Upcoming “July Fun” Activities

Hello,

It has been awhile since I have done a post and first let me say I am sorry for that; I have been so busy with upcoming summer preschool program and the start of my vacation soon that I have just not had enough hours in a day. I did want to post today and let everyone know that starting in July I will be posting our preschool ‘fun in the sun’ activities everyday. For the crafts there will be tutorials on how to make them and links for any templates that I might use 🙂

Also I will be starting a reading corner on this site for anyone who would love for their children or preschoolers to hear safe readalongs. I used to have my preschoolers follow along with readalongs on youtube for a fun switch when they had grown tired of me reading to them 😉 I found this way to be not so reliable at times due to some videos being more for adults but geared towards childrens books. So with that in mind, I decided to make my own videos for children’s storytime in hopes that they will be fun to hear and engage children. This will start in July as well 🙂

So many exciting changes are taking shape and I look forward to sharing each one of them with you.

Have a wonderful week and a safe/fun summer 🙂

Spending a Fortune in Teaching Materials… Why???

In my life I have not always had a good stable income stream coming through my door, in fact most days were spent wondering how we would get bread or gas money. During those hard times I had to get creative for my kids because sadly preschool was not in the budget for my little family. At the time I had no idea that those struggles and “thinking outside of the box” would help me in my preschool career. Now being a preschool teacher money is still tight but no where near what it was 10 years ago, making my budget stretch now is a lot easier with some tips I picked up along the way…….

DO NOT SPEND A FORTUNE IN SCANDALOUS TEACHING AIDS!!!!

The above statement is my warning for all new preschool teachers or stay at home moms. The kids do not care how extravagant a lesson is, they only remember the lesson itself. So learn how your child(ren) learn best and incorporate anything around your house or the closest dollar store. This year my preschoolers learn best through movement so I use a lot of games to bring that connection between the activity and the child(ren). Here are my two favorite games and GUESS WHAT??? I only spent one dollar for them (which I will explain at the end of my examples).

Count the Sticker Game:

This game does not have the best name and really I do not rock when it comes to naming a game but they are pretty fun regardless of the name factor;) This week I used 8 stickers with small cards each displaying numbers 1-8. Note: the teacher will decide how many stickers to put down and what numbers to lay down as well then ask the child how many stickers there are and find the right number. I started with laying down 4 stickers and underneath the stickers put numbers 4,2,7 down, then I asked the child to count the stickers and find the number 4. If child has some problems finding the number I always point to the number and allow child to hand it to me. This also helps the child to not feel so stressed if they ever struggle with finding the correct number. Remember— you (as an adult) experience stress over new challenges and kids are no different….

Roll That Dice Game:

This game’s objective is counting in groups and if you are talking about numbers 1-5 then this game is a must have on your lesson plan. Each child will take a turn rolling the dice, whatever side it ends up on the teacher will ask the child to count each dot, after child has counted each dot then the teacher will ask “How many dots are there?” and give the child time to reinforce the number to the pattern of dots they see.

The only thing I purchased for these games was the dice that I purchased at the dollar store a few weeks ago, the white cards I had in my classroom (but if you need them they also can be purchased at the dollar store) and the stickers were donated by a parent sometime ago. Feel free to change the stickers to anything you have in your home.. at times I used cotton balls, spoons, and sometimes crayons. Also with crayons you can incorporate the colors in the same lesson. For preschoolers killing two birds with one stone is a great time saver…..meaning if I can do two lessons at once and have more time preparing for something else then it is a great day in my classroom.

I hope this helps others who struggle with the everyday challenge of no money for teaching aids. Have a wonderful day and thanks for stopping by my preschool blog;)