Something that I learned about during my years in college that still permeates my classroom and pedagogy is the Reggio Emilia approach to early education. I am not a teacher in a Reggio school nor have I attended a study tour in Reggio Emilia, Italy, but I am passionate about the approach and how it
Welcome to my pre-k classroom tour! Classroom spaces and and arrangements are so very important and especially in the early childhood years! Defined areas for learning centers allow for students to be gravitated to new provocations and it also helps them know where to return materials properly. I love to create inviting center areas that are already set up for play! It gives students kind of an invitation to play and a few ideas about how to get started. The center learning areas I have are: blocks, pretend, discovery, reading, abc's, art, ipads, math, sensory, puzzles, & light table. Sometimes I don't have the centers open all at one time. For example, at the very beginning of the school year blocks and pretend centers are open. Students learn to be responsible in that center and then a new center is open/added every couple of days. I also like to incorporate the topic we are studying into all the centers. Currently, we are learning all about the season of spring! There are so many seasonal concepts students are interested in. We are exploring insects, spiders, butterflies, and gardens! We are also learning new art techniques with our Andy Warhol bee prints and learning about garden artist, Claude Monet! First stop, our morning board area! Here we have our word wall which has our alphabet circle letters (purchase here!), sorted student names, environmental print from our community, and post-it note student drawings of vegetables we have been learning about! We also have our Smartboard, Wish You Well Board, and other carpet/circle time supplies. Here is our newly arranged blocks center! This is a new classroom and I finally came up with a solution of where I wanted our blocks center to relocate. For a few years I have had it open to the group carpet area. It allowed for students to have a lot of room to build...but when it was time to clean up (and even if I gave the blocks group a head start) ..students were waiting to sit because of the blocks on the floor. So during winter break I revised the room layout a little bit which allowed for a new reading area, separate blocks area, and larger discovery area. It is working quite well! I am trying to stay with a more natural theme this year.. I purchased the two burlap canvases (above shelf) at Hobby Lobby and they display photos from our buildings study and photos of our observation of a hobby farm construction. The carpet is from IKEA and I like how they colors and design are a bit toned down? ..unlike a regular primary colored transportation rug. I was also attracted to this rug because it features a castle (for fairy tale unit), an igloo (for winter unit), and neighborhood buildings. We were studying community, construction, and maps when the rug arrived so it tied in nicely! The mirror is actually a pretend dress up clothes cabinet that I flipped over. It makes the center appear larger and students can view their constructions from a variety of angles! The blocks always stay in the center but I rotate extras with the current topic of study throughout the year! The "extras" include road signs, cars, construction vehicles, flowers, stuffed animals, plastic toys, people...whatever fits the theme. The blocks center also includes baskets for storage and clipboards. We practice drawing out our "construction plans" on the clip boards and students also like to copy the vocabulary posted. Our newly expanded discovery area! I have a large wooden spool/table and 2 wicker Ikea chairs that I hope to add in soon. The discovery center is all about investigation & finding out! Students explore weight differences, measuring, size ordering, textures, etc. The discovery center permanently houses science tools like a microscope, tongs, tweezers, pan balance, scales, binoculars, and magnifying glass. The center also has baskets for storage, clip boards for observation drawing & writing vocab, pencils, sensory bottles, plants, and vocabulary. In our discovery are we also have informational picture books on insects and gardens, seed activities, a butterfly observation basket, During our spring unit of study the center holds: The Very Hungry Caterpillar butterfly life cycle cards, plants, mini pretend nature doll house, seeds & seed packets, real butterfly wings, and a basket of textures. Here is an example of another unit of study in our discovery area. This photo is from our summer ocean unit from last year. Items can easily be switched out and easily rotated to fit any theme! This is a photo of our spring math center that contains insect books (that focus on counting & time), folder games, a Hungry Caterpillar roll, count, draw game, a Hungry Caterpillar graphing game, chick eggs number match up, sensory numbers, and a few other spring themed math games. I love using trays for center games with little cups on the trays. Trays help students be ready to play with easy setup and easy clean up! Before we play in new centers for the new topic of study we ALWAYS have a class circle time meeting about center procedures. We go through how to play every game (teacher and students model) and how to clean it up! This is so very important and helps center time to run much more smoothly and students learn practical life skills. Our new reading area! It contains a Hungry Caterpillar felt board for story retelling and sequencing, Hungry Caterpillar sequencing cards, pillows from Hobby Lobby, rug from Ross, two wicker Ikea children's chairs, insect puppets, books about gardens and insects, and also spring themed QR codes that lead to stories on the ipad. Our sensory tub is filled with flowers, magnet numbers, green and pink pots for patterning, gardening gloves, gardening tools, and watering cans. It also has mini vocab. cards that I laminated and then taped to the side. Sensory is such a fun center and quite popular too! There are hundreds of sensory ideas on Pinterest. I store sensory materials in large plastic bags in a tub. I like to sprinkle in plastic magnet numbers and letters and also post vocab on the outside of the tub. Tweezers, tongs, chopsticks, and shovels can be added to help with fine motor! This is our ABC center which now features Hungry Caterpillar word cards, Eric Carle stories, rhyming cames, and alphabet matching games. I have my writing center and ABC games combined this year and we call the whole center ABC center. The writing supplies are located next to this shelf and contain whiteboards, a variety of writing utensils, paper, and wikki stix. The ABC center games can include: letter matching games, letter bingo, alphabet beading, letter i spy sensory bottles, letter formations sticks, letter tracing, etc. Our spring pretend center filled with farmer's market items such as flowers, pots, seed packets, and vegetables! We incorporated literacy into this center by having gardening books, seed packets, an open/closed sign, and vocabulary displayed. Pretend is such an important center to have for students to explore community roles, practice life skills, and just experience "play." This is just a glimpse of all the fun and exciting things going on in our classroom for spring! Thanks for stopping by to check out our classroom! Only a few more months till school is out, then summer, and back to fall again!
My sister-in-law recently came to me asking for advice about doing preschool at home. Due to covid they have made the decision to not send their daughter back to preschool/TK,...
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This is a great worksheet to practice weather vocabulary and the name of the months in an ESL classroom.
Help kids learn to tell time and quickly and easily with these 15 time telling worksheets for learning to tell time.
Related Printables: Planet Earth #3 – Earth’s Layers Earth Day Coloring Page – Kids Hugging Earth Earth Day Coloring Page – We Love Earth Planet Earth #7 – Water Cycle
Summer is when kids love spending time hanging out and enjoying garden crafts for kids. The rest of the year, we're all busy with our allotment, days ...
Let me lead you through a creative process on how to draw Wonder Woman in chibi style, capturing her essence in a cute, powerful sketch.
To all of the 13.7K people that pinned my bulletin board since 2013, I apologize that I didn't do this sooner! :-P This PDF contains 3 different styles of the words for this AWESOME Bulletin Board (I always get SO many compliments when I do this every year) Styles: *Black letters (you can print on white paper or bright colored paper!) *Black letters with Color Glow *Bright colored letters **Another thing that is different from the picture is that all of the careers are not the same font! I fancied them up :)
PLEASE FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS ON THE SCREEN TO INSTANTLY DOWNLOAD YOUR PURCHASE(S) Go to 'YOU>Purchases and Reviews' at the top of any Etsy page to download current and/or past digital pattern purchases. *This listing is for a crochet pattern, not a finished product* Would you like to have this item made for you? Go here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/542363273/giant-praying-mantis-custom-order This is a fully articulated giant Praying mantis based loosely on *Stagmomantis carolina*. The crochet part of this project is very simple, though the assembly is quite involved. I have included over 50 photos to walk you through the assembly. Crochet Terms: American Language: English Finished Size: 29 inches long In-line color changes: none Skill Level: Novice Crochet, Advanced Assembly Shaping: involved Sewing: involved No. of Pages: 16 No. of Images: 51 See Blog for full Materials and Stitches list: http://www.jennawingatedesigns.com/2017/06/praying-mantis.html Pattern Usage You are welcome to sell finished items made from this pattern. If you do so online, please link to the website and give designer credit. Please do not reproduce, share, sell, or ‘borrow from’ this pattern in whole or in part, including all text or images. If you intend to offer items made to order from any of my patterns, please do not use my images to advertise. Your customers will want to see the quality of work YOU do, not the quality of work I do. Above all, your honesty is appreciated and allows designers to continue doing what they do. Please email only if you have any questions. No other form of communication is as reliable as email. Thanks!
The set of 13 sheets with clothing pictures designed specifically for preschool activities. This fantastic resource includes 44 different types of clothing, ensuring a diverse and engaging learning
"I'm bored!" They're the two words kids say that every parent dreads. OK, they're not the only two, but the moment they're uttered, it can sometimes feel like an impossible task keeping them entertained. Instead of leaving them to their tablets or the TV, this is the perfect opportunity to create long-lasting — and in this case tangible —memories.How, you ask?Pull out the coloring pencils, crayons and markers, and give the kids free reign to scribble their hearts away. And luckily for you, we have plenty of printable craft templates on hand to help kids embrace their artistic talents and...
If for any reason you have trouble paying online, email me at [email protected], I've had some technical difficulties but h...
Boost kids creativity with a new kids art idea to try: ever tried painting on textured surfaces?
Challenge your students with these 5 Jamboard activities! Use the provided templates to start using Jamboard with your students right away!
I'm working on developing several Animal Themed art projects for my Art Camp this Summer. I have always thought a Rousseau inspired project would be fun so I decided to give it a try. Rousseau's Paintings are very dreamlike and primitive. He painted several jungle scenes even though he never traveled outside of France. He wasn't formally trained in art and simply taught himself how to paint. I'll show the students a few examples and then we'll do a directed drawing of the Tiger in pencil on Watercolor Paper. It's pretty simple if you break it up into simple shapes: a circle for the face, rounded triangles for the ears, triangle for the nose, etc... We'll discuss what parts of the tiger are white and what parts are orange, also the stripes down the forehead, across the cheeks and across the chest. They'll outline their final drawing with black sharpie and then using just the orange, paint the outside of the ears, the face and chest, leaving the appropriate areas white. I am going to have them paint along with me - I'll demonstrate and then they can do theirs. I'm not trying to have them copy me, just that they understand how to work with the watercolor. After the orange is dry they can go in with black paint on a fine tip brush and go over the stripes with a ziggy zaggy brushstroke. While they are waiting for the orange to dry we'll cut some leaves and flowers out of tissue paper. The eyes and nose are yellow with a drop of orange put in while it's still wet. If they get it too orange I'll show them how to squeeze the water out of a brush and use it to remove excess color. Now they have practiced a watercolor wash, wet into wet, and removing excess pigment. The final step is to use a glue stick and tissue paper to surround their tiger with jungle foliage. A fierce and fun mixed media project!
A galaxy is a wonderous place. Stars, planets, meteors, dust, gas and some gravity to hold it all together. It comes together to create a most beautiful scene. You can bring the galaxy to life with our free coloring pages. So many colors, so many things TO color… for free! And when you’re done with […]
The best sensory tools and toys to support vestibular development. The vestibular system is all about balance and movement, or spatial awareness. Designed to help your kids with balance skills, these tools are perfect for use in Preschool and Kindergarten classrooms.
Learn about wycinanki, a beautiful Slavic paper-cutting design. Then make your own Polish folkart for kids and learn about reflection symmetry.
Rose Parks Preschool, a Reggio Inspired school, had so many hanging art pieces. I am sharing a few of these amazing collaborative art pieces. The strands of assorted beads, ribbons, and other objects that the children created. These were all hung from a tree branch. Beautiful! I love full branches like this one. The children's self-portraits twirl from the limbs with their photo. The teacher in this classroom told me the best story about this chandelier. On an afternoon walk, the class found this discarded chandelier in a neighbor's trash. The children strung the beads on wire (or pipecleaners) and all of these were attached to the chandelier. Love it! I am not sure what is hanging (it kinda looks like a metal wine rack). There are bowls of beads and a basket of black feathers for the children to create hanging strings. So fun! Get this! These are bracelets from the Dollar Store that are hanging from an old bike tire. This is so cool. A grapevine wreath with strands of beads hanging from it that the children had made. A string of lights hanging from a disc. You could use a large embroidery hoop. This is a stick chandelier. If you look closely you can see that the stick were wrapped together to form this cube like shape. The children made the strands from pipecleaners, beads and feathers. This is so beautiful and so simple. The children's self portraits hanging from a tree branch. A large embroidery hoop with all kinds of string, yarn and ribbon hanging from it. It is amazing. Every family made a strand on this piece that represented their values and traditions. I love this! I have my last installment of Rosa Parks photos tomorrow! Hugs!
