with red curtains for the kids to perform in. This also houses our puppet theatre to the left. The bulletin board picture shows the kids different problem solving skills. My para is going to add a title to the board tomorrow while I'm at CPR training. I'm excited to have the board to refer to when the kids may need some help with solving a social problem.

Block area. We post pictures of different styles of buildings for the kids. I actually have one who LOVES trying to build each one! He'll come get me from whatever I aim doing to show me his structures! I love it!

A better view of the block shelf and some more building photographs.

Gotta have a little literacy and social studies in the block center!

The Discovery center. Thanks to my awesome work friend Dana for the stump stools. The gray tote to the left houses or class worms. (Yup... and the kids LOVE holding them. Well most of them anyways... lol)

A view of our toys & games center.

The back of our math center.

Other side of our math shelf.

Another view of our word wall and some fun charts we have done! (They LOVE the Chubby Snowman!)

Art center #duh

Nothing exciting in the sand table right now, except... sand. (Need to switch out some fun toys for Jan!)

The kids listened to music and we "felt" the music as we drew. 

The next few photos are some examples of tallying we did before Winter break! I was so amazed at how well the kids did on their own with this! They came up with their own question to ask their classmates. Then they walked around the room with a clipboard and crayon, asked their peers the questions and tallied their responses. I had them bring it to me when they were finished and I watched them count their tallies and I wrote the numbers down for them. Then I asked them which had more/fewer. 

I love this question!

He did a great job!

This one asked how old my para and I were, so we wrote down our age since we are neither 4 nor 5! 

Before winter break, we had some visitors come in and talk to the kids about their musical talents. Before the visitors came, the kids helped come up with some questions to ask them. Ya'll... these kids are AWESOME! I didn't prompt any of these questions! They came up with them all on their own! 

The visitors would share with us their talent and perform something for the class. Then we asked our visitor the questions and I wrote down their responses. The kids loved this! (And I just realized I forgot to take pics of the instruments the kids made below this chart! Well shoot! Maybe tomorrow! *wink *wink)

You'll notice there is no clip chart or behavior management system in my room. That's because we have an amazing Social-Emotional curriculum we use called "Second Step" and we also use CSEFEL. The reason why....? Because we are teaching the children problem solving skills and self-management skills. I thought I would hate this... but actually, I love it. The kids are responding very well and I've seen them put the new skills into place! Plus, now that I have the bulletin board in dramatic play center, I can refer to that when needed also! It's great! I also have the benefit of seeing all the parents when they drop their child off and when they pick them up!

I have, Who has #s to 20 freebie!

Three posts in one weekend??? Yeah! I come with another free download for you today! This is something I put together after I taught all the numbers to 20 to review. My kids were obsessed and we played it 3 different times and they wanted to play it again and again!

 This game could also be used throughout the year for a quick review game for identifying numbers to 20! I also have 2 recording sheets for numbers 1-10 and 11-20 you could use in a center or whole group after teaching numbers to 20. They can be used to identify numbers, count and write the numeral. I hope you can find this useful in your classroom!

Counting On Winter Penguin Freebie!

Hey ya'll! So I made this back in December to practice counting on with my kids! I ended up being really sick and having a sub use these, but she did a great job! I just printed them off onto cardstock and laminated them. Then had the sub use a dry erase marker and model counting on from a given number a few times. Then I had her call on kids (by pulling popsicle sticks with the kids names on them) to come up and complete a counting on card on the document reader. If a child got stuck, they could reference the 100s chart, calendar, number line, or the class could help them if they wanted! The sub said they had a great time with it! (Click on the little square with an arrow, to have the screen pop up so you can download it. Let me know if it doesn't work!)

Once they had plenty of practice whole group, I made this recording sheet for my student's to complete for independent work! (I made them 2 to a page to save paper, which is why there are two of the same sheet in this document.)  The kids loved having it half size b/c it was little like them! =) I did not print the recording sheet in color, just in black and white b/c lets be honest, it probably gets tossed as soon as their parents get it! Am I right? =)

You could even pop this into a math station too for more practice! 

Be sure to leave me a comment if you like them! I'd love to post some more freebies I've created lately if ya'll like this! =)
Have a great rest of the weekend!

WINTER FREEBIES

Hey ya'll! If you haven't noticed, I've taken a little hiatus from blogging. I honestly wasn't enjoying it as much as I used to, so I have been taking a break, while I'm finishing up grad school. I hope to return next school year (2014-15), but until then I'll try and post a few old freebies that I have had a few requests for!

Today I'm bringing back the hot chocolate ten frames that I made a year or two ago. I have uploaded it to my google drive for you to download for free.  Just click on any of the photos below and you will be directed to your free download! =)

This one I tweaked a little bit! I now have it so the kids write down the number words and color words (since those are the words my kids need extra practice with!) And now my kids only need to read number words to ten, but I still included the teen numbers for older grades or for students that may need enrichment. Again, click on the pictures below for the free download!

Addition FREEBIE!

Hey friends! I'm back with a little freebie! It's nothing fancy, but it will really help your kiddos understand the concept of addition!

Introducing....

{click on picture to go to free download!}

There are 7 different versions of these mats. Some have 2 to a page so you can print them onto colored paper, laminate, and then cut them in half to use in small groups or whole group activities. 

There are also work mats with numbered lines for you to use to assess or put in a math station! 

I am so excited to being our addition unit this week! I'm such a nerd! =) 

I hope you all have a wonderful week and enjoy this freebie!!! 

More to come soon!

Math Stations Party =)

I am sooooo excited about this Math Work station party! I am waiting til tomorrow to purchase the book (payday! Yippee!) and have been catching up online! I have loved the first 2 chapters so far! It's a bit reassuring b/c I have been doing math centers, and although I have A LOT of room for improvement, I have already got the routine started! 

I have to admit, I was slacking on doing my math small groups my first 2 years, but I plan on doing a much better job next year (with thanks to Debbie Diller and her great advice in this book!) 

My areas to improve:

 Model MORE before putting our materials in the stations.

Model how to correctly get the centers out and how to put them away.

Label my bins and baskets

Make my centers into STATIONS (looove this idea!)

Less worksheets and more hands on activities

Areas of strength:

Staying consistent with my math whole group and math station time =)

Here is how my stations worked last year...

Each child was put into a group of 3-4. Then they were assigned an ocean animal on one of my green tubs. In each of my tubs was an activity that went along with whatever math skill we were working on that week. I had a lot of problems with some kids getting work finished quickly- so I would send them to an "anchor tub" to work. It was usually a game or activity we have worked on previously in math stations.

But I love Debbie Diller's idea of having a place for each station in the room. So I will definitely be changing this up and using these bins for recess centers next year.

I have most of my manipulatives sorted in these bins, but want to purchase smaller bins from the dollar tree for some since there is a lot of extra space in these ones. I plan on labeling them as well!

Here are the anchor tubs, along with all our Lakeshore instant learning centers that we use from time to time.

My calendar/whole group area:

I do my small groups on the carpet b/c I don't have a kidney bean table. All my small group materials are kept in the green drawers and the small white ones as well. 

Close up of my calendar: We do this daily before math to review all of our skills each day. My kiddos were number wizards! =) They loved to tell time, name the coins, count the days of school, etc. Math is an exciting time in our class! B/c I LOVE math! =)

We use these flash cards to review number patterns. (I also have 10 frame ones to practice number sense.)

Were I keep our play coins for counting the days of school.

We use these links to practice place value during calendar time. We also make patterns with them! =)

Well, here is my answers to the checklist =)

1. Materials used by the teacher first, then placed in the station: Yes, but I could do a better job modeling it several times before putting it in the station!
2. Materials do not change weekly, but rather changed to reflect the students learning objectives:  I could do a much better job with this!
3. All students go to stations daily:  YES!  Yay!
4. Materials are differentiated: Whoops!  Need to work on this.
5. The teacher observes work or meets with differentiated math groups: I will definitely work on it this year!''
   

   
   

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