Staying Organized!

Trying to stay organized as a teacher is a difficult task as you are teaching, creating lessons, creating journals and artwork with your students and using different materials as you teach. Figuring out where to store everything that you need in a classroom and having to deal with the storage that is available in the class is not easy task, in this post I will share with you some tips I have for staying organized! 

Below is an image of how I store portfolios that the students create all year long. At my school the for student portfolios are divided into six sections with three pieces of student work throughout the year to show the students progress. I use hanging folders that have been re-used year after year. I use a label marker to create a folder for every student in my class and as we create a portfolio piece I store the student's work in their assigned folder. 

Materials Needed

• Hanging folders
• Label Marker 

Below is an image of my "teacher" supplies including special markers, chalk, colored pencils and crayons. I keep these in my teacher cabinet for special projects that require fine motor skills and to ensure that the pencils are always sharpened, the markers are not dried out and the crayons and chalk and are not broken. I found these smaller caddy at Target in the dollar section! The dollar section in any store in a teachers best friend!

Below is a picture of the student caddies. We have four tables in my classroom and each caddy has an assigned table that the students are aware of and when we go a class project one student will get a caddy for their table. In each caddy there are markers, pencils, crayons and sometimes scissors. These caddies can be found on Amazon.  These caddies were passed down to me from the previous teacher, and they are perfect because they are plastic which makes them durable and easy to clean!

Below is an image of the students' markers that they use for coloring during free choice in the mornings and afternoons. My students are four years old and in the afternoons three year olds also come into my classroom, which makes putting caps on markers still a difficult task. The students have their own container of markers, which gives them a sense of responsibility, because they know that the teachers will not give me new markers if all of their markers are dried up. I started this at the beginning of the school year and thus far have only had to give them new markers twice! I recycle the markers from the student caddies shown above to the students' free choice markers below. 

 In the two below images this is how I organized all of the books used for different lessons. Before the books were in these same cabinets, but everywhere! I change the books in the students' library based on the theme of that week, so finding the right books before was not easy! I purchased these standing folders at Amazon though IKEA.  The containers are cheap, easy to assemble and the perfect size to fit into the cabinet with the doors shut! I used my favorite tool, the label marker, and organized the books based on their theme. Books that are too big to fit into the standing folder I put them next to the correct folder to help stay organized! Now changing out the books weekly is easy and it saves me time to do other things in the classroom.

As you can see we have a lot of books in my classroom and I wanted to make sure all of the books were being seen and used in my classroom. My students look forward to the new books that I put out every week. Just by organizing the books I am fostering life long readers!

How do you stay organized in your classroom?

Earth Day

                                               
To celebrate Earth Day we first discussed the meaning behind the holiday and the importance of treating the Earth with respect by using less water, recycling, picking up trash and planting trees and plants. We spent the week reading books such as the Lorax, Earth Day, Birthday!, The Three R's: Reuse, Reduce, Recycle. 

We also conducted a science experiment that I found on Pinterest that demonstrates first hand how plants give clean water and plants help the Earth while garbage and dirt gives us dirty water.

The following items are needed for the experiment:

• seeds
• 3 milk jugs or cartons
• dirt
• 3 small water bottles
• garbage
• scissors 

Below are images of the students helping plant the carrots seeds. My students love science experiments and anything that involves getting dirty!

                                           

 In the three milk cartons different solutions go into each. One carton contains dirt and the seeds, the other just dirt and the third dirt with garbage and leaves.

Planting the carrots is also a great conversation starter to discuss what plants need to grow and the parts of the plants. My co-teacher and I turn Earth Day into two weeks of lessons by learning about Earth and conversation one week and then plants and seeds the next week. 

The below picture is the picture from Pinterest shows how the experiment after a few weeks of watering the plants. The students are able to see the difference in the color of the water and see that the water from the plant is clear, the leaf water is slightly brown and the water from the dirt is brown.

Wish me good luck that the experiment we started today turns out to be a Pinterest success like the image below and not a Pinterest fail!  

What activity, book or lesson did you teach to have your students learn about Earth Day? 

Baking For A Cause

My Pre-K students participated in a bake sale where they created fliers to advertise, baked the treats and sold the treats to raise money for children at Edwards Children's Hospital and the organization Helping Hands, which creates birthday bags for children that are in need. 

The money that was raised will buy toys for the children at Edwards Children's Hospital and the students will take a field trip the Helping Hands where they will help create the birthday bags. 

Below is a video documenting Baking For A Cause:

What community service projects have you done in your classroom?

Spring Books and Activities

For the teacher that cannot teach about Easter, myself included, this post is for you. The preschool I work at is private, however, the school is not affiliated with a religion so we do not teach about Easter. Many of my students are Christian or Catholic, so instead I focus on spring and egg activities. 

Below is a window that I created from activities from the students. The theme of the window is based around the book, "Whose Egg?" written by Lynette Evans and illustrated by Guy Troughton.  Each student created one of the animals that hatches from an egg in the book and wrote a journal about a fact about that animal. The students also measured the "animals" (plastic animals and Beanie Babies) from the story using small paper eggs. 

The animals from "Whose Egg?" that are in the below image are the following:

• A butterfly
• A platypus 
• An emu
• A plover
• A turtle 
• A snake 
• An alligator 
• A penguin 

The images above and below are a closer image of the either side of the window to see the eggs, animals and journals more closely. 

 Another book that I use around the spring/Easter season is "Whose Nest?" by the same author and illustrator that was described above. "Whose Nest" focuses on animals that build nests in different habitats. We discuss the habitats that the animals live in and the students work in partners for this board. One student creates the nest and the other students creates the animal that lives in the nest. Both students write a journal describing the nest or animals that they created.

Below is an image of the board that I created using the students' work.

The animals that are featured in the book, "Whose Nest" are as following: 

• A bumblebee
• A clownfish
• A rabbit
• A dormouse
• A humming bird
• A tree frog
• A gecko 
• An eagle 

The bird in the below image was created in our Technology class using the website Tagxedo.com. Tagxedo.com allows you to turn words into a world cloud. The technology teacher had the students think of any words that they know that are related to nests and eggs and she created a word cloud of a bird with all of the words that they thought. 

What Spring book(s) or activities do you use with your students?

Classroom Door Decorations

Every month or so the students create a piece or art work for the classroom door. Sometimes the door is themed for the season, lesson plan or what the students' interests are. My current class loves the song "Blue Bird, Blue Bird," which is a children's song that many teachers sing during circle time. However, my co-teacher changed the words slightly to the following:

Blue bird, blue bird, through my window

high diddle diddle day day day 

(Child's Name) pick a little partner

Tap them on the shoulder 

high diddle diddle day day day 

We sing the song every day during free choice when the students are allowed to pick the center that they want to go to in the afternoons. We pick the student that has been behaving the best that day to first pick a partner and then pick their center. We sing the song over and over until all of the students are at a center. My current class loves the song and asks to sing it multiple times during the day. So this month we decided to create blue bird for classroom door, which is shown below. 

Each student cut out their own blue bird and glued on the bird's feet, mouth and drew on its eyes. The students also wrote their last names on the birds. During the first half of the year the students write their first names to practice writing their first name in proper case. After winter break the students start writing their last names to learn how to write their full name in proper case. 

Below is an image of another door artwork where the students voted on their favorite character in a story and created the character to be displayed on the door. Some of the characters that the students chose were the following:

• Arthur from the popular series Arthur
• The cat from Cat and the Hat
• Pete from Pete the Cat 
• Olivia the pig from Olivia
• The man with the yellow hat from Curious George. 

The students wrote the name of the character and then their first and last name to practice writing most of the letters in the alphabet in proper case.

How do you integrate your students' interests into your classroom?

ParentShare

A great communication tool that we use at the preschool I work at is a new form of technology called ParentShare. ParentShare is a paperless solution to communicate with parents. At the preschool we use it to send pictures of the students daily in different activities for the parents to see first hand what their child or children are doing as school. Many parents have told me that they forward the emails to grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends! I have heard nothing by positive feedback about ParentShare. 

ParentShare is sent though an iPod that we are fortunate to have at the school and it is sent directly to the parents' email addresses that are on file. The teachers take the pictures that use an app on the iPod and create a message to send to all of the students or you can select certain students to send it to. 

Below is an example of a ParentShare that I sent of my co-teacher doing Character Education with the students where they are practicing using their atten-o-scopes that help them focus their attention. 

We use two puppets that are used in the whole school names Lola and Lenny that help the teacher act out different situations for the students.

How do you incorporate technology in your classroom?