My giddy, blissful home preschool dreams

   

Well, it's official; my mind has been made up. As soon as college is over and my degree is in hand, as soon as I can get my 1940's cottage home up to code, and get permission to run a home preschool from my home, that is my plan. As I posted before people will surely question why I bothered going to school and racking up student loans just to run an in-home preschool, and here is why: unless God reveals to me something else in life that compares, nothing, not any other job I have ever had makes me feel the happiness and excitement and sheer giddiness I feel when I imagine my home daycare/preschool. :)

  I love all the things about it...setting it up...being my own boss...decorating....shopping for the items for the kids....planning the lessons and learning centers....making the schedules....and most of all, being with the kids!  I think of all my jobs so far my time at the daycare really prepared me for the possibility of be able to do this, and showed me how much I really enjoy the preschool age group.

   I began to dream about the idea of a home daycare years before we stopped homeschooling. And I've never stopped. Its all I think about. I draw the rooms, write out the schedules, buy toys at the Goodwill and save them in my basement "just in case". I take my college education courses and alongside them, preschool business trainings. I think about my daycare/preschool in the shower...as I drive...when I lay down to sleep. I can't get the thoughts out of my head and nothing else really excites me the way these dreams do.

   So feel free to follow me on Pinterest and keep up with my boards. I have plenty of them pertaining to education:

• learning is fun
• the heart of teaching
• cute and clever classroom idea
• classroom photo gallery
• my preschool daze
• future dream preschool
• classroom behaviors/SPED

  No matter what age level you educate or where, you're sure to find something of use in my pins. But if you, like me, love to work work with preschool children or dream about your own daycare/preschool business, make sure to visit me here often as I share ideas, hopes, and links to helpful sites.

Spring has (almost) sprung and neat Easter finds

Our classroom board update, thanks to Miss A.

TN is warming up and the today the sun is shining brightly. I can see the river sparkling from my living room and I know it's just too pretty to be inside. But before my family hits the river walking trail, I'll update a bit to show you what Dollar Tree and Walmart have in their Easter sections for use in the classroom.

First off, I work in a daycare classroom with another teacher. So this makes it easier to pull a 4 children aside each morning during our center rotations to work in small groups on needed skills for school-readiness.     I am adding things to a stash at home to rotate out, such as fine motor activities, and all sorts of math and literacy activities. I am always looking for new items to add, and Pinterest inspires me by showing what simple tools others are using in their classrooms. Thanks to Pinterest and the creative teachers there I am really learning to think outside the box and see other uses for materials one might not commonly associate with a classroom.

Here are some examples:

Add alphabet letters to eggs; cover with clear nail polish to help keep letters on eggs longer. Match the egg halves together to match upper and lower case letters.

Have children match the magnetic letters to the proper egg. Opening, inserting, and closing the egg helps with fine motor skills.

Patterns, matching, and sorting can all be accomplished using the neat patterns on plastic eggs. Sort by flowers, animal prints, camo patterns, or colors for example.

Our children really enjoy matching the egg patterns together and then taking the eggs apart again.

These stamps were cheap and a fun addition to our art center.

These plastic egg trays were less than $1.00 each at Walmart. They are great for sorting.

Add some holiday pencil erasers and you have a great sorting activity.

Erasers are also great for patterns. 

Another fun activity uses these huge dice from Dollar Tree. Children take turns rolling a die, counting the dots on it, and putting that no. of plastic eggs into their trays. When a child has his or her tray filled they win. 

I welcome your small group ideas for preschoolers. Would love to hear from you all.

Blessings!

Joy Anderson's Start a Preschool training

My new hero and inspiration: Joy Anderson

Have you heard about Joy Anderson yet? Everyone's talking about her because she just discovered something that might revolutionize the daycare industry. I have taken her Start a Preschool training online and loved watching her videos---her enthusiasm is contagious! I can tell she's a great preschool teacher just from her training videos. I looked forward to each week's video coming to my inbox. Thanks to Joy, I have a dream of my future and what I am praying about doing when I finally finish my ECE degree.

Let me tell you a little about Joy. A few years ago Joy became a single mom. And wanting to stay home with her 3 young kids, she had to find a work-from-home job that would give her a full-time income. She considered selling from multiple party plans (but that would have taken her away from her children and required hiring a sitter). Then she considered running a home daycare, but she didn't like certain aspects of running a home daycare business, like working 10-12 hours a day! (I have been there and done that in my home daycare over 12 years ago...it is exhausting even when you really love children).

So she removed all the negative aspects about the business and created something I was totally blown away by! She only works 5 hours a day and makes a full-time income! And she only takes children ages 3-5, which is my favorite age to teach. She says it's the best job for stay-at-home moms because you actually spend quality time with your children WHILE you're making money! I love the idea of taking out the fun parts of a typical daycare day: center time, circle time, activity time and playtime, and building a business on those times. No more hassles of feeding lunches, of getting kiddos to nap, or dealing with tired children who have been at daycare all day and just want to be at home. It really is the icing on the cake in my eyes.

You've got to see what she does! Check out her story by clicking on the link in the right side-bar or by copying and pasting this code into your browser bar:

http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?Clk=4567148

Plus, she's put together some really cool videos (and even a CD she's giving away for free) to teach you how to do it too! Get your FREE copy here today:

http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?Clk=4567148

What really impressed me was how Joy got her start-up money and how she used her own home, with very little pocket money or changes to the home, to start what is now a very lucrative business. She has recently opened a second location where she will also be able to provide a state-regulated kindergarten program alongside her preschool. All this from a woman who found herself single with three kids to support. Kudos and blessings to Joy! Her training covers so many things I would have never thought of. Don't try to start a home preschool without Joy's training to help you. She covers it all from set-up to working with parents to advertising to legalities.

Maybe you are looking for work you can do from home...or currently work in a daycare or run your own and need a break from the long hours...or maybe you teach in a school system and are ready for a change...Joy's training could open your eyes the way it did mine.

So if you haven't started your daycare yet because the whole process seems overwhelming,
or...
if you've started your daycare and you feel overwhelmed with the long hours you're working every day, I highly recommend you go check our her story here (copy and paste the link please):

http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?Clk=4567148

I wouldn't promote Joy's products if I didn't whole-heartedly stand behind her. So give it a try. You have nothing to lose.

Randomness

 I keep losing the photos I transfer to my laptop. And I had some cute ones today. We'll see what I can pull up here. Can't recall posting these yet; if I already have, ignore me.

When I came to work at Smarty Pants, these were right-side up on the wall of my future classroom. My director took them down and removed the backpack hooks as most of our kiddos do not carry backpacks. She sat them on the floor upside-down and now we store our nap mats where the backpack hooks used to be. The children's mats go above their personal cubbies. I took this photo during nap so the mats were being used but usually we stack the mats three high. Great idea Leeann!

Ok, so lining up neatly can be hard for preschoolers to master. They like to touch, poke, push, shove, and jump line. We use colorful duct tape squares to make spots for standing. Everyone picks a spot and then follows the path as it moves along. We do this in front of the sink and at the playground door. We also try to stand with "duck tails" (I'll try to add a photo of that one day soon). The squares don't leave much residue and easily remove when they get dirty so you can add new ones. And duct tape comes in some amazing colors and patterns now.

 

This is our marble jar. When we nap or have extra good-behavior, we add some marbles to our jar. When the marbles reach the middle line, we are getting an ice cream sundae party! When they reach the top line we'll choose a bigger event as a reward, like maybe a water day outside, a special guest speaker, a pj and popcorn day, or whatever else the kids come up with.

This is the way we brush our teeth, brush our teeth, brush our teeth...

In February we had a week-long unit on dental hygiene. My students learned how to care for their teeth. They got to brush soda-bottle bottom "molars" and we did two experiments for science.

We soaked a raw egg in Coke for the week and a second raw egg in vinegar. The raw egg in Coke became heavily stained and the entire shell melted off the second egg, which simulates the wearing away of our tooth enamel due to acids and bacteria on our teeth. Thank you, Pinterest, for all my latest ideas!

Ok, while this has nothing to do with work, I just had to sneak my own baby girl Ash in here. This is her cooking a big old pot of ham and bean soup. We like it with cornbread made in my cast iron skillet on a cold night. And just like her mom, Ash likes a country bedtime snack of corn bread in milk. Just like our late Grandpa Lonnie, too! He loved his milk and cornbread. Yum.

Now back to our show. We had a lot of bad storms here in the south and mid-south to ring March in. March brought with it massive tornado devastation and sadly, a large loss of life. Our class had been on tornado-drill lockdown in the hall and were a bit scared of the storms. So we talked a little about the old saying that if March comes in like a lion, it will go out (we hope!) like a gentle lamb. This turned into a full week of lessons on "lions and lambs". Today we had our finale and we ended it with a lion salad snack that they kids made themselves. They love to "cook". 

To make a lion, you just need one pineapple ring, a maraschino cherry, three raisins, and a handful of shredded cheddar cheese. Ta-da! It really was fun despite the looks on the kiddos' faces. :)

Next week we'll be learning about St. Patrick's Day. Following that our next two unit's will be "Spring Has Sprung!" and "What's with the Weather?". I'm sure to have lots more pictures of our adventures then so keep in touch.

-Lynn

Classroom Arrangement Addiction

Classroom rearranging addiction

What starts out as a quick weekend run by the daycare to drop off a Goodwill find or some discarded toy from my kid's toy box leads to a 2-hour marathon of cleaning my room and re-arranging (again) my furniture.

In a preschool classroom, you have these ideas about how things are going to work. You arrange your room and it looks great. You can't wait for the littles to come in and try it all out. And very soon you realize that your plan has gone awry. There is a reason why furniture must be placed a certain way, and why quiet centers and noisy centers can't be neighbors. So you observe and make mental notes; then you come in and arrange again. And again. Someone please tell me that this stage shall pass. It's not that I don't enjoy being there in my room, in the quiet, reflecting, planning, thinking. It's just I want my room to be DONE. And to function really well.

My main challenge is that my room is very long and narrow and the loft (although I love it), darkens the whole corner of the room and I am a "let the light in" kind of gal. I also have to have seven centers set up at all times. I have no problem setting up seven centers but they do take up a lot of space. And trying to place the centers according to guidelines can be tricky, especially with large, chunky, preschool furniture. I also long for a desk, but there is not one ounce of space to squeeze one into, so I use my cabinet for all my personal storage and the children's table becomes my desk each day during naptime.

Public school teachers have the advantage of being able to paint, decorate, clean, and arrange over summer break, whereas daycare is almost always in session. So it's tricky to fit in long projects or do a major overhaul. My director, her husband, myself, and my husband (with help from some other volunteers) recently  painted the room over a 3-day weekend. They stayed to finish and put the furniture back, literally, at the last minute the night before school was back in session. That was close!

Well, here are more photos of the smaller rearranging I did this weekend:

Added new chart rack to circle time/meeting area

 our classroom song, sung to tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

 Classroom rules

Sensory area

 

added some quiet toys to loft

 

my Goodwill finds this week- watering can for .29 cents, fake strawberries to water, a girl's Pink Leap-pad with case and 4 games (keeping for my kiddo until she tires of it then I will donate to my class), and 20 Big Books (thanks alerting me, Donna M.)

My son gave up his marble maze and I located some dress-up clothes in the daycare closet to add to this center

 

Our daily schedule

 

I added the What Time is it Now? pouch with schedule cards to the bottom of our schedule with sticky hooks. The kids like to change them out to see what time of day it is.

Ok, so even the bathroom got some posters

 

The bathroom door and classroom door were lovingly decorated by my students with help from some Dollar Tree re-positionable wall art I had in my crafting closet.

 

-Lynn

A New Year, A New Job Title, and a New Blog

My classroom

Here are some photos of my classroom at the daycare. I teach up to sixteen fours and fives. They are bundles of energy and little sponges all at once! It's a great job in a Christian atmosphere which teaches me more than my college textbooks could about what preschool is all about.

 This is what my room looks like as you enter.

To the right we have our cubbies and mats.

This photo shows are our art center.

Here is a look at our blocks center.

Our helper board allows me to draw names of each day's helpers and assign jobs. The favorites for now are "fish feeder" and V.I.P. at story time.

This is my parent board.

Our science center, which I am looking to add to, and need ideas.

Our schedule chart, not very pretty but it will work for now.

We use this area for our Morning Welcome and again for Circle Time. My chart rack will eventually go here and I'll remove some of the posters to put on the rack as we have fire regulations regarding how much of the wall can have paper on it.

Our music center. Looking for some new things to liven it up and spark the children's interest.

Our reading loft (or the "bear cave" as it has been affectionately called since our unit on the North Pole).

Another view of the reading loft. We have books, puzzles, and JC Penney Christmas catalogs in here. Those catalogs sure do inspire a lot of toy-filled dreams in my littles! I need to sort and organize this better so the kiddos can clean up better.

Back downstairs, a misc. center with a lot of various activities inside. Since this photo was made the table has been moved and I've added three donated computer/Leap Pad tablets to it. I might add a splash of paint to it one day. Our playground door is in the background.

A view of our dramatic play center/house center under the reading loft. This is one of the most chosen centers. I would love to add curtains and flower buckets on the posts. And maybe add some sort of lemonade stand that could become a grocer, etc. I think we could use a bit more lighting in and under the loft but am not sure how to go about adding it. We have one light under it already. There is a corner area under the loft where the kids like to hide. One minute they call it their elevator; the next moment it has morphed into a pantry, phone booth, or cave. What imaginations they have and I love it.

The kitchen inside our house.

This is the view from the back of my room at the playground door. It's a long narrow room with fresh paint. It's really not as dark as this photo appears. The orange is a very cheerful color.