COOK UP AN EXCITING TEACHING MODULE
Preschoolers love learning things when it involves hands-on activities and food. By combining food with hands-on activities, preschoolers engage in learning basic skills in an interesting way. Creating a cooking theme at home, or in the classroom, lets you teach skills such as shapes, colors, letters, numbers, spelling, reading, measuring, sorting, adding and subtracting. The best part of a cooking theme is that the kids can eat everything they learn.

Step1: Choose your kid-friendly recipes based on the learning theme for the month or week. If you're working on letters, you can choose apple dipping sauce for A, chocolate chip cookies for C, lemonade for L, peanut butter for P and so forth.
Step2: Read the recipe aloud to the kids so they know what you're cooking. A couple kids can gather the ingredients as you call them out, while other kids can gather any utensils or bowls you need. This teaches preschoolers that preparation is important before cooking.
Step3: Go over safety rules before cooking. Teach preschoolers about the importance of hand washing and wiping counters down after food touches the surface. After a few cooking lessons, ask the kids what safety rule you should follow as you cook so you can see if they're catching on to safe kitchen practices.
Step4: Use a measuring cup with large numbers on it so the kids can see how much one cup, two cups, three cups and other measurements look like. Hold up the measuring cup and tell the kids how much you need for the recipe and then have a kid show you how far the measuring cup should be filled.
Step5: Plan a day where the kids break into groups of two or three and cook a recipe you read aloud. This helps preschoolers practice listening and following directions skills. Keep the recipe simple, such as putting together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, making ants on a log or adding chocolate chips and nuts to pre-made cookie dough.
Step6: Let the kids practice book making skills by creating a picture cookbook. Bring in food magazines and have the kids cut out pictures of dishes they think looks good. Have them paste the pictures onto construction paper and bind with yarn.
Step7: Practice sorting and counting skills with iced cookies and different colored candies. Give each child two cookies and instruct them to put all one color on one cookie, and only a certain number of candies on the other cookie.

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND DISCIPLINE
Classroom discipline and management causes the most fear and consternation in new teachers. However, classroom management is a skill that is not only learned but practiced daily. Here are ten tips that can lead to successful classroom management and discipline. These tips can help you cut down on discipline problems and leave you with fewer interruptions and disruptions.

1. It's Easier to Get Easier
Many teachers make the mistake of starting the school year with a poor discipline plan. Students quickly assess the situation in each class and realize what they will be allowed to get away with. Once you set a precedent of allowing a lot of disruptions, it can be very hard to start better classroom management and discipline techniques.
2. Fairness is Key
Students have a distinct sense of what is and what is not fair. You must act fairly for all students if you expect to be respected. If you do not treat all students equitably, you will be labelled as unfair students will not be keen to follow your rules. Make sure that if your best student does something wrong, they too get punished for it.
3. Deal with Disruptions with as Little Interruption as Possible
When you have classroom disruptions, it is imperative that you deal with them immediately and with as little interruption of your class momentum as possible. If students are talking amongst themselves and you are having a classroom discussion, ask one of them a question to try to get them back on track. If you have to stop the flow of your lesson to deal with disruptions, then you are robbing students who want to learn of their precious in-class time.
4. Avoid Confrontations in Front of Students
Whenever there is a confrontation in class there is a winner and a loser. Obviously as the teacher, you need to keep order and discipline in your class. However, it is much better to deal with discipline issues privately than cause a student to 'lose face' in front of their friends. It is not a good idea to make an example out of a disciplinary issue. Even though other students might get the point, you might have lost any chance of actually teaching that student anything in your class.
5. Stop Disruptions with a Little Humour
Sometimes all it takes is for everyone to have a good laugh to get things back on track in a classroom. Many times, however, teachers confuse good humor with sarcasm. While humor can quickly diffuse a situation, sarcasm may harm your relationship with the students involved. Use your best judgment but realize that what some people think as funny others find to be offensive.
6. Keep High Expectations in Your Class
Expect that your students will behave, not that they will disrupt. Reinforce this with the way you speak to your students. When you begin the day, tell your students your expectations. For example, you might say, "During this whole group session, I expect you to raise your hands and be recognized before you start speaking. I also expect you to respect each other's opinions and listen to what each person has to say."
7. Overplan
Free time is something teachers should avoid. By allowing students time just to talk each day, you are setting a precedent about how you view academics and your subject. To avoid this, overplan. When you have too much to cover, you'll never run out of lessons and you will avoid free time. You can also fill up any left over time with mini-lessons as described elsewhere on this site.
8. Be Consistent
One of the worst things you can do as a teacher is to not enforce your rules consistently. If one day you ignore misbehaviors and the next day you jump on someone for the smallest infraction, your students will quickly lose respect for you. Your students have the right to expect you to basically be the same everyday. Moodiness is not allowed. Once your lose your student's respect, you also lose their attention and their desire to please you.
9. Make Rules Understandable
You need to be selective in your rules (no one can follow 180 rules consistently). You also need to make them clear. Students should understand what is and what is not acceptable. Further, you should make sure that the consequences for breaking your rules are also clear and known beforehand.
10. Start Fresh Everyday

This tip does not mean that you discount all previous infractions. However, it does mean that you should start teaching your class each day with the expectation that students will behave.