preschoolpointers.com

Greetings!  Welcome to this website, a work in progress.  I have been teaching 4’s & 5’s in a Lutheran preschool for 13 years, and in that time have learned many things - mostly from my own mistakes.  If I could go back in time and tell myself these things 13 years ago, things may have run smoother.

However, if you are a beginning teacher, I want to encourage you to be brave enough to make mistakes!  You’ll learn SO much, and you’ll be a little more ready for the next time!

There are several categories on the side of the page. Some articles are posted in several categories, since many of these areas overlap.  Hopefully there may be a few things that are helpful to you, and I hope you share your ideas here, as well.  If you are looking for specific lesson plans, this is not that kind of site.   Although if you look in Curriculum, I’m glad to share some thoughts on planning.

With that, here we go!

I had some plain hand sanitizer (alcohol-based) to get rid of and another teacher asked about ordering some colored rice.  Having plain rice on hand - viola’!

In a jar, I put 4-5 squirts of sanitizer and  several drops of food coloring.  I scooped in a couple of handfuls of rice, stirred it up and spread it out to dry.  I normally do this with a tablespoon or so of rubbing alcohol, but this worked great!  Each batch of color was dry within half an hour.  (And think how clean it is!)

Did I write about the pump table yet?  Our center has been working on an outdoor classroom - making the environment much more natural.  We have trees and plants now and other wonderful things.  I wanted to have a water table with a working pump, and initially it worked wonderfully!  We had some great large-motor development from the toddlers up to the school-age children.

Until.

*sigh*  I’ve been on vacation for a while, and during that time the pump stopped working.  Today I took it apart to see that the inside was CLOGGED with sand. It’s cleaned out now and moved to a spot further from the sandbox, but don’t forget that children treat things a bit rougher than you expect.  (I thought this would be pretty indesructable.  Shows what I know.)

I have about twenty minutes to kill before my next home visit, so here’s a little insight about what to take.

First, do all your research ahead of time. I used to to Home Visits in November for our first Parent-Teacher Conference and it was awful.  It was dark by 4:30 and everybody lived out in the country. Cell phones had not been invented yet.  I’d be out on some gravel road looking for ‘the white house just past the big red fuel tank in the field’ and trying not to hit a deer.   Cell phones, Google Maps and Google Earth are your friends.

I have about 5 scheduled for each day, with about 20 - 25 minutes at each house with 5 - 10 minutes saved for travel time.  Bring a watch along and tell the parents ahead of time if you have a visit following theirs.  It will help you stay on track.

I take along (in the car): a basket/box with all the folders, a map with the evening’s visits marked, a pen and pad of paper to leave a note in canse someone forgot I was coming, my cell phone, the class list of numbers and addresses, and a digital camera.  (Bring extra batteries if you can.  I’ve had mine die before I took the child’s picture.)

I’ll try to figure out how to put up photos of the papers inside the folders, but until then, here’s what’s in there:

• Welcome letters from our Pastor and Principal
• Family Devotional ideas
• A copy of our handbook
• An Events Calendar for the year
• Release/permission forms
• a Parent/Teacher Assessment form - this is new.  It asks the parents to list some goals they have for their child.  On the back side is a list of the 50 objectives from Creative Curriculum to help them with ideas.  They are to return this form the first week of school.
• A ‘Handling Separation’ form
• My classroom procedures/schedule/policies
• a stick-figure schedule for the child
• a ‘Welcome to the CDC’ video

It seems like every year I make something new in the classroom, and this year it may be kind of small.  We’ll have more children than we have cubbies, so some old shelves in my basement were turned into this:

This is actually in the entryway of my house, but at school it will go by the other cubbies and each space will have a basket.  I only need three of the spaces for children, so the other two spaces will hold 1) extra mittens and 2) the ‘line-up’ tambourine we ring at the end of outside time.

We’re at 18 days until the start, and the past few days I’ve called or left messages with all the families for home visits.  Yesterday I updated the little video I give to new families and put my papers in the home visit packets.  This year I included a page about handling separation.  Still to do?  *sigh* Accreditation.  We’re supposed to be done with it by August 22, and it seems I’m having a difficult time getting moving.  Fear will be a great motivator.

And as long as I don’t think too hard about everything that has to be done, I’ll be fine.

I’ve really let this website fall by the wayside, and I think I’m just going to turn it into a memory archive like the other one.  It will help me in the long run, I’m sure.  Here goes: Prepping for home visits 2008

1. 26 days before first day - Asked Lloyd to retake my picture, printed and cut new postcards (4 x 6).
2. 25 days before fist day - Addressed and stamped postcards.  I would have mailed them right away but I had a problem with one child’s address.
3. 24 days before first day - printed other teacher’s cards and cut them out.  (Thank you, Lloyd, for the paper cutter!)
4. 23  days before first day - dropped them in the mailbox.
5. 22 days before first day - drew up home visit schedule and printed it on cardstock.  It will stay in my purse ALWAYS, since I included my phone number on the card.  One copy, no missed appointments (ha).  Also made new version of stick-figure daily schedule.
6. 21 days before first day - started to make phone calls, realized this is going to be a small nightmare.  Made up a one-day sign-up sheet to leave at school tomorrow.

I was pleased with how I put together this version of the schedule.  It’s on 8 1/2 x 14 paper, and I bent a little glue margin and marked it before making the copies.  They fold nice and flat this time ’round.

I am writing this at the end of July/early August.  NOW is when you should go to Wal-Mart and purchase markers, glue, folders, etc.  They will never, ever be cheaper anywhere.  ever.  Go NOW.

I have always been dismayed by the amount of trash that we throw away at our Center.  It’s just a fact that we have to use many cups, napkins, boxes and miles and miles of paper towels.  Just recently we decided to try to make a dent in it, and start recycling our cereal boxes and milk jugs.   I thought this would be a great subject to study with the children, and I’m glad we did.  It was a little difficult to come up with ‘activities’ for them to do, but the conversations we had were very meaningful.  Our story was Trashy Town by Andrea Zimmerman and David Clemesha.  It was good to begin by looking at the litter around the trash cans and discussing how that’s not good for our world.  Then we talked about how if the trash trucks didn’t pick up the trash, our world would be ugly and stinky.  That developed the idea that there’s a place for trash, then we moved on to discovering how everything doesn’t need to go in the trash.   Some things can be used again, and somethings can be made new again.   We spent some time finding all the trash  cans around our school.

We ended the week by making paper out of construction paper scraps.  You just tear some up, throw them in a blender with water, then pour them out over those weird disposable kitchen towels that look like mesh that’s over some kind of screen.  Press out the water, let dry.  (This was learned from Denise Fleming.)

Every year I have made name cards with/for the children, and I think it is much more effective if I do them with them.  These are just cardstock rectangles glued back-to-back to make them more sturdy, with the child’s photo off to one side and their name in capital letters.  On the back side, their name is written ‘the Kindergarten way’.  (I’ve found that it creates much more excitement about letters when we learn them first in all capitals.  That way when we’re looking at NOAH, Olivia says, “Hey, that’s my letter, too!”)  I laminate them with clear contact paper so I’m doing it with the children, and as we assemble it, they are just overjoyed to hold it and show it to their friends.  We use them throughout the year to write our own names or our friends’.