Teach Preschool: Book Resource

Just in time for a winter break, Pinterest popped up with Teach Preschool. It's a collection of different activities that you can do that go along with a book. This is an archive of different blogs that have featured these activities, so you may find some wonderful blogs to follow after poking around :)

(via “Little Cloud” Activity)

I love these kinds of activities because they start to build a connection between the literature and the child's life. These are far from the only things you can do to extend the learning a book can provide, but I liked a lot of the ones I saw when looking through the archive. Even if the target age is Preschool, I saw many activities that would be fun for kids of all ages :)

The Factor Tree

When you start to try different products at home to give reviews and spread the word about them, it can be either feast or famine! There can be a lot of wait time to get something to try, then you're trying multiple products at once and trying to keep up with telling others about it and reporting back to the companies.

This is one of my busiest times! Not only have I been able to review Tom's of Maine Wicked Fresh toothpaste, and a Just Dance 2 Houseparty, but now I get to have my kids try out The Factor Tree.



When I heard about The Factor Tree, I was excited to try it out! I am both a student learning to become a teacher, and a mother of young children who are in school. Anything that could help them learn math is an asset! They also love to use the computer so I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity for them to learn and for me to be able to track their progress.

Overall, I was disappointed. Though I have clicked around the website, I have not seen anything that would help entice children in. The set up seems to be in test format where students are able to take "real" tests and "practice" tests and the scores are given emailed to parents. Though I do think that the way the scores are tracked could be helpful, since they are listed based on the concepts being tested, I do not think this format will help my children learn.

It is not interesting to them. Though they get to be on the computer, just typing in what time is displayed or filling in the blanks of math problems is boring and by question 20 they are more than "over" the whole experience.

I think the concept is wonderful and think that with some improvements it could be something that would be wonderful for both parents and educators to use when working with children, but as it is I do not think it is something I will continue to use past the free trial.

Would you like to try it and see how you feel? Use "BZZAGENT" for a 2-week trial at thefactortree.com and let me know what you think!

Ready for PreK

My 3 year old just graduated from the 3-4 class at his preschool today. They had an awards ceremony and it was really bittersweet to watch him stand up there and receive awards. He got certificates for counting (he can up to 12), knowing shapes (triangle, star, square, circle, diamond, heart, rectangle, oval), and knowing colors (red, yellow, blue, green, purple, pink, orange, black, brown, and white). I am so proud of him for working so hard this year.

I was also able to see from the ceremony what areas he could work on (since they don't do report cards). He was not able to identify all uppercase letters, say every letter, or identify numbers visually, so I plan to work on those areas this summer when I work with both my children.

Some ideas I have are an Alphabet Book (inspired by the creative letters that are on No Time for Flashcards). I plan to do each letter at least once and put them together in a binder to review. I may use some of the lessons shown there but also may adapt them to what we're doing on a given week. I can do the same for numbers. I also plan to have other alphabet related activities like spotting different letters when we are out an about, finding things that begin with certain letters, and more. It wasn't until today that I was able to see where he could use extra work, so I haven't planned a lot for him yet.

I'm just so proud of him and all he's done this year. I love that he loves school and I hope that stays the same for years to come.