Teachers.Net Spotlight
The Kindergarten Center

by Kathleen Carpenter

Kindergarten teachers everywhere have learned that the Teachers.Net Kindergarten Center is the place to connect with colleagues, gather teaching tips and classroom management ideas, access kindergarten lesson plans, recipes, crafts, and connect with enthusiastic collegial support. The web home for Kindergarten teachers is at http://teachers.net/mentors/kindergarten.

The Teachers.Net Kindergarten Center includes a message board (known at Teachers.Net as a "chatboard"), an email group or "mailring," and links to free classroom printables along with additional resources of interest to those who teach Kindergarten.

The Kindergarten Chatboard hosts lively discussions about topics such as lesson plans and activities to accompany classic books including Chicka Chicka Boom Boom; Brown Bear, Brown Bear; Mrs. Wishy Washy; If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, and many more.

Teachers share information about good buys on classroom materials, problems related to classroom management, parent involvement, standards, learning center and theme activities. The forum assists teachers and classrooms who wish to connect with others seeking pen pals and hosts for Flat Stanley and other traveling buddies.

A visitor can easily access or elicit successful literacy and math lessons, recipes for play dough and other Kindergarten fare. If it's Kindergarten, it is discussed on the Teachers.Net Kindergarten Chatboard where a plea for help or advice often receives responses within minutes--often instantly.

Real time interaction is available through monthly, no-registration-needed, Kindergarten Teacher chat meetings in the Teachers.Net Meeting Room. Kindergarten teachers also flock to one or both of the two EC-Primary (9pm ET and 11pm ET) Tuesday chat meetings for early childhood and primary teachers. The schedule of chat meetings is posted online at http://teachers.net/chat/meetings.html and can be accessed through any "Meetings" link on the site. Chat transcripts are archived at http://teachers.net/archives.

The Teachers.Net Gazette monthly webzine inlcudes news, recipes, classroom photo tours and teaching tips of interest to those who teach or administer Kindergarten. Typing in http://teachers.net/gazette brings one to the current issue where there is a link to all back issues.

The Kindergarten Chatboard is one of more than 120 message boards designed for educators who work with infants-pre-K-12 through college level and can be reached via any "Chatboard" or Mentor Center link on the site.

The mailring system consists of as many forums and can be found at http://teachers.net/mailrings and through the Teachers.Net homepage http://teachers.net.

Teachers.Net has been meeting the needs of the online education community since 1996.