Off To A Great Start!

A great start to a great year! 

Welcome to all of my new kinders and parents.

You are now "o-fish-ally" a kindergartner!

- New Blog Design -

I was looking at my blog and I realized that my design was gone!  I couldn't figure out what I had done.  It completely disappeared.  So sad - I really liked it.  So I had to start over from scratch.  It took me all night to finally decide on a design that I liked.  When I went to preview it I realized that all of my gadgets or widgets - whatever they are called - had all disappeared as well.  I was starting to feel that this was my punishment for not blogging for over a year - sorry:(    So after a very long night I finally am finished - thank goodness.  So how does it look?  Now I can finally get some shut eye!

 Summer Time Prep

So I looked at my sad blog and realized it has been a whole year since I last posted.   That might give you a little indication of what my school year was like - VERY CHALLENGING!!  Well now that my daughters graduation is over, graduation party is done, my nieces' wedding is done and the fourth of July is over - wow we have been busy- I am ready to start planning and preparing for the next school year.  Today I scrubbed my chair pockets and sent them through the wash,   Unbelievable how dirty they get!

Here they all are drying on my living room floor!

I love these handy chair pockets.  They are from School Specialty and well worth the money.  It keeps my kiddos daily folder and pencil pouch neatly tucked away until we need them.  This also keeps my tables clutter free.  I used to use table caddies and I just didn't like all of the supplies visible.  Not only did it look cluttered, I would find that it was a distraction for some.  While I am explaining a lesson, etc. some of them just couldn't help themselves and would start to play with their supplies - drove me CRAZY!!

So now that I have clean pocket charts for the upcoming school year my next project is to make a new "fake" cake for birthday celebrations.  Sadly I had to throw away my old one.  After 6 years of use it just fell apart.  I will post pics of my new cake as soon as I get it done!!

How are you preparing and planning for the upcoming school year?

I am teaming up with 2 wonderful bloggers Teaching Is A Gift and A Teacher Without a Class for a fun blog hop. With Google Reader gone by the wayside one wonders "How will I find all of the amazing blogs out there?" Well now you can by following this blog hop! You can click back to either one of the blogs hosting the event to find all of the steps to link up. Have fun Blog Hopping!

Blog Lovin' widget is here!!

Okay so with some help from my wonderful hubby I was finally able to put the blog lovin' follow button on my sidebar! So I guess I am lovin' Blog Lovin" :)

Bloglovin - not sure if I'm lovin' it or not!

Just signed up with bloglovin - not sure if I have done everything correct. I have lots of questions - not sure how to find my list of blogs that I am following (the old google reader) Does anyone know of a blog or a website that explains how to use bloglovin? I have put the icon on my blog and I don't like how it showed up on my blog and I am unable to move it around in my layout or remove it - any help is appreciated!!!!

Fun With the Book "The Mitten"

We had a lot of fun this week reading, retelling and responding to "The Mitten" by Jan Brett! I always love to have the kids retell the story with props and this year I tried something a little different. Take a look.

Students colored and cut out a mitten that we then stapled to a ziploc bag.

Here you can see the animals that are "in" the mitten. My kiddos had a great time with this retelling project!

Permission to pin

I just read on another blog that I am supposed to make a post about anyone being allowed to pin from my blog - didn't know that - so please feel free to pin away!

Pinterest

I have started my pinterest board.  Just beginning!  Hop on over to the pinterest tab on the left and check out my pins!

Brought to you by the letter M and Monsters!

Letter M can be a lot of fun when you mix it up with MONSTERS!

Here is a quick peak at what we did for math work stations with the letter M and monsters:

Rolling the big dice and recording the number on the ten frame

Rolling the dot dice and matching the dots to a number inside the monster!  They love rolling the dice in the containers!

Writing the number that matches the ten frame on the monster

Write the room for math!

Classroom tour for 2012-2013

I wish I would have taken pictures before the start of the school year when everything was nice and clean!  I've made a few changes this year - all pinterest inspired!!

This is our morning meeting area, calendar area, classroom library - the hub-bub of the room. I love love my new carpet!

This is our calendar area.  And the yellow and blue strips in the pocket chart is our daily schedule that we read every morning during our morning meeting.

My benches hold part of our classroom library.  You can see the headphones behind the bench - this doubles as our listening center area.  The CD/tape player is sitting on the floor to the left of the benches.  The blue pocket chart is a regular sized one that I folded to make shorter.  I use this every day to sort pictures into beginning sound categories, build sentences with our star words, etc.  You can also see my reading strategies by the tree.

Here is my word wall - pinterest inspired!  I use velcro to attach my words so that I am not messing up the paper - I am hoping the paper will last a long time - this took forever to put up and I don't want to do it again for a long time!

My number cards that I made - pinterest inspired as well.  You can also see my vowel cards that I made and my "sound-spelling" cards that I made that go around that small blue pocket chart.  We refer to them when we do our interactive writing.

Our "star words" 

This is our pocket chart center.  I have been creating a pocket chart story that goes with each theme we are working on - it has done wonders for my kinders in regards to reading those color words.  I also make a book for their browsing boxes that matches the pocket chart story.  You can see the zip-loc bag hanging by the pocket chart- that holds the words to the sentence strips.  They are to match the words to the words on the strip! 

My shelf that holds our Star word books, ABC book (abc pages to work on each letter) and on the bottom are our "Activity Workbooks" that go with our reading series

This is the wall to the right when you walk in.  It has my Literacy and Math workstation rotation boards.

Lucky Ducks and my morning work.  Students check here every morning to see what their morning work is for the day.

Math calendar books. You can also see my write the room cards for math and literacy - it was "M" week and our theme was Monsters!

The blue and red tubs are for literacy workstations

The green and yellow tubs are for math workstations

This is how I organize my workstations.  The top paper shows my literacy rotations (they last for 2 weeks)  the bottom is math workstation rotations.  The center paper tells what is in each tub - this is all beneficial if I have a sub

Our classroom bucket - we are filling it very quickly this year!!

This is my voice meter that I made - it works very well!!

Our writer's workshop check list - Are you sure your story is finished?

This was pinterest inspired - this took 4 mini-lessons.  I did one page a day (large size) and then I made copies of the pages (shrunk them) and made the starts and it is a perfect anchor chart for Writer's workshop.  We also did the Rate your writing one day for a mini lesson.  You can hear my students all the time saying "wow that is star work"  or "That is not very good star work"  they are harder on each other than I am!

These are my baskets that sit on the window ledge behind my small group reading table.  There is one for each group.   I put our supplies in them for each reading group for the week - keeps me organized!

This is the shelf below my group baskets.  Sorry - the bottom shelf is a mess!!!!.  The baskets on the shelf above hold leveled books that we pick out to put in our browsing boxes.

This is our retelling station

housekeeping

My mailbox that I made a few years ago!

These are hanging right next to the door - stores all of the important information that I need at my finger tips

Our focus for the week needs to be posted for visitors

Pete the Cat - not sure what wonderful blog I got this from :(

My new chairs.  Students who are at the listening center can choose to listen to books on CD's after they finish their listening center story and response sheet. Or they can choose to read books in the library or do retell - which you can see the legs of the retell easel in the background

My new organization tubs that I got this year - love them - they are from Lakesore

Newest Wall Stories

Here are our last two wall stories.  We read The Season's Of Arnold's Apple Tree to create the murals of all 4 seasons of trees.  We also read Go Away Big Green Monster and created a retelling of the book.

Pete the Cat

We started the year off with the adorable Pete the Cat.  Here is a look at our cute bulletin board and Pete the Cat craft!