My daycare classroom

We have so much Fun in our in home daycare. I am blessed to have wonderful families, who help our children learn and participate in our daily activities. Last year we all put our resources together to build a small garden.

We invite our families four times a year to participate in a Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall Events. This year in the Fall we had a Fall Feast and in the Spring we had a Easter Egg hunt and lot's of food and fun. We even had a Dora Jump house.

Birthday Parties are fun too. We get the chance to celebrate each child individually. Which helps them to feel special and loved. Early Education is important. Day care providers, caregivers and preschool teachers prepare children for school. The more they know ahead of time the more successful your children will be in school.

The Living Well Classroom

Teachers Website Search

When researching practicing teacher’s websites for ideas on arranging the classroom, providing structure, finding activities and organizing the area I found these four website to be very helpful

                                                      My Website picks are:

1.      Pre K-Pages

Classroom Arrangement

http://www.pre-kpages.com/

This website is a resource for parents and educators of young children. The creator Venessa Levin uses this website to share ideas and educational information to early education teachers from all over the world. Your have the opportunity to give and get wonderful idea mailed to your in box.

When you click on the classroom management page you will find many strategies to help

 you arrange and manage your classroom. Circle time in the management tab show pictures and gives tips on the best way to structure circle time along with rules and expectations. This website really helps the educator with what I think is the most important part of the day “Circle Time”!

I also loved the Easter hands on game that was given to help preschool students visually discriminate the letters of the alphabet. We will use these ideas for our spring event this year.

2.      Mrs. Lawrence Website

Structure

http://eflawrence.weebly.com/classroom-structure-ideas.html

In this website Elizabeth Lawrence shares in her classroom management section that lay out and structure are two very important parts of classroom structure. This particular page of her website entitled ‘Classroom Structure Ideas” will help you find resources and also guide you to other websites, pictures and articles. It is not a complicated site and very direct. The Classroom management area is also very helpful when it comes to finding the right classroom procedures, talking with your student’s families, discipline and behavioral strategies.

3.      Teacher’s Corner

Activities

http://www.theteacherscorner.net/

This website provides resources, lesson plans, worksheets and activities. And is said to be world famous with their puzzle and worksheet maker. The online collaborations projects allow two or more classrooms from differ parts of the world to work on similar topics together

I really like the Pals/Pen Pals sections which is a free service enabling your students to pick a pal according to their grade level from a virtual map. When the students click on the part of the country they would like to see pictures will come up of various students and schools that participate in the pen pal service. I would suggest that this be a handwriting assignment, because these pen pals are not screened. However it is a fun way to write to someone from another country.

Everything a teacher would need as far as activities are on this website. Teachers also have the opportunity to chat with each other and submit lesson plans for publishing.

4.      Getting Organized

Organization

http://www.ourclassweb.com/sites_for_teachers_getting_organized

 Every teacher’s challenge especially new teachers is becoming organized this website gives power point presentations and handouts and is one of the best websites that I have seen on getting organized.

Mrs. McDonald Covers everything from materials you will need to get your classroom organized (and where to get them) to organizing your classroom library. I have found that even the most effective classrooms after a while look messy and unorganized. This website gives you tips on how to purge unused materials, organizing the teacher’s desk, setting up files, managing date and events and even organizing students supplies. “I would love for my future classroom to be this organized”!

                                         Chart: Analysis of Websites

Website	Grade	Categories	Features	What I did not like.
http://www.prekpages.com/	Pre-k and kindergarten	Classroom arrangement	Great colors, good logo, easy navigation, give a ways. Great Welcome page.	No complaints
http://eflawrence.weebly.com/classroom-structure-ideas.html	Any grade	structure	Simple, easy navigation and very informative	Lacks color in some areas and has not been updated since 2011.
http://www.theteacherscorner.net/	Any Grade	Activities	Colorful, easy to navigate, holds interest, nice colors.	At first glance may seem to be a little busy.
http://www.ourclassweb.com/sites_for_teachers_getting_organized	Any Grade	Organization	Very organized, holds interest and very informative	Needs more color and eye catching symbols.

References

Getting Organized (n.d.) Retrieved, 4-2-2014 from,

            http://www.ourclassweb.com/sites_for_teachers_getting_organized

Mrs. Lawrence Website (n.d.) Retrieved, 4-1-2014 from,

           http://eflawrence.weebly.com/classroom-structure-ideas.html

Pre-K Pages (n.d.) Retrieved, 4-1-2014 from, http://www.pre-kpages.com/

Teachers Corner (n.d.) Retrieved, 4-2-2014 from, http://www.theteacherscorner.net/