Celebrating 83,000 Views of My BLOG!

Thanks to all of you who have read and followed my blog.  I have thoroughly enjoyed doing it and love sharing my work with all of you!  I have not had as many followers as I thought I would have by now (hint, hint!), but still happy!  I encourage you to follow me through Bloglovin' or by email.  It is a great way to keep updated when I make new posts.  I am trying to post at least 3 activities I create in my room to share with you each month this upcoming school year.  That is my goal anyway!

I have just finished creating some great number play dough mats.  I am working on the letter version to go with the GUM BALL theme!  Many of my other play dough mats are rolling "worm" shapes, so for my latest game I used the ball shape.  I made a few at my table tonight.   My twin girls were asleep, so I could not try it out on them yet!  They love all of my other play dough games so I know they will try it out when they wake up!

Here is a preview and I hope you enjoy.  This set comes with games to use with play dough and pompom "gum balls" too!  It can also be laminated and used with dry erase makers.  

Click here to view my TPT store!

As summer comes to and end, get out and enjoy your last days!  I know I will.  Heading back to our house on the Greenbrier River!  More to come so check back or follow me to stay updated!  

Play Dough Mats for Preschool

I have worked all year long and never got the time to get my activities up on TPT!  I have tweaked and researched and I am finally ready to share my stuff!!!  I make things that I want to use and that I know other preschool/kindergarten teachers will use.  I love all of the cute things I that I have seen and I thought to myself, you know, I can do this too!!!  I have included a preview of the product with some pictures of my students using them.

I began the year by making play dough activities.  I wanted to change up my play dough and make it a bit more educational and meaningful.  I had kids in my class who were using their creativity, and they were strengthening their fine motor, but seemed to need more.  I started with the play dough mats.  Here you can see how much fun these can be!

My students love rolling out the "worms" for the numbers and then using a real plastic knife and cutting off cylinders for the marshmallows in the mugs!  I have also had fun using these during teacher evaluations.  My bosses love that I can sit and assess as they are learning!  Shocking, right?!

Here is a sneak peak into my other great play dough mats...

                                                         Flower Play Dough Counting Mats

This game is my favorite one... Play Dough Pizza Math Mats!!!  I found the greatest clip art from the 3A.M. Teacher!  It was calling my name.  I have not used this one yet but I cannot wait to try it.  I am going to print it and try it out with my twin girls!  I know they will love it!

                                                       Play Dough Pizza Math Mats

 I hope you love these.  I know your students will!  Enjoy!

Number Smack Math Game

This past summer I had the opportunity to work in a great summer program designed to give kids who did not go to preschool, a jump start before they got to kindergarten.  It was a short program but we got the opportunity to do a lot of fun things with our class.  The activities we did were really hands on and incorporated very active learning.  This game below was designed to get the kids moving and working to identify numbers in various ways.  We began by reviewing the numbers 1-20 for our upper group and 1-10 with my lower group.  Then I would take a piece out of our number puzzle and say the name of the number.  Once I called the number, the students could run around the big table that had the number smack poster and find the number I called out.  When they found it, they had to smack it and hold their hand on it.   Then I yelled out, "Peek!"  The students lifted their hand but kept it right next to it so that I could check and chart the students who got it and who did not.  We made it harder for the children who already could recognize numbers and just yelled out the name.  I have repeated this activity in my preschool classroom and used fly swatters from the Dollar General.  This gave my students something extra to make the game interesting.  I used a rectangular table with chairs all pushed in so that the students could run around to find the numbers.   Next week we are going to draw shapes all over our poster to review shapes.  I think getting my students up and moving to learn makes them work harder and gets some of their energy out too!  It is a win, win!