it's all in the details...

our fine motor shelf ready to motor!

We're spending a few weeks reading books on trains and trucks. The library corner is stocked with books, we have an awesome thrifted wooden train and car set on our building table, and the shelves around the room are filled with activities centered around shapes and things that go. Here's a peek!

This is our Math Shelf.  It consists of two Ikea cabinets with the doors and extra shelves removed. We aim to keep it simple by placing one basket or tray of manipulatives for exploration on each shelf. We have been exploring shapes and colors in the room so our Math Shelf is full of happy shapes and colors. On the top shelf we have a basket of pattern blocks along with a book on shapes, and our cylinder stackers from Guidecraft* (via Zulily). On the bottom shelves we have a basket of Magformers*, and a basket of rainbow cubes.  During the week, the children bring the baskets to different areas to the classroom to explore. When they are finished and it is time to clean up, the fill the baskets and return them to the shelves (or any surface they think will suffice).

The felt train was made to go along with the book Freight Train* by Donald Crews. I did a big ol' eye batting at the mister to get him to draw me the template for these pieces. I have them somewhere in a file and when I find them I will scan them in so you can use them as well if you are interested. I introduce the pieces as I read the story. We then work on sorting our vehicle counters* as a group on our circle time rug. Later in the week, these felt pieces are moved all over the classroom and used in various ways. The counters too are used all over the room. While I set up the investigation on our Math table, I do not fret when the children decide to use them elsewhere. The table is a bit tall for them and they prefer to use the floor for the most part. 

On the art table I have set out tickets, hole punches, and crayons in a truck shaped container. The children spent the week making ticket collages and creating their own train tickets. We have an art shelf as well full of paper, glue, crayons, and markers. Next to the art shelf and table is our easel for painting. 

We have two waterfall style bookcases in our reading area. I hit up the public library every two weeks for books that fit various themes. here we have all things transportation. I want to write more about the books but am not sure if anyone is interested enough. 

Finally we have our fine motor shelf, which is a Kallax shelf from Ikea (the entire shelf can be seen in the top photo of this post). Here we have shape connectors, transportation lacing beads* (I picked these up from Target), a thrifted peg board, and gears from Plan Toys*. In front of our shelf is a coffee table that the kiddos bring the baskets down to for exploring. 

So there ya go! More details on what I use in my classroom and how we set it up. The baskets are all thrifted and we have a cabinet in the classroom where we stack up the unused baskets. I'm a basket hoarder and my teaching partner is not so we agreed that if it doesn't fit in the cabinet it goes! Thank goodness they stack so nicely! 

*all Amazon links are affiliated with my school, just so ya know. Thank you!

a new year, a new classroom set up with details!

Howdy folks! This year my classroom got new floors. Our carpets were a bit on the sad side so the school district came in and set us up with new floors (we lease our space from the district). We were hoping for something a little less busy but we'll take what we can get. The best part about having a tiled (laminate?) floor is that we can pop that easel anywhere in the classroom, and so we did! We also took advantage of having the entire room emptied out by rearranging everything when we brought it all back in. The three-year-old classroom was the most recent class added to the school (which goes all the way up to twelfth grade) and we often get cast-offs from other rooms so it's a little hodge-podgey but it works. There are two of us who share the room and we think this year we have finally found a winning combo in floor arrangement and materials. Crossing fingers at least! Up top you will find a photo of our science/nature table. We moved it back to under the window to take advantage of the natural light. The first week of school is generally loosely planned so that we can get a feel for how the children will use the space. We do not put out a whole lot but do thoughtfully arrange items.

Here is the view from the doorway. New floors! The floors make the room appear a little lighter and airier. They also reflect the light back out into the room making it appear brighter. I love that as I am not a fan of the overhead lights.

 I managed to hit up an IKEA on the way home from a mini road trip. I picked up this four-cubed Kallax for $35! This is what we call opur fine motor shelf. Each shelf holds a baslet or tray with items inside that encourages fine motor wark. The children may take a basket off a shelf and move it to the floor or coffee table in front. When they are finished, they return the tray or basket back to the shelf they removed it from.

Here is the view from the fine motor shelf into our kitchen area. We pulled in our old fine motor table into the kitchen to use as a group project table and to eat on at lunch. Previously we had a very large shelf unit defining the space but it was awkward to get into for our art supplies and made it the space smaller so we had to use three smaller tables for the kiddos to eat off of. We also put curtains over two sets of our window shelves. We needed more storage and the shelves are a bit too shallow to put items on. The middle shelf set will still be used for our artist study area.

These small white shelves used to have doors on them. I nixed the doors and the additional shelves to create an open space for our math materials. We use these fixtures to separate our circle rug area from the rest of the classroom. I plan on putting felt on the back of the shelves but keep forgetting to get spray adhesive or mounting tape to do so. Each shelf will hold one basket or tray on the bottom and one on the top for math exploration. There is a table available to work at or the children can use the carpet.

These are the items on our math shelves. I found the graduating cylinders on Zulily. I love watching the children play with these. They get quite creative and will play alone, side by side, or together. We put these out at the beginning of the year to go along with our week of Little Blue, and Little Yellow, then I move them to our artist study area to accompany our study on Vassily Kandinsky.

Unifix cubes! Here we pulled out the blue, yellow, and green cubes to go along with the literature for the week. Already these cubes have been turned into swords, brooms, and measuring sticks. The green place mat underneath was a Homegoods find. Four place mats for $4. It adds a bit of texture to the room.

A simple set of canisters (Pringles, anyone?) with color coded holes on top and a pile of pipe cleaners in corresponding colors. A parent made these for us a few years ago and they get a lot of use. The children play with these in all sorts of ways as well. Sometimes the pipe cleaners disappear and end up in other areas of the classroom. It's always an adventure!

Two types of magnet tiles/blocks. Here we pulled out all of the green, blue, and yellow again to go along with the literature. Since there are limited colors and shapes the children have to get creative in what they wish to build. This basked of tiles has already been turned into a house that fits three of our dollhouse dolls and a toilet because "every house needs a potty" according to one of ht kiddos.

And, the return of the curler table! This time with added pom poms! The children stack, organize, sort, and build  with them. There is a lot of social activity going on and the parents are always surprised at the medium! Curlers for the win!

We moved our block area to where our reading corner used to be. The big hunk of furniture that holds most of our art supplies was pushed up against the wall to the right. This separates the area from the circle rug and gives it a little more definition. We left the canopy up to add a bit of soft to the area. Building with blocks on our new floors is a little tricky as small fingers can get punched when there is rushing going on. The kiddos are learning a new type of respect.

Our Froebel balls are out and on top of our fine motor shelf to add a splash of color and familiarity. Not pictures on the remaining shelves are a tray of yellow, blue, & green beads with pipe cleaners for bracelet beading; colorful wood shapes and laces for more threading, a tray of transparent circles for Little Blue and Little Yellow retelling, and a basket with felt pieces in yellow, blue, & green along with small objects in matching colors for color sorting. I love this shelf!

And finally, our reading nook which is still a work in progress. It's a little larger than the old nook and more inviting but needs a little more oomph. We're working on it. For now there is a garland of book covers matching the books we will be reading for the first twelve weeks of school. We're hoping to add photos or other art work to the area as time goes by. We hope this new arrangement all around will help with classroom management and keep a little lid on the want to run around in here. So far, the change has been tremendous! Thank you for checking out our classroom! Come back soon!

circle time shelf part 2

The top of our shelf. The boombox bit the dust a month or so ago but we keep it there as a space saver for the new soon-to-be box. Crossing fingers we get one before the year ends.  We feature the book of the week on the book-stand at the right.  The children know that whichever book is there we will most definitely be reading that week.

We use Mary Engelbreit's Mother Goose book in the classroom but I brought this one in as well as it is the one I grew up with (alongside this one). This little succulent garden is a smidge tired. I blame Home Depot and their wee collections that are GLUED in place. There are small rocks on top of the soil and the rocks are glued together making it ridiculously hard to separate and re-pot.

I'm working on teaching the kiddos about feelings and empathy. These wee kimochis are popular with the kiddos though they see every face as being either happy, sad, or angry. Even so they love them and we use them a lot.

My impromptu texture basket using what we had on hand. I want to make little texture pillows for next year. We'll see. Inside you will find things that are bumpy, coarse, fuzzy, smooth, soft and ridged. I also have a mystery bag that I use. The children pull out an object and we decide as a group who has a soft object, hard object, etc. We talk about using descriptive words and the children gain new vocabulary. It's pretty cool.

The whole pretty shelf. Next year we will be scootching it a bit to the left or maybe a lot and using some other shelf that is a little lower so as not to block our circle-time board.

Here's the view of our circle-time area from where the kiddos sit. You can see the mystery bag on top of the sharing chair which was intended to be the teacher's chair but we tend to plop ourselves down on the floor with the kiddos. The children place their sharing items on top and they know that anything on the chair is for eyes only until after sharing. Inside the ottoman you will find our bean bags which I had to hide because the kiddos like to throw them everywhere. When they get crazy with throwing I ask if they need to play the bean bag game then the top comes off, the bean bags are parceled out and they try throwing the bags into the chair. Sometimes they tell me they want to play it and we set it all up with tape on the floor and everything. I need to make new rainbow bean bags for next year as the bags we have are not able to be equally divided and the threes are very particular about that.

Group art created by both classes is put on this board along with our Nursery Rhyme of the week. The shelf to the right there is a puzzle shelf (I found this at the Goodwill outlet for $2!) On top of the shelf is this sweet little game that the children love. Leaning against the shelf is our song notebook, a cookie sheet for magnet play and drawing on, and a felt board for felt stories.

The children memorize a Nursery Rhyme each week and take turns reciting it in front of their friends. We learned this rhyme in sign language thanks to a lovely parent. I put the paint chips there to review our colors in rainbow order and sign language. We also practice putting them into a color wheel shape, and separating them into warm and cool colors (though the children really love making train tracks with them). Behind the purple you will see a few Spot It! cards. I gave my game away but had a sample pack that we use during math and/or discovery time.

That's it for our circle time area, I hope you had fun touring it with me!

classroom set up for the first week...

color sorting w shape buttons

little blue and little yellow bead stringing for fine motor

little blue and little yellow pom pom sorting

loose parts: circles

little blue and little yellow curler play...a little green too

natural parts; circles

extras on the block shelf

circle printing and paint fun

crystal connectors and cylinders

little blue and little yellow at the art table

books on color

our new snack tray

Can you guess which book we are reading?

a new school year means a newly organized classroom

the view from the door

It took us hours and hours to get this room to look like this. It's the same room as last year but good golly did we do an overhaul. We removed some furniture, added a few small tables, and rearranged the whole shebang. While we do have a nice budget for our preschool it goes to big wishlist items such as a light table or block shelf so a lot of our furniture is a bit mismatched but you can't be too choosey can ya? The blue table here replaced a taller rainbow table and we love having it there.

the view from the reading corner

Our classroom and school used an old elementary school so we have amazing windows and space. I mean look at all that natural light! The white shelving units are from Ikea and had blue doors on them last year. We relocated the items we were storing in them and pulled the doors off to create a math shelf and a science shelf. The backside of each shelf will soon hopefully have magnet boards on them. The coffee table was in the a-go-go garage and is now a small world table. The rug came from the old casa de a-go-go and adds a bit of color to the grey carpet. The playhouse in the way way back there was sold to create more space in the room and put a little moolah back into the budget.

the art shelf

The art shelf is a work in progress but I love having the art supplies out all the time. I covered the back of the shelf with brown paper because there were a bunch of flower stickers stuck all over the place.

another view

 On the shelf for the first two weeks the kiddos will find glue and gluesticks, colored pencils, sharpeners, markers, pencils, beeswax crayons, gemstone shaped crayons, paper, and traditional crayons. Phew! The art table is next to and in front of this shelf for easy transfer of supplies. On the table is a lazy susan which currently is holding cans of yellow, blue, and green markers for our week of Little Blue and Little Yellow.

the reading corner

 Our reading corner used to be on the other side of the room where the play kitchen now is. The bookcase is new and we finally got the canopy hung. I would love to not have an ABC rug but that will be for a later project. I would also love to switch out our pillowcases to match other elements of the room. There are a bunch of orange pillows at Target that I am adoring right now. The Alphabet cards are from K & Company and have nifty animal facts written on the back.

the play kitchen

 Here is our play kitchen. Out went all the plastic toys and food and in came the fabric, glass, wood, and stainless steel. This little area sees a lot of play. It's a bit trying to keep organized but al that happy play is worth it.

the artwork wall

 The brown paper here is covering two long white boards. I am so happy to have them covered up. we will be putting photos of the children on this board and their art will be rotated here throughout the year using washi tape covered clothespins that have magnets glued to the back. This took me far too long to put up. Phew!

view into our kitchen area

Here is our kitchen area. This is where all the play dough play, easel painting, cooking, and concoctions happen. We also eat our lunch here before heading out to our adjoining play yard. Last year only one of the cubby areas with hooks was a vailable for use as the other was used for storage. The mister installed shelves on the bottom for us and now we have official cubbies. Just don;t look in the cabinets yet, they still need a bit more work. One holds our pantry items such as flour for cloud dough, baking soda, vinegar, shaving cream, and snacks for us teachers...of course.

another kitchen view

Last year I made a few organizational-like changes to our kitchen such as putting in a hook or two for our broom and dustpan and adding an art wire across the top of the entryway (fine, I didn't do it myself, the mister did, but it was my idea).  Before that, the broom was always in a different place and  artwork space was at a minimum. We now create classroom garlands with the kiddos' artwork and hang them along the wire. It adds a bit of flair to the room. The white shelf unit there used to be in the middle of our room. It held art supplies and blocks. The shelves are pretty deep and the unit is taller than the kiddos so we were super happy to move it to where it is now to act as storage for all the plastic shoebox sized bins we have that hold art/craft materials such as pipe cleaners, beads, coffee filters, etc. The other side holds puzzles and games. I made the curtains from a Target tablecloth and a couple of tension rods.

our kitchen counter

 Here is where we set our snacks, wash our dishes, and place art trays ready to go out. Last year it got super cluttery so this year I asked the mister to install a couple of shelves for us. We also added hooks under one of the shelves to hold our mugs. The shelves closets to the wall hold cleaning supplies and spray bottles while the other two shelves are for cups and plants. The plate rack was moved from the center of the counter to the right side of the sink and above the sink there is a three tiered hanging baskets that holds dishtowels, plastic clips, sponges, and a few other odds and ends. Not pictured is the mini fridge and microwave which have a hanging clippy thing that we clip damp dishtowels to for drying.

the paper shelf

 The paper and paint shelves used to house all sorts of art supplies and all of the bins for collage and the like. It was a mess and got very cluttered. We now have one side dedicated to paper and the other dedicated to paint. I found the white paper holder on the left at Micheal's on clearance and mister made the paper holder on the right out of cardboard. The trays are used for wet and messy art and as drying racks for wet and messy art. The stripy bin (a gift from the divine Ms. Za) holds tiny notebooks and is often added to the art shelf. The basket hold paint chips which also get added to the art shelf. The purple bin holds scraps of construction and scrapbook paper. It's so organized! I love it!

paint shelf

 I got a bit wacky with our paint shelf but I love how every type of paint has its own space. Most of the baskets and bins came from home. The tempera paints gets used daily and I like to store them in rainbow order as a conversation piece for the kiddos. They totally notice later i nthe year, when one is out of place. The basket on the top shelf holds baby food jars with the rest of my glass collection on the left. The children love when they get to use the glass jars and bottles.

This is the basket I put on top of the mini fridge. We tend to drop our water bottles, keys and phones up there and it gets jumbled and messy. The basket helps solve the mess and holds supplies we use everyday such as tape, scissors, and markers. It also holds my snack as you can see.

So, that's it. A mini tour of my newly organized classroom. I hope you had fun. I'm quite happy with it. Phew!