Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Information Sheet

At the beginning of the year, it is important to gather student information.  Most of this information will be provided to the school, but having it on file in your own classroom is great for a quick reference or substitutes.  Also, you can get more useful and specific information for class projects and celebrations.  Make sure to find out what holidays the family celebrates or does not celebrate.  This is a great sheet to use for basic student information: Pre-K Information Sheet

Monday, July 30, 2012

Creative Curriculum

This year, I will be using the Creative Curriculum in my classroom.  I have done a lot of research on the materials and have come across a few useful tools for other teachers who are starting to use it. 

The Creative Curriculum for Early Childhood is a great blog to start to follow if you are going to be implementing it into your own classroom.  It has great descriptions of why the curriculum is being used, and it also has creative activities to support the curriculum.

This link includes a Creative Curriculum Schedule.  It breaks down a day with the students and gives clear goals of what should occur at those times. 

The article How to Use Creative Curriculum has fun and useful ideas for incorporating the curriculum into your classroom.  For example, it stresses bringing music into the classroom.

This is also a good video showing how to make use of all the time, including those pesky transitions.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Daily 5


This is the Daily 5 PowerPoint that I use courtesy of my former cooperating teacher.  Implementing  this begins with discussing the ways we all can read.  Then we slowly, over several days, introduce the different components of the Daily 5.  Review each of the slides everyday with the students, and remind them about their responsibilities.  This is a process that takes time, so the PowerPoint is a useful tool to simplify the task.  Enjoy!!


Let the Fun Begin!

Welcome to my classroom blog!  This is my first year teaching...and I could not be more excited about entering into my new classroom.  Over the next year, we will journey through a 4K classroom together.  I'm constantly looking to try new ideas in my classroom, so I will be sharing all my creative learning projects, lessons, and activities.  My teaching career has just started, so I am prepared to learn a lot of new and intriguing ways of implementing lessons.