A Dead Computer and Now Learning All Over Again

My home computer has been on its last legs for a while now.  I had gotten to the point where I was afraid to turn it off because I was not sure if it would boot up when I attempted to turn it back on.  Fortunately, I managed to upload the important family photos from its hard drive before the latest crash.  I did not get all of my teacher files from it, though.  I am sure I will be figuring out what is lost over time and  perhaps when things quiet down here for my husband he will be able to get it up and running long enough to offload some files.

In the meantime, I was blessed by my boss with a laptop.  I have been busily trying to figure out everything about it since it uses Windows and I have been using a Linux based desktop for as long as I can remember.  I was able to download some of the programs I used in Linus, like GIMP and LibreOffice, but they are newer versions so I even have to figure them out.

What's with the photo of the dog in the snow above?  He is in my latest product.  I am madly working on a new Question of the Day set, which will include winter theme questions.  I hope to finish it up before Monday, since that will be the day I have to take my oldest to camp.

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.