centers

Playing on the tabletop train station in preschool

January 8, 2012

We explored a little boxcar math and decorated our boxcars for our train station in preschool!

Pumpkin vines on the sticky table

October 17, 2011

Exploring pumpkin vines in preschool through a variety of activities…

Finding treasures for your preschool classroom

July 24, 2011

One thing I don’t have yet for my preschool classrooms are child-sized shelves. My husband is planning to build me a few but in the mean time, I happened to stumble across this little shelf in my mom’s neighborhood… It’s funny how being a preschool teacher makes you look at everything with an eye for [...]

Cutting flower stems in preschool

May 11, 2011

Cutting flower stems in preschool Perhaps I should have titled this post “Attempting to cut flower stems in preschool” because child scissors don’t make much of a dent in the stems. However, one of our students figured out how to make this work…. These are left-over stems from our flower bouquets which I posted about [...]

Adding to the science and nature center in preschool

April 1, 2011

Lately, I have been trying to find items to add to our science centers. Filling baskets in the science center is an ongoing effort. I am trying to use items that I find already available in our school and so I have been searching through the old materials in the school storage area… As you can [...]

Inviting children to play in preschool

March 25, 2011

This is not a St. Patrick’s day post but I did use photos from our St. Patrick’s day activity box to start this post off so please read on…. How you set out materials on a table can make a difference in whether children will want to play with those materials or not. During St. [...]

The child centered classroom: Adding things to do

December 29, 2010

I have been writing about setting up classrooms over the past few weeks and so far I talked a little bit about setting up furniture and selecting baskets for your shelves. Once you have your baskets, you will certainly need to decide what will go into the baskets. What goes into each basket depends on [...]

Working on weaving in preschool

December 14, 2010

I have learned so much from others since I started Teach Preschool. I am always amazing at the creativity of all the other bloggers out there and I am constantly sharing the ideas I read about with the teachers and children from my school. As I continue the process of setting up classrooms, I want [...]

The child-centered classroom: shelves

December 13, 2010

As a general rule, when I set up classrooms, I find that it is most helpful to make sure that shelves face the area that you want the children to play… For example, if I have a shelf with art supplies on it (an art center) then I will set the shelf up near a [...]

Setting up a child-centered classroom

December 11, 2010

Selecting baskets for a child-centered early childhood classroom requires thought and time.

Holiday activity boxes for preschool play

December 2, 2010

One of the most invaluable employees in our preschools is our curriculum coordinator. She has a huge responsibility and is amazing at her job. One of her many jobs is to create and prepare what we call mini- “centers” or they could be referred to as “work boxes” or as “activity boxes”. Mrs. F is [...]

Centers in the preschool classroom

April 30, 2010

When children enter this classroom, they will discover plenty of things to do and the freedom to explore because each center in this classroom was designed just for them. At this table the children are creating paintings with the dot painters. At the block center, a couple of boys have decided to pull out the [...]