Super Easy Puppet Theater

I decided we needed a puppet theater for the classroom this year since we have so many puppets. I made a whole space for it!  Found this easy design on Pinterest (https://pin.it/q4amyzj2dt5275) using a tri-fold board and here are the results. I'm pretty happy with it. Now, let's see if it lasts!

Preschool Classroom Setup-Walls

So, it is February and I am FINALLY getting my post up from the beginning of the year about our classroom setup. These are some photos of our circle time area wall and our birthday board. I decided to make it real simple this year. We don't even have a calendar, just the interchangable day, month and weather words. Also, I love that our word wall is interactive with velcro, so the children can take the words off when they want. Also, the laminated white posterboard is being used as a dry erase board for making our webs about our topic, lists, etc. When done, I take a photo before erasing it for documentation. It is much better than having chart paper hung all over the room or finding somewhere to store it that I will remember.

Here is a close-up of the word wall.

Here is our birthday board.

Please leave comments about things that are on the walls in your classroom!

Birthday Board

Here is the birthday board we did this year. Each cupcake has a month on it and will have the childrens' names whose birthdays are in that month clipped to the ribbon hanging from it.

At my center, we are not allowed to let parents bring in cake or any food for birthdays, so we made a birthday basket where they can choose a prize on their birthday.

What did you do for birthdays in your classroom?



Tutorial Tuesday: Learning Air Pollution in Preschool

Today's guest post is from Brenna from Brenna Phillips: Children's Ministry, Education and Life. Please take a moment to visit her blog and make a comment!

Learning Air Pollution in Preschool 

During Recycling week and studies on Earth Day, the preschool students learned about the importance of keeping the air clean.

They drew pictures on black bulletin board paper. There were pictures of flowers, the sun, and even some letters of the alphabet. Then we took the black paper outside and sprinkled baby powder on it. Yuck. It made a mess out of the students’ nice pictures.

We tried to shake the powder off the paper. It didn’t come off. We turned the paper over and tried to wipe the powder off on the grass. It only smeared it and didn’t come off.

The students were able to see how air pollution messes up good things. They learned the importance of keeping the air clean. We talked about factories with smoke stacks that cause air pollution and how that smoke sometimes makes our air yucky to breathe and not healthy for our lungs.

Tutorial Tuesday: Planning Preschool Activities

Planning Preschool Activities 

Hi! My name is Trina from Teaching My Blessings! I am a former elementary teacher and the Mommy to my three sons, who are my most amazing blessings. I am honored to be guest posting here today at Tutorial Tuesday. Today I will be discussing how to plan preschool activities and match activities with books.

One of my most favorite things to do is PLAN! I am a planner by nature. My calendar is my friend! When I was teaching full time my planning period was always my favorite time of the day. When I first started teaching I always loved getting a freshly, sharpened pencil and my empty lesson plan book! Then as technology progressed I began to type my lesson plans and then I loved looking at my blank excel spreadsheets to fill in. Oh how I do enjoy the planning piece of teaching. I learned over the years to be flexible with my planning. The ideas in my head can often be so much greater than the “real” world of teaching and learning.

In August of 2011 I decided it was time to engage my sweet boys more at home, therefore my new adventure began. I decided I would teach them concepts that I felt they needed to know at home at least two mornings a week. As the year went on I learned to be flexible with this piece of the planning process too and we did “preschool activities”, as we like to call them, anytime.

I began planning preschool activities for my children. First, I ran to Target to purchase an empty lesson plan book from the dollar section. I was so excited to have a blank lesson plan book again!

First, I planned the year thematically by choosing a theme for each week. I included monthly themes to coordinate with holidays. Then I researched online preschool themes to get more ideas. I found a ton of great resources! Including an amazing community of bloggers all blogging about teaching their children. I also asked my boys what they wanted to learn about this year and I included those themes in my plans. One week we learned about dinosaurs because that was what my son was interested in at the time. Another week we learned about Big Bird and Ernie at my son’s request.

I love to match our learning activities with books. I have a huge love for the public library. During the planning process I use our public library’s online card catalog to search for books to match each theme. I write the coordinating titles in my lesson plan book next to each theme. Then I put the books on hold to match each theme according to when I need them. I try to plan ahead and reserve the books to coordinate with each theme. Reading to my boys is one of my most favorite things to do as a parent and it is so important!!

I then search many of the blogs that I follow to find activities and printables to match the themes. I preview the activities and if I feel they are age appropriate for my children I bookmark them and write them in my lesson plan book.

This past year each week I planned:
Letter of the week
Shape
Color
Bible Verse
Character development Trait

I also plan crafts, cooking projects and field trips to coordinate with the theme when appropriate. The more hands on, creative, and fun activities I can plan, the better!

I hope this simple tutorial of how to plan activities has inspired at least one reader. Happy Planning!

DIY Feltboard

Here is a felt board I made for the classroom awhile back and now use it with my son. It is just a piece of cardboard with black felt glued on and then a cardboard border with colored masking tape to decorate it. Very simple. I also made another one which I can't find now, but it was thicker. I used 2 empty fabric bolts from the store and taped them together. It takes a lot of tape, but was quite sturdy actually.

 Remember, you don't have to use felt to make pieces for your felt board. Laminated pictures with velcro on the back works as well. I made 4 sets of some different things that L is familiar with. The first is food as shown above.

Farm Animals

 Vehicles

Toys

To make these, I photocopied the images from a book I got at the library, colored them with crayons and then laminated and added the velcro.
I think this way is easier than cutting out felt, although I have made some of those as well. I like the idea I saw at library storytime for making felt pieces, using fabric paint for the details.

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Thinky Linky Thursday

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MOST CLICKED LINKS FROM LAST WEEK:

Exploring the Ocean-Sensory Fun from We Can Do All Things

Craft Camp-Caterpillars from Having Fun While We Learn

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Animal Homes Books for Toddler/Preschool

We have been going to the library toddler storytime this week and I wanted to share some of the books we heard. Unfortunately my sweet little boy was being not-so-sweet today and we didn't get a chance to write down the names of the books that were read, but nevertheless, here are the ones I did remember:

Also, I have come across 2 great sites with lists of more books about houses/homes:

Family Reading Partnership

The Miss Rumphius Effect

Have fun reading!

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Thinky Linky Thursday

The number 1 most clicked on post from last week was...

Valentine's Day Activities from Mom's Heart

And here are the 2 runners-up:

Good Books Copywork from Living and Learning at Home

Heart Animals from Reading Confetti

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Thinky Linky Thursday

I have decided to start featuring the link that got the most views from the week before. Last week's top viewed link and my very first featured winner is...

Polar Region Sensory Bin by Criss-Cross Applesauce

Congrats!!!

Thank you all so much for entering your links. Please continue to come back each week, so we can build a database of the best kids thinking ideas on the net!

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Thinky Linky Thursday: A Day in Preschool

Here are some of the things we did since being back from winter break. (only 1 day) It was so nice to be back with my kiddos! Love them :)

Floating sailboats. Matching colors and shapes. One of my little girls made up her own song "I'm sailing, we're sailing together."

Love the way this little boy set up the dramatic play area with our new baby dolls! Setting the table shows understanding of 1:1 correspondence.

Isn't this snow angel adorable?!

For small groups, we sat at the discovery area by the window and looked out at the snow. We talked about winter and what happens to the weather when winter comes. Then we drew pictures of things we can do with snow.

My car-obsessed student decided to build this ramp/street/track to run his cars on. A bunch of other kids joined in. Just look at how he matched up the blocks to make them fit together. Excellent!

And lastly, we used these gear blocks (not sure what they're really called) to make letters. 

What have you been doing with your kids?

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