Math Stations

I run math stations in my classroom every day except for Late Start Wednesdays.  I have a total of six math stations that use the acronym BUILDS.  I found this idea on Pinterest and adapted it to fit kindergarten.  Here is what the letters stand for in my classroom:

B - Blocks
U - Using Manipulatives
I - Independent Work
L - Learning About Numbers
D - Doing Math
S - Solving Puzzles

Each student does every tub twice, to reinforce skills that we are working on.  They are in mixed ability groups to allow for questioning and help within each group, so they don't have to rely on me while I am doing Guided Math groups.

Here is a picture of my math station tubs, which are housed in an easily accessible shelf above my Literacy Station tubs:

Here are the activities for the first set of math stations.  They are pretty easy this rotation, so that I can monitor the students and explain expectations.

I - Looking at counting books.

L - Shapes with Geoboards 

U - Links

B - Foam Blocks

 D - Puzzles

I started the S tub with our second rotations, which we are doing now. Thanks for stopping by!

Classroom Tour 2013-2014

Welcome to another school year! My new kinders have already been in school for 3 whole weeks. I decided to post pictures of my classroom to give ideas and insight into my OCDness when it comes to my classroom. I am a super organized person and expect my classroom to be as well. I have high expectations of my students and expect them to help keep the room organized and clean, so that it is functional to all that use it. This is especially important this year as I have the medically fragile students this year (two of which are highly allergic to a lot of things), so we disinfect multiple times a day! Hopefully this will help keep the germs to a minimum this year ;) All of the posters and things on my wall are all posted in my TPT store. I have to have everything matching, so it is just easier to create them myself.


Studen coat hooks.  The book boxes hold my books that I use for read-a-loud and also the seasonal books that I change out in my library.  The Sterilite containers hold files and station materials by month.  You can also see my FOSS science boxes and some of my snack storage.



General view from the middle of my room.  The colorful boxes are for the browing box station.  The empty slots in the shelves are their cubbies.  The cabinets to the right hold my reading, math, fine motor, and sensory supplies.  The letter circles on the bulletin board is the start to my word wall.



General look from the front left of my room.  Ignore my messy desk.  The small table is my writing station.



General view looking from the back left of my classroom by my recess door.



Pink tubs are math stations.  Green tubs are literacy stations.  The green baskets on top are for homework folders and class books.



Guided reading area.  The shelf to the left holds the blocks for math stations.  The shelf to the right holds all of my literacy and math station materials for the week.  Pink tubs are for math and green are for reading.  The tubs on top of the AC unit are for the materials that I use with each guided reading group.



Computer and listening stations

  


This is my reading/whole group area.  To the left are my puzzles that are used during math stations and the bookshelves hold my classroom library books.

 


The shelf with the sheet covers all of my classroom supplies ( Kleenex, wipes, paper, pencils, crayons, etc).  The baskets that aren't covered hold things we use often (dry erase markers, glue, and watercolors).  The rolling book cart in the middle holds all of my guided read books that go with our Lead 21 curriculum.  The cabinets with the birthdays on the back wall hold my art supplies and paper goods.

 I share 1/4 of my classroom with a self-contained special education room for our high needs kinders. That is what the big supply shelf and the dividers are separating. It is super helpful have SPED staff just on the other side of the room. Thanks for visiting.

Polka Dot Classroom Decor

It has been too long!!!  The birth of my son has been wonderful and has made my life vey busy, therefore, my blog has not seen any action.  But the time has come to change that!  I am going to try very hard to blog at least twice a week the happenings in my new kindergarten classroom.

As a teacher, one of the greatest sights is seeing things that I have created being printed, cut out, and laminated!  It is one of my obsessions.  Everything that I want to keep or have the kids use gets laminated.  Our laminator at school is very temperamental, so on the advice of one of my co-workers, I purchased my own and it has been WONDERFUL!  It actually laminates things a little thicker than the one at school, which makes flash cards and other things sturdier.  Here is a picture of the laminator that I purchased, along with the box of laminating film. The laminator was bought at Wal-Mart for under $30 and the pouches I got at Sam's Club for $20 .  Wal-Mart sells a 50 pack of these for $10, but since we have a Sam's Club membership it is more economical to get them there.

Here are some of the products that I have created this summer that coordinate with my Bright Polka Dot classroom décor.  I am a little OCD when it comes to school décor and like all of my things to match, so I started making my own things.  You can get any of my products by clicking on the pictures, which will take you to my TPT store.  I will post pictures this week of these things hanging up in my classroom, with my classroom tour once I can get back into my room this week.

These are color word posters for my kinders to learn their color words.  I chose not to put these on the polka dot backgrounds, in order to not confuse them.

These are number cards from 1-20 that I also hang up in my room.  There is pictorial representation using 10 Frames.



These are the cards that I use for my literacy station rotations.  I print off two sets of these, as the
students go to two stations a day.




I use these numbers to label my student cubbies.  You could use these for numerous things though...and since you made it to this post they are FREE!!!!

 

These are my alphabet posters which I will put on the table side of my room to help with ABC order, letter sound association, and spelling.



Be sure to check back next week to see these products in action in my classroom!

Classroom Library

 

This is a little late coming, but this year has been a whirlwind of activity since school started over a month ago.  Along with switching from preschool to first grade, I am also expecting my first child in April.  I am so tickled!  This is another organizational post, along with ideas for setting up your classroom library.  So far, this system is working great with my firsties.  Here is a look:

 The numbered bins on the top shelves are my student's browsing boxes.  Now that school has started, they have 2 books of their choosing from my library along with the monthly theme reader for our Language Arts curriculum and books that we have read in their group during guided reading for the current theme.  As you can see, I have lots of choices for the students to pick from to find a book. I  was just holing them up in the cabinet and thought that I would put them all out this year, except for a few that I don't want handled.  The books are sorted by Author or topic.  The big crate houses my Beanie Babies, which we use as quiet reading buddies.  The two empty bins will hold the seasonal books that I change out monthly.  The book bin labels are courtesy of my TPT store.  You can get those by clicking on the picture below.

 

 I also sell these sets in Primary Polka Dots and Plain borders.  I also have a second set of labels in all three themes to expand your library selection.  Here is a close up view of my bins.  Each bin is labeled with the large label, which matches a smaller label that is placed on the inside front cover of each book.  This allows the students to put the books back into the correct bin.

Mini Tubs

This year I am chaning my decor to polka dots and my colors to pink, purple, blue, and green.  I am super excited about all of the fun things that I have found so far!  While at the Dollar General the other day (Family Dollar also has these), I stumbled upon these mini tubs.  I thought that they would work great for things like drawing classroom numbers from.  So I busted out my Cricut and some vinyl and made some letters.  This was my first adventure using vinyl and it wasn't too bad. 

Here are the before pictures of the mini tubs:

Here is my vinyl post-cutting:

As you can see, I cut the letters too big the first time.  Oh, well!  The font used is Simply Sweet.

Here are the finished tubs:

I plan on putting these on top of a shelf at the front of my classroom.  In the numbers tub is a class set of numbers. When I want to randomly pick a student, I pull the number out of the tub.  Each student is assigned a number.  You can get the numbers that I use HERE.  In the voices tub, I have cards with different types of voices to use.  I like to use these when we are doing rote counting or something like that to change it up.  You can get those cards HERE. The Brain Breaks tub contains simple motions/activities to get the students up and moving for a few moments during looooong lessons.  You can get those ideas HERE.

Classroom Jobs

Inspired by all of the super creative sellers out there on TPT, I was inspired to try it out myself and create Classroom Jobs for my new polka dot themed classroom.  I am going to print these out, glue them onto library pockets, and laminate.  I use popsicle sticks with their names on the end to rotate my jobs, which I will do weekly. 

Here is what I came up with:

 I also did a version using primary colors: