Just Some Center Organization: Part 1~ Writing Area

I take a little bit of pride in the way my classroom is setup. Okay, a LOT of pride. I have spent endless hours moving, rearranging, lifting, sliding, organizing, building, sorting, and doing it all over again (and I usually leave after 8 pm on those nights). My classroom is...well, small. When I walked into my classroom for the first time four and a half years ago, there was a LOT of teacher space (read: kidney shaped table, big comfy desk chair, gimondo filing cabinet, etc.). The kids' materials and supplies were all crammed into tiny little, unaccessible boxes that were dangerously stacked on top of one another, defying gravity like the Leaning Tower of Puzzles. It had to change. The past 4 years have been filled with trying, and then trying again. After all...isn' t that what we teach our students?

4 and a half years later, it isn't perfect...but it WORKS. The children can independently (and SAFELY! Phew!) access the materials. The key was flexibility, creativity, and simplicity. If you have a small classroom like me, you have to let go of having everything in your classroom all year long. You have to be realistic about which materials you really don't, haven't, and probably will never use. Prioritize which materials are essential to keep in your classroom. Store and rotate the rest. It's better for the kids to have a streamlined, organized learning environment. When you rotate new materials in, they will be elated that they got brand new (or so they think) toys and supplies. 

I'm going to be honest with you upfront: you will make...a LOT...of trips to wherever you will store your extra stuff. But it is worth it. So, so worth it. 

I hope you find these ideas to fit the many required preschool learning centers into a tiny, little classroom. Our classroom has a sand and water area, sensory table, Science area, writing area, art area, library area, computer area, toy/fine motor/puzzle area, dramatic play area, and an open circle time/music/movement area. Phew! 

Today I will focus on the writing area. I will make this a series and publish several more entries in the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned! So without further ado...

The pictures! 

Writing Area

Keep in mind that the materials contained in the writing area are switched out as the students' interests and skills change!

Above is our writing area from a faraway view. The little red desk was purchased at a garage sale for $7. The students like sitting there because they feel like "big kids." Now, let's get a closer look at what's inside the area! 

 Use a dollar store shoe organizer to help you organize classroom materials! I cut out 2 sections of an organizer to hang on the wall with thumbtacks. It currently holds highlighters and colored pencils. I trade out the writing utensils so that the children can experience writing with all different kinds of tools. 

I have a personal love for the Handwriting without Tears program. Even though our school doesn't officially use this (amazingly, developmentally appropriate) writing curriculum in lessons, we used to. Therefore, I have all of the materials and I incorporate them throughout the classroom. Above are flip crayons. Did you know that when crayons are small, it is virtually impossible for them to hold them incorrectly? Oh yes, that means that we intentionally break our crayons. Small crayons= correct grip. This is especially true for children with special needs. They need to practice good writing habits from the day you put a writing utensil in their hand, or the bad habits will be extra hard to break. 

With that being said, make sure your students are really, really ready to hold writing utensils before you give them the opportunity to use them. I will write a whole blog post about the pre-requisite skills to writing in the near future. 

 Extra fine motor bonus of flip crayons: practicing the fine motor skills of, well, flipping. And who doesn't like a crayon that has 2 colors? 

Another Handwriting without Tears treasure! I found these in a pile of dusty worksheets (gasp! worksheets!). What a wonderful find! These are templates that are used to help students "build" alphabet letters with the wooden lines and curves from the HWT program. I put the templates in paper protectors, and put them in a binder. They can be found in the writing area under a bucket of wooden lines and wooden curves. 

If you do not have the HWT materials, you can get paint mixing sticks from your local home improvement store and use those for the wooden lines. You can trace them to make the templates. Only thing is, I am fresh out of ideas about what you could use for wooden curves. Anyone have any ideas? Write them in the comment section! 

The laminator is my best friend. So are free printables from my blogger friends. Check out these amazing shape tracing printables from www.3dinosaurs.com!  Print, laminate, and put in your writing area! Children can use dry erase markers to trace and draw the shapes. 

If you have students with specific needs and the printables you find don't seem to fit their needs- you can create your own tracer sheets! Draw out what you want the kiddos to trace, put a little sticker where they should start (always at the top!) and laminate. Again, they should use dry erase markers to trace. 

In the same way I believe that children should practice writing with lots of different writing utensils, they should also write on all kinds of media! We have all kinds of paper, including looseleaf, stationary, notebooks, envelopes, dry erase boards, chalk boards, etc. Rotate these out- too many choices can be overwhelming! 

This is a great way to get the kids to learn how to write their name. I use two different colored sentence strips and tape them together. On the top line, I write their name and put stars or stickers where they should start their letters (at the TOP!). They trace on the top, and copy on the bottom, using dry erase markers. My students did this every day from September-December after they unpacked their belongings. Now, we have moved on to writing with paper and pencil because they are ready. These name trace & copy templates got moved to the writing area so they can practice writing their name and their friends' names. 

Well, that's all for today. 

What are your favorite writing area ideas? 

Share them in the comment section! 

Until next time...

*Bite Sized Lessons*

Baby It's Cold Outside

Winter. There is something about snow that just makes kids so excited. 

I on the other hand, am not a fan of winter, post-holiday season. 

I don't let that stop be from letting the kiddos explore the magic of snow in the comfort of our heated classroom! 

Here are a few of my favorite winter centers and activities! 

This sensory table was popular, especially with the boys. I took the bin from my sensory table and filled it about 1/3 of the way with water. I then took a metal tin and put it in the corner. I filled it with full water bottles so that when the rest of the water froze, it could be pulled out to create a small pond.  (Note~ the tin will freeze to the rest of the ice, so fill it with some hot water and you should be able to pull it free in a few minutes.) I placed the sensory table outside overnight and in the morning I had an ice table with a small pond! If you don't have a sensory table, a tupperware container will work just fine. We added arctic animals to the table, along with some real snow. We also poured water into the pond so that the kids could explore what happens when ice, snow, and water are mixed together. The children brought gloves and mittens to be hung on a clothesline near the sensory table so they can still play without their hands getting too cold! The best part of this sensory table is that it will be like new every day if you let it refreeze overnight! 

When the kids got tired of the ice table, I replaced it with another type of snow table. We found all sorts of white materials in our room such as cotton swabs, cotton balls, pom-poms, feathers, tissues, tissue paper, paper, styrofoam balls, snow glitter, etc. The kids can pour and scoop the materials. I also had the children practice fine motor skills by tearing the paper to make snow. This is also a hands-on experiment in which types of materials can be torn and which cannot. Here's a close-up of the materials we used. I look forward to hearing from you in the comments section about what other ideas you have of things that could be added to this table! 

I must give my friend Jannette props on this picture. Our class did the same activity, but hers came out so much cuter so I took a picture of her bulletin board. Thanks Jannette! This was an activity that the whole preschool did. Each child had to count the letters in their name and choose that many circles. They wrote one letter on each circle and then glued them in order from top-to-bottom. The Occupational Therapist who works in our preschool was elated that we did this project. She said that developmentally, left-to-right progression can be very difficult, especially for 3s and 4s. She applauded our use of top-to-bottom progression for the little ones! You can get really creative with this project. Allow the children to draw snow in the  background and create the snowman's head however they want. If you are feeling really adventurous, the kids can also cut out their own circles! That's what we did~ and that's why ours weren't as photogenic as Jannette's. At least the kids got to practice using scissors! This was fun for all. 

Sugar cubes are fun to build igloos with! Add some non-fiction picture books to the center so kids can flip through the books and check out pictures of real igloos! Let the children explore building igloos with sugar cubes! 

The traditional bird-feeder recipe using peanut butter is not something that we can use because we are a peanut-free school. Instead, we used Crisco shortening. This was easy and fun! Cut cardboard tubes into small pieces. Let the kids spread shortening on them with a popsicle stick and roll it in bird seed. Hang it by a tree with some yarn and lets the kids delight in watching the birds go to town! 

The recipe for getting kids to play with academic tools and materials is to add them to something sensory, goopy, or messy. This was a small group activity. Each child got a ball of white floam (snow). We put magnet letters in the center of the table. They spelt each other's names, and some different words from our winter word wall. 

Practice writing and pre-writing skills by allowing the children to write in "snow" (shaving cream). They love to cover themselves up to their elbows in this stuff! We covered our table in Saran Wrap for easy cleanup. You can also use baking sheets or trays so that they can be removed for easy cleanup, too. Provide the children with q-tips to write with as an extension activity. 

Another activity created by my colleague and friend, Jannette (isn't she amazing?) We read the book The First Day of Winter by Denise Fleming. Each child added a piece to the snowman while we left. You can also find lots of activities for this book at www.denisefleming.com and www.makinglearningfun.com. 

Even though there are endless activities for winter, this will be my last one for today. Fill a dishpan with water and small objects or magnet letters. Put outside or in the freezer overnight and voila! A fine-motor, science, and literacy center wrapped into one! Give the children small squirt bottles filled with warm saltwater and watch them marvel as they melt the ice to free the letters. Provide them with a cookie sheet to stick the letters on when they free them. You can also provide them with popsicle sticks or other objects to etch away at the ice with. Refreeze and reuse until the kiddos are no longer interested in this activity. Easy~peasy! Another twist on this is to freeze individual magnet letters in water in an ice cube tray so that you can pop out letter ice cubes and let them hammer away at them with play hammers! 

What are your favorite winter activities?
My next blog will be about the way I organized my classroom learning centers. Stay tuned! 

Until next time...
*Bite Sized Preschool*

Fa La La La Lessons

Hello friends! Welcome to my first official blog post! I teach preschool in a public school! I teach 2 half day sessions- 2 1/2 hours each. The morning session is a self-contained session, and the afternoon session is inclusion! I love coming up with new ideas for my kiddos and I also love finding and sharing great ideas from other teaching blogs on the net! So without further ado, my FIRST blog post will be about holiday fun!

In our school, we are allowed to discuss winter holidays as long as we discuss them all! We do mainly focus on Christmas, though, as that is what the majority of the population celebrates.

Here are some of my favorite ideas from this past year's holiday lessons!

This is one of my all-time favorite holiday displays! The kids LOVE creating their own Rudolph by painting a paper plate and adding eyes with various craft supplies! The antlers are their traced hands and the red noses are Red Globe Christmas lights! This is one string, I found a box at Target for $12! The kids love the light-up display of their artwork! The papers in the middle are the kids' letters to Santa. They told me what they wanted, I wrote it in, and they colored the border.

Cinnamon Applesauce ornaments are a quick and easy gift idea for parents! Be prepared to make a MESS if you take on this project! It is a sensory experience to the max! All you need is cinnamon, applesauce, a mixing bowl, and a wooden spoon. I let the kids take turns scooping in some applesauce and shaking cinnamon into the bowl. They love the way the cinnamon smells. The whole SCHOOL will smell like cinnamon. Seriously. Let the kids mix up the dough with their hands. They will be a wonderful, goopy mess. After the dough is mixed, experiment with the consistency by adding more cinnamon if needed so the dough is plyable but not sticky. The finished product should feel like play dough and should not stick to the table. Roll it out, cut it out with a cookie cutter, make a hole in the top with a pencil, let it dry, and voila! An ornament that will keep its wonderful smell for years and will remind your students of this wonderful day every year when they take it out of the box!

During December, I add green play dough, tree cookie cutters, buttons, and other craft supplies to the art center so they can create and decorate their own Christmas trees.

This awesome activity works on so many skills! The children will create their own string of lights using precut lights labeled with color names! Hang a string in an easily accessible area, put some clothespins on the string, and let the kids go to town! For the little ones just learning colors, allow them to put the lights on in any manner they choose. The older kids can create AB and ABC patterns. The readers can begin to recognize colors and their written names. Everyone practices fine motor skills by pinching the clothespins! This activity can also be done with letters and numbers. The kids can match uppercase and lowercase letters, or put letters and numbers in sequential order on the string! So many variations! What other variations can you think of? Write them in the comment section!

We did a gingerbread unit this year. The childrens' favorite activity was the one that they got to EAT gingerbread! I made small gingerbread cookies for the kids using Betty Crocker's gingerbread cookie and cake mix. It's only $1.29 a box! I used 2 boxes to make a bunch of cookies. Make sure to follow the directions on the side of the box for the cookies so that they keep their shape in the oven! Each child got a cookie in large group time. They were instructed to take one bite only at first. We graphed how many childrens' first bite was the head, right leg, left leg, right arm, or left arm. Then the children wrote their names on post-it notes and put it on the appropriate section on the graph. As you can see, the head was the first to go for most of our cookies!

This bulletin board was almost completely created by the students! The first step was painting mini paper plates with craft paint. The kids painted the plates in all different ways to create the candies. The next day, we went in the hallway to get cuttin'! I drew out a template of a house and of swirly icing with a highlighter. The kids cut it out using scissors. I stapled the house and the icing up on the bulletin board, followed by the candies. The icing that makes the doors and the windows was made and measured by the kids using the scraps from the roof icing! It was so neat to see them measuring and talking about how many more they would need to create a square, etc. The next day, the kids create gingerbread cookies to add to the display.

This was a small group activity that we did. The kids each received a laminated Christmas tree. There was a bucket of buttons on the center of the table. The children were instructed to explore with the materials freely. Some of them create patterns. Some of them sorted by color. Some sorted by button shape. Some of them decorated randomly. On the other side of these trees, there is a number on each star so the kids can also work on counting and creating number sets.

This was a sensory bucket I created. I dyed elbow pasta green and bowtie pasta red. The pasta sat overnight in a bowl of rubbing alcohol and food coloring. Don't be shy with the food coloring- the more the better! Use enough rubbing alcohol so the pasta is completely immersed. Once the pasta dries, add it to your sensory table. I also added candy canes, jingle bells, plastic scoops, red and green pom poms, red and green magnetic letters, and a magnet board. The children loved this center!

I hope you found some great ideas for the holiday season!
What are your favorite preschool lessons at Christmas time? Leave them in the comment section below!

Until next time...
*Bite Sized Lessons*