My Preschool

I decided on the name "Ms. Jamie's Discovery Preschool" - not super creative, but it will do.  It might sound surprising but I am not very creative or very "cutsie".  Some may think that is necessary in being a preschool teacher, but truth is I have found that it is all very methodical more than creative.  I have an objective (have child learn to write name) and then I have to break that down into skills (fine motor, letter knowledge, etc) and then how to get them to learn that skill (play dough, salt trays, cutting, etc).  It is all a process. 

I will write more about my philosophies and processes later in one of my tabs.  I am not sure exactly how I am going to use this blog.  I just know that it helps in my process to document what I am doing and how the kids responded.   But obviously this blog is about the preschool - so my full devotion will be given to that, this blog will have no bells or whistles and will lack anything "cute" - maybe in a few years I can create a great website.  But for now it is just a place to share my ideas.  Also, I may or may not proof read the posts before I publish them - so cut me some slack and guess what I am trying to say when none of it makes any sense. :)

Here is how my room will look on the first day.  My center materials will rotate weekly (or every other week depending on the children's interests) - but I THINK this will be the layout - ***think is why the white board is not hung yet - once it is hung it is staying and I wasn't ready to make that kind of commitment - room layout has so much to do with classroom management, behavior, and learning.

Those plates will have paint on them in the morning.

My centers are writing, reading, dramatic, art, sensory, math, science, blocks, and white board, and as mentioned earlier the materials and focus will be changed often.   

Anyways... wish me luck!

Some Centers

This is my science and math center.  I will always have discovery bottles.  I have about 15 or so right now and will switch them out periodically - especially ones that fit our theme.  Also staples like magnifying glasses, flashlights, tweezers, magnets, etc will always stay there.  I like having discovery boxes.  That flat brown box you see has really cool rocks in it.  This center is very basic right now because I need to introduce tools to them before I put them in the center.  It will get more interesting as the year goes on.  On the table is the "invitation to play" highlighting a math or science theme.  This weeks theme in preschool is "I can".  So many of our activities are focusing on cans.  So these are for tin can robots.

 Sorting will also be part of the math center.

I have a little shelf with puzzles that I will rotate though.  If the kids get done with snack early or our large group activity, rather than going back to center time they will be invited to pick a puzzle or a book.

My sensory table.  This thing has been a nightmare.  I knew exactly what kind of sensory table I wanted... and it only cost $300.00.  I looked and looked for almost a year and couldn't find one.  Finally a week before my preschool I broke down and bought this at Lakeshore learning center.  It is nothing fancy and will have to do for now.  I decided to start our sensory table off with water play.  I may or may not end up adding bubbles, we will see what direction the kids want to take it.

My block's center.  These materials will also be fluid.  In my head this is my "engineering center".  I have a lost of different materials that will come and go here. 

And my writing center.  This will be my center that is mostly likely to grow and change as the year goes on and I get more experience.  I know what  I want it to do, but I am not sure how to get it there yet.  In the preschool I worked in before the children rarely visited the writing center.  I have plans to change that - but I need to see how the children want to use it first.  The key is to remember that it is not about producing writing, but building writing skills.  I have a small word wall.  And for this week I am just leaving it simple (paper and writing tools) - but soon I will have more specific purposes.

New Writing Center

My writing center was... lacking.  I knew it, and obviously the kids knew it.  I didn't really know how to fix it.  I went to several different stores and could find anything that I wanted and/or fit my budget.  I needed something on the wall that could hold all the tools and craft supplies I wanted - but also be versatile and changing because I often like to mix things up with new tools, materials, and mediums.  I found this at the Container store - it is fully customizable and SO easy to install.  I am so so sad I never had this for my own kids - I always knew I wanted something like this, I just didn't know it existed.  I may just get carried away and get several more for all areas of my preschool and home.  At first I was sad about the "industrial" look and the stainless steal.  When I left the store I had concluded that I was going to spray paint it.  But that night I was too eager to set it up and once I did I realized that if it was spray painted the craft supplies would not stand out and be so inviting.

My own kids were so excited to see it and are often downstairs creating things - and my preschoolers.... well it has changed our whole day.  These writing and craft tools are now incorporated into every part of their play - it is so wonderful.  I am far from being done (I am currently trying to find a way to organize different papers that are easily seen and accessible. 

I also hung this little "mail" slot for letters and creations.  They love it.

Magnetic Robots

So I kind of have an assistant - that makes me feel so professional.  My friend, Hannah, is one of the mom's of one of my students.  She has offered to help me.  I told her I needed this magnetic robot activity built.  She did a great job.  The kids loved it and got very creative with it.

I can't remember if I have mentioned that on the first day of school we talked about things that "I can" do in preschool.  Rather than starting out the year with rules we started with things they can do, cut, paint, color, glue, build pretend, read, write, etc. Many of our centers used cans as kind of a fun reinforcement.  We painted with cans, stacked cans, categorized cans, sorted cans, built robots, and they took a can home to bring back something that started with the letter C.

Glue

At our art center on Thursday the kids got to learn how to use glue.  What kid doesn't just want to squirt glue with out having an adult say, "oh, that's enough".  So I thought I would let them have some open ended play with glue. 

 

I added some liquid water color to some glue bottles and chose to have a paper plate be their medium - so it would provide somewhat of a natural boundary.

 

I taught the kids how to open and close the glue bottles, and how to squeeze them.

Each kid made about 5 plates of beautiful glue art.  Some had great designs full of lines and squiggles - others (like megan) loved to make her art "blobby" and add color on top of color.

They liked to see how high they could hold the glue in the air and still have it hit the plate.  At the end of the day I think they all became experts on how to perfectly control the amount of glue you want and how have it go where you want it to go.

Morning routine

I never wrote about our morning routine.  

First we would sing a couple songs.  Then we had a news minute - where the kids got to tell me what ever they wanted - this we always a fun part of the day.

Then we looked to see what our jobs were.  We have calendar, weather, rhyme time, estimation, clean-up, snack, and lights.

Calendar person would come up.  The way most preschools do calendar (including the way I was taught) is not very meaningful to 4 and 5 year olds.  Most preschoolers can talk about the calendar everyday and still not grasp what yesterday was and what date tomorrow will be, by the end of the year.  Their brains are just not ready for it.  But as "educators" we do it anyway.  Well, I wanted to do something different, something that would be more meaningful and visual for the kids.  I kept a traditional calendar (although I considered tossing it all together) but i kept it for 2 reasons: one - it DOES introduce the concept of calendars, how they looks, how they function, the changing of the months, etc and two - who ever was the calendar person wrote in the date, and although it didn't have any real meaning - it did give number and counting practice because we counted the numbers every time.  But BEYOND the calendar I added a chain.  One link for every day we have been in preschool.  Blue to Tuesday, Pink for Thursday, and yellow for "weird days" (sometimes preschool would get changed to a Wednesday or Friday).  We patterned the chain, counted the links, the fine motor skills in making the chain.  It all came together quite nicley. 

Then we did weather.  Who ever was the weather person would draw what the weather looked like on a little strip of paper, and then the class would help me write to word on the paper, "cold, snowy, sunny, windy, etc"  We would sound out the words together and they would tell me what letter to use.  Then we would pin our picture on our weather chart.

Then we had rhyme time (which is that little blue box).  Whose ever job that is they would pick a word out of that box.  For example: cat.  Then they would come up with 2 words that rhymed with cat.  Then we would open it up to the whole class and come up with as many rhyming words as we could.  I often wrote the words on the white board as they came up with them.

See the jar with the pom poms? that is our estimation jar.  Everyday their would be something new in it (it often went along with our theme).  The student would estimate how many items were in the jar, then go pick that number off the white board and put it next to the word "estimation".  Then they would dump the jar and count the times and then put the number next to the word "actual".  We never really discussed how close or far off they were - that wasn't the point and I didn't want it to fill like winning or loosing.  I praised them that they found the correct number and put it in the right place.  No child ever felt discouraged if they were "way off"

After this everyday was different.  I would often introduce what we were doing that day, maybe with a large group activity, or a book, or a new song, you saw those in my previous posts.  But these are the things we did everyday.

Felt Monsters

In large group we read "Five Little Monsters go to School" then I put trays in the middle of the circle - each try containing different shapes and/or colors for monster parts.  The hope was that they would create some basic monsters.  Boy did they love this activity; what I thought would hold their attention for a minute or two actually lasted about 10 minutes or more.  After large group I added the trays to one of our classroom tables so they could continue to create. 

One of my students loves blue.  Everything she does is all blue... it is so endearing.

Monsters

There is a fun little book called "5 Little Monsters go to School" that I read to my class on the second week of school.  Most of our centers incorporated monsters just to keep up the fun. 

We had monster making play dough.  Of course they could do what ever they wanted with the play dough.  This is how the table looked when the kids came into preschool.  Pretty open ended and inviting - but I did have one example just so they could get their wheels turning.  Most my kids are pretty shy and timid still and have been nervous to get in and get exploring.  As the year goes on I will stop providing examples so the "figuring out part" can be included in the creativity.

They all got super creative on their own.  I was very proud.

Adding eyes to popsicle sticks... that took some skills.