Preschool Classroom - 2010 Version

As I stated in my previous post, I moved the preschool classroom from downstairs to upstairs. This area was previously our living room/playroom. This link will take you to pictures of the 2009 living room and dining room as well as other pictures of upstairs rooms. I also reorganized the shelves and put quite a few items in the storage closet because this year, all the preschool students will be 2.5 when we start (our start date is the day after Labor Day.)

The East Wall

1/2 of the South Wall

The other 1/2 of the South Wall

Practical Life Area -

Dressing Vests in the basket, ironing, clothes line, babies and high chair

Practical Life/Language Area -

Lock puzzle, Open/Close

Language Cards, Matching Cards

Magnadoodle, Letter Magnets

Sensorial Area (and Music) -

Red Rods,

Color Tablets 1 and 2, Fabric Squares, Percussion

Block Tower, Knobbed Cylinders A

Brown Stair

Alphabet Area -

LeapFrog Letters

Sandpaper Letters

Sound Bins

Reading/Infant Toy Area -

Preschool Read Aloud Basket, Mother Goose book, Flower Fairies book

Homeschooler Read Aloud/Literature books

Board Books

Infant Toys, Cloth books

Geometry Area -

Insets, Shape Cards

Shape Puzzles

More Shape Puzzles

Shape Sorter, Geometric Solids

Geography/Puzzle/Toddler Toys Area -

Continent Globe, Book about Animals of the World, Sandpaper Globe, Continent Puzzle

Bead Maze, Stacking Cups

Puzzles

Math/Science Area -

Pegs, Counting Bears

Fruit and Vegetable Puzzles

Spindles

Sandpaper Numbers, Number Cards,

Large Dominoes

The West and North Wall

Wood Toys -

Bead Pattern, Gears

Cutting Food, Toolbox

Farm, Wooden Animals

Dollhouse/Infant Toys/Silks -

Dollhouse

Silks (on top of drawer tower)

Puppets (first drawer)

Potato Heads (second drawer)

Infant Toys (third drawer)

There are also some preschool/homeschool items that are in the dining room. The dining room is adjacent to the living room/preschool classroom area.

The Sensory/Practical Life/Block Area is in the dining room.

It is in the southeast corner.

There are shells in the nature box and some castle blocks.

The bottom row of drawers has castle blocks, tree blocks, and wooden blocks.

The upper row of drawers has glasses, bowls, tongs, cloths. You have to lift the top portion to be able to open the upper drawers.

These bins/drawers, etc. contain most of Jelly Bean's homeschool books and materials. It is in the southwest corner. (Sorry about the shelf that is falling. I didn't have the energy to try and fix it before I took the picture LOL)

This is the art cabinet. I no longer have free art available on the preschool shelves. (I'm brave, but not two year olds and an infant in a room with brand new carpet brave LOL)

The art cabinet is the northwest corner.

On the top is collage materials.

Watercolors, prismacolor pencils, pastels, charcoal, contact paper, big construction paper, etc.
Crayons, twistables, scissors

Markers, colored pencils, sketch books, paper.

The play kitchen.

It is in the northeast corner.

A picture of the whole dining room.

Jelly Bean is at the table, working on her spelling, I think.

Tomorrow, I'll post pictures of the "new" rec room. There won't be nearly as many pictures. I'll try and keep it down to 4-5 pictures, I swear.

BIG changes around here at Montgomery Academy

This year was busy, busy, busy, and lots of children - 4 preschoolers, 4 homeschoolers, 2 toddlers, and an infant. It took a lot of planning, and a lot of help from my sister/assistant. But as we get to the end of the year, I'm feeling like we did well. The homeschoolers had fun and learned about many things (I'll have a wind-up post soon for both the homeschoolers and the preschoolers) and so did the preschoolers. And the toddlers and the infant just grew and changed so much, so quickly.

But as the school year nears a close, it is with quite a bit of sadness that I think about next year. My sister and her family will be moving. FAR away. States and States away. She is likely going to continue homeschooling, but we won't be doing it together. So I'm sad about that. I'll miss teaching my nephews in the afternoon, and I'll miss my sister's help in the morning, but mostly I'll miss her company.

And after a lot of consideration, Flower's dad and I have decided to have Flower return to public school in the fall. She wants to return and way back when we started homeschooling, it was the plan to have her return for 5th grade. It wouldn't take much to sway ME to continue homeschooling her, but it feels like we made the right decision. I will miss her SO much. And Super will likely be going to Kindergarten at the public school too. I'm strongly considering just doing half days (mornings) but at the very least, he will be at the public school for at least a few hours a day. He will back to homeschool in first grade, but still, I'll miss him TONS. Since we started homeschooling, we always said that we would take homeschooling on a year by year basis, and that we would choose what we felt was best for the child. It may not be the same for each child. And right now, we have decided that Flower and Super at the public school next year. Jelly Bean will still be at home. (Oh, we are both VERY excited, and we already have some great plans for next year!)

Princess will be going to Kindergarten in the fall. Sweetie is going to a different preschool. Spunky may or may not be back.

So Montgomery Academy will be going from 4 preschoolers, 4 homeschoolers, 2 toddlers, and an infant TO 1 preschooler, 1 homeschooler, 1 toddler moving up to a preschooler, and an infant moving up to a toddler. From 11 to 4.

Times and Seasons. I know. And I've learned so much from this season. I'll miss so much from this time. But there will be different experiences I'm sure that I'll gain from teaching at Montgomery Academy this fall too.

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PS Any locals, by the way, I would consider taking one 2 or 3 year old for preschool only, or full or part-time daycare for this fall.

Preschool: A few more what we were up to from Late March . . .

Sweetie working on the Bead Matching Activity.

Wiggles working on the dry erase letter Ss. Sheet from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Wiggles doing a turtle counting activity from Confessions of a Homeschooler

Wiggles doing another turtle activiy - this time it is the turtle color matching activity from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Sweetie working on the block tower alone

Sweetie and Super working on the brown stair and the block tower

A trapezoid - our shape of the month

Preschool: What We Were Up To in March

Making a rainbow book - cover is from

Confessions of a Homeschooler

Back Cover by Super

Wiggles working on the Shape Puzzles

Working with Pink Cards with

Moveable Alphabet - Super and

Princess are really enjoying the

Pink Level works that are out right now

Wiggles working on the Rainbow

Color Matching cards - cards from

Confessions of a Homeschooler

Making a small book -

the children like to take a few sheets

of inset paper and staple them together

to make a book.

Spunky working with the Sensory Tub.

Green peas and gold coins were

in the Sensory tub for March

Pictures from early March: Preschool

Top shelf on the Art Shelf - free art materials, shamrocks, and
Level 1 from Child-Size Masterpieces.

Second shelf on Art shelf - Q coloring sheets and Cat In The Hat coloring sheet

Cutting sheet, paper, and inset paper (the children like to use inset paper for smaller drawings/making books, etc.)

Top shelf of the geeometric shelf - The insets. There is also a geometric plane shapes chart on the wall and geometric plane cards in the bottom right corner - both from Montessori For Everyone.

The Geometric Shelf

Top shelf - stereognostic bag with geometric shapes,
pattern blocks, and a shape game that I got at the thrift store.

Middle shelf - Geometric solids, felt geometric shapes,
shape sorter.
Bottom shelf - My version of the triangle, rectangle, circle,
and square trays of the geometric cabinet, sandpaper shapes,
and a shape puzzle.


Not pictured in this picture - my version of the
geometric cabinet trays 7-10. They will displayed in a future post.


Shamrock number line, shamrock cards and counters

Math U See Stair

Quilt number activity

Quack, Quack flannelboard story from KidsSoup

A picture of some of the things on the wall.

On the South wall, there is a small 12 month calendar, our Montgomery Academy pledge, a little sign about children, and a painting of The Very Hungry Catepillar done for us by Little Boy's mom. We love it!

On the West wall, starting from the left - Our calendar, the monthly nursery rhyme, geometric plane chart, a bird poster (I got this for 25 cents at our local teacher's store. I have mammal, reptile, fish, and amphibian posters too.), continent chart (from Montessori For Everyone), and our Daily chart. Our Daily Chart holds our schedule, the sign language card for the letter of the week, the weather/season cards for the day, and name cards (the name cards are flipped over).

I got all of the pocket charts shown here (and our red Helper chart, our red folder holder, and our Alphabet Center - not pictured) at our teacher store. They have a big sale in July, so I buy then for the year. Most of these pocket charts I purchased 4 years ago - when we moved the preschool room out of a bedroom into the family room area.

Preschool: What We Were Up To - First Week of March

Dr. Suess and Being A Great Me!

March 1-5, 2010
Letter of the Week: Qq

Number of the Month: 7

Shape of the Month: Trapezoid

Color of the Month: Green

Nursery Rhyme: Little Boy Blue

· At the sensory/art table, we have green play-doh, salt tray, and nature box.
· At the paint easel, we have green paint and green DOT paint.
· On the practical life shelf, we have lock puzzle, lock and key, tonging, lacing, , sorting pom-poms by color, sorting quilts by size, transferring with a dropper.
· On the art shelf, we have a cat in the hat tracing sheet, quilt cutting sheet, Qq coloring sheet, Quack coloring sheet, shamrock stickers, shamrocks to glue, and then our free art supplies (paper, cardstock, construction paper, scissors, crayons, markers, pencils, tape, glue, stapler, and paper punch.)
· On the sensorial shelf, we have color tablets 1 and 2 and 3, the brown stair, block tower, and knobless cylinders, fabric box, and baric tablets.
· On the geometry shelf, we have the circle, triangle, square, and rectangle puzzle, and the constructive triangles. We have geometric shape cards. There is also a geoboard, shape sorter, and geometric solids, pattern blocks, and a shape game. We are also working on the geometric cabinet trays 8-10.
· On the letter shelf, we have sandpaper letters (lower case and upper case) alphabet cards, and leap frog letters. We also have objects, cards, and books for Pp and Qq.
· On the language shelf, we have CVC cards with middle letter “a”, picture cards with CVC words with middle letter “a” to match, calendar matching, and winter letter words. I also have the Bob books – Set A (easy reader books) on the shelf. There is also a flannelboard story (Quack, Quack) on the shelves and the farm.
· On the writing shelf, we are working on the trapezoid shape with the metal insets. We also have dry erase writing, letter stamping, magnadoodle, and CVC cards with middle letter “a” to spell with the moveable alphabet. We also have the number 7, the letter q and q word letter tracing sheets.
· On the science shelf, there is bird puzzle, bird books, bird cards and bird coloring sheets and the flower puzzle, flower books, flower cards and flower coloring sheets. We will be doing the fish and the root soon.
· On the geography shelf, there are the continent globe, sandpaper continent cards, the sand and water globe and the continent map puzzle. We have continent 3 part matching cards, and continent coloring sheets. We started the Asia continent box with Asia cards and Asian animals.
· On the math shelf, we have sandpaper numbers, number puzzle, number rods, number matching, spindles, and shamrock counting activities. We are starting more Montessori math activities this month.
· What we are reading: Cat in the Hat, Cat in the Hat Comes Back, Green Eggs and Ham, One Fish, Two Fish, A Bad Case of the Stripes, The Mixed Up Chameleon, Quack, Quack, and Chrysanthemum.

Preschool: The Science Shelf

On the preschool shelf, I usually have something out from botany and something out from zoology. Sometimes, I have a science tray out with something about ecology or earth science or astronomy, etc.

Here is a picture of the Science Shelf -

The wire shelf is from Target (in the laundry section).

Close up of the 1st shelf.

The puzzle is from Montessori N' Such.
The sheet next to it is from Freebies section of
Montessori N' Such. I print them out, color them,
laminate them, and use the as control sheets.

I've had these MNS puzzles (both the botany and
zoology) for many years, and they have
held up very well. (I also use these puzzles with
the early elementary homeschoolers, but on a
more advanced level.)

Next to the puzzle are flower books.
One is from Scholastic (A First Discovery Book),
and the other one is a Dover sticker book.
I have many of these Dover "Learning About"
sticker books. The preschoolers seem to enjoy
the small size of these books.

Close up of the second shelf.
Three part cards about flowers from
Montessori For Everyone.
Types of Flowers from MOE.
More of the Freebie sheets, but these are
printed on regular paper, and used as coloring sheets.

Zoology puzzle from Montessori N Such.
Freebie sheet from Montessori N Such.
Books about birds including an Usborne Spotter's
Guide to Birds of North America,
and a Dover "Learning About" sticker book.

3 part bird cards from MOE, Types of Birds
(I'm not sure where I got these? Anybody know?)
and more Freebie coloring sheets.

What We Are Up To: Preschool - First Week of February

It isn't uncommon to see a little dancing during work time

And it usually makes me smile to see it

Our masks that we used while reading The Mitten.
I printed these off of Jan Brett's website a few years ago.

Tonging "snowballs"

I got this Snowman Pre-Writing sheet from

Confessions of a Homeschooler

Looking at a Dover Sticker book about

Flowers

Working on Opening/Closing

Even though most of the students are

around 4 years old, this activity is always

popular. I switch the containers occassionally,

but it is generally out on the shelves.

Working with the Nature Box.

I put a collection of shells in at the beginning

of February. We don't live by the beach

and it is still definitely cold and snowy

here, but I thought it would be nice

to have something to remind us of the sun.

Painting with red paint at the easel.

Using hearts instead of spindles

Sorting by Color