Skip to main content

Quiet Boxes

We have snack time every day and each child brings their own snack and obviously eats their snack at their own pace. The time right after snack, when some children are still eating but others have finished, used to be tricky. It was hard to keep the chaos at bay. Now, I create Quiet Boxes. Each child has a Quiet Box under their cubby and each week I shift the Quiet Boxes so that each child gets the opportunity to try every Quiet Box before the end of the year. So, when a students finishes their snack and cleaning up, they walk over and pull out the Quiet Box that is under their cubby and play with the contents until every child is finished with their snack. I have a couple of guidelines with Quiet Boxes that I have found helpful maintaining order. Students are required to only play with their own Quiet Box, not a friend's. Also, students must play quietly. If they are not interested in their Quiet Box, they are allowed to draw in their journal or look at a book instead, again as long as they are quiet.
Quiet Boxes include activities such as:
*pattern blocks
*buttons and pipe cleaners
*cotton balls and tweezers
*magnets
*linking cubes
*popsicle sticks with Velcro on the ends
*clothespins and number cards
*dice games
*patterns and counters
*pom pom, cups and tweezers
*lacing cards
*marker board and markers
*felt pieces
*wooden blocks
*letter blocks
*magnetic letters and a marker board
*dominoes
*letter tiles
*rocks and magnifying lens
*matching games

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pumpkin Theme

 Every October we learn about pumpkins. Mini pumpkins are brought into the Science Center for every child and we investigate them with magnifying lenses and our senses. We also cut the top off of a large pumpkin and scoop the seeds out to investigate as well.  I allow every child who is interested, a turn scooping seeds out. I never require the students to help if they are not interested.  In the Literacy Center, we use mini pumpkin erasers to trace around letters. Pumpkin stickers can also be used.  We take a field trip to a local pumpkin patch where every child is allowed to pick a pumpkin to take home.  In the Fine Motor/Sensory Center, we make pumpkin pie with orange playdough and rolling pins.  We also count and make patterns in the Math Center with pumpkin erasers or manipulatives. In the Pumpkin STEAM box, I include mini pumpkins, leaves, acorns, magnifying lenses and orange slices of pool noodles that the children can play and experiment with. The Dramatic
Post a Comment
Read more

Cookies Theme

Who doesn't love cookies? We have an entire theme based on cookies and it is one of my favorites! We incorporate a lot of counting into our cookie theme. We count chips onto cookies in our Math Center.  We count cookies and clip the correct numeral in our Fine Motor/Sensory Center.  We serve cookies at the bakery in the Dramatic Play Center.  We also practice numeral recognition and matching and fine motor skills using cookies and pom poms.  We have taken a field trip to a local bakery some years and other years made cookies together as a class but in both situations, we have decorated them and enjoyed eating them.  There are several cookie stories we read including: *"The Gingerbread Boy" *"The Gingerbread Girl" *"Whose Stole the Cookies from the Cookie Jar?" *"The Doorbell Rang" *"May I Please Have a Cookie?" *"The Duckling Gets a Cookie" *"If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" At our A
Post a Comment
Read more

Friends

Social-Emotional Skills are such a large part of the Preschool curriculum. Most of our activities are group based and we spend a lot of time and instruction learning about how to be a good friend and how to treat the people around us. In February, I send home a handful of cutout hearts with each child. I ask parents to document each time they catch their child doing something kind and send it back to school. We then read them aloud to the class and hang them on our wall. The goal is to cover the entire wall with hearts. We also focus on one character trait each week. We discuss the trait and give examples of that trait and then watch for students exhibiting that character trait throughout the week. Some books that I use to reinforce our lessons are: *"Stick and Stone" *"A Sick Day for Amos McGee" *"How Do Dinosaurs Play with Their Friends?" *"Llama Llama and the Bully Goat" *"Rainbow Fish" *"Should I Share my Ice Cream?"
Post a Comment
Read more