American Education Week Revisited and New Happenings

Well, I didn't quite make my goal of one post per day for American Education Week.  Here is what we did the rest of the week as a school:

Monday - Whole school read for 15 minutes
Tuesday - Thank you notes to someone who works at a school
Wednesday - Reading round-up ( we dressed up like cowboys/cowgirls)
Thursday - Volunteer Read-A-Loud in classrooms
Friday - My favorite book writing assignment

Here is a pic of our great guest reader and another pic of Ava dressed in her cowgirl gear.

 

Other happenings in our classroom have included our most recent inquiry project, which we did Friday.  The students came up with our question, "What can neighbors do to have fun in the park?" and they had to put together a puppet show to answer that question. They worked together in groups of 4 or 5.  Here is them working hard on their puppets:

Next we went to work practicing our parts. Then came the fun part, putting on the show.  I put some desks together and put coats over them to help "hide" the students. Their plays were a-dor-a-ble.  Some had stage fright at first, but they were so cute.  Next time I will have to take some video to post!  This group was playing basketball in the park.

 This group was playing on the playground equipment.  I love the slide and swings!

 This group was walking their dogs in the park.

Onto other news in my life....I am excited to tell everyone that we are expecting a baby boy mid-April.  I was so thrilled when we found out on Wednesday.  Everything was great on the sonogram, with no abnormalities that they could see.  Our little boy has some long legs, which explains why his foot was in my ribs all of Thursday afternoon ;) 

American Education Week: Day 2

Happy Tuesday everyone!  Today for American Education Week the students got to design their own bookmarks to help promote reading.  Here are my kiddos at work on their bookmarks:

 

Last week on Thursday, our school had Reading Night. This is where families come in the evening for games, information, and a book fair.  First grade was in charge of the sight word fishing pond.  Here is one of my students getting ready to fish and another student enjoying a cookie while at the sight word walk:



 

 

Teacher Tip of the Day:  If you see Ava's shirt in the picture above, you will notice that those are self-portrait t-shirts that we made this year.  I order the shirts from Rocky Mountain Shirt Company and they are only $10 for a youth and $12 for an adult shirt.  You have to have a minimum of 18 shirts, but shipping is totally free!  I have made these the past 2 years with my preschoolers, and I have found that my firsties love them just as much.  I love to see their drawings of themselves on the t-shirts all year long.  Be sure to check out their website here.

 

American Education Week

In honor of American Education Week, I am going to try to post every night with our special activity of the day and something that has been happening in the classroom recently, along with a teacher tip!  To kick off our "Reading Round-Up" was a whole school 15 minute read this morning.  The teachers knew it was today, just wasn't told at what time.  That just keeps us on our toes!  Here are my firsties reading their books in the hallway:

They just love to look at their library books and were super excited that we got to do it in the hallway!

Another activity that we did today was writing postcards to adults in the school to thank them for all that they do for us on a daily basis.  The students got to pick who they wrote their card to.  We had lots who picked the principal, some who even picked me, and some people that I was so proud of them to think of (cafeteria workers, Title 1 Staff, the janitor, etc).  We will deliver these cards to the appropriate recipients tomorrow.

 

 

On Friday we completed our inquiry project for Lead 21 (our Language Arts curriculum).  The question that the students came up with was, "Who works in the community?"  I was super happy that they came up with such a great question.  So, on Friday each table group made two community buildings and then we combined them together to make a mural.  Then they drew on the community workers that work in those buildings, along with adding other details like cars, clouds, and trees.  I think that they turned out fabo!



 

Teacher Tip of the Day:  Glue a pom-pom onto the end of your dry erase markers.  I used hot glue to adhere the pom-pom to the end of the marker, it eliminates the need for erasers!  The students love the cool erasers and get to pick what color they get.  They also like to use the lid as a prop up for their dry erase board, which in turn improves their handwriting.  A win - win!

 

October Art Image

Okay, okay.  I know that it has been a month since my last post, but things have been hectic! The first quarter is done and I had to do grades for the first time.  The last two years in preschool have not prepared me for the horror that is doing grade cards.  Don't get me wrong, they are beneficial and a good measuring tool, but it is hard to pass judgement on young six year olds.  I was soooo proud of my babies, as their knowledge of sight words when way up from where they were in August.  Yeah!  The daily drill during guided reading groups is paying off.  I am ready to move one of my intensive groups up to the first grade list.  This makes me uber happy.

On to fun art projects; we had our second Art Image project last week.  In the spirit of Halloween, we made oil pastel paint resist with jack-o-lanterns in the night sky.  The sky turned out purple instead of black, but I like that they now look eerie and creepy instead of just dark.  A big thanks again to Cori's mom for organizing and setting up this art project.  Here are some pictures of the project in progress and our finished products.  They look so cute hung up in the windows in the hallway.

 

I love how hard they are concentrating on their pictures!

 

Our finished products:

 

 

Hopefully, tomorrow I will post about our visitor for Fire Safety Week and later this week on how I run my Literacy Workstations.  Being pregnant is tiring, but I vow to be better on posting more often.  I am looking forward to seeing all my parents this week for conferences.

Constitution Day

Our school is a big believer in Constitution Day.  On Monday we had an Army National Guard soldier come and speak to us and then we sang patriot songs as a whole school in the auditorium.  It was really neat to hear 520+ students all singing the Star Spangled Banner and This Land is Your Land, among others.  It really makes you proud to be an American where we are free to express ourselves and our country.

We have 5th grade buddies which we do art projects and read with.  Our buddies came down and helped us to complete a patriotic heart, complete with a sentence that says why we love America.  I thought that they turned out darling!

My silly camera would not take a good picture without the glare of what her sentence says so I will just tell you.  "I love America because I get to go to school and learn."  How precious is that?!?!  Sorry I couldn't post pictures of us making them, but our buddies were in all of the pictures.  Go Red, White, and Blue!

Apple Time!

I am going to start posting twice a week (hopefully!) on the happenings within our classroom.  Last Monday, the 10th, we had our first Art Image class.  That is where one fabulous parent comes into the classroom once a month to teach art to our kiddos.  I am so thankful that I have Cori's mom to do mine this year!  Since it is September, we decided to do apple prints.  Here are some of my students creating their apple prints:

 

 

 Here is one of our finished products:

 

 I loved how they were all different and unique.  Some students put lots of apples on their paper, covering it, while one student did one apple of each color and called it good.  I love Fall and Fall themed art.  They had lots of fun with this art project and some even asked if they could eat their apple afterwards :)  Yuck!!!  I, of course, told them no and they smirked at their joke.  A big thanks to Jennifer for setting this up and we are looking forward to next month's project!

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.

Classroom Tour 2012-2013

As sad as I am to see it go, Summer is officially over.  On Wednesday, we started school.  I really enjoyed my summer.  I read 11 novels, including the 50 Shades Trilogy twice.  I also rewatched all 10 seasons of "Friends", which is my all-time favorite TV series.  The husband and I also went to Branson for five days with his brother and sister-in-law.  It was a nice, short mini-vacation.  I also spent lots of time with friends and got tons of stuff made for my new first grade classroom.  Over the summer I also became a seller on Teachers Pay Teachers and love it.

I thought I would post some pictures of my new classroom, as I love to see how other people set up their rooms.  Here is what I came back to find in my room:

I started to work in my classroom in mid-July.  I was going in for a few hours in the afternoons, following some professional development classes that I had been taking.  Mark McLeud (sp) was by far the best presenter that I have ever seen, speaking on Classroom Management and Motivating the Unmotivated.  His big push was creating an emotional bank account with your students and making deposits with them before you start to make withdrawls, otherwise they will shut down on you.  Here are some pictures of what my classroom looks like now that I am done, or as done as your room ever can be!

Here is the view looking left from my classroom door.  To the left is the only storage I have in those cabinets and the students' cubbies.  On the  black shelf to the left is all of my math manipulatives.  The trapezoid table houses my Poetry Station.  The big long shelf to the left holds my classroom library.

This is looking more to the right from my classroom door. In the far corner are my two student computers and my puzzle/game shelf.  Those boxes are our new FOSS science curriculum.  My guided reading table is in the middle and my teacher desk to the right.  I have my students in groups of 4 or 5 for Kagan groupings.  I am going to use community supplies, using the caddies in the middle of the desk groups.

This is a view from the back of my room looking forward.  Again you see my desk area.  In front of that is my Listening Station and my White Board.  We are getting Promethean boards sometime this year.....On the floor in front of the board is my Big Book Station.

This is looking right from the back corner.  You will see my Writing Station at the table and the cabinet/cubbies.

This is the now-clean area that is my desk.  My document camera is on the filing cabinet, as well as my Mobi.  Behind my desk I keep my fridge and microwave and all of my teacher materials.  The pixie stick balloons are courtesy of Pinterest.



Here is a glimpse into my new first grade classroom.  I will post more pictures explaining my Literacy and Math Workstations areas of the room soon.  More posts will follow about my classroom library, Word Wall, and cabinet contents.  I hope that everyone enjoyed their summer and are having fun setting up for your first days of school!

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:

Here Goes!

Hello Everyone!

I want to start off by welcoming you to my very first blog and my very first blog post.  I will tell you a little bit about myself.  I just completed my 3rd year of teaching, one year of which was in a self-contained behavior Kindergarten classroom and the last two years were in at At-Risk Preschool classroom in the elementary school.  This next year I am moving to 1st grade....and I couldn't be more excited about it!!!!

I live in Topeka, Kansas with my wonderful husband and 3 Daschunds (Buster, Rocky, and Mason).  When I am not at school or doing school things I like to read for pleasure, go swimming and fishing, scrapbook, make cards, hang out with my BFF, play with my nephew (Graham-a-ham-ham), and organize :)  Here is us on our anniversary:

When it comes to school and my classroom, I am one of the most organized teachers that I know. I love for things to be in tubs and labeled for easy identification and location when I need it. I also love to have things out for the students to axcess, such as manipulatives and an extensive classroom library. I am a believer in making the students be accountable for the classroom as well, which is where the endless labels come into play for me. I label the tub and then the shelf where the tub goes, so that there is no confusion about where things should be put back.

As well as starting to blog, I have also just started a Teachers Pay Teachers store.  You can check out my 2 things I have made so far.  You can find my store by clicking here.Hopefully, there will be many more projects to come before going back to school at the end of July to start setting up my new classroom.  The past two years have been owl and frog themes and this year is POLKA DOTS (Thanks to Erica Bohrer's great packet I found on here blog and her TPT store).  You can find that here.

My goal with this blog is to share my ideas about education and organization and hopefully inspire other teachers.  I have loved finding blogs and getting great ideas, so I thought that I would share mine.  Thanks for visiting and I hope to have many more posts to come!