Organizing My Classroom In My Head

Since my classroom still smells interesting (and not in a good way), I have continued working on some projects that will get printed and put up in my classroom later this summer.

As I cleaned my classroom at the end of the school year I realised that my centers signs were a bit rough looking.  In addition, they really were not what I wanted in the first place, but I had made them work while I searched for the perfect set.

That perfect set never appeared, so I decided to work on a few sets of my own and then I will decide which one to print out for myself once I can get in my room to finalize which centers signs I will be using.

I found some cute graphics from Educlips to use with one of the sets of centers.

I also made a set with graphics from MyCuteGraphics.

Now I just have to decide which set to use for myself and which signs I will use this year.  Which would you choose?

Question of the Day Summer Fun

 Question of the Day Summer Fun Set

I really enjoy using a Question of the Day in my preschool classroom.  I make it simple, so it is normally a yes/no or a two choice question.  I place the students names out on a table and each student finds his or her name upon entering the room for some name recognition practice.  Then the student brings the name card to the pocket chart near the door where I post my question of the day.  Generally I read the question aloud to the student, running my finger along the text and showing the two answer choices.  Then the student places the name card in the pocket chart under the appropriate response.

Later in the day, during circle time one student is assigned to tally the responses for some counting practice.  The chosen student gives us the tally and we discuss which number is more or less, most or least, and whether we have a unanimous response to gain some familiarity with those math terms.

One of my goals for the summer is to make up sets of Question of the Day to use for the entire year.  This past year I would sometimes have the questions already thought out and in my lesson plans, but occasionally I would suddenly realize as the first child came in the door that I needed a new question and so they would not always be as well thought out as they should be.

I just completed creating my first set of 20 Question of the Day cards and added them to my shops so that you could use them as well.  The set in the TeachersPayTeachers shop has a preview so that you can print one of the questions to see how they would work in your classroom.  I like my questions to be big, but if you want to save paper you could print two sets to a page which should still be readable.