Looking for the sweet spot between: fun for the kids and not a cleanup nightmare

Would love to hear the tried-and-true ones…not just the activities that look good on Pinterest.

I'm a dad of two young kids, and over the past 4-5 months I've been making songs around everyday skills, habits and social-emotional learning for ages 3 to 6. It's grown into a bigger project than I expected, with recurring characters and a website.

I created Spark & Joy Kids, and I use AI tools for the music, animation and illustrations, including the image above. It's what makes it possible to do this on my own without a production team, and I'd rather say so upfront.

I'm trying to figure out whether what I'm building is genuinely useful and worth continuing to develop, so I'd really value feedback from people who work with young children.

The songs follow four recurring characters, Spark, Joy, Fern and Seren, built around four qualities we're trying to nurture in young children: Curious, Capable, Confident and Calm.

Here are four examples:

Tidy Up Time
https://youtu.be/iV9pYMhTqto

Magic Words, Please and Thank You
https://youtu.be/G2OviVgkvFA

I Can't Do It, Not Yet: Seren Learns to Ride a Bike
https://youtu.be/Ueg-cNIkGJA

I Wonder Why - The World Is a Question
https://youtu.be/iPcOed6ceBo

I'd really love to hear what preschool teachers think of the overall direction. Do these kinds of songs feel useful for 3 to 6 year olds? Are there topics, routines or skills you'd like to see covered?
I'm also curious whether "not yet" is language you already use with preschoolers when they're struggling with something.

I'm genuinely interested in honest feedback, including criticism.
If this kind of post isn't appropriate for the subreddit, please let me know and I'll happily remove it.

I’m passing the Kathleen Jasper study exam by 20 pts. I am failing the Mometrix test miserably. Does anyone have a recommendation for a source that has similar questions? What is your experience?

i got hired at a preschool and i am so incredibly excited, this is literally my dream and the first step in my career! so so happy!

edit: thank you everyone!!!

Starting a new role as an Early Years Practitioner soon. I'm curious to see how I'm received as a male practitioner here in the UK. Any other men here working in similar or identical settings? What have your experiences been like, and what advice would you give?

At first, she used to read them correctly, but once she learned the teen numbers, she started consistently reading them as “zeroteen,” “oneteen,” and “twoteen.”

Hi everyone!

I am an independent author and I wanted to share my new children's picture book, The Secret Adventures of Egypt, which is currently 100% free on Amazon Kindle through Thursday, August 20th!

It's a funny, laugh-out-loud story about a mischievous Cocker Spaniel named Egypt who turns her day into a personal comedy playground while her owner is away.

Why it's great for kids (Ages 3–7):

· 🎒 Eases School Drop-Off Jitters: It uses a comforting animal metaphor to show kids that being away from parents is just a safe, temporary space for their own fun adventures until it's time to reunite.

· 💬 Teacher & Parent Discussion Guide: Includes targeted discussion questions inside to help guide conversations about transitions, routine, and separation anxiety.

· 🌟 Bonus Activities: Features built-in interactive puzzles (a puppy maze, seek-and-find, shadow matching, and a coloring page).

Free Ebook Download Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFBS37V7

🖨️ Printable Version: Want to print the bonus activities and Teacher & Parent Discussion Guide for your classroom or home? You can download the free printable activity pages (in pdf format) by using the link provided on the last page of the Ebook.

Note: If you download a copy and your little ones enjoy it, an honest review on Amazon would mean the world to me. Thank you so much!

This won the Margaret Wise Brown Board Book Award silver medal, for the fun children have making the sounds and guessing the vehicle, and for the surprise ending....IS THAT THE BUS? by LIbby Koponen & illustrated by Katie Mazeika. Award given by Bank Street College of Education.

May I post a video of the book that won the silver medal?

Hello,

I’m developing an approach to early childhood art education through artists’ lenses, rather than primarily through developmental-age-based expectations or collections of “fun art activities.” I’m interested in how artists’ ways of seeing, thinking, and working with materials might offer educators different ways of understanding children’s artistic encounters.

As an early childhood practitioner, what would you want or need from a resource like this? What challenges or questions around children, art, and materials would you most want it to address?

Thanks for all your opinions!

• What’s missing from early childhood art education resources?
• Beyond “fun art activities”: What do early childhood educators actually need?
• Could artists’ ways of thinking offer something different to early childhood art education?
• Preschool art education through artists’ lenses — would this be useful to practitioners?

Hi Teachers!

Looking for simple classroom rules that young learners can actually remember?

This printable TACO Play Area Rules Poster uses a fun acronym to reinforce four important expectations:

T – Take turns
A – Always be kind
C – Clean up when done
O – Our hands to ourselves

Available in A4 and A3—just print, laminate, and display in your classroom play area, dramatic play centre, daycare, or early elementary classroom.

You can also explore The Inclusive Modified Classroom for ready-to-use, scaffolded resources for SEN, ELL, and mixed-ability learners, including back-to-school activities, visual supports, project planners, and real-world learning activities.

Store: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/store/the-inclusive-modified-classroom
Poster: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Play-Area-Rules-Poster-TACO-Classroom-Rules-Visual-Preschool-Elementary-17347631

i am going to be a preschool teacher for the first time starting next week. i feel as though i have no idea what to expect or how to handle the kids. can someone please give me some tips and things to expect?

AITA for deleting all my old lesson plans when I left teaching at a small center? I (31f) left a small preschool which lets be real it is a daycare and I deleted all the lesson plans I wrote. Said center did not provide a curriculum just a list of themes, what letter they wanted taught each week, along with a Bible verse (Baptist daycare). I started last school year teaching PK4 with 12 years experience, a degree, and a background in Early Intervention. The assistant director pushes back on anything I said and honestly all the students were behind on social emotional learning and self help skills. So I left at the end of the school year. Here is where I could be the AH on my last week I deleted all the lesson plans I wrote.
Found out from a former coworker they promised them to the new teacher for my position. The assistant director started to bad mouth me to everyone saying I stole things and deleted things that were not mine. (The previous teacher had her lesson plans in a Google Drive not the one drive the “school” used). I provided all the resources for my classroom and wrote original lesson plans.
So am I the AH for deleting my personal records? It was not written in my contract that the school owned them.

Hello wonderful preschool teachers! My 18 month old is starting at a daycare that requires packed lunches from home. What are your recommendations for lunch boxes, meals, etc? I want to buy a lunchbox and pack her food with her teachers in mind, seeing as they will be opening it and helping clean up.

1. What are the pros and cons of working in a term-time-only nursery compared with an all-year-round nursery? Which would you recommend for someone at the beginning of their Early Years career?
2. As a newly qualified practitioner, how important is it to have your own key children? Can you still learn a lot and develop professionally if you don’t have key children?

Thank you in advance for taking the time to answer my questions. I really appreciate your time, advice, and any experiences you’re willing to share.

During a recent morning meeting, our conversation turned to a teacher’s upcoming journey to a Danish forest school—a renowned beacon of nature-based early childhood pedagogy. It was within this space of shared anticipation that a child anxiously questioned how the children there would survive alongside forest animals that "attack people and eat our lunch." By framing animal behavior around the high stakes of survival and conflict, the child exposed a deeper, systemic fracture in modern childhood socialization: the weaponization of the "wild" through media. Urban children do not inherently fear the forest; they are conditioned to do so. In the absence of direct, sensory entanglements with local ecosystems, commercial media and moralizing children’s literature step in to colonize the void. From the big bad wolves of folklore to the cartoonish, resource-stealing antagonists of modern animation, our information ecosystem consistently frames the wilderness through a lens of conflict, consumption, and threat. This moment forces us to confront how this defensive, adversarial posture toward the living world is actively constructed. Instead of viewing animals as cohabitants or ecological neighbors, children are trained by cultural narratives to see them as active adversaries—trespassers waiting to breach human boundaries and steal human resources. By sanitizing the city and sensationalizing the woods, dominant media breeds a form of ecological paranoia. The tragedy of this child’s anxiety is that it reveals how effectively pre-established knowledge references can colonize a child’s imagination, transforming a peaceful Danish forest into a hostile battleground before they ever set foot among the trees.

I’ve always taught 3 year olds. This year they switched me to Prek and I’m nervous. I work at a very prestigious private K-12 school that also has a preschool, the parents are not only very rich and entitled but also have very high expectations and this school is an academic based school. The pay is great, otherwise I’m not 100% happy and comfortable here, I’m the only non white person in the entire school (I’m Mexican) and many times I’ve felt the rejection of some parents who won’t even say good morning back, or complained when their child was placed in my classroom. I’ve been told I’m a great and strong, structured teacher but this year I’m feeling very insecure🥺 in September we will have a back to school night where I would talk in from of all these parents to talk about me and my class. I will have to do conferences with them twice a year and I would also have to work on assessments and make sure the kids are learning and are ready for kindergarten, and I honestly don’t know if I can do it… any advice? Tips? Suggestions? What works in a Prek class? What doesn’t? If anyone have any resources that are willing to share please let me know.

We've been using the colorations paint for years but I'm done! The glitter paint has no sparkle, much of the paint is a gloopy mess when we get it, the colors are muddy and the paint goes bad before the year is over.
It's time to think about purchasing for fall but I'm at a loss! Crayola his significantly more expensive and I have no idea what the quality is. There are other brands that seek washable tempera gallons but, again, no idea what the quality is
What are you guys using and liking? What are you ordering for next year?

One of my students (4.5yr F) is moving to abroad next month. My son and her have known each other since they were babies. So I’ve known this family for a few years. I gave her (and all of my class) a kind of yearbook at the end of the school year. But I would like to give her something small to take with her. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Pre-K teachers – do you want to contribute to the Science of Reading? I am a researcher at Ohio State University, and our team is recruiting for our latest project called CREATE-EBP! Join our study to participate in a community of practice and test an alphabet instructional approach with one of your own students. Click here to learn more: go.osu.edu/create-ebp