Day Care Confessions

Color Sorting with Pom Poms 

Sorting with Apples


Storytime. (Worksheet Activity On LlamaLlamaBook.com)


Felt and Apple Seed Counting. (By Oopsy Daisy Blog)


Ladybug Activity (By Making Learning Fun)


Did they survive? As you can tell my midnight projects are in need of some TLC. I used Self-Adhesive Paper to "laminate" them. They lasted through the tugging and pulling of the children fighting over them and crumbling them. But, right now they are bent up and look worn out only after two days.
Help I am running out of ideas for this RED/Letter A week!  (I haven't done any ONLY RED activities - besides an apple coloring.)
Most of the children are under 5 and need loads of attention. (A classroom of high energy students - imagine.) For a lot of them this is their first time around other children, and in a classroom setting. We can't passed the not sharing and tattletales to have a smooth activity.
I need to think of some team building activities for toddlers.
What are some good attention grabbers for toddlers?
Can you tell I'm new to this?

Classroom Management

Happy Wednesday! So I have been out of the classroom since school ended and I'm going though withdrawal :( . Anyway, as I reminisce on the glory days (with some challenging ones along with it), I thought I'd share this Classroom Management idea I came up with during school. After Circle Time the group separates and goes to different centers for Center Time. Before they can leave the Circle Time rug they have to make a decision on where they want to go. Sometimes it's hard for children to make decisions on their own, especially when they are used to someone telling them what to do, so, I thought a visual of the different centers would be helpful. I made this Center Time Board for the preschoolers.

I made little gingerbread men shaped people and wrote their names. The red ones are the Jumpstart members. (I worked with Jumpstart and our uniform was a red Jumpstart shirt.) Before they could go to the center of their choice they had to place their gingerbread man next to the center on the board. If they chose to change centers during Center Time they had to move their man again. This helps keep track of where each child should be and helps manage how many children are at each center so it doesn't get too hectic. (Dramatic Area and Art were really popular in my classroom. We made a rule that there are only suppose to be four kids at Dramatic Area at a time and 4-6 at the other centers.)

I used a poster board and lots of index cards. I drew and colored everything on the index cards, cut everything out and then glued it onto the board. The gingerbread men have Velcro on the back of them and near the centers are about 5 Velcro spaces.