A Guide to Teacher's Freebies

Being a preschool educator, I am only too well aware of how hard it can be to find free supplies, let alone good free supplies. The internet has proved itself time and time again as a valuable resource. There are web sites for printable pages, freebies, lesson plans and more. Here are a few that I use and highly recommend.

Lesson Planning:

childfun.com - Activities are broken into themes and age appropriateness. The activities are simple to understand and are accurately explained.

lessonspage.com - The site offers an entire week of activities. This site is not as extensive as other lesson planning web sites, but it does offer a great deal of theme centered ideas.

canteach - This website is mostly catered to older elementary students. However, it is full of ideas that can be easily altered to work with younger students. One aspect that I found greatly appealed to my lesson planning was the abundance of songs and rhymes to use during circle time.

123child - This web site is very easy to navigate and has a large variety of themes to choose from.

AtoZteacherstuff is probably one of the bigger lesson planning web sites on the internet. Not every activity on the site is free, so be aware. This site is also one that links you to a lot of other web sites that are affiliated with AtoZ.

Printable Activities:

preschoolprintables.com - On this web site you will find reward charts, desk labels, flannel board stories and cubby labels. If you are in search of coloring pages a visit to preschoolcoloringpages.com will provide you with ample choices. Both sites are well organized and easy to navigate. Just be sure to have your pop up blocker turned on!

dltk-kids is a great web site for both activities and for printables. The web site is clean, bright, and a breeze to navigate. It has plenty of ideas for younger age groups as well.

lil-fingers is geared towards toddlers and young preschoolers. The bright, large designs make their printables especially inviting to two and three year olds.

Supporting Providers In Childcare Education (S.P.I.C.E.) Is a web site aimed mostly at day care providers. They offer a lot of support information in addition to some very cute printable lacing cards, center signs and calendar cards.

Affiliates with the S.P.I.C.E. website is Kinderprintables This is by far, my favorite printables web site. Not everything is free, but there are a lot of great printable for your classroom. There are calendar numbers, word walls, flash cards, cubby labels and much more.

Last, but not least are Billy Bear 4 Kids and Chubbie Cubbie. They both have bright, colorful designs to choose from. I especially like the Billy Bear cubby labels and Chubbie Cubbie center signs.

Freebies:

Do a Google search for teacher freebies and you will likely spend a full week or better sifting through them. Who has time for that? To be honest, there is only one freebie site that I visit for supplies.Volition; It isn't the website that I think is so great, but the forums. I am specifically referring to the "Stuff I Found" forum. The users here are constantly updating, providing the viewer with a never ending list of freebies. "For Educators Only" topics pop up frequently. However, as any thrifty teacher knows, almost anything can be put to use somewhere in their classroom.

There you have it, my basic list of where to go on the internet (for teachers). May you be blessed by the freebie Gods and may your lesson plan forms never be blank!