Charleston or BUST!

Do you remember the game?..."On my way to Charleston, South Carolina for the Early Childhood Summit I brought my....2 Preschool Pals buddy, a dead battery 5 hours in, and my Starbucks gift cards !! 

Well...we finally made it to one of our new favorite places in life... Charleston! The conference has been Amazing and we are beyond excited about implementing all of our new wonderful ideas, and we've only been out of school for two weeks! From meeting Dr. Jean and learning EVEN MORE ideas and hearing her heart on the importance of oral language to Vanessa Levin who is getting us organized for the new year! We loved her "picture perfect" idea for showing the students how a center should look during clean up time! Sam Williams was another presenter who showed us numerous ways of how to use Math manipulatives appropriately in our classroom! One great example was to turn cookie sheets into 10 frames with magnets! Or how bout' converting shoe laces into a number line. 

The ideas are just pouring out as we talk about all of the new creative ways we are going to start our year... And we still have another day to go!! We will blog again soon! Happy Summer from 2 preschool pals... Liz and Kim

Numbers

In my classroom I have tried to come up with some ways to help my students with number sense. One of my favorite things (my kids love it too) is:  can you guess my number?

I only reveal the numbers we have worked on. Each day my teachers helper gets to whisper a number in my ear. Then he/she will call on students to guess what number was chosen. I use little sticky notes to cover up the numbers. When the number is guessed, the helper writes the number on the board. I am never allowed to miss this activity, and my kids are learning. 👏

The picture above is part of my jungle/safari math centers. I will have it in my stores early this week, this is just one of the ideas. Hope you all check it out!

Bear Day!

Hi Everyone!
We just finished our "B" week during the week before thanksgiving and we had a BLAST!  We started the week off  with reviewing circles and making these adorable Bears to hang up in our classrrom! Then we had loads of fun with Bubbles, Bubbles, Bubbles! Our 3rd grade Reading Buddies decided to join us and we read our favorite bear books on our blankets. Next, we learned about different kinds of bears ( Brown bear, Black bear, and Polar bear) we even did a Preschool version of a Venn Diagram! We ended the week with our students bringing in their favorite stuffed bear, making home-made butter, and eating bear-shaped biscuits! We graphed the different types of bears that were brought in, and played Bingo with our teddy-bear manipulatives! We ended our week with the song "Teddy-bear, Teddy-bear Turn Around", and Dr. Jean's "Going On a Bear Hunt!" It was a very busy and blissful week!

Bear photo spot!

Eating the bear biscuit and butter!

I love that they all turn out different!

Bear craft on poster board

close up of homemade butter
and biscuit.

 Check out our bear unit HERE!  The first 3 people to rate us on TPT can have this unit for free!
You can also grab the bear graph as a FREEBIE HERE!

Tea Party!!

Happy Thanksgiving!  I am full of Turkey and enjoying some great family time!  My daughter is home from college this week so that is extra special!  I am gearing up for one of our many preschool events!  It is review week and for "T" day we celebrate with a tie and tiara tea party!  We change our classrooms into a princess castle!  We do have spiderman tablecloths for the boys...we invite moms in to help us with our day...We begin in car line by announcing each child as they arrive with a bugle.  In the classroom we set up centers and divide the kids into groups and they move around the room when the bell rings. We finish with a tea party accompanied by 4 disney princesses.  partycharacters.com donate the morning and send 4 princesses and spiderman!  Here is a picture from last year's party!

My niece was in my class last year!  Such a blessing...The other thing I do is have the girls take a picture in a ballet pose and then add it to their memory book with the caption: "I'm a child of the King!"
Check out the unit HERE!  The first 3 people to follow me on TPT  will receive this adorable unit for free!  Thank you for checking it out, we hope you love it as much as we have loved teaching on this day!