Our Daily 5 Journey: Activities Continued

My littles have done a great job so far of using these activities and working independently as we progress on our journey. I will be posting more on our progress as we go along, but here is a peek at a few of the other activities that are available in our Daily 5 drawers.

Who doesn't love an Aquadoodle? I know I do, and my kids do as well! It's also great fine motor and letter-writing practice for my littles!

My littles love it when we break out the dry erase boards. I am absolutely in love with these dry erase crayons from Crayola. I love the resistance that they give. It's great for building finger strength, which is why I prefer crayons over markers and encourage my littles to use crayons the majority of the time.

(Sorry for the blurry picture.) I found some colored space sand while cleaning out a closet, and decided that it would be perfect to put in a pencil box and use for prewriting skills. I'm in the process of making cards to stick in the tub that have shapes and lines on them for my littles to practice making. They are currently waiting to be laminated, so sorry about the lack of picture.

That's it for this installment. I'll keep you posted on our progress with our implementation of the Daily 5!

Our Daily 5 Journey: Work on Writing/ABC Activities

Here is a peek at what is in a few of our Daily 5 activity drawers.

We use the Handwriting Without Tears Program, and these three activities utilize what we have been learning with the program. 

The first activity is making letters with Play-Doh. This is not only a great activity to practice forming letters, but also a great one for strengthening little fingers and working on fine-motor skills. I love activities that manage to work on two things at once!

The next activity is using the chalkboards to do wet-dry-try. I plan on putting a sheet of the HWT letters  in the drawer for my littles to use as a guide. 

The third activity is using the magnetic pieces to form letters. Again I will be putting a letter sheet in the tub to help them learn how to properly form their letters. 

Well, that's it for this installment, stay tuned on what else we will be utilizing during our Daily 5 time!

Our Daily 5 Journey Continued

I've been trying and trying to figure out something to put our independent work in for the next two sections of the Daily 5. (See the previous post for our take on the other three sections of the Daily 5.) I knew I didn't want to do individual boxes for the littles, but wasn't sure what I was going to do. I came across this ten drawer rolling cart while out shopping the other day, and I absolutely love it for what I will be using it for. The best part was, that it was on sale! Who doesn't love a good sale, especially when it fits in so perfectly with what you were looking for!

I will be using this awesome cart for the next two sections in our Daily 5 journey. The drawers will hold independent activities that the students will be able to access by themselves. I will be modeling each activity over the next several class periods and monitoring students' use of them until they are able to do each activity independently. I will be displaying what I put in these drawers in the next couple of posts. 

Work on Writing. For this section of the Daily 5, we will be focusing on pre-writing skills and letter formation, depending on the needs of each individual student. We use the Handwriting Without Tears program, so a lot of these activities will be based around that program. 

Word Work. My littles aren't ready for word work, but they are ready for more alphabet activities and phonics work. These activities will focus mostly on letter recognition and letter sounds in this part of our journey. I'm thinking of renaming this section to more fit our needs, I just haven't found the right title for it yet.

This is our take of the Daily 5. Stay tuned for updates as we continue along on our Daily 5 journey!

My Daily 5 Journey

We are beginning our journey into the world of the Daily 5. I know several elementary teachers that have implemented the Daily 5, and have loved it. After doing lots of research, talking to other teachers, reading the book, and doing lots of searching on Pinterest, I am ready to start using it with my four year olds. We have been working all year on being more independent, and I think we're at a point in the year where we can begin our journey.  I will be sticking to the basic premise of the Daily 5, but altering it to fit the needs of my littles. They will be the guiding force in our journey and we will be moving along according to their needs and wants. 

There are several aspects of the Daily 5 that we have been doing all year.  

Read to Self has been used as a transition between Snack Time and Story Time. My littles sometimes need reminders on treating books nicely, but they've come a long ways in learning how to read books independently. We've been working on reading the pictures and making up stories using the pictures or retelling familiar stories. 

Listen to Reading is another aspect we've already been using all along. Our listening center is a free choice center that the students always have access to. I switch the books out frequently so there are always new books for the students to listen to, and my littles love listening to the books several times. We also use Storia from Scholastic. This allows the students to easily follow along with the book, and gives them more choices of books for them to choose from. We also have Story Time every day where I read one or more books aloud to the class. 

Read to Someone is another aspect that we have started using, but less frequently than the others. As my littles have become more acquainted with each other and have started building friendships, they have become more interested in sharing books and reading to other students, without any prompting from me!  It is amazing what they can accomplish on their own when given a chance to let things develop naturally. This aspect of the Daily 5 we will let continue to develop naturally according to the students' needs and wants. 

Stay tuned for more information on how we plan to implement the other aspects of the Daily 5! 

A picture of our reading and listening center. 

Ipads in the Preschool Classroom

I am very fortunate to be teaching in a very iPad friendly school. I am lucky enough to have two iPads for my students to be able to use. When the students arrive at school, the first thing we do is have center time. This is free choice time for the students, and one of their choices is to use the iPad. This is a very popular center for my students. When they see one student using it, they flock to that student, and everybody wants a chance to use the iPad. Until today, I had one iPad, but I was lucky enough to get a second one for student use! This will help ensure that every child who wishes to use the iPad will have a chance. I have primarily been using the IPad during center time, but I am beginning to implement parts of the Daily 5 into our schedule with my four year olds. I plan on utilizing the iPads during daily five time as well. I will be posting more about our journey into the Daily 5 as well as what were doing with the iPads in the coming weeks. iPad time has been very heavily supervised up to this point in our school year. I have been reviewing the iPad rules daily with each child who has used it. I've also been right next to them ensuring proper iPad use. As we start our Daily 5 journey, I am going to start letting the kids have more autonomy in using them while checking on them frequently and reviewing iPad rules daily. Stay tuned for updates on how we use iPads in a preschool classroom, and coming soon is a list of our tops apps that we use!

"Don't Put Your Shoestring in Your Nose"

As a preschool teacher to three and four year olds, I often find myself saying some of the most random things. When this happens, I often pause afterwards to think , "Did I really have to just say that?" Then I look over and see my associate laughing, and yep, I really did just say that. Today it happened during circle time. I was in the middle of changing CDs during music time, when I look up and see one of my students sticking his shoestring up his nose. Apparently I should have covered not sticking shoestrings up your nose as part of our circle time rules; who knew?

If You Build It, They Will Come

It's amazing how much teamwork and friendship building can happen throughout the day. It can start with something as simple as someone asking for help with a puzzle. Today while working on a puzzle, I saw several of my three year olds working together to help complete it.  I often notice that when I sit down to do an activity with a child, other students will notice and want to participate, too. And when that happens, kids who don't normally play together on a regular basis have a chance to interact and find common interests and help build new friendships. This is what happened while working on the puzzle today. Three kids who don't normally play together were talking and working together to achieve a common goal. And while they all went their separate ways once the puzzle was completed, they got a chance to interact with other students and start building new friendships.

Pumpkin Art Center

It is amazing what you can find in your closet when you decide to organize it. While cleaning a few months back, I came across a whole bag full of these black foam stickers. There were different sizes of circles and rectangles. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them, but I stuck them in my art closet to use later. Last week when I was trying to decide what I was going to put in my art center, I came across these foam stickers again. I had a sudden epiphany and decided they would make great pumpkin faces for Halloween. 

I put out some copies of pumpkin templates, some crayons, scissors, and the stickers (in a cute Halloween bucket), and waited for the kids to discover it. The art easels are close to our cubbies, so they are visible to the kids right away when they come in. It didn't take them long to discover the pumpkins and want to start in on them right away.

These are a few of the pumpkins my kiddos made. Many more were proudly taken home to show their moms and dads. This was some great fine motor skills practice for my kiddos. Some of the stickers were hard to peel, which really made them work for it at times, and they were so proud of themselves when they were able to peel the stickers off by themselves! It's was a very popular place to be, and the kids kept returning to the center day after day to create more pumpkin masterpieces!

Corn Sensory Play

A couple of weeks ago we took a field trip to our local Pumpkin Patch. Needless to say we learned a lot and had a blast. They enjoyed it so much, I still get asked quite frequently when we're going back to the Pumpkin Patch.  While we are there, one of the most popular activities was playing in the corn bin. This inspired me to bring in corn to put in the sensory tub for the kids. I bought ears of corn from our local hardware store and placed a couple in our tub. When the students came in Monday morning and opened the tub, they were greeted with several ears of corn. They spent a few minutes exploring the ears, and then spent several more trying to figure out how to get the corn off of the cobs. It was very interesting watching the kids trying to figure out how they could get the corn off. You could almost see the gears turning as they had to use their critical thinking skills. They tried several different objects around the room to try to get them off, and finally figured out that their fingers worked the best. It was also great fine motor practice for my kiddos. It was fun watching each new set of kids explore the corn and figure out how to get the corn off the cob. We have since added tractors and other farm-related toys to the tub of corn, and still remains a very popular place for the children to gather. 

Our Family Tree

I will admit it, I am addicted to Pinterest, and I especially love it when I come across a jewel like the one from  christywallace84.blogspot.com This is my take on the family tree she made. My wonderful associate was a big help in making this happen. She cut a tree trunk out of brown construction paper and then cut circles of various sizes out of scrapbook paper. She then made little branches, which I think is really cute. I have since added pictures of my students' families to the tree, and it is looking wonderful! I've been kind of layering the pictures and overlapping them and it's really coming along as I get more family pictures in! My students love to find their families in the pictures and point themselves out to their classmates. It is a great addition to my classroom and helps bring a homey feeling into the classroom. 

Classroom Reveal

Well, here is the big classroom reveal! We have made it throughout first week of preschool and are getting ready to start our second week! 

Here is a picture looking in the room from the hallway. Straight ahead area our cubbies

 To the right is our kitchen/dramatic play area. Apparently I didn't get a good picture of that area, so I'll have to post another picture of that later.  You can also see our writing area by the whiteboard and our art center by the easels.

Our craft table and shelves for our pencil boxes and our shelves with our manipulatives on it. 

A view of the back of the room, circle time area, reading center, and car table.

A picture of the reading center. I love this area, it definitely turned it a lot cuter this year, and I am absolutely loving it!

A close up of our car table, with other manipulatives, people, animals, etc. This has been one of the most popular places to be this week! The kids have absolutely loved being in this center, especially the boys.

My block and building center. It includes many different types of blocks. The kids have enjoyed the tools and the hardhats this past week. 

Our puzzle center, with our Dora house, which was wildly popular this week, as well!

I hope you enjoyed the tour of my classroom! This was a short tour, I will post more in-depth pictures of the various centers as we go along. 

Classroom: The Before Pictures

Here are the before pictures of my preschool classroom. 

The back of the room.

The other back corner.

My new closet with our heating and air conditioning units!

The front of the room.

Be on the lookout for the "after" pictures coming out shortly!

Duct Tape Borders

I told you I was in love with fun duct tape! Here's another use I found for this wonderful invention! Duct tape makes a Wonderful border! It comes in lots of different colors and designs and makes for a nice straight border. In the picture below you can see that I used it around my whiteboards in the back of the classroom where I plan to have circle time. As you can see on the top picture, it is on top of the old chalkboard and I didn't like that I could see the raw edges, so I decided to cover them up. This is where the duct tape comes in. It didn't take me very long to put up, and I was very happy with the results!

A look at my completed board all ready for circle time! It's hard to tell from the pictures, but those are actually mustaches on the right side of the board! A look at my finished classroom will be going up within the next few days!

Dry Erase Markers

My preschoolers love to write on the whiteboards and I love to let them. Anytime they want to write, is fine by me! My problem was always making sure that they were using my "special" markers (aka the dry erase markers) on the board. Part of my problem is that some of the new ones look just like the regular markers they use to color with. So, what to do? I have fallen in love with fun colored duct tape this year, as I'm sure you'll see as we go along. I took some of the fun duct tape and wrapped it around the bottom of all my dry erase markers. Problem solved! Now I just have to keep reinforcing that the only markers they can use on the board are the ones with the green duct tape on them!

Time to Organize

Today I spent a good six (yes, six) hours cleaning and organizing one of the closets in my room. I'm almost embarrassed to show you the state that my closets are in, but alas that is the sacrifice I must make. Ninety five percent of the things in the closet I inherited from the previous teacher after she retired after about 20 years, so needless to say, she had a lot of stuff to share. Its kind of overwhelming to take it all in at once. I had to work up my courage to start tackling the enourmous job of cleaning and organizing. Today I finally tackled the first of two large closets in my room.  The best way for me to get motivated to do this is to do one shelf (or drawer) at a time. Then as I slowly see things start to change for the better, it makes me want to keep going. I managed to get through four of the five shelves today (just dont look at the bottom shelf on the picture). Three bags of trash later, it is finally looking like an organized closet in which I finally feel like I can find things quickly and easily in. Now I just have to work up the courage to tackle the back closet. Wish me luck . . .

Tips, Tricks and a Little Randomness

There are always little tips that you find out along the way that are useful and that you almost always wish you knew earlier because it would have saved you a lot of time and effort. These are a few that I have found that I hope you will find useful, too.

Tip #1: Dry erase markers make great erasing tools. They will take permanent marker off of anything that has been laminated or is plastic. This way you can continue to use posters over and over again. Just use your dry erase marker and color over the permanent marker then use a kleenex to wipe it off, and voila! you now have a clean poster.

Tip #2: Magic Erasers will become your new best friend! They can be used to clean just about anything off of anything. Once you start using them, you'll never go back to any of those stinky sprays again! Crayon marks on the table (or wall)? No problem! Glue on the table? Gone! Random sticky stuff? Wipes right off! As a bonus it can alao be used to clean those stubborn marks off of a dy erase board! I highly recommend investing in some of these; they will change your life!

Have any good tips you want to share?  Stay tuned for more tips, tricks, and a little randomness!

End of the Year Cleaning and some Whiteboard Magic

Well, it's that time of year. Time to clean and put away things until next year. It's also a great time to purge unwanted files and other artifacts that are lurking unused in the deepest darkest recesses of your classroom. This is what I have been doing over the last week and a half. Last week was spent going through my filing cabinets, and I'm sorry to say that job isn't even done yet, sigh. I have, however, made a lot of progress. When I got my teaching job this year, I was lucky enough to inherit a large supply of preschool items, which I am definitely thankful for. The downside is that I also inherited a lot of old files, some dating back to the eighties that I've been going through and purging. One filing cabinet at a time. I've found lots of interesting items that I will definitely be using next year. It's like a perpetual treasure hunt, and its always interesting to see what I might find in one of the closets, which I what Ill be tackling next. Before pictures are coming tomorrow. I've been having problems getting my whiteboard to come clean. I've tried everything I and Pinterest could come up with. I tried white board cleaner, baby wipes, air freshener; you name it, I've tried it. Nothing would take the marker off completely. Then today out director suggested using a Mister Clean Magic Eraser, and Bingo! With a little (okay, a lot) of elbow grease, the white board is finally clean once again! Mr. Clean saved my whiteboard!

I'm back!

After a long absence I am back. Older, hopefully wiser, and with a lot more experience. I have recently renewed my interest in reading blogs (especially preschool ones) and it has renewed my interest in blogging. I am committed to blogging more often about my experiences in teaching preschoolers. As I am posting this, I have just finished my last day with students for the year. It is a bittersweet moment. I'm glad for the summer break, but I will definitely miss my preschoolers, especially my four year olds as they are moving on to pre-k and kindergarten in the fall. My three year olds I'm lucky to get back for another year to see how they continue to grow. I'll be posting throughout the summer on different things I'll be working on to get ready for next year.