Teach students how to use the SMART Board by carefully going over your expectations, modeling the expected behavior and role-playing what these behaviors look and sound like. Examples of SMART Board expectations might include that students approach the SMART Board one at a time. Students touch the board lightly with their fingers. Students use only the designated markers to write on the board and only use the board when an adult is helping.
Find preschool learning games online by searching for "preschool learning games" or "SMART Board learning games." Try the games before playing them with the whole class so you know exactly what to expect. Use games that reinforce concepts that have already been taught. Examples appropriate for preschoolers might include number and letter recognition, counting, sorting and phonics skills.
Use the SMART Board for classroom management procedures such as daily attendance. Develop and save a notebook lesson with smiley faces or another icon to represent each student at the top of the screen and a schoolhouse or other symbol to represent school in the middle of the screen. As students come into the classroom they can go to the SMART Board and pull a smiley face onto the schoolhouse to show that they are present for the day. Extend the lesson later by counting how many students are present that day, how many are absent or how many boys and girls are in the class. You can also use similar lessons to do a lunch, milk or snack count or to get a count of bus riders versus parent pick-ups. This provides students the opportunity to take on some responsibility and have ownership in the day's routines.
Create your own SMART Notebook lessons if you have access to the training or find existing lessons to practice skills like letter and number recognition, counting or sorting. Existing lessons can be found at the SMART Technologies website.
Expose students to different genres of literature. There are numerous literature-based websites available to expose the children to different types of literature such as poetry, fairy tales, fiction and non-fiction. Many sites include on-line storybooks that the teacher or computer can read to the students. The SMART Board varies students' exposure to literature types and read-alouds.