Hello, I’m Jackie, your go-to girl for early childhood ideas and inspiration.
My passion is to inspire and support teachers with play-based activities, themed centers, social-emotional supports, and research-based curriculum that nurture and challenge little learners. I also want to help you find ways to embed character (aka social skills) throughout your day. I want to do the work for you so you can stop stress less and go home after school.
Teaching little learners is HARD
(and sometimes messy).
As an educator, you are constantly thinking up new and engaging centers for every theme, creating visual supports and finding activities to meet the needs of all your little learners. In addition, you are talking with parents, taking care of kids when they are hurt, doing assessments, creating bulletin boards, maintaining portfolios, going to meetings and so much more. You LOVE teaching! You want your students to love learning, and you STRIVE to make learning fun.
Raise your hand if you have ever thought…
- I don’t have time to prep that amazing activity.
- I don’t have time to actually sit down and play with my students.
- I want to create an engaging classroom environment for my students.
- I wish I had time to plan ahead and be more prepared.
- I wish I didn’t have to spend my nights and weekends on school stuff.
- I want more time with my family.
- I want time for myself.
I’m here to help you unleash your teaching superpowers! You’re not in this alone.
in my resource shop
In my resource shop, I have everything you need to set up an amazing classroom environment with engaging themed centers and activities with tons of visual supports and developmentally appropriate decor plus ideas, lesson plans, and units to teach social skills, literacy, math, STEM, science, fine motor, and more!
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Years of Experience
After over 11 years of teaching a multi-age, full-day preschool and 3 years of teaching half-day preschool, I am here to share best practices, activities and supports that excite and challenge students in an early childhood classroom. Children learn by doing, getting messy, investigating their questions and problem solving with their friends. They learn by playing games, using their imaginations, expressing their emotions, creating and exploring the world around them. If you want to know even more about me, keep on reading.
A little bit about my classroom…
When I taught full-day multi-age preschool, most of my students are in my classroom for over eight hours a day. When I taught half-day multiage preschool, my students were there for almost four hours. I love making my classroom a warm and inviting home for little learners to explore, create and discover new things! I want school to be a safe place where students feel loved, valued and confident. The classroom is a child’s third teacher. The materials evolve and change as our studies/themes change. I am very intentional with the materials I set up in my classroom. I feel it is my job to nurture my students’ excitement for learning by creating developmentally appropriate, engaging and challenging lessons and activities so they become lifelong learners.
A little bit about my professional background…
I am a proud graduate of Maryville University where I received a Master and Bachelor of Education (M.Ed. and B. Ed.) in Early Childhood and Elementary Education. I served on several committees to create our own school board approved early childhood curriculum using current research, best practices, state and national standards and common core standards. I also worked to develop our district’s kindergarten curriculum. In my school, I served on the Character Education Leadership Team. I created and implemented several character education initiatives receiving Promising Practice awards. My school was named a State School of Character, an honor bestowed on schools who satisfy criteria based on their implementation of the 11 Principles of Character.
A little bit about me personally…
I am a mom to two amazing little boys who are my everything! I LOVE my family and I am very grateful to have them in my life! My dream day is sleeping in, eating a late breakfast and playing outside for the rest of the day. My happy place is the Target Dollar Spot and the Dollar Tree (seriously, I could spend hours there). I love cold unsweet iced tea, chocolate cupcakes and going to the gym with my friends.
Connect with me
Meet the Team
Abby
Customer support specialist, project manager, and video editor
Katie
Photographer
This blog is a personal teaching blog, written by me, Jackie Kops. All advice I give is based on research and my own teaching experiences. If you have any questions, please email me [email protected].
DISCLOSURE
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It takes a lot of work to keep this little blog going. On Pocket of Preschool I allow third-party companies such as but not limited to Amazon Affiliates and Medavine to serve ads and/or collect certain anonymous information when you visit our website. These companies collect certain anonymous information when you visit our website. These companies may use non-personal identifiable information (e.g. click stream, browser type, time and date) during your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about good and services of greater interest to you. These companies typically use a cookie or third part web beacon to collect this information. Pocketofpreschool.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associations Program, and affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
Pocket of Preschool accepts advertising and sponsorship paid in cash and/or merchandise. All of my recommendations will be honest and will always disclose and clearly identify that they are ads part of sponsored content.
All opinions and recommendations are honest and my own. I will only highlight and link to products I use and find useful in my classroom and for my students.
