Planning for December, part two

Just before Thanksgiving my coworker and I attempted to plan the entire month of December together.  I will admit that I did a good job of getting this coming week planned, but only have a general idea of the rest of the month.  I am grateful that my coworker wanted to plan this way, though, because it will really make the rest of the month much easier.

Christmas Q-tip Painting

I decided that I wanted some fun fine motor practice for my students this month.  We have done a few q-tip painting activities in the past, mostly focusing on making the shapes of the letter of the week.  The set I created involves dot painting along the outlines of Christmas related drawings.  I will probably use the black line with the clip art this time around in my classroom.

To use these printables I provide q-tips or other cotton swabs and a small paint palette with a few colors of paint as well as a paper towel to set used swabs on.  There are a few students who really like to mix colors, so I do need to remind them that these are shared paints for the center and that mixing is not a choice.  I will try to make sure I do have an activity in which those students who like to mix paint will be able to mix during an art project, if possible, during the week.  Otherwise, I will try to let my happy mixers be the last to use the paint at the end of the last centers time so that they can mix to their heart's content.

Visit TPT and make  your wishlist now

Teachers Pay Teachers is having a site wide sale Monday and Tuesday, so make your wishlists now and be sure to check out one of those days.  I have a few items I want to purchase myself and need to decide how much I can budget.  Some are just to use in my classroom and some are to make items to use in my classroom as well as add to my store.

Planning for December in Preschool

12 Days of Christmas Set

Thanks to an awesome customer I have twelve new questions for the holidays for my Question of the Day Bundle.  Between these questions and the ones already in the bundle I am sure I have plenty for the entire month of December.  I may end up making a few more, though, since we are focusing on the five senses during December and I may want to have a few questions that relate the senses to Christmas.

I am also planning to switch my pretend play from a Construction Site to a Post Office, so I have a bunch of work to do before Thanksgiving so that I don't feel overwhelmed when I get back.  I need to pack up the golf tee nails, the sand paper, the wood, tool sets, and construction vests.  Since I am planning to move my writing center into the Post Office I need to pick up a bunch of Christmas cards from the dollar store to stock that part of the center.

Welcome to my Classroom

After a break from Laura's Lily Pad to get my school year started, complete a college course on Play and Learning, and deal with some family issues, I now am dusting off my blog and sharing my classroom photos of my new Ocean Friends PreK classroom.

I started out the year with an ice cream shop in my dramatic play area.  The freshly painted wooden kitchen pieces were donated by a family from my church and were painted by another member of the church.  My director made most of the decorations when she did this dramatic play area in her classroom in year's past.

This is the view when you enter the room.  I have since added a table and rearranged some things, including moving the easel nearer the door and behind the cubbies.  You can see my question of the day pocket chart on the right side, hanging on our bathroom door.  Student name cards are on top of the cubbie shelf.  

I am hard at work on some new products for my writing center using alphabet stamps.  I am gearing these printables specifically for preschoolers since most of the stamping activities I have found lately are more for kids who know their alphabet and are working on words.  I am excited to test using them in my classroom over the next week to see how the students like them.  My coworker has also expressed interest in them, so after some feedback and any revisions I will add them to my Teachers Pay Teachers shop.  

What Will You Put In Your Cart?

The big Love Back to School Sale is going on at Teachers Pay Teachers on Monday and Tuesday.  I will be participating with 28% off.  Make sure you use the promo code BTS15 to get your entire discount on your back to school goodies.

I still cannot decide which set of Preschool Center Signs I am going to print for use in my classroom.  Anyone have any suggestions?

I have been working on making a Happy Birthday banner for my classroom with an ocean theme.  I finally managed to get it to print correctly from my Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader, so I will hopefully manage to add it to my shop as soon as I write some helpful printing hints.  I don't want any of you to have to deal with the trial and error I messed with last night.

Tomorrow my church starts Vacation Bible Camp where I will be going on a Thailand Trek with 16 preschoolers.  This promises to be an exhausting, but fulfilling week.  Hope I can remember to check in on my shop and hopefully treat myself to something from one of the other great teacher shops during the sale.

A Dead Computer and Now Learning All Over Again

My home computer has been on its last legs for a while now.  I had gotten to the point where I was afraid to turn it off because I was not sure if it would boot up when I attempted to turn it back on.  Fortunately, I managed to upload the important family photos from its hard drive before the latest crash.  I did not get all of my teacher files from it, though.  I am sure I will be figuring out what is lost over time and  perhaps when things quiet down here for my husband he will be able to get it up and running long enough to offload some files.

In the meantime, I was blessed by my boss with a laptop.  I have been busily trying to figure out everything about it since it uses Windows and I have been using a Linux based desktop for as long as I can remember.  I was able to download some of the programs I used in Linus, like GIMP and LibreOffice, but they are newer versions so I even have to figure them out.

What's with the photo of the dog in the snow above?  He is in my latest product.  I am madly working on a new Question of the Day set, which will include winter theme questions.  I hope to finish it up before Monday, since that will be the day I have to take my oldest to camp.

Organizing My Classroom In My Head

Since my classroom still smells interesting (and not in a good way), I have continued working on some projects that will get printed and put up in my classroom later this summer.

As I cleaned my classroom at the end of the school year I realised that my centers signs were a bit rough looking.  In addition, they really were not what I wanted in the first place, but I had made them work while I searched for the perfect set.

That perfect set never appeared, so I decided to work on a few sets of my own and then I will decide which one to print out for myself once I can get in my room to finalize which centers signs I will be using.

I found some cute graphics from Educlips to use with one of the sets of centers.

I also made a set with graphics from MyCuteGraphics.

Now I just have to decide which set to use for myself and which signs I will use this year.  Which would you choose?

My Preschool Classroom Smells Like Tricycle Tires

We had quite a storm a few weeks ago, which resulted in our preschool playground shed exploding.  The roof landed on the sandbox, several walls sailed over the fence, but the doors stayed locked to each other and landed on the tricycle path.  As a result, all of the playground supplies are now in my classroom until we get a new shed put up in the playground.

Tricycle tires have quite a strong smell when closed up in a preschool classroom.  This is keeping me out of the room more than the fact that the room is quite crowded with tricycles and other ride ons as well as quite a variety of other outdoor play equipment.

The good news for this is that I need a break from my room to feel refreshed and ready for the new school year.  It also gives me time to play around on the computer and create new things for my classroom.

My latest project is Ocean theme decor items since I am switching up my classroom from a frog theme that I have enjoyed the last two years to something new.  I found some great clip art from Pixel Paper Prints that inspired me to start creating.  So far I have made some calendar numbers and months of the year.

Click above to see bundle in my shop

Question of the Day Summer Fun

 Question of the Day Summer Fun Set

I really enjoy using a Question of the Day in my preschool classroom.  I make it simple, so it is normally a yes/no or a two choice question.  I place the students names out on a table and each student finds his or her name upon entering the room for some name recognition practice.  Then the student brings the name card to the pocket chart near the door where I post my question of the day.  Generally I read the question aloud to the student, running my finger along the text and showing the two answer choices.  Then the student places the name card in the pocket chart under the appropriate response.

Later in the day, during circle time one student is assigned to tally the responses for some counting practice.  The chosen student gives us the tally and we discuss which number is more or less, most or least, and whether we have a unanimous response to gain some familiarity with those math terms.

One of my goals for the summer is to make up sets of Question of the Day to use for the entire year.  This past year I would sometimes have the questions already thought out and in my lesson plans, but occasionally I would suddenly realize as the first child came in the door that I needed a new question and so they would not always be as well thought out as they should be.

I just completed creating my first set of 20 Question of the Day cards and added them to my shops so that you could use them as well.  The set in the TeachersPayTeachers shop has a preview so that you can print one of the questions to see how they would work in your classroom.  I like my questions to be big, but if you want to save paper you could print two sets to a page which should still be readable.

Laura's Lily Pad Hops On Board

I have started my summer with a new project, to open a preschool printables shop at Teacher's Notebook. I am currently scurrying around, updating ancient blogs, starting new ones, and working on some products for the shop. I am anxiously awaiting my first freebie going live in my shop. Here is a little preview for you:

Once it is live in my shop, you will be able to click over into my shop from the shop button on the right hand side of the blog. This school theme word wall will be free. I am currently working on two more word wall sets for the shop. I plan to upload them once I see that the first set uploads without any errors and I make sure there are no "bugs" for my customers. If you happen to download the freebie, please let me know that it downloads and prints correctly for you; I don't want to keep making the same mistake if I missed something with my first set. I plan to work my way through all of the preschool themes that I teach so that I can have fresh word walls for the whole year. I am carefully choosing my photos so that I have no copyright restrictions that would keep me from sharing them with other teachers who are looking for what I wanted for my classroom as well.