My FCC school room is set up in what I like to think of as three sections: my "baby safe" and explorative learning areas, our imaginative/dramatic play area and the instructional learning area.
I have a wide variety of materials in each of these sections! Let's start by taking a look at the baby safe and exploration learning areas! I have a multi-age classroom and having infants can add a whole new dynamic to running a classroom an ensuring the safety of the little ones. Infants (or in general kiddos under 16months) need more direct supervision. Well when I need to cook, clean up or am working on a preschool project where I can't be sitting one-on-one with the younger kiddos I use a tension gate and place them in the "baby safe zone". This area has lots of room for them to roam and explore. There are age-appropriate toys for mouthing, manipulating and playing with! I also have a simple sleeping area set up so when a baby is napping I can use the tension gate to keep the older ones out of the area. This gives the babies a semi-quieter space to nap in, while still being in view and it keeps the order ones from accidentally dropping any toys over the side of the pack-n-play....
The infant safe area has a variety of toys for the kids to play with! When it's not being used as a "safe zone" all of the kids are welcome in it. There are toys for counting, playing with, squeezing, reading, climbing and so much more!
Both inside the baby safe zone and outside I have exploration stations. In the baby safe area (image on left) these types of toys include shape sorters, chunky magnifying glasses, thick peg puzzles, counting eggs, blocks, Mr potato heads, etc. These are toys that encourage hand eye-coordination, manipulation and cognitive play. In essence the kids are learning different functions and skills while playing! I usually swap out 2-3 toys weekly to mix it up and give them new things to explore.
Outside of the baby safe zone (image on the right) I have toys that are geared for older ages. Letter games, magnets, etch writers, more advanced blocks, music toys, electronic reading game, etc. All of these toys are on low shelving so the children have access to them all on their own! I even have toys on the top of the shelving for the kids to access. Occasionally the tops get cleared off and I will set up investigation stations based on recommendations from the Mother Goose Time curriculum!
Next we move into imagination and dramatic play areas! These include dress up, baby dolls, barbies and the kitchen. When we are not doing lessons I find that this is the favorite area for a majority of the older kids in my care. They enjoy shopping and pretend cooking. They enjoy getting lost in a world of princesses and knights. They love bringing barbies to life and helping them climb the castle!
Lastly we have the educational area! Throughout my room you'll see Mother Goose Time music posters, counting posters, emotional posters, small toys, etc... but here in Circle Time and the educational area of the room, Mother Goose Time is pretty dominant!
This is my interactive circle time board. It's magnetic so the kids can move everything around! It's where we do our counting, letter introduction, topic/theme, etc! I've recently given it a new look from some of the yearly updates we received in our Mother Goose Time 2016-17 school year welcome kit!
Our reading nook, calendar, weather and art areas are all also located at this end of the room. I have a kid sized work table where we are able to sit for lessons, activities, projects and meal times! The kids like seeing their art work displayed
Above are a few of my favorite room resources, toys and materials! Tell me what your favorite are!
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I knew that our A to Zoo animal theme was going to be a hit! The kids are seriously in love :) We've had fun singing LOTS of different songs too! With my new group of little's I knew that singing would be a big part of the everyday fun! So, I did a little digging on-line and found songs to go with a few of our different letter days! For example on our day about B we sang "I Caught a Baby Bumblebee" and "Baa, Baa Black Sheep"! My favorite was our day about D because we sang "Five little Duckies" :) I think one of the kids favorite parts of this study is when they get to pull out their ABC Zoo books. They LOVE these little books that have animals on one side and letters on the other. See how proud they all are of their special letters?! First we started by coloring a letter picture that had the letter of their first name on it. I told them that those were their special letters! After they were done coloring we pulled out their ABC Zoo books and they each turned the pages until the found their special letter. Then I called them all by their "animal names" (their name + the animal). So I was Tawsha Tiger :)
They thought it was so cool and we pretended to act like different animals throughout the day! Our Mother Goose Time box came with so many fun art projects for this theme! Below you can see the elephants the kids made! Because of little fingers I did the cutting before hand and had all of the pieces ready for them to color and glue :) I even hid the elephants special letter for them to find! On the right you can see the kids all showing me where the "ehhh-ehhh, elephant's E" is hiding! With school starting up all of the older kiddos have pretty much headed off to school... this brought me to a whole new world of TWO's! It's exciting but kind of scary at the same time. We're taking August to test the waters and see what the kids are going to enjoy doing and I think working with all of our ABCs is the perfect way to get a feel for where everyone is! Tot-School is how I'm looking at this "semester". These guys are all a little young for Preschool material, but tot-school is full of sounds, singing, and sensory! A to Zoo animals is sure to be a hit here at Kiddie Korner! I'm in love with the fun book that was included in our Mother Goose Time curriculum box! And I combined our manipulative counting animals from this month with ones we've collected from previous months. It's going to be fun to pull the box of these out for the kids to play with while I read the A to Zoo story book to them! I really enjoy the way these pages are set up. The letter is big and obvious. The easy to read and understand sentence is in LARGE text "A is for aaah-aaah alligator". For the younger two's that's all they care about! Reading that tiny text to them is a little much... honestly they don't care about hearing too much more about the alligator. Sometimes we make the animal sounds and they laugh and giggle at that. Now, when I have an older crowd (like my daughter), they enjoy hearing the different facts about the animals! So that additional info is great. While we were reading the book I gave the kiddos some of the animals to hold. When I got to an animal they were holding I would say "who has the {Kangaroo}?" Whoever had it would hold it up and repeat the sentence with me. They LOVED this part of interactive story time!
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Proud supporter of Mother Goose Time curriculum!All the posts in this blog are from real life experiences. We've taken the activities and materials provided in the Mother Goose Time curriculum and modified it in different ways to fit our lifestyle. Enjoy the read!
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