Sorry for not posting in so long.  I have been sick, sick, sick!!!!  Terrible flu (high fever, body aches, etc.) and then the flu caused my shoulder to become inflamed and I have been to the Dr. twice, ER once and now I am in physical therapy --- all from the flu --- who new.  I promise pictures of our newest and latest wall stories and our adorable February bulletin board coming soon!!!  Glad to be back in the land of the living!

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!

Just a few snapshots of our winter bulletin board. My students had a lot of fun making their pattern block snowflakes!

How To Build A Christmas Tree Wall Story

Here is our Christmas Wall Story!

Gingerbread Man Wall Story

Here is our gingerbread wall story - we had a lot of fun writing and retelling The Gingerbread Man. 

Above the last picture that says "We ate him!"  I had a picture with snapshots of my kinders decorating and eating their gingerbread cookie.

Blog Help!!

Can anyone help!  I am unable to view my google reader.  It is completely blank and I have no idea what happened.  Also whenever I stop by other blogs I am unable to leave a comment.  The option is just not there!  I am going crazy here!!!!!!!!!!

Common Core

I was able to post the common core tab onto my blog.  If you have not visited the website that allows you to not only put the tab on your blog, but has many other exciting resources you should do so soon!  Here is the link to Mastery Connect

Wonderful New Blog

I wanted to let all of my followers know (and hopefully you can spread the word as well) that I have found a wonderful new blog that many are missing out on!!!.  Mrs. Plant's Press.  She is offering some great freebies and would love to have some more followers.  Stop on by her blog and link up as a new follower!

Winter Reading

When Christmas break is over - tomorrow :-(  I will begin my snow and snowman unit.  I always read the common snowmen books, the mitten, the hat, etc.  So I thought I would share with all of you two different books that maybe some of you might not know about.  The first is . . .

This is a wonderful book about what to do after Chrsitmas with your used up Christmas tree.  You can follow the reading with a craft of making bird feeders (pine cones rolled in peanut butter and seeds) for the kiddos to take home.

My next book which I will also read tomorrow is . . .

I follow the reading of this book with a math/craft idea to creat our bulletin board for out in the hall.  We make pattern block snowflakes and use interactive writing to make the title for our work!  I will post a picture tomorrow of the finished bulletin board.

Christmas Treats

For our classroom Christmas party we made these adorable bagel snowmen.  The cream cheese was a little hard to spread so next year we will try the whipped cream cheese.  The kiddos had a lot of fun making thier snowman!  We also had individual banana dessert cups and chocolate milk for our drink!

Classroom Tour

Just sharing a few ideas that I use for classroom organization and management.  These pictures were lost on my memory card in my camera, thus the reason for posting classroom tour pictures so late :-)

This is my classroom door and entry way.  We are required to post our focus for learning so that whoever enters our room will know what skills, standards, etc. we are working on. We are also required to post times for our reading, math and writer's workshop block times.  These are absolute and uninterrupted times!

We read our daily schedule everyday. Yellow for our morning (up to lunch) and blue for our afternoon.  It is amazing to see the students look at the schedule to see what is up next.  Heaven forbid if I forget to change it and I have the wrong special up for the day.  My students also read our daily schedule during read the room.

This is our writing wall

This is how I manage my helpers for the day.  I have one boy and one girl.  They are the "lucky ducks" for the day.  Line leaders, lunch count helpers, paper passers, etc.  They get to wear the lucky duck necklace for the day.  They all look forward to their day!

I have two of these cabinets, one for math tubs and one for abc tubs.  Although I like my cute little labels I made I am thinking of changing them to just have big numbers.  I have and am reading again (I don't think one every stops!) reading Debbie Diller's book Math Workstations.  I keep trying to improve my math and literacy workstation times!!!

My wonderful chart caddy!  We use these charts for reading during Literacy Workstation time

The Versatile Blogger Award

I was totally surprised when I went to my blog today and found out that Lisa at Criss-Cross Applesauce  awarded me the Versatile Blogger Award.  I told my husband that I am so shocked to receive these awards when my little blog offers no freebies or downloads - I just can't figure out how to do it - I have tried through my Google docs, but it just does not work!

Thank you Lisa for finding my blog award worthy! 


Now on to the blog award rules... 

1. Thank the person that nominated you with a link back to them.

2. Tell 7 things about yourself. (see below)

3. Pass this award on to 15 newly discovered blogs and let them know that they’ve received an award!

Seven Things About Myself

1. I love to take walks by myself with my i-pod playing my favorite music.(love Adele)
2. My favorite vacation is anywhere I can park my camper and sit by the fire!
3. I want to go to Europe but I am terrified of flying :-(
4. I am petrified of heights!
5. I have 3 amazing children and an amazing husband
6. I have been told I am a perfectionist! - really?
7. My favorite color is green - nature's green!

Here are my 15 newly discovered blogs

     1.     My Kindergarten Kids
     2.     Heather's Heart
     3.     Hoppy KIndergarten
     4.     Inspired by Kindergarten
     5.     A Teacher and a Blog
     6.     kindergarten days
     7.     Kindergarten is a Hoot!  (I love the title of her blog!!!)
     8.     Kindergarten Khronicles
     9.     Kindergarten Klassroom
   10.     Kindergarten Teacher Tales!
   11.     Kindergarten Works (My favorite - so organized and amazing ideas!
   12.     Life is Sweet in Kindergarten!
   13.     Miss Kuhn's Creative Kinders
   14.     Mrs. Bearden's Kindergarten Class
   15.     Mrs. McCardle's Kindergarten Class

The Lovely Liebster Award

My Little Blog has been awarded the Liebster award from Cheryl at Crayons and Curls
Thank you so much Cheryl - this was such a nice surprise after a very tough week.

Here are my top 5 picks (sooooo many to choose from!)

1.  A Teeny Tiny Teacher - I love to read Kristin's posts - she always has me laughing!!!!!
2.  Growing Kinders  - awesome center ideas!!!!!
3.  Can Do Kinders - such great ideas and freebies!!!!!
4.  Kindergarten Works - love all of the wonderful organizational ideas
5   Kindergarten Rocks - so many wonderful ideas to use for workstations (so well organized)

Thanksgiving Feast

I know it is a little late to be posting about Thanksgiving, but sometimes it takes awhile to get those pictures off of the camera and downloaded to the computer.  Anyway, this year I am trying to make all of our classroom party treats of the healthy variety.  We made vegetable soup, homemade butter for our dinner rolls and ants on a log!  I will post our Christmas feast pictures soon.

Christmas Decor

Just a few pictures of our bulletin board and our adorable hanging snowmen!  We did the snowmen a little at a time for morning work.

My New Painting Easel

My wonderful hubby woked so hard on this all summer for my classroom.  How awesome is my new painting easel.  I love it!  It is on wheels so I can push it out of the way easily and it has storage on all sides along with drying racks on all sides.

Love Interactive Writing

Here is a picture of our latest wall stories.  The top one is our Thanksgiving Story and the bottom one is "How to Make a Scarecrow"

Name Charts

I have been introducing my class to "name charts".  They use these charts with student names (name with a picture) during workstation time.  They have a lot of fun using these - they lay them out on the carpet and have a great time inserting student name cards on the blank line and reading the text.

Little bit of Fall in the classroom

Just a few odds and ends pictures of how our classroom looked in the fall

This was done during interactive writing time.  It is our bulletin board right outside our classroom door.

My wonderful daughter painted the tree for me

We completed this fall poem during an interactive writing lesson as well.  This is our poem wall in our classroom.  It is used during read the room as well as our wall stories

Our cute little leaf men!  So Cute!

Latest Wall Story

Here is our latest wall story that we wrote together about the life cycle of a pumpkin.  We completed this wall story just a few days prior to our field trip to the pumpkin patch!

You can see our next wall story that we are working on "How to Build a Scarecrow"