9/25/2014
Welcome to week 7 of tips for teachers! This week I have 3 tips from a preschool teacher friend of mine as well as a few of my own tips. I hope you enjoy!
This is a fun idea/tip for working with felt pieces for story telling. This tip comes from my
mom's cousin again (the preschool teacher). She made this felt board and displayed it on an easel. The top half of the board is blue for the sky and the bottom half is green for the grass. She stores all the felt pieces for each story in a zip-lock bag. She uses the felt board to tell Bible stories so you can see from the picture the bag is labeled, "Creation" and all the pieces she needs to tell the creation story are stored in that zip-lock. She keeps each zip-lock bag of felt pieces in a 3-ring binder so she can easily flip through and
find the story she needs for that day.
This is a great way to quickly see who is absent each day (whose clothespins are left). She has two sets of clothespins (with black names and red names) one set for her morning students and one set for her afternoon students. Students find their clothespin (with their name on it) and answer the "Question of the Day" with a "Yes" or "No" response. The teacher writes each question on a sentence strip and attaches it to the top of the poster (where it says Graph of he Day!). Her questions are always related to the theme of the week. For example, if they are studying worms that week her question might be, "Can you wiggle like a worm?" She will read the question to her students and then they answer it.
Create PowerPoint templates for future projects. I have found that creating PPT templates can save you TONS of time! For example, you can create a slide that is 8 x 8 for a perfect square product cover (for TpT). All you need to do is set the slide to the size you want it and then click "File" and "Save As". Give your PPT a title (i.e. 8 x 8 Cover) and under Format select "PowerPoint Template" and hit "Save". Now when you want to create another 8 x 8 cover you can just go to "My Templates" in PPT and select the 8 x 8 cover and you're all set!
Teach using real-world examples. This preschool teacher has 5 animals/class pets in her classroom to teach about the different kinds of body coverings. She said she likes to have an animal for each type of body covering so students can see and touch each kind to learn the difference. The five animals are birds for feathers, fish for scales, hermit crabs or turtles for shells, Guinea pigs for fur, and frogs for skin. She sends each animal home with different students over the summer to take care of them (that is why they are not all
in the picture below).
If the magnetic strip on the back of your credit card has worn out or has scratches on it, try putting it in a plastic grocery bag to swipe it. I have no idea why or how this works but my hubby taught me this trick. He said one time when he was getting groceries and his card wouldn't swipe the cashier did this trick and it worked so ever since then he's been doing it. Guess you could just order a new card but just in case I thought you might
like this random tip! :)
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