Holidays in Room 8

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Remembering......

A Month In Review

Take a look at our November Newsletter! I love my class!

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Indian Day!

Only a few days before our Thanksgiving feast and we are busy making our costumes. Today we spent all morning making our indian costumes. We made indian vests, beaded necklaces, and indian headbands.

My kiddos were so busy adding fringe to their indian vests. I was pretty impressed with their use of indian symbols. They've been practicing all week!

My kiddos practiced making patterns on their indian headbands and their necklaces.

Tomorrow we'll make our Pilgrim costumes. Until then...... Sherry

Halloween Fun!

What a special Halloween my kiddos had! So much fun making pumpkin pizzas, measuring with candy corns, making witches, and playing pin the nose on the pumpkin. Take a look!

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So much fun! Sherry

Alphabet Realia!

Here are some activities I do with my kiddos at the ABC center. I found this great jewelry organizer at Marshals and in an instant I turned it into a center. I found small objects for each letter. I children sort the objects into the correct pocket. So fun for my kiddos :)!

Each week we focus on the letter of the week. We always start off our week with Our Very Busy Caterpillar! The letter of the week is added to the caterpillar. When we are focusing on a vowel that letter gets two feet. One short for the short vowel sound and one long for the long vowel sound. My kiddos remember the vowels fast because of this little special touch to our caterpillar. We also read the weekly song and I can always find a friend to come up and find all the words that begin with the letter of the week. That's it for now! Sherry

Freebielicious

I am so excited about a new blog I found that will make your life a little bit sweeter....! Some terrific creative bloggers are teaming up to create a new blog for YOU! I would love to introduce the new blog to you....FREEBIELICIOUS! The name says it all! It contains ALL FREEBIES for YOU! and it's only for PK-1st!! So check it out cause I've been looking at it all night :) Oh and did I mention I am a follower too :) Sherry

Smilebox for September

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Simply Poetic

Why not introduce your kiddos to poetry.  Weekly I use this bulletin board to display the poem of the week.

During literacy centers, my kiddos visit the poetry center.  In their poetry journal they have to complete 3 jobs:

1.  Glue down poem.

2.  Find words in poem.

3.  Draw a picture to go with the poem.

First month of school, my kiddos learned their color words.  At this center they circled the color words in this poem.

Each day during morning meeting, we practice the poem by reciting, singing, or using hand movements.  We use highlighting tape to find our weekly sight words and my little detectives always find rhyming words :)

Sherry

Organizing My Kinders!

The month of September has really taking over my classroom!  I've been busy getting the year started with classroom routines, organization, and everything that a little kiddo might need in kindergarten :)

I would like to share with you how I organize my centers around my little friends.  

My center time is organized into 5 groups.  Each day my kiddos visit two centers.  I began center time by setting up our classroom rules during literacy or math centers.

1.  Use an inside voice.

2.  Stay at your centers the entire time.

3.  Do your best work.

4.  Ask a parent volunteer or teacher for help.

This is our third week focusing on center rules and knowing how to find which center to go to.  My kiddos are getting to be good at finding their name and reading the center board each day.

I organize my literacy centers in this 6 drawer file cabinet that I found at Target.  Each drawer is labeled with the same center card that is displayed on my centers chart.  The drawers are pretty deep so I can keep all supplies in each drawer ready to go.  Once I announce the centers for the day, one child from each group will go get the appropriate drawer and bring it to the labeled table to begin working.

My Literacy Centers are:

Word Work Center:  Practicing sight words and CVC words

Poetry Center:  Poem of the week

ABC Center:  ABC's and phonic practice

Write the Room:  Monthly challenges

Listening Center with response

Computers:  Starfall and KidPix

ITouch:  Language Arts Practice

Magnetic Board:  Magnetic letter practice

Puzzle and Games:  Language arts games

Writing Centers:  Monthly challenges

Back To School: New Classroom Pics Part Two

So excited to share with you my NEW classroom pics.  I posted a few days back that I decided to change the layout of my  classroom to help with organization and SMOOTH sailing throughout the new school year.  

Last year it was my first year back to teaching after being a stay at home mom to my four boys.  I taught 1st grade for 5 years, then I enjoyed being home with my boys for 16 years.  Now I am back! So we all know the first year no matter if you taught before or not is always tough :(!  I felt like everyday I was doing the best I can to keep up.

So at the end of last year, I started organizing.  I went through cabinets where papers were all mixed up and I sorted, sorted, sorted.  I purchased plastic boxes to place all my materials for each monthly theme. I also spent a lot of time this summer looking at many blogs to get ideas how to organize my room.  Here is what I came up with :)

Last year each student had their own supply box with a box of crayons, glue stick, white glue, scissors, pencil, and eraser.  The supply boxes took up a lot of room at their tables.  Supplies got lost, and someone was always looking for something.       "I can't find my scissors!"  I also spent a lot of money on supplies to fill 18 supply boxes!!  So for this year, each table will have 1 basket of supplies in the middle of the table.  I found these baskets and fuchsia pencil holders at IKEA!    I saved a lot of money on less supplies :)  We all like to hear that.....

Center Ideas:

I made an area for each literacy center.  Here is my guided reading area.  Last year my word wall was away from where I was doing my guided reading.  Not the smartest idea.  I always wanted to refer to it and the children were reluctant to use it.  This year my word wall is behind my guided reading table.  In this area I have everything I need for guided reading.    The binders that you see are all labeled.  I still need to laminate the spine labels to make it easier to find what I am looking for.  

Binders:

Sight Words

Word Work

Student Assessments

Writing

Guided Reading

The baskets have sight word readers in them to use during guided reading.

On the left side I have my guided reading leveled books.  I have two mini pocket charts to use doing word work.  The small turquoise file on the top shelf has sight words on index cards for each student.  I have it labeled so I know where each student is at with their sight words.  I have a parent volunteer come in to practice with each kiddo so this will be easy to find.  The black 4 drawer shelves right next to my table has sentence strips, highlighting tape, spyglasses to find sight words and ABC charts for students.

My reading nook is much larger this year.  The kiddos were always cramped trying to read their books last year, so I knew it needed to be larger.  All the baskets are labeled with themes.  The corner book holder contains thematic books.  Right now it has all books about apples.  My big books are in the reading nook also for students to look at.  Once we have the first day of school, I take a pic of each darling and then I label their orange book boxes.  These will go on that empty top shelf that you see.

A cozy little area :)!

Poetry Center:

So excited about this area!  Last year most of my bulletin boards displayed student's work.  I decided for this year to make some of my bulletin boards an active area for my kiddos to learn.  Each week we have a poem of the week.  I used to have the poem on a pocket chart.  Now I will display the poem of the week on this bulletin board in my cute polka dot frame.  On the right side I have two small purple pocket charts.  I will have the kiddos find rhyming words and sight words in the poem and write them on sentence strips to put in these pocket charts.

All the supplies for the poetry center are right here!  How amazing is that!  I finally figured it out that by keeping everything in the right section, makes teaching a lot smoother.  In the 3 drawer file I have highlighters in one drawer, glue sticks to glue down the poem, and the poem of the week miniature style.  In the black shelves are the kiddos poetry journals.  The white binder contains all the poems for the school year so I can grab it and copy the poem for the following week.

Art Center:  

Everything my kiddos need for art!

Colored Pencils

Colored Markers

Scrap booking  Scissors

Playdough

Stamp pads/Paint dots

Yarn

Scrap Paper

Foam Scraps

(Planning on labeling Everything)

Word Work (Top Shelf)

In basket I have white boards for sight word practice.

Sight word letters to make necklaces.

Sight word game

( Will add to this center once kiddos are familiar with routine)

ABC center (Bottom Shelf)

Plastic letters for playdough

Letter Stamps with stamp pads

Letter game

Handwriting books

Sandpaper letters with crayons to do rubbings

Math Center:

These baskets I used last year for my math manipulatives.  I decided to use my tall bookcase for them because I can hide the door to my furnace.  My math center is on the other side of the room now.  I have a lot more space and a cute round table for my kiddos to work at.

This is right next to the bookcase.  These shelves are perfect for all those small math supplies you need daily!  Here is what I put in the shelves:

Colored buckets contain math specific books

Math journals

Links

Rulers (wooden and plastic)

Place Value rods

All kinds of counters

Calculators

Scales

Magnetic numbers

Mini Clocks

I placed my daily schedule in this cute little nook behind my computer.  Last year it was on my white board but it never was too secure.  Kept falling or sliding down.

So much better to look at each day :)!

I love the pocket with the daily activities in it close by!

Finish this today!  I know several of you out there in blogging world had this great idea to take a pic of all the students in each month for the birthday bulletin board.  It's ready to go.  I just need to add the months and the pics of my students once school starts!

I always like to decorate behind my desk area.  I will probably add pics of my boys and family to make it more personal.  My students love to see what my kids look like!

Reading Buddies Shelf:

Behind my desk I have a sweet reading buddies shelf.  In the turquoise bucket are the books that go along with my reading buddies.  I have a backpack that goes home with one of my kiddos each day.  They write and draw a picture about their sleepover with the reading buddy.  We share the student's picture with the class each day :)!

And finally, here's my desk :(.  Still have a lot more word to do.  Stay tuned for Part Three of my classroom pics.  I can't wait to share them with you.  Please let me know what you think so far.

Sherry :)

My Very First Blog Award!

A big "thank you" to Megan from The Teacher Wife for giving me my very first blogging award!  I've been spending a lot of blogging time on her blog lately so if you have a chance stop by!  She is so sweet and extremely helpful :)
So now my job is to find 15 lovely blogs of my own to share with you.  So stay tuned and I will do my searching.....
Sherry

Back To School: Day One

     It's here!  Time to conquer the good ol' classroom.  Mistake number one.....thinking I need a new layout.  It would of been much easier to keep my same classroom layout from last year, but NO....I decide to rearrange everything and now I am in the middle of one big MESS!
     I need to LOVE the space that I am going to be in day after day, so I spent all summer surfing the web and blogs to find that comfy space that I am looking for.  So I am showing my room on DAY 1 so you can see how I possibly put it all together before the first day of kindergarten.  You can also take a look at my classroom tour from last school year and let me know which layout you like better!!!  Here are some pics of the disaster zone.......

Here is the view from the front door.

Nice and clean, but a lot of work ahead of me....

Tried to move my desk and it completely fell apart.  Desk is gone!  Hopefully I'll get a new one from another classroom.  I'll keep my fingers crossed :)

OK so I dove right in.  I always wanted a cute sink area.  Last year this was always so ugly and boring.  So I put bright fuchsia and trimmed it with a cute flower black border.  My entire classroom is going to have bright green, purple, blue and fuchsia with black polka dot borders.  

With the desk breaking this is all I have for now..................Stay tuned :)!