Get Ready for a Tech-Savvy Start to School! Back-to-School Boom Card Bundles for Pre-K!

Are you looking to kickstart the new school year with exciting and interactive learning activities for your pre-K students? Look no further! Pre-K Tweets' Back-to-School Boom Card Bundles for August and September, are specially designed to engage and captivate young minds while building essential skills for their educational journey! 

Why Choose Boom Cards for Pre-K?

As technology continues to play an essential role in modern education, integrating interactive learning tools becomes increasingly vital. Boom Cards offer an innovative approach to education that combines fun with learning, making it a perfect fit for your pre-K classroom. With these digital task cards, your little learners will embark on a tech-savvy adventure while mastering key concepts.

What's Included in the bundles?

Our August and September bundles are thoughtfully curated to align with pre-K curriculum standards and are perfect for the beginning of the year! Each bundle includes a diverse selection of interactive activities like:

Llama Llama Color Sort - A great supplemental activity to the Llama Llama Red Pajama book! Reinforcing color knowledge AND classification with entertaining images and engaging game play!

Sticky Glue Alphabet -  These cards will strengthen students' early literacy skills and is a great activity to read after the story, Too Much Glue! 

Crayon Counting -  Counting and basic math concepts come to life with interactive counting and number recognition!

Mouse Shapes -  Watch as young learners identify, sort, and analyze different shapes in a playful environment!

School Supply More or Less - Students will have a blast sorting school supplies in jars and will be able to proudly compare and contrast! 

...AND MORE!  Each bundle comes with 10 learning games! 

How to download these bundles:

Visit the Pre-K Tweets TPT Shop or find us on Boom Learning website.  Browse through the August and September Boom Card Bundles. Choose the bundle that suits your pre-K classroom's needs and add it to your cart. Once you've completed the purchase, you'll receive instant access to the digital task cards, ready to be used in your classroom! (You must have Boom Learning account to access Boom Cards.)

How to set up a Boom Learning account: 

1. **Set Up an Account:** Go to the Boom Learning website and create an account. You can sign up as a teacher or school. And yes, homeschool parents and moms & dads can sign up too! 

2. **Browse and Select Decks:** Explore the Boom Card Library to find decks that align with your lesson plans and subjects. There are various topics and grade levels available.

3. **Get Decks:** You can access some free Boom Card decks, but there are also premium decks that require purchase. Add the decks you want to use to your library.

4. **Assign Decks to Students:** Once you have the decks in your library, you can assign them to your students. You can even create classes and invite students to join or share the deck's link directly. Students can get in extra practice, even from home! 

5. **Monitor Student Progress:** As students complete the Boom Card activities, you can track their progress and performance through the Boom Learning platform.

Remember that Boom Cards can complement your teaching strategies but should not replace other forms of instruction and interaction in the classroom! Boom cards on ipads are great to use in a technology learning center! 

*Note: My boom card bundles are compatible with computers, tablets, and interactive whiteboards, providing ultimate flexibility for your classroom setup! 

Happy Dr. Seuss Week!

Dr. Seuss week was so much fun for our students AND teachers! Here are a few more activities we were able to incorporate.
Read about "Dr. Seuss Week part 1" here! 

Students decorated silly Cat in the Hat hats to their heart's content while wearing their silly hats of course! 

For journaling, students thought of funny food combinations and had to draw/share their ideas!

Silly socks were designed with dot markers for "Silly Sock Day!"  Here is the template.

Centers were transformed into Seussville for the week!  Here is a "Cat in the Hat" math game. I free handed the had outline and then drew different stripes.  I made about ten and students had to match the number of stripes to the numbered clothespin.  (matching, colors, counting, number identification, and fine motor!)

I cannot find the original source of this game and I don't take credit for it. It is a math game where a student rolls the dice, locates the number card, and then counts out fish for the bowl.  I use it during Dr. Seuss week and during our ocean unit. I love to use wooden or plastic trays to hold the games in math and ABC centers. I buy them at Hobby Lobby.

Another math game!  This is a go fish magnet game. Students use two jumbo foam dice to roll a number, add numbers together,  and search for the matching fish!  The poles are made from paintbrush sticks, yarn, and a heavy duty magnet. Click HERE or below to download some silly fish so you can create your own Go Fish game! 

"Dress like your favorite Seuss character day!"  Best dress up day yet!  This is our lovely pre-k assistant sporting a table/fish bowl combo!  She's so awesome! She even has a framed photo of Cat in the Hat on her "table."  Her fish bowl is made from a salad bowl attached to a headband/ribbon. The kids LOVED it! 

..and here are her lovely Dr. Seuss nails to theme with our week! 

Look how creative this mom was!  The fins are made of craft foam and attached to a t-shirt with safety pins! 

I love, love, love this game! I had been looking for a rhyming game easy enough for pre-k to put in ABC center. This is a truffula tree picture rhyming game.  You can purchase it here for FREE!

..and last but not least...favorite Dr. Seuss book graph I downloaded off the SMARTBOARD exchange...love that site!

Fall Room Tour! - 2013 (Part 1)

Here's an update for ya! I moved into my new classroom in August days before school started. It is now October (!!!) and I finally have my classroom pretty much arranged/organized to how I want it. I have less shelves than last year and our school is going for a more natural look...so I am slowly weeding out my lime green/hot pink things and replacing them with neutral colors and baskets. My only problem now is, when I buy something,  have to decide whether I want the new item for my classroom or my house. I love baskets and my house is decorated in neutral colors! 

This is our sensory center. In my previous classroom I had a whole sensory tub/table. This year I don't have one for my classroom (we do have some for outside sand/water play)...so I found this shallow tub at Target and set it on a low table. (Works great!)  Currently the tub is filled with oatmeal, fall scents, apples, pumpkins, shovels, measuring cups, farm animals, and plastic alphabet letters. 

Above our sensory table is our pumpkin patch!  For a math activity, students had to draw a large circle, cut it out, and practice measuring
height/width with unifix cubes! They did AWESOME!
I love all the variations of their pumpkin sizes! 

Our ABC center! 

In our ABC center we have: Alphabet books, magnadoodles, highway letters with matchbox cars, a magnet letter match game, upper/lower case letter matching popsicles, Handwriting Without Tears wood pieces, an Apple Pie letter match game, alphabet bead stringing..

Alphabet letter stringing: I have a ton of pipe cleaners and this is a great way to use them up!  I change out the pipe cleaner colors with the seasons. The ABC beads are from a craft store. Students can practice spelling their name or words from vocab. cards!

...we also have a variety of writing utensils (including melted crayon hearts, pencils, colored pencils, skinny markers), paper, old keyboard, name cards, dry erase boards, stencils for story writing, mini mailbox,  wikki stix, and mini alphabet board books!

Birthday bags..they are finally up!  Some of my co-teachers have some adorable hanging birthday bags! We use these to sing the months of the year.  I covered reg. brown gift bags with scrapbook paper from Hobby Lobby. The book of scrapbook paper included all these fun rustic chevron prints!

This collage art is not in our room..but just outside our door.  We call them our "Fall Trees."  Students chose what items and how many items to glue on..and where! 

See Fall Room Tour part 2 HERE!
Also..check out another fall setup  

Autumn!

Here is a simple apple pie matching game to make for your ABC center: print off pie clip art and apple slices, cut & laminate, and write upper/lower case letters. You could easily change out the letters with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser..OR you could switch it and make it a math game! Students can record their letter or number matches on paper, white board, or even a magnadoodle! 

Mmmmm...the smells of Autumn!  We passed around spices, used our "sense of smell," and guessed what the spices could be!  Here are some of the spices we smelled: cinnamon, cloves, apple pie spice, pumpkin pie spice, nutmeg, and dried orange spice (Target!). After smelling the spices, students can create spice art! Mix a little watered down white glue with spices. Use paint brushes and thick paper. Students will take home some sweet smelling paintings! 

We set up a practical life station during centers. Students were able to grate their own cinnamon! I found these large cinnamon sticks at an Amish bakery but McCormick sells smaller cinnamon sticks (near the spices in the baking aisle of the grocery store).

I don't think I will ever get this song out of my head!  The kids love it and it is quite catchy! "Herman the Worm" by The Learning Station.  We gave each student a worm (half of a pipe cleaner). This song includes counting, sequencing, and measurement!  Students stuff their "worm" in their hand and as Herman eats, students pull out a little bit more of their pipe cleaner..showing small, bigger, longer!! ..and then he burps! ..and he goes back to small again.. It's a fun song!! doowop doowop! 

Here is another activity we did this week... I first saw the idea on kindergartenkindergarten.com.  It's called "Find the Worm."  I printed off apples..laminated them...and then used a sharpie to write the numerals, number words, and counting dots.  (Write over the laminate..so then later you can wipe it off and use the apples for something else!) We used a small piece of green pipe cleaner for the worm..yarn would work too..(or how about one of those rubber fishing worms!? ..maybe next year!)  We played this activity every day this week as an intro. game for our math group time.  The apples were arranged in a different pattern each day...ABAB..ABC..ABBA.. and after the worm was found I had extra apples on hand so the students could take turns finishing the pattern... Another way to play: Hand out the apples to the students..then they take turns arranging the apples in order...then one student could hide the worm.  Patterning, number identification, counting, colors, and ordering...LOVE IT!

Other things we did with apples this week:

-Finished simple patterns with real apples and created our own patterns with real apples!

-Graphed apples and taste tested apple butter!

-Measured ourselves with real apples, compared heights, and took turns measuring things around the classroom (with apples!)

-Played "Pin the Apple on the Tree" ..used the apples from the pocket chart, masking tape, scarf for blindfold, and butcher paper tree.

-Played "Meet Me at the Top of the Apple Tree" game.. the class was split into two teams. We laid out our butcher paper tree on the carpet and I had drawn a grid up the trunk. Teams rolled a jumbo dice and raced their beanie babies up the tree! (We used a worm and a snake..a chipmunk or bird would work too! OR print off clip art and laminate!) 

-We went apple picking! Red pom poms were hidden all over the classroom. Students worked with partners to collect 5 apples in their baskets. (We used berry baskets that I scored at a garage sale!)  Students had to determine with their partners if they had five apples, more than five, or less than five.

-Apple Eruptions!!! ..Students took turns stirring a bowl  filled with a cup of baking soda and some spices (Students used their sense of smell and they chose their spices..cinnamon, apple pie spice, etc.)...  Then, we dropped food coloring (experimented with a couple of colors!) into vinegar. I cut out holes on the tops of apples..Students took turns filling the apples with the baking soda mixture and (carefully) pouring the vinegar over top. We watched and listened to all the millions of  tiny popping bubbles.. At one point, we decided to try three apples at one time, each apple with a different color.. and then we watched the colors mix. This activity allowed students to use their senses, predict, experiment, and witness cause and effect! It was a super cool experiment that I highly recommend!  

Click here for more fall fun from Pre-K Tweets! 

ABC Center

Here is a glimpse of some recent additions to my ABC center. A fellow teacher let us borrow her typewriter.. the kids LOVE it! It is perfect for letter recognition!   I will have to keep an eye out for one at garage sales this summer!  It would be perfect to go along with the book "Click, Clack, Moo, Cows Can Type" during our farm unit!

In our ABC center we now have:
letter builders (handwriting without tears wood peices/cards/plastic hammer)
ABC learning toys
letter stencils and crazy colored pencils
transportation letter game
lakeshore color changing touch board
wiki stix and letter cards
letter punches and paper
doodle boards
ABC and community/construction books
community vocabulary
notecards and pencils

Community/Construction/3 Pigs Unit

We started our Community/Construction/3 Pigs unit last Monday.  The idea of this unit came from my awesome next door pre-k teachers!  I am using "The Three Little Pigs" story to transition into community/construction.  In our class, I read the story to begin with and the students discussed the role of the characters in the story. We talked about the three pigs being "builders" and then introducing our new vocabulary with "construction workers" ...and then THAT led into building materials and tools (and more vocab!) which allowed me to introduce all the new theme related items in the centers!  This unit is broad enough to last for 3-4 weeks and can expand into students learning about community helpers and transportation!  WHEW!  ..Loving this unit and excited for all our learning experiences ahead!  The photo above is of a shelf in our blocks center.  Currently in blocks center we have:  3 pigs felt house, pig puppets, construction vehicles, community workers, cars, construction vehicles, variety of blocks, tp rolls for tunnels, a 3 pigs picture book, and informational construction books.

This is our construction sensory tub.  I used a large scrap piece of felt to cut down on the sound of the rocks.. If I had had green felt it would have even been better..to represent grass...or tan for dirt.   The tub could also be filled with sand..(or colored sand!)  

The tub contains: rocks, foam blocks for stacking and sorting (3 pigs' bricks), number magnets, mini tools, shovels, tp rolls for tunnels, popsicle sticks and driftwood (3 pigs' sticks),  plastic construction worker figures, felt roads and lakes, boats, cars, and construction vehicles.  Color sorting bowls, size sorting bowls, and measuring cups can also be added!

The pretend center has been turned into a hardware or
Lowe's/Home Depot type of store.

The "store" contains:
 pvc pipes and connectors
foam blocks for screwing and nailing in golf tees
pots for stacking
watering cans
paint pails
paint brushes and rollers
tiles
carpet squares
paint chips (color sorting!)
house building magazines and brochures
construction or gardening gloves
real tools (small wrenches, levels, screwdrivers)
pretend power tools
sandpaper
toolboxes
cash register
shopping baskets
canvas apron
khaki button down shirt

The store also will have vocabulary cards posted for building materials and pencils/ note cards for writing.

I mentioned to a worker at Lowe's that I was a teacher trying to setup a hardware store pretend center and he loaded me up with all kinds of free goodies!  The the man who was working in the carpet department overheard us talking and then HE offered me free carpet samples!

The paint roller pan was actually a dollar store pan we used for our pretend bakery. The paint brushes I borrowed from my mom's garage...and the black baskets are from my husband's desk drawer (he doesn't know that yet..shhhh!) Let's hope he doesn't look in there for another three weeks because his drawer is a mess! 

These items can stay in here for our next unit, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." The pretend center will become a farmers market complete with vegetables and flowers!

I purchased a very exciting lesson pack off of teacherspayteachers.com: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/On-the-Road-and-in-the-Air

The pack has word cards, board games, math mats, bingo game, an early reader, and so much more!

Pictured above is one of the board games in our ABC center. I added transportation erasers as game pieces and wrote letters on a counting cube.  EASY! 

My pre-k teacher neighbors next door had given me some Handwriting Without Tears letter blocks.  The teachers renamed them "Letter Builders" for the construction theme in their classroom. Our letter builders are in our ABC center.

Community helpers vocabulary posted in reading and writing centers.  I downloaded it for free from:
http://mrsalbanesesclass.blogspot.com/2012/03/more-writing-centre-postersfreebies.html

A parent donated all kinds of fun stuff that she ordered from oriental trading.  These community helper foam pieces actually will stick to our reading center felt board and can also be turned into an art project..memory game..or sorting activity!

Check out my "TO LEARN: COMMUNITY" board on pinterest for tons of great ideas and freebies I have found:
http://pinterest.com/thepinkido/to-learn-community/