Yep, the Penguin is Coming Home with Me...(Hitting the Yard Sales for Preschool Finds)

Did a little yard saling with my friend Gay this morning.  I found all kinds of treasures - a backseatful, in fact.

Here's some proof:

Yes, I did buy a four-foot tall inflatable penguin at a yard sale today.  He's life-sized, so the Little People can see how they would measure up to a real emperor penguin.  If they're not scared of him.  I got home with my yard sale treasures before my fourteen-year old woke up and put the penguin right outside the door to his room as a little "good morning" surprise and he about had a small heart attack as he came out of his room later.  Now we're positioning him in random places around the house just for fun.  Like a large penguin family member.

You know, if he were real, I really would be scared of him.

Good times, good times...

Stretching Your Free-Explore Preschool Centers: Inexpensive Add-Ons that Extend Interest

It's happened to the best of teachers.  You set out a new and exciting free-explore center for your students - let's say a new sensory table.  When you first open it, it's all the rage.  Your students crowd the center, excited for a turn to play there.  They ooh and ahh about all the discoveries they find there.  But then, after a week or so, you notice the the visitors at that center are dwindling.  Many days it stands unvisited, all of its sensory splendor going un-sensed.

What's a teacher to do?  Center items like the objects in a sensory table can be time-consuming to change frequently.  Plus, it can be expensive to fill a sensory table well, and most teachers can't afford to change them out too frequently.  As a result, you find yourself looking for ways to "stretch" these centers and find ways to extend your students' interest (and learning) in and from them.

Obviously, you could just change out one or two small items in the mix to make it more interesting, but I find one of the easiest and cost-effective ways way to extend learning in many of my centers is through containers.  I have found that adding different types of small buckets, boxes, or even cups sudden provoke a renewed interest in a center.  Most times, the center finds some new life in these containers, which are not just another type of object, but instead promote new ways to play and learn.  These new ways are the skills of sorting, classifying, quantifying and plain arranging and rearranging.  For example, in my fall Sensory table, the Little People might decide sort the fall flowers into one container and the fall berries into another.   They might sort the containers out by color among two friends, and each friend gets to fill their own group of containers up.  I even had one Little Person today insist on stacking up the cups in a pattern today at the end of Center time, although I'm guessing that this was more of an avoidance (of cleaning up) tactic than it was a compulsory need to create a pattern.

Here are some of my favorite containers:

The cups found above were found in the current Target Dollar spot.  I think of them as "oatmeal" sized, and they come in wonderful fall colors:

Here they are with their green dot, showing what a bargain they are:

There were also in dollar area at Target:

They come in a package of three:

They even fold flat, which I think is a complete bonus:

I find these at the Dollar Tree.  I believe there are about 10 in the package.  The lids are easy enough for most of the Little People to open and close alone, which leads to all kinds of sorting, filling and stacking:

I also love these glittery containers from the Dollar Spot.  However, they are more expensive, at $1 each.  But oh - so much glitter!

I do also love this Target Dollar Spot bag for its cuteness and its fall theme.  However, in my experience, containers like this almost beg the children to take the materials out of the sensory table and carry them off somewhere else in the room.

See:

Maybe it's the handle.  I don't know.  But since I don't like rounding up all of these little sensory caches around the room, I avoid these containers.

Whatever containers you use, just remember - don't put them out the first few days the center is open.  That would be the equivalent of handing your own three-year old child the entire contents of a new "car toys" bag at the outset of of ten-hour road trip. Let the excitement of a new area play itself out a little bit before you "stretch" the center with the addition of the containers.

I think you'll like the "stretch" that these containers will give your free-play centers, along with the added learning opportunities it will give your students.

Circle Sculptures

This week we are talking about trees, but we're also working in lots of other things, such as some basic shapes and colors.  I just finished my first round of assessments with this new batch of Little People, and have found that many of them have lots and lots of fun things ahead of them to learn. (Meaning that a good number of them scored very low on this first assessment.)  However, I figure that they're really  not "supposed" to know any of these things until the end of the year anyway.   Plus, I kind of enjoy seeing such great amounts of growth during the school year, as they start out with not much "academic" knowledge and develop into these competent pre-kindergartners at the end of the year.   They're just like little sponges throughout these months.

This week we're familiarizing ourselves with circles.  I decided to set out paper plates, lots of die cut circles, my collection of recycled plastic lids, empty ribbon spools, and brand new bottles of glue.  Then I let them use these materials to make some Circle Sculptures.  Along the way we talked about the different circles - what they were made of, how some could fit inside others, and all about the different sizes.

Not surprisingly  the Little People went to town on this project   They stacked and glued and stacked some more:

 They picked their favorite circles and made some "collections" on their paper-plate bases:

They filled their plastic circles with glue and then in turn dumped the glue out onto their plates before gluing their circles down:

They even decided to bring over some scissors to cut some of their circles.

  But that was okay, too, because we also had a good discussion about what you can make when you cut circles.  I was told that when you cut circles you make pizza (slices).  And then when a smaller circle was cut, I heard, "I cut my circle and made a D!  No - two Ds!"  Sigh - they're so clever - just like little sponges.

New Preschool Items in the Teacher Stores

Well, I sadly was waylaid by a nasty stomach virus on Friday and throughout the weekend.  I am not sick very often, but found myself abandoning my Little People Friday afternoon as I decided that I just couldn't make it through the rest of the school day.  Well, I didn't exactly abandon them, since I work with two other teachers and a sub was called in to replace me.  But I did take my leave of them - quickly.

Ever since then I've been in various recovery stages, gearing up to feel good enough to return tomorrow.  I was able to finish my Halloween printable set and get it in the teacher stores this evening.

Here are thumbnails:

Here's what is included in this set:

-Two 11 x 17”  patterning pages with cards to add that practice ABAB and ABCABC patterning

(10) 4.25” x 5.5” “Clothespin Counting” cards

-Two Math Grid  games (Haunted House and Spider Web) in two different sizes (8.5” x 11” and 11” x 17”)

-Three Halloween song cards and corresponding song props (Five Little Pumpkins, Five Little Bats and Five Little Jack O’ Lanterns).

-Two Spider web Math/Play Dough Mats  in two different sizes (8.5” x 11” and 11” x 17”)

-One Pumpkin Math/Play Dough Mat in two different sizes (8.5” x 11” and 11” x 17”)

-Two “Which One is Different” full-color cards to practice visual discrimination

-One set of 11 x 17” number sequencing cards  (The page has 3 strips of  pumpkin sequencing cards)

-Nine “Jack O’ Lantern match up cards

-Three Halloween Graphing Printables:  “Have You Ever Made a Jack-o-lantern”, “What is Your 

-Favorite Type of Jack-o-lantern” and “Have You Ever Made a Jack-o-lantern?”

You can find this set in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store and my Teacher's Notebook Store.  Thanks for looking!

Light Table Love in Preschool

Ever since I starting hanging out on Pinterest, I have wanted a light table for my classroom.  In fact, I have a board called "When I Get a Light Table", but it doesn't have very many pins on it.  I was always discouraged by how expensive light tables are, and knew that my limited classroom budget wouldn't cover a table.

However, this year I was thumbing through the Back to School Constructive Playthings catalog and I found this:

It's an Ultra-Thin Portable Light Panel, and it was only $119.99 (on sale).   I asked my supervisor to order it, and we have loved it ever since.

I love the most that it's super-light and therefore super-movable.  I can put it on any table surface that's close to a plug, and it's big enough for two Little People to use happily.  It even has a thin, plastic sheet (like a transparency page) over the top of it so that we even do messy things on it without being afraid of messing up the surface.

I also ordered the Light Panel Accessories set, which provided some basic materials to use with it.  However, we have used some of our own fun things on it as well.  Here are some of the fall leaves that I bought in the Target Dollar Spot recently:

Also shown on the table are both lids to the clear containers and petri-type dishes that I also bought at Target.  They have proved to be the perfect containers for the tables - because they're clear, they encourage sorting and/or quantifying, and they were super-cheap!

I'm sure that we will find ways to extend this very affordable Light Table Love for months to come.

Good Things at the Art Table in Preschool

There are some consistent materials that are available at our Art/Writing table every day. Of course there is paper, and the "basket choices" that are available on the shelf at the end of the table. In these baskets we have crayons, stencils, scissors, pencils, and lots of labels (one of the best yard sale finds EVER). On the shelves above the table are markers, paper, and lots of glue sticks.  Plus, we always put out some die cuts that have to do with the theme that we're talking about.

Most days we get several people who visit this center, and lots of fun art gets created. Sometimes it's just drawings, but sometimes it's something really elaborate, like this picture:

Perhaps the parents of the Little People wish that they would be given cuter, more crafty papers at the end of the day. But I personally love these creations.  When I look at them I see spatial concepts, and fine motor skills, and lots of emergent writing.  Plus I see something that a Little Person was able to make from the own design, with their own hands, all on their own.

And that, (in my opinion) is what Teaching the Little People is all about.

Talking About Fall When It Isn't Fall at All

I had a little bit of a strange lesson with the Little People yesterday.  You see, this week is "Fall" week - and yesterday we had a high here of 103.  It seemed that every point that I was trying to make about fall I had to negate.  For example, I would say:

• In the fall, the days get cooler - but here where we live it's still really hot.
• We start wearing long pants and jackets in the fall - but now we're still wearing shorts.
• In the fall, the leaves turn different colors on the trees - but we won't really see that until November here.
• In the fall, many birds fly to a warmer place, because they don't like it where it's cold - but here the birds are pretty happy - because it's so hot here.
• Thank goodness we could still talk about apples and pumpkins being ready to pick, and we could talk about fall sports - except those sports at our school that get cancelled periodically because the air gets so bad when it's warm like this...

After a whole lesson on this, I had to start asking myself why I even tried to teach the kids about fall when it really isn't fall at all.  I had to remind myself that sometimes I have to let go of my regular ideas (such as the one that says that October is when fall should be happening) and go with what the Little People know...and experience.

So, next year I think we'll talk about fall - in November.  And during the first week of October we'll talk about - air conditioning and swimming pools.