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

Popular posts from this blog

Daily Preschool Schedule

Our Preschool runs a half day program so we have a morning class and a completely seperate afternoon class.  Here's the lesson plan form that I have tweeked and found to be helpful in fitting everything into our short day. Class Name_________ Week #____  Day #____ Theme_____________ 9:00-9:25 Arrival and Free Choice Play 9:25-9:30 Clean Up 9:30-9:45 Morning Meeting and Music 9:45-10:00 Gross Motor Play 10:00-10:15 Math Circle Time 10:15-10:20 Brain Break and Movement 10:20-10:35 Fine Motor Table Work 10:35-10:55 Snack and Quiet Time 10:55-11:10 Literacy/Science/Social Studies Read Aloud Read: Focus: 11:10-11:25 Centers 1)math center: 2) art center: 3) fine motor center: 4)language arts center: 11:25-11:30 Clean up and Dismissal

Bug Theme

When we study bugs, there are several activities I include in an effort to meet every student's ability and interests along with multiple curricular standards. I bought several bags of plastic bugs at my local Dollar Tree and also gathered a few other supplies and we are ready to look at bugs and investigate them-how many legs do they have? How many body parts do they have? What other characteristics do they have? Then we sort them-insects or not insects. Count how many are in each category. Take some time outdoors as well looking for insects and allowing the students to move in larger ways. Run through the grass but also get down and crawl. Take magnifying lenses out with you and see how many insects can be found. On another day we sort the bugs by color. We identify each color and again count how many bugs are in each category. We use tweezers to sort the bugs so that we are working on our fine motor skills as well. Write the color words where the children can easily see the...

Nutrition Theme

 When we have our nutrition theme, there are many fun activities that I tie in. We create food with playdough in our Fine Motor/Sensory Center.  I write numerals on paper plates and give each student a handful of pom poms. When I call a number, they cover it with a pom pom on their plate. We play until every plate is covered ith "berries."  The students find and cut out pictures of food in magazines and then we sort the pictures. They can be sorted healthy vs. unhealthy or they can be sorted by color, by likes vs. dislikes, or by food group.  In the Art Center , I lay out blue paint and clothespins attached to a cotton ball. Students dab "blueberries" around their paper. In the Science Center, students take a basket of play or felt food and sort it onto an oversized food group plate. The Dramatic Play Center and Block Center can both be used to create restaurants or grocery stores. The Math Center has a sorting pie where the students sort frui...