#IAmATeacher

I've posted a lot about the things I have been doing in my classroom. One thing I haven't posted about is the Adopt A Classroom.org website that I've started using and have already been blessed by having a few people adopt my classroom and donate some money. I've been able to buy new headphones, glue sticks (a huge must have in any Kindergarten classroom), and now for the new year some new games and building materials that I'm really looking forward to doing some STEM things with. Being a teacher, I am constantly spending money on my classroom; this year I feel like I have been doing it more so because I'm trying to save money in the long run with copies and other things by laminating a lot more so students can re-use papers over and over. So far this has been going pretty well.

One thing that I have noticed by doing this, is so many of my students have improved their skills quicker than in years past because they aren't just doing it once and then being done. They go over and over the pages a few days a week. Many of the things my class seem to love so much that they'll choose to do the pages during free choice time.

I have one student who has been struggling with their fine motor skills ever since school started. Cutting and writing are very difficult, but bring in the whiteboard and laminated pages, and he isn't getting nearly as frustrated because it is much easier to erase if he makes a mistake and his favorite color is black :) Since the start of the year, I have seen a lot of improvement in his fine motor, especially with his name; he's not writing it as big as usual but is now starting to write it to fit on the "name" line. So I really think that having these expo markers and even the dry erase crayons have been a huge hit with my class and especially with those that tend to need a little more help with their writing because starting over isn't as big of a deal.

I wouldn't have been able to do a lot of the things I'm doing now this year without the support of donors helping out my classroom. I'm very blessed and fortunate to have any and all help. I appreciate it and I know my kids do as well.
Adopt A Classroom Profile

What To Do Over Christmas Break?

Well to answer that question, blog on my new computer of course! What a whirlwind of adventures I've had over the last few months. Fill time is amazing and yes after 66 days of school, the kids are still getting used to being there all day. I've changed my schedule two or three times since I initially made it in August, and now I think it's ok. Mainly after specials, which all happen at the same time everyday which is amazing, I've put writing and art time. But I'm still surprised that even at the end of the day, the kids are still almost too tired to even do art! I hope by 100 days, we're all on the same page and not as tired at the end of the day.

My class this year is full of very helpful and kind kiddos. They love to help each other and help me, we're just working on the correct times to be helpful to each other and to me. :) We have also been REALLY enjoying GoNoodle this year. Oh my goodness I knew it was a lifesaver last year at times, but this year it is REALLY a lifesaver. We're up to almost 1,000 minutes of GoNoodle time and have grown about half the Champs. The kids wanted to earn a GoNoodle party day, so I bought wristbands for each of them to wear and keep, which they totally flipped over. It was lots of fun that day and we earned lots of XP for our Champ.

I have also been using my new laminator SO much already. It is the best thing I have gotten through Donors Choose. This year our school is really cracking down on laminating and copies. I had to make a price list spreadsheet going over everything I could think of that I would need copies of for the rest of the year, which helped with my case of what and why I needed to make certain things for my classroom. One thing I have started doing this year is instead of regular morning work packets or worksheets, I have taken Deedee Wills idea of "dessert" tubs and turned the idea into morning work tubs. I put in a lot of past math and literacy games that we've done before and then the kids can just play them over and over; continuing to work on those skills. Lots of them they love to keep playing. Roll and record (roll the dice, write the number), all of the buddy game cards from the BUILD series Elizabeth Hall created for math, and also Miss Kindergartens letter cards to make words or just say the sounds. Since I have my laminator, I laminate lots of worksheets that the kids can use expo markers with and use over and over. This is especially useful for Write the Room since I have kids who just love to do this station over and over again. Just being able to have kids re-do games and worksheets is not only helpful to me since I can use my copies for projects and crafts, but then the kids can also practice those skills over and over and not have it be a one and done thing.
I also changed up my literacy and math stations a bit this year. As many of you know I gush over Deedee Wills and all of her amazing ideas. She has station cards for FREE, and I just love how they are set up. There are blue ones and yellow ones. I think because of this, my kids have been able to learn to read the rotation board quicker than in years past. The labels match perfectly and are so easy to put up. If I had a picture I would include it here, but it'll have to wait till I get back. I also love that she just as Word Study A-E and I can put whatever in these and the kids don't fuss that it changes. C and D are pretty consistent with the same activities but all the others can have different skills I want the kids to work on and certain kids get assigned the different Word Studies depending on their level.

Well since it is break, I am going to go off and enjoy it with a little spa day (that's also what to do over Christmas break). :)

3 More Weeks

I can't believe my summer vacation will be over in just about 3 weeks! So since school is coming up so close and many other teachers have already started, I wanted to share a few things that I used last year and I loved and my students loved.

1. Class Dojo! I've blogged about using ClassDojo before, which you can read here. Since I have started using it, I've only had one negative thing said about it from a parent and all it was, was that her kiddo did not like seeing the negative icons on the report. True, having  a blaring red thumbs down isn't the most fun thing to see, but the students and the parents need to know if the child is misbehaving. I don't draw attention to the negative, it's a quick "hey let's not do that", record it for the parents so they can discuss it if needed. Other than that, I have had nothing but positive reactions. Parents love being able to check in and see how their child's behavior is going during the day. Are they helpful? Do hey listen? Are they kind? Things like that. Another feature I used quite a lot last year is their messaging. It comes up like a text on my phone or ipad and it's an easy way to get quick notes from parents or to check in about certain parts of the day. If anything major ever happens I always call, but in the case of something minor it's been easier to let parents know what happened. It may look intimidating, but if you give it a chance, you will be very happy you did. 
2. GoNoodle! With moving to a full day this next year, I'm excited to use this website even more than I did last year. This site has great brain break videos to help students get the wiggles out, calm down after recess or before a test, and even ones to help with review. There are little monster champs that the class can choose and for every 10 videos, the champ grows a little. The kids loved seeing the change of each one. The site is free, but I signed up for their Plus videos so I can have the kids spell sight words with their bodies, and type in custom questions that match our curriculum. It's fantastic!
3. B.U.I.L.D for Math by Elizabeth Hall - these monthly packets are wonderful. You can read about her post on them here and here. I've never done math stations or centers before until I saw these. She makes it so easy to divide up tubs and put these activities in but also put your own in as well. My students really liked the books. I never even thought about putting math books in with math centers but it totally makes sense since we use book in literacy stations! She has loads of great ideas. She has a subtraction chant, that really helped my students remember about subtraction. 
4. Math Journals! Oh wonderful interactive math journals, where have you been all my life? I first discovered Deedee Wills' math journals, which are great. They are all story problems that match up with the Common Core. You can download a freebie set of them to try out.  I actually started to use these on Wednesdays for Calendar Math for Word Problem Wednesday or Work Out Wednesday. The other days I use Karen Jones' interactive math journals for kinders. I love how students cut out and paster (great for fine motor) and then paste them in to their journal. These don't take very long either, only about 10 minutes. 

These are only a few things I discovered last year that I am excited to fully implement this year. BUILD has lots of copies that I have printed off and am now I'm trying to figure out how to laminate since our laminator at school is currently down. My goal this year is to find things that I can use over and over each year. The math journals from Karen Jones have lots of copies, but luckily a lot of them have multiples on each page so you won't have to make as many copies. Deedee Wills has put hers with 24 to a page, which is great! except when you have 25 students. :) You can read about what she does here.
I'm taking a break from going into my classroom so I don't get tired of being there, but I know if I go in about a week before school starts, then I'll be able to get everything together and be ready for my new group of littles!

New Year and New Schedule

Again, apologies. I've been leaving the blogging to others and just following them. I had just a great year last year with my kinders and am looking forward to a whole new group for the whole day! Yup my district has finally decided to go to a full day K program and I finally (after almost 9 years of teaching) get to be a full time teacher! I'm excited and nervous. I think this is why I have been doing so many projects this summer because I know I will not have the time like I have in the past.

I've got a slightly new set up in my room (which is not by any means done). I switched to round tables and carpet squares (which was a happy accident I'll explain in a minute), and moved some big furniture around so now I have a little book corner instead of it sticking out into the room. The tables are great but they can only fit 4 at each one so I have to have more than I had of the double-desks, which I put 3 together to make a group of 6. I'm very inspired by the whole no table, no desks thing many people are doing, but I just can't wrap my head around how that could work for me in my classroom. Maybe some day.

Ok so the happy accident with the carpet squares. Someone in a Facebook group posted a link about kid carpets on Wayfair for not very much money at all. I was stoked! I've been wanting a classroom rug so there was a space for each kiddo and they weren't crammed together on my current carpet. I found one I really liked and from the picture I thought I was getting a big square rug with 30 spots. Great! I go away for a few days and when I come back my husband has put this little box on the counter. I was confused as to how a big square rug was supposed to fit in this tiny box. Well low and behold the listing was for squares that when put together make a big carpet. I was going to send it back but then my husband suggested that I put non-skid stuff on the back of each one and the kids could use them whenever they work on the floor. (Yes I know I could just get rid of the tables and use these, but like I said, maybe someday). So another thing I'm excited to use this year and hopefully it'll work out.

So our full day is going to be much different from everyone else's full day plans from what I've seen Our school has 3 recesses; morning, lunch, and afternoon. I really liked the plans of only have two; lunch and afternoon. Much for time to get things done and not have that interruption in the morning. I should also say we start at 8:35 and our first recess is at 9:45, so I was perfectly happy skipping that one but I got a whole lotta push back and people thought I was crazy. So 3 it is.
Here is a mock-up of what I'm thinking. My plans usually tend to change once the year starts depending on how things are going. Week 2 Plans

I hope everyone has a great year! I'll try to be a little more diligent with posting.

Columbus Day and There Was an Old Lady

Oh my goodness, it has been crazy! But so much fun. We started our There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves. I really love these books, they're so much fun and the kids really like them. Having Fun in Kinder makes some great units to go along with these books with Write the Room, Pocket Chart cards, Math games, and crafts. Here is a picture of the craft we made to go with the Leaves book.

 

Starting this week (hopefully) we are going to do There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat, and then for a little bit of Science we'll talk about bats. I love doing this little craft, it's a great following direction activity, and a nice way to start with writing.

For today we did a little Social Studies and talked about Christopher Columbus. I found some great FREE activities that were a little challenging but still good practice for math. We used Google Earth to show the kids where Spain was in comparison to North America. We weren't able to get to the Reader for Little Learners, but that is on their desk for tomorrow to color and then read as a group.

I just have to look through my schedule to make sure I can get everything in that I want to in the very little amount of time we have. So looking forward to next year when we will have full day Kinder.

Tomorrow we are going to work on Elizabeth Hall's Rhyming Dust Bunnies craft, which I'm really looking forward to and I think the kids will like it. I'll try to post about how the project goes.

Center Time

Hi have been really behind in my posting. My husband and I just fixed my personal computer so I will be able to post a lot easier.

So we have finally started centers and these past few weeks my EA and I have not been pulling groups but instead have been roaming to help with where to go, what to get, and what to do at each center. I put the kids into pairs and my hope is that they can help each other out with where to go and what to do. This week I just changed up the pairs and put them into pairs based on their ability. The last two weeks I just paired them based on who I thought might get along and then once I paired them by ability, they have been working so much better in their pairs! I know a lot of people don't like to put their pairs by ability but for me this makes it much easier to pull for small groups. There are of course some pairs that is the "blind leading the blind" but I'm hoping that this will not continue to be the case once they get used to their new partners.

Here are some pictures of the centers that I do in my room.


 This is my Word Work center where they use magnets to match letters, spell CVC words, and match beginning sounds.

I also have Big Books that the students can pull out and look through. All of the ones that we read as part of our curriculum as in there so they can go back through them. As we learn more Sight Words, I will put in a worksheet for them to find the sight words in the books and then also words that are 3, 4, or 5 letters long.

This goes along with my Pocket Chart center, but these kids decided to make words on the floor instead of in the chart.









Here is another view of what they can work on. There are numbers for them to put in order and then also sentences to go with the Old Lady books that we love to read. I did also buy Deedee Wills Super Sentence center and for those I just need to print them off and get them in the center.

This is from my Write the Room center and I have some seasonal pictures but them also The Old Lady units that go along with the pocket chart and math center. (I linked the page that has a lot of the units that I've purchased that have great seasonal things to do that I put in my centers)

Leap Frog's are a HUGE part of my classroom centers. I LOVE them. I just received a grant from DonorsChoose.org for more books so I know my students are going to be really excited about the new books. I love the games that are in the books and that it will sound out the words and read the page to them. It's like a listening and buddy reading center all in one. 

These are my math centers. I have Roll and Cover (which goes with our themes), number puzzles, and math boxes which I put different math games in as we learn them.


Here is one of the math box games. It's Bacon and Eggs that a previous kinder teacher left me. There are felt eggs and bacon and the kids pull out a math problem and first put the bacon on for the first number and then the eggs for the second number then count how much is on the plate to find the total.

These are my File Folder games. These are great but so much work to first put together. If you have parent volunteers or college volunteers, these are great projects to work on. There are games for rhyming, letter matching, number matching, beginning sound, ending sound, classification, etc. You can find the books on Amazon, but I don't recommend the colored file folder game books, those are almost more work than these, but if you like them then go for it. I just like these better.


The File Folder games that come in the boxes or the ones for "On the Go" are really nice. This is the kind of book you want to look for on Amazon. It's the color ones in the books that I've found to be too much work.








             
This is my Listening Center. I only have a few books right now, but I am looking at getting more so the kids will have more choices and to get some for themes.

            I do have computers that are very old, but they still work. They run some great OS 9 Classic games such as the Living Books. I love these games so I'll use them till the computers die. 

And last this is my ABC chart. I have this for my ABC center as well as a tub with letters in it along with little toys for the kids to sort by letter.

 This kiddo placed a "tiger" in the "T" pocket and then showed me the "T" in sign language. Such a smartie!

Getting into the Routine

Well, I think we're about into our routine. I'm still trying to figure out how to go through my calendar portion a little quicker since it seems that my kids get fairly bored by the time we get to the math part. They like the songs, but we're still figuring out all the math bits. :)

I'm also trying to figure out (as I have been for many of my years of teaching kinder) how to get slow workers to work just a little bit faster. Even if I make their assignment smaller, such as color 4 pictures that are black instead of all of the pictures on the page, they still can't get it done. This is my big frustration from only having them for 2 1/2 hours (well really about 2 hours if you take out recess, snack, and transitions) so I'm constantly "rushing" them through things so we can get everything done. We don't have a lot of time for writing, so I have to squeeze it into center time, but then not everyone gets to it each week. There are a lot of compromises I have to make in order to get what I want done and unfortunately miss out on either fun stuff or other important stuff like writing and science that we just don't have time to squeeze in.  Crossing fingers that we really will go to full day next year.

One thing that I am working on that I'm really excited about are a few name-game activities. First I'm working on a power point that will show kids pictures and at the top it says "Who am I?" and I'll take a few guesses from the class, then with a click the name will come across. Another thing that I'm making in a book that is the same idea, but students have to match the name to the picture (this could go with a pocket chart center as well which I'm contemplating doing instead). Last I'm making a SMART Notebook where students can drag the names to match the picture, draw lines to match the name and picture. I'm really hoping I can start the Name of the Day from Elizabeth Hall, I might be able to fit this in when I start Star of the Week (which I'll post about later). I think they will go together really well.