Website and Blog Sharing

Welcome,

 Children are the most important asset in our lives.  I have been involved in teaching, working with young children for many years. I have seen many changes over the years in teaching approaches.  Along with these different teaching approaches there have been many new exciting ways to share information not only with children, but; with our early childhood professionals peers throughout the world. The internet and technology have definitely helped to enhance teaching.  The sharing of information has become a daily activity with many educators. Whether it is through; teacherspayteachers.com/ or http://www.pinterest.com/ the sharing of information has become commonplace.  With the new Early Learning Standards and Common Core, sharing is a great way to encourage one another to go to the next level of expertise of developmentally appropriate activities as well as differentiating our lessons.

With this being my first blog, I would love to share with you a few of my favorite sites involving early childhood teacher blogs/websites. I hope you enjoy them, I will be also posting some other websites for you to visit and hopefully you will find the information useful and enjoyable too.

Play to Learn Preschool

Focus group: Teachers and care givers of young children to Pre-k

By, Jamie White

http://playtolearnpreschool.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-tour-of-classroom.html

Classroom Arrangement:  Within this blog the author gives a tour of her classroom through pictures, it is bright and cheerful aesthetically pleasing.  She explains many reasons why they have arranged things.  Her classroom looks wonderful, everyone should be so lucky! 

Structure:  She shares information about her day; she offers many different ideas of ways for children to learn, there are printables, ideas for communicating with parents, tips on parenting and more. There is a wealth of useful information.

Activities: from the moment you begin searching this website/blog you will find yourself wanting more. There are cooking activities, ideas to help children with pre-writing skills, centers and more.  She includes science, cooking small and large motor ides along with math and literacy ideas, it is all there, listed on the right hand side of the blog.  Her newer activities are on the main blog page.

Organization: She shares through pictures and descriptions many different ideas for storage, arrangement of toys and shows even their catch all area (which was clutter free).  She encourages journaling even at an early age.

My Opinion:  This website is a treat! It is one I will follow frequently.  It is very well put together, organized, cheery and leaves you wanting to learn more.

Buggy and Buddy

Focus group:  Teachers and care givers of young children to Pre-k

By, Chelsey

http://buggyandbuddy.com/

Classroom Arrangement:  While this site does not really offer classroom arrangement, it truly gives a person many ideas to draw from that may encourage them to arrange a classroom in a special way.

Structure:  She offers printables and many ideas for different themes and centers.  She includes ideas for playing outside. She teams up books with activities; helping the teacher to have a complete unit or theme, she does suggest themes.  She helps you to follow her ideas on Pinterest and also gives the reader the option of a weekly/monthly newsletter. There are science experiences to share with little ones in your classroom; it truly gives the reader a wealth of ideas for young children.

Activities:  This site gives a multitude of activity ideas; it reaches out to parents, teachers and caregivers of young children. Activities are developed for large and small motor skills, math, literacy and science along with play.  It is truly a great website for inspirational ideas in teaching young children.

Organization:  While it is not a classroom organizational site, it does give ideas through pictures of how to organize activities, how to dry art materials, seasonal, and creative ideas as well as theme based activities. 

My Opinion:  I love this site; I follow Buggy and Buddy on Pinterest.  It is a wealth of information from a teacher who is now taking a different path to share her knowledge of teaching.  I receive the newsletters and always find something useful in them.

Fun Fabulous Firsties

Focus group: Teachers, parents of k-2 students. Many of the learning activities may be adapted for older and younger students.

By, Julie Gesin

http://funfabulousfirsties.blogspot.com/

Classroom Arrangement:  Ms Gesin shares many thoughts about organization of her classroom; there are pictures of her classroom layout. She also explains why her classroom is arranged the way it is. Her classroom is bright and colorful to help children feel comfortable and want to be a part of the classroom.  She also shares ways in which the students share their goals for learning, with Common Core this is important in many classrooms and ideas are welcome.

Structure: She has structured her blog to help teachers who are needing ideas for Common Core Math Goals to be able to simply click on a goal and there are activities for the teacher to use.  She also provides ideas for many other subjects.  One of her latest topics is about ADHD, often teachers need help to discuss this with parents as well as what to do to help these students within her classroom.  While she is definitely on top of the math game, she offers many ideas about writing, positive classroom behavior ideas, social studies, science and literacy.

Activities:  Activities on this site are plentiful, many relating to the Common Core standards.  She gives strategies for math and more.  It is obvious by her expertise she is a veteran teacher. There are projects and ideas for writing as well as interactive white board ideas.  She shares technology ideas, on this site it is all there for K-2 teachers.

Organization:  One of her latest posts is about organization and how she needed to reorganize, she shows before and after pictures.  She shows pictures of her room and offers ideas through pictures how to help children with interactive Venn Diagrams (hula hoops).

My Opinion:  Her website is very well organized, easy to read and navigate. It is a site to visit often to get ideas for the k-2 classroom.  She relates as a real person with activities she is doing with her family and friends. Last year, her son was awarded a “Wish Trip” by the Make a Wish Foundation; she shares her joys and sorrows and becomes a knowledgeable cyber friend. Her son is doing well, what a wonderful experience, gift and memory for them all to share.

Ms Cassidy’s Class

Focus Group:  Teachers Pre-K to Third grade, parents of children in her class, and her students

By, Kathy Cassidy

http://mscassidysclass.edublogs.org/

Classroom Arrangement:  While you do not see actual classroom arrangement, you do see pictures of her students working within the classroom to get an idea of the set up.  She explains how her classroom has gone digital and it is a great site for teachers who are gearing up for their classrooms to go digital. You may follow links to her professional blog about how to set up the digital classroom and help each child set up their own blog.

Structure:  The structure of her classroom is learning through the world, digitally. She explains a great deal about going digital even with books in her classroom. She explains setting up children dictating information. This blog is basically about setting up digital portfolios along with how it works in her classroom.  She shares activities they have worked on in this scenario; it is a great learning tool for teachers entering the digital age with their classrooms.

Activities:  She offers ideas for activities and the experiences her children have had through this new type of learning.  She shares portfolio ideas and how they can put their own portfolio together, allow parents to view it and it is all protected so strangers and other parents/students cannot view many of the items.

Organization:  Her organizational sharing is helping new teachers to digital portfolios, she contributes many worthwhile activities, ideas and her expertise to help teachers make the most of a digital classroom. Her students are only 6 years old and they have their whole portfolio on this site. The children are working with Ipads.  She shares her knowledge willingly; it will be something eventually we will all need to know how to do.

My Opinion:  While at this time I am not a digital classroom, many digital activities happening within even early childhood classrooms. This teacher is paving the way for those of us who will be following in the next few years.  Following her activities where her students are interacting with other students from other parts of their country (Canada) is truly inspirational and making me wanting to get on board with more ideas to come.

Creating a Thoughtful Classroom

Focus group:  K-2 Teachers

By, Karly Lomax

http://creatingathoughtfulclassroom.blogspot.com/

Classroom Arrangement:  This site has pictures of her classroom, it is a pleasing, colorful classroom, and she offers suggestions of different ways to set up parts of her classroom. She explains about how the classroom is used and why it works well for her. 

Structure:  There are plenty of ideas for math, reading, character building, thinking, and more.  There is a tab for freebies.  Using her abundant ideas and the many books she suggests will get your creative side flowing.

Activities:  There are many activities, many related to literacy.  Most of her ideas and activities have pictures showing how to implement them and set them up.  She wants her children to think and develop ideas on their own.  The way she shares her information; while she is giving you her ideas, she wants you to think too and to use it, develop it for your best practice in your classroom. 

Organization:  There are many ideas for organizing book activities, libraries and more. All of them have pictures, giving you the ideas of how to implement them.  She shares books for Kindles (for those who do not have Ipads).  Her Classroom Management tab gives many useful ideas for teachers to use.  She shows many ideas for stations or centers and ways to organize them.

My Opinion:  Love this site; she is truly helping children become thinking, thoughtful students. She wants them to enjoy learning and become lifelong learners. This site is worth a look and following.

Technology in Early Childhood

By, Karen J Nelson

Focus Group:  Early Childhood Professionals (pre-K and) Kindergarten 

http://technologyinearlychildhood.com/

Classroom Arrangement:  Once again this site is not about classroom arrangement but; with technology in the hands of most of our students and classrooms gearing up to go digital, it is important to stay abreast of new developmentally appropriate practices in technology. The author of this site is very knowledgeable about the subject matter.  She has worked with young children and has written programs for computers.

Structure:  She gives many ideas of how to implement technology with in the classroom, counting, using QR codes; she offers information for math and counting apps, as well as the best apps for Pre-K and Kindergarten.

  Activities:  She shares freebies, and ideas.  There are ideas for math, working with 10 frames and ideas for different holidays, videos that are appropriate and even BINGO, through using QR codes.

Organization:  Her organization is with technology and how to make it easier to use.  With many schools going digital these tricks and tips could be very useful.

My Opinion:  Trying to get on board with the new technology that is making its’ way even into early childhood classrooms, it is important for us to learn the tricks and realize how to make it developmentally appropriate for our students. This author has ideas to share and it is welcomed.

Regurgitated Alpha Bits

Focus group: Adults, teachers needing to have some humor in their lives.

By, Edna Lee

http://regurgitatedalphabits.blogspot.com/

Classroom Arrangement:  This is not a website to organize your classroom however; we all have had days when we need a laugh, this could be the website for you.

Structure:  The structure of the website is nice, it is pleasing to look at and enjoyable to read, you can go in and find different topics that may be humorous to you.

 Activities:  It tells about activities and happenings that have gone wrong.

Organization:  It is well organized and offers a thought on the real world of teaching and how things go.

My Opinion:  While this was not a site that would be helpful on the assignment, when I ran across it, I found some of the stories this author shared humorous and many times we need to know others have those kind of days, too.  It is for you to enjoy.