Daily 5 thoughts and a bloggy get together

First things first, Natalie from Teachery Tidbits is coming to my hometown to visit. (I live in a touristy area so it isn't all that strange.)
We are planning a lunch get together on July 5th at 12 at Smoky Mountain Brewery in Gatlinburg. We would love it if you would join us. I know that a Thursday isn't the normal day for a get together but when you live in a tourist town the weekend is a little crazy. The restaurant is a local favorite and there is parking. Parking can be an issue in this town I love. There is also talk of later in the month having a Dollywood day. So look for information about that if you can't make it on July 5th. Please let me know if you plan to come. So I can alert the restaurant of how many people will be there. If you don't hear from me for a week or so it's because I'm MIA on my honeymoon. I don't plan on getting on any blogs while I'm on my honeymoon so starting Saturday I will probably not be around. You can also let Natalie know if you plan on coming. You don't have to have a blog. Blog stalkers are welcome.
So there are several Daily 5 book studies going on right now. I was having trouble deciding whether to join in on the Kindergarten one or the first grade one. I think I've decided to go with first grade since that's the grade I'll be in next year. Switching back and forth can give you a little identity crisis. So here are my answers to the questions posed by Mel D at Seusstastic Classroom.
 1. On pages 4-6, the authors present two different pictures of their classrooms. In thinking about and reflecting on your own practice, how would you characterize your literacy block? Does it look more like the first or second scenario, or is it somewhere in between? How will you change it
This past year, I tried out some of the Daily 5 after Christmas.I had spend the first semester of school teaching my students to use literacy centers. We had developed routines that worked for the first time since I started teaching almost 8 years ago. So trying to figure out how to both was way too difficult. By the end of the year, my literacy centers became more like the structure of Daily 5. I had a listen to reading, word work, writing, read to someone center. I also had a computer center and an ipod center. This really worked well for me. I think one of things that really helped this finally come together for me was reading Debbie Diller and Daily 5 and finally getting that what I hadn't been doing all these years was the modeling piece. I finally understood that it took a lot of modeling to get the behaviors that I wanted. So I guess that my classroom is a mixture of the two classrooms. I did find myself scrambling trying to get centers together but I tried to make them more about reading and writing and less about producing something.

2. The typical teacher is very busy having students do lots of different activities. How is what you are having students do now in your classroom creating quality readers and writers? 

I try to give my students lots of practice with reading and writing. I probably focus more on the reading piece than the writing piece. After reading most of Daily 5 and the Book Whisperer, I really challenged myself to have my student read more. Writing is a different story. But that's a goal for this upcoming year.

3. What sets the Daily 5 structure apart from what you are doing in your classroom?

The biggest challenge for me is letting students have more of a choice or control over what they are doing. I have a hard time letting go of the control piece and I don't always trust my students to make the right choice. But I need to work on that. I need to work on giving up some of the control and allow the students more choice. I try to give them some choices in their center that they were at. They can choose their books they read. They can choose the books they listen to. But that's probably as far as it goes. 

I guess I'm still trying to make sense of all this myself and where I see my classroom next year. I'm leaning right now towards a mix of literacy centers and daily 5. But maybe it's my desire to have control that is keeping me from going full force for Daily 5. I'm looking forward to continuing on in this study to hopefully wrap my  brain around it all.

Looking forward to the next chapter. If you want to join the fun, check out Mel D's blog.

Spring break is over!

I'm riding in the car on my way back from Nashville and I'm so sad spring break is coming to an end. But I had a great week and a great get together with other TN bloggers. It was wonderful to meet fellow bloggers. I loved being able to talk about the bloggy exchange and the person I was talking to didn't think I was nut for sending someone I don't know a present. It was fun to talk about blogging stuff and others know what you were talking about. The underwear bandit in Jennifer from Herding Kats might have been discussed. This meet up only confirmed what I already knew. There are some wonderful, supportive and generous teachers out there. I plan to give a shout out to everyone and a couple of new bloggers on the block sometime this week. But I'm doing this post on my phone and I haven't finished my plans for next week and i'm going to be out Tuesday to see Dr. Jean so it might be a few days before I get all my pictures together.
I did reach my goal of 200 followers today. I'm hoping to do a good giveaway so if you would be interested in participating leave me a comment. Hopefully I can get it together before the weekend. Happy Sunday night!

What is Not Wrong!

I'm linking up with Carried Away in Kindergarten for her What's not wrong? linky party. This is one of my favorite posts of the week. Midweek is a good time to stop and reflect about what is good in our lives. So here my 5 things that are not wrong.
1. Zumba is not wrong. Last week I went to zumba class for the first time and loved. It was so much fun and I got a good workout. I returned this week and have decided to make it a weekly thing on Mondays. It's nice to do something different rather than running.
2. Birthdays are not wrong. Sunday we celebrated my mother's birthday with my family. My niece was hilarious sticking her finger in the cake before it was cut. Then Monday was future sister in law's birthday. We celebrated with her family Tuesday night. I made chicken and dumplins, apples and a chocolate cake. It was the first time one of the nieces has been to my house since they're mobile. My house needs some child proofing big time.
3. Shoe shopping for my wedding is not wrong. Saturday my mom and sister and I are going to do some shopping for the wedding. I need to pick up my dress (That story actually is wrong but I won't go into it today.) Get shoes, makeup and Chris's clothing for the wedding. Less than 3 months away!
4. DeeDee Will's Math journals are not wrong. If you haven't checked out her math journals, you should. They are the best. My kids are doing so well with a variety of math skills because of these journals. Click here to see a post she did in October about them.
5. TPT Credits are not wrong. Have you seen where you can redeem your points on TPT for products now? It's pretty awesome. I've traded my points into for 2 or 3 products already.

Anyway, what is not wrong your life this week? Link up and check it out. I would love to hear what is going great for you.

Bloggy Love

In the past week I've been awarded the Top 10 blogging award and the Lovely Blogger Award.
Miss S. from Just Teaching . . . Kindergarten awarded me the Top 10 Blogging Award. So thanks Miss S. I appreciate it a ton. If you haven't checked her blog, you should.
I'm suppose to pass this along to 10 more blogs that haven't received this award yet. That's so much harder than I thought it would be. To figure out who I was going to nominate for any award, I usually look at my starred items to see who I've been starring a lot lately. So first up is:








  She has a ton of Eric Carle ideas that I'm dying to use. I'm planning on doing some Eric Carle when we study insects in the Spring.  I love her What is Not Wrong posts and yoga information. Check her out.  Kindergarten at Heart She's someone I've recently started following and has super fun freebies. They had wonderful freebies for Dr. Seuss week. It was like they were reading my mind on what I needed. I also love their monthly and seasonal word list they do. 

Mrs. Ricca is so incredible generous with her freebies. She has an entire St. Patrick's day unit on her blog currently you can download for free.  I know that I've only named 5 of the top 10 bloggers but I had a hard time finding people who hadn't been awarded it. Hopefully I'll have a chance to come back and award 5 more sometime. I was also awarded the Lovely Blogger Award by Laura at KinderKraziness, Kelly at Kindergarten Kel, and Michelle at Inspired by Kindergarten awarded me the Lovely Blogger Award. Thanks to these wonderful ladies. You should check out their lovely blogs if you haven't. I've now been working on this post for 2 days and I need to start getting ready for work today so I'm going to have to award my lovely bloggers at another time. I follow so many lovely bloggers it's going to be hard to choose.  I have a couple more things to say about bloggy love. I love getting comments and feedback. I love the dialogue that is created through blogging. I have to admit that up until just recently I'm not sure I commented enough. I think was afraid to comment while I was stalking blogs. But since the new year, one of my resolutions is to make the effort to comment a lot more. I try to comment on anyone's blog who I download a freebie from and then anyone else I have a random thought to go with. So I want to encourage you to comment. This isn't a plug to get you to comment on my blog but maybe on someone's blog that you like but have been a little shy about commenting on. Just go for it. One last thing, one of the fifth grade teachers at my school left me the sweetest present in my mail box on Friday. She knows I'm into this whole teaching blog thing. 

Aren't they adorable? Lots of bloggy love to Teri for thinking of me.

Giveaway Results and other stuff

I celebrated reaching 100 followers right before the new year with a giveaway. Here are the results:

 

So congrats to Julia at Loving and Learning In Pre-K. Be sure to leave me your email so I can get you goodies to you.

So over the break, I made this great schedule of how I was going to start posting on my blog. I don't know what I was thinking. I'm not that good at sticking to schedules. I like to post when I've got an idea. Here lately my brain has been full of ideas to post about. I had planned on getting ahead on posting and have some scheduled ones done this weekend. Plus I'm working on a word work valentine's day packet, and I have several things to make for school for this week. But my weekend is half way over and I've gotten nothing done yet. Friday night, we went out to eat with my sister and brother in law to celebrate our engagement. Yesterday morning, Chris and I went hiking with his aunt and then we had a surprise birthday party for Chris's grandmother yesterday. Today I'm off to a bridal show with my friend Sarah, who is also engaged.  So maybe I'll get my stuff together eventually.

Friday was our first day back and my kids did so well. I think they got smarter over the break. They were very excited to be back. It was cute. When I told them I was getting married, one of the girl's response was "That's cute." Then another little boy wanted to know if I had two beds in my house. It was pretty funny. 

I read the book How Full is  Your Bucket?. They really responded well to the book and the idea of being bucket fillers. I tried to use the language as the day went on. One of the kids said that his bucket was kind of empty so all the kids started giving him and other kids compliments. It was cute. I need to decorate our bucket I was going to use and find something to fill it with. It's always something I need to make. 

The other new thing we started on Friday was Daily 5. I introduced Read to Self. We talked about why we need to practice reading. One of my kiddos that's really smart, said he wanted to read like his Dad reads. It was cute and exactly what I wanting them to say. They practiced for 3 minutes and they did awesome. There was only one student who looked like he could have been a little off task. I know according to the sisters you're suppose to stop a soon as someone is off task. But I honestly couldn't tell if he was off task or not. He's an interesting child. Next week we're going to keep practicing and modeling. I'm not sure if I'm going to add a minute on Monday or not. It'll depend on their moods. We're also starting our centers back up. I'd hoped to post about them and offer you a freebie or two. But that will have to wait for another day.

Hope you're enjoying the last of your weekend. I should probably start on breakfast and get ready for church or something.

Supportive Bloggers

Little Miss Kindergarten is hosting a really cool linky party about recognizing supportive bloggers. I have said over and over how much I've gained since I've started blogging. Part of what I've gained is becoming part of this incredibly supportive community. I've always thought the best teachers are those who share with other teachers. Some of my experiences since teaching have involved more teachers in competition rather than encouraging and supporting each other. I think the new evaluation system that has been put in place by Tennessee only encourages more competition. I've had a teacher come up to me and shake her chest in my face and tell me what she got on her evaluation. Not only was that completely unprofessional, it was unnecessary. It didn't help that she's someone I have to work with and I don't think she works well with others. I started a prayer group this fall to try to encourage positivity and a system of support at school. Blogging has really helped me stay upbeat and positive this year.
I love this linky party and I have to participate. It's hard to just choose just one or even two. But I've narrowed it down.
Jennifer at Rowdy in First Grade has been super helpful to me. She offered to answer any questions I had about starting a Teacher's Notebook store.





Laura at Kinder Kraziness. She has a Someone New Sunday feature every week and featured me. She's a fellow Tennessean and is super helpful with any questions I have. She also leaves great comments.

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The third blogger that has been so encouraging is Pam from Can do Kinders. She was one of my first followers and she leaves me encouraging comments all the time. She also offers great freebies on her blog.

  
If you haven't checked these three bloggers out, you should. They have great blogs and their very encouraging. Thanks Little Miss Kindergarten for hosting this party. Great idea!  Check out other bloggers support system here.

Versatile Blogger Award

This winter break has been so wonderful and a big part of that wonderfulness is my blogging. I have had the time to get on the computer everyday and keep up with bloggers and comment. I've found tons of new blogs out there and have a whole folder full of ideas for winter activities. To top it off, I've started contributing to a new blog The Best Endings, made some new blogging friends, and got an email from Dr. Jean. (I'm such a dork but I love that woman. So it completely made my day when she responded to one of my comments with an email.) And now Michelle at Inspired by Kindergarten has awarded me The Versatile Blogger award.
I'm so grateful and excited about how my blog has taken off. I've reached over 100 followers and feel like I'm part of a wonderful community that improves my teaching everyday.
Here are the rules of this award:
1.  Thank the person who nominated you with a link back to them.
2. Tell 7 things about yourself (see below)
3. Pass this on to 15 newly discovered blogs and let them know they've received an award!
Thanks to Michelle. I appreciate this so much. Check her blog out.







  Here are 7 things about me: I have such a hard time coming up with things about myself. I can't believe anyone would want to hear these things.  1. I'm starting to plan a wedding for June at the beach to my love. I'm also excited to be going through this whole wedding planning and being engaged with Sarah. Sarah is the one of the other kindergarten teachers I teach with. We started at our school together and we're really close. 2. I 'm addicted to pinterest. Who isn't these days? I love doing crafts and pinterest is perfect for feeding this hobby. 3. I love crime and mysteries in tv show form or book form. This worries my fiance a bit. He isn't as into the whole murder and mayem like I am. 4. I started a girls ministry at the church I used to go with. I still have really close relationships with those girls. I'm looking to do something similar at my new church. I think girls need time together to grow in their relationships with Christ, themselves and each other. 5. I'm afraid I would make the worst housewife ever. I'm a good cook but a terrible housekeeper. Chris cleaned up my porch and storage closet yesterday and commented that now this part of the house looks like an adult lives there. Unlike my bedroom and guest room that are disaster areas. 6. Reading is my passion. I love to read and love to teach reading. I give books to every child I'm close with. I give them toys too but I think books are so important. My nieces (Sophie is my sister's and Kaley is chris's sisters.) get books from me all the time. I just want to make sure they love reading like I do. 7. I do a variety of crafts. I crochet and make jewelry pretty consistently. I also have sewn some and want to start more. I also use scrapbook paper for a variety of purposes.
Yay! I finally came up with 7 things.  Here's the even harder part. Naming blogs. I'm trying to award all the new blogs that I've found and love. 

 

Learning New Words in ESL Kindergarten

    Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten

 

Literacy Minute

The Picture Book Teacher's Edition
Ok so this is just a list of 10 but you get the idea. There are so many good blogs out there. So check out some of these that I nominated.

100 followers Giveaway

I'm so excited that I've reached 100 followers and right before the new year. I've only had my blog for about 6 months and it has changed so much about the way I teach. I have really come to love this community that I've become a part of. There is so much support and so many great ideas out there. I'm excited to continue this journey into the new year. So to get the new year started off right I'm having a giveaway.
You can win a lanyard and lotion all hand made by a friend of mine who has a craft shop here in Gatlinburg. The name of her shop is Rocky Flats Pottery and she makes awesome stuff. She's willing to make a lanyard with whatever colors you want. I have a purple one and love it. Although my id is broken in half so I haven't been wearing it as much.

You can also win my Cupcake Math pack from my teacher's notebook store.

Here's how to enter.
1. First entry is to just follow my blog and leave me a comment telling me you follow it.
2. Another entry can be earned by following my Teacher's Notebook store.Leave me a comment tell me you made it a favorite.

3. A third entry can be earned by liking my friend Alison's store Rocky Flats Pottery on Facebook. Click here to like and then tell me that you did so by leaving a comment.

The contest will be over on Saturday January 7th. Happy New Year and Happy blogging!

Awards!

I'm still dreaming of Christmas break. Only one more day left, thank goodness. I plan over the break to post all about this awesome and incredible workshop I went to yesterday. I got so many new ideas my head is spinning a bit. Once I get it all processed, I'll be sure to share.
But I wanted to post about the awards that I recently got. Lauryn at Paste and Pearls awarded me the Sunshine Award. I've already followed all the rules for that one but I wanted to say a big thank you to Lauryn. It really makes my day to get these awards. I love this world that blogging has opened up to me and my teaching is definitely improving everyday.

Wild about K awarded me the Liebester award. Thanks so much for the award. Here are the rules:

• copy and paste the award on your blog 
• ♥ thank the giver and link back to them
•  reveal YOUR top five picks and leave a comment letting them know
• hope your followers will share the love with them :)

Here are my five newbie picks. Enjoy!!

• Kindersmarten _
• Laughing and Learning with Kinderkids
• Kindergarten is A Hoot!
• Work Smart Not Hard in Kindergarten
• Live, Laugh, Love K
•  

So check out these great new blogs. I've already starred lots of their post to refer to later. I think I can make it one more day! I guess I'm going to have to. I really feel for all of you that have to go til Friday. Wednesday is a reach for me. 

What I'm loving Wednesday!

Last week, I shared a top 10 list of what I loved about blogging. 10 was a little ambitious and I think I might have just said the same thing over and over. So this week I'm sharing my top 5 ideas that I've gotten from other blogs that I use and love.
1. Math Journals from Mrs. Wills. I've blogged about these several times before. They are my favorite. My students like them and they don't take a lot of time. I also can reinforce skills we're working on already and stretch some of my higher kids with a little higher order thinking. We're already writing addition problems and using that vocabulary this year. I don't know that I've ever introduced it so early. But it makes sense presented in this format.
2.Fran at Kindergarten Crayons Sight words to Rock your room packet. Not only do I use her activities but they've inspired me to create some of my own that are very similar to her stuff. I haven't offered it on my blog because I feel like some of it is a direct copy of her stuff.
3. Ms. Miner's Popcorn word packet. She uses the same reading series so our words are the same and we call them popcorn words too. Love this resource.
4. Carpet Bags from Kindergals. I call mine gear bags but I love this idea. It works so well for the class. I just tell them to get their gear bags and then they can get their materials out from there. I think it makes things run smoother and more efficiently.
5. There isn't one source for all the thinking maps that I'm using now. But I credit blogging with the great ideas, I've gotten for thinking maps and graphic organizers. I've been using the tree maps a lot with a variety of subjects. I think it's helped my kids think about different topics and organize their information.
So those are my top 5 favorite ideas or products I've gotten from blogging. What is the best idea you've seen that you use?

What I love about Blogging Wednesday!

This is my own take on what I love Wednesdays. I was thinking this morning about how much I love blogging and how much it is improving my teaching. So I decided to make a list and a linky party to see what others love about it as well.
1. I am a lot more creative in my teaching. I see wonderful ideas out in blog land and I'm inspired to try them and to come up with some of my own. Also, I've been inspired to start my own teacher's notebook store. While I don't have a ton going yet, I have lots of ideas in the works and cooking.
2. It helps me remember why I'm a teacher. I love to teach kids, adults anyone. It's nice to be sharing my resources and ideas with others who appreciate it.
3. I've made lots of new teaching friends. I have a whole new support system when I have issues and problems to get information from.
4. I'm growing a ton professionally and my students are really gaining from it. In trying some new things, I'm stretching my students more than I have in the past and they are meeting the challenge.
5. You can win things. :)
6. I'm learning more about my abilities artistically. I think my drawing has improved because I've been stretched to do more drawing with my students. I also am making new things on the computer and learning a lot more about technology.
7. I'm a nerd and I love to learn new things. Blogging feeds into that.
8. I have found a lot of new books to read for myself and for the kids. Remember #7 I'm a nerd.
9. It gives me an outlet for writing.
10. I'm a better more excited teacher because of blogging.

What has blogging done for you? Link up with your list of what you love about blogging.

Blog on Fire Award

It was such a nice day after Halloween treat to get a comment from Laura at Kinder Kraziness saying she had awarded me the Blog on Fire award. This is my first award as a blogger and it means a lot. I'm really loving this experience of blogging about my class and teaching. I feel like I'm growing so much as a teacher and that I've gone back to my roots in teaching. I'm excited again about what I'm doing and am loving trying to find new things to do.
So the rules of the award is to tell 7 things about yourself and then award 7 more bloggers.
1. I tried out for Jeopardy my last year in college. I didn't make it on or even past the first round but it was fun anyway.
2. I have the sweetest niece in the world. She's 14 months old and I love her sooo much. I love teaching her new things.
3. I love to watch crime shows like Criminal Minds, NCIS, The Closer and I also like kind of trashy shows like the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Jerseylicious.
4. My favorite show of all time is Friends and I have all 10 seasons on DVD.
5. I love to read and read just about anything. I read so much that I sometimes don't know if I've read the book until about half way through it.
6. I love food and cooking.
7. I want to write a book one day. I have lots of ideas about what it would be on so who knows.

Now to award the other blogs:

This is one of my favorite blogs. She has the best ideas and is so generous with all she has.

Mrs. Wills has so many wonderful resources. I have been using her math journals. My kids love them and they are learning so much from them. I also love her weekly posts about her math stations and centers. They inspire me so much.

I love Mrs. Miner's directed drawing activities and her sight word packet keeps me going. She's also super generous with her wonderful resources as well.

I just love Pam. She always has great ideas and resources. Plus she leaves me great comments.

Jennifer is full of wonderful ideas and has been so helpful as I've been trying out new things in this blogging world.
The Very Busy Kindergarten
Sue was one of the first blogs I discovered and she has inspired me so much.

I love Leslie at Kindergarten Works. She is so inspiring and organized and I've gained a lot from reading her blog.
I'm super excited to get this award and it was so hard to just pick 7 blogs to award it to. I love so many blogs. My google reader has like 140 blogs I follow.
Hope you survived your day after Halloween.

Random peek at Ms. Kerri's Class

This week we tried a couple of different things. The first was the math journals from Mrs. Wills. I love love love them! If you haven't checked them out, you need to. If you click on her name, it will take you to a freebie at her site. I've bought both the August/September pack and the October pack. We're having fun with it and it doesn't take a lot of time. I bought some composition books from Dollar Tree and then made a simple label with their name and math journal. I did it a couple of weeks ago but I couldn't figure out the best place to store them. This week I came up with the genius idea to store them on their supply caddies at their tables. It makes it so easy to get them out and work in and put them away. My goal is to do about 3 a week. I like how Mrs. Wills has made them with a variety of math skills. Right now we're just working on simple numbers and colors. Next week we'll tackle some patterning.

After reading some of Literacy Work Stations , I reworked a few things with my centers (I hope to make them work stations one day but we're not quite there yet.) I worked harder on having mini lessons to discuss the expectations at the centers. We made charts for our Promethean board and reading center. Those two centers seem to be working better. Next week, I'm going to work on introducing a little more choice. In the math game center, they will have the choice between 3 games we've already played. I'm also introducing the see the teacher center. I'm going to try to work with one small group a day. Right now the kids go to one center a day and I'm hope we'll eventually be able to rotate but my sanity can't handle it yet.
I made some little letter books over the summer after being inspired by Fran Kramer's little folding books she does. I had every intention of using them the week we did the letter but they just weren't ready. But this week was a review week of m and a. They did the little books this week and they went really well. We reviewed our  circle maps of the letters and I'm trying to get them to use some invented spelling. It's going ok. Hopefully, they'll get the hang of it as we go on. Next week, I'm being evaluated the first time. (Tennessee has a new system. Every teacher gets evaluated at least 4 times.) It is a planning one so I turn my lesson plan in Monday and then on Wednesday my assistant principal is coming by for a visit. We're going to be working on writing. I'm crossing my fingers it goes well.

Anyway, here's a free copy of letter books for the letters m, a, s, and p.
What have you been doing in your class this week? I love to see others ideas and classes.

Literacy Centers and the Letter A

Next week we're going to be working on the letter A. While we have already gone over all the sounds and go over them everyday, our reading series (Treasures) is designed to focus on one letter a week. Last week was our first attempt at literacy centers and they went well. We also had a special rotation on Friday of centers related to the letter M and monsters. I would like to do a letter celebration every Friday. So this week is A and apples.
Here are our centers for during the week:

1. Play dough - Using the alphabet cards from Kindergals, my kids have been making their letters with play dough and then I'm going to add some sight words from Fran at Kindergarten Crayons and her sigh word packet. I'm adding a recording sheet this week. They have to highlight the letters they make. You can get that here.
2. Stamping Center - Inspired by  Work Smarter Not Harder, I made a name stamping sheet that some of them are still working on. You can get that at  an earlier post. I also added one I made with our sight words from this unit. You can get that here. 
3. Math Exploration - They are going to be exploring with unifix cubes. I've made some number cards that they can match with quantities of the cubes. We haven't done much counting with our math series and I feel like we need a lot of practice with those skills. So far in the math series, we've working on sorting and now position words.
4. Math Game - I bought Kreative in Kinder's dice unit on her Teacher's notebook. If you haven't checked out her stuff you should. She's great. The kids are going to play a monster themed one this week. Then on Friday for apple day we're going to play an apple themed one from her Apples unit.
5. Computer center
6. Promethean Board - a picture sorting flipchart. They will sort pictures of things that start with m and things that start with a. This will be a change from their starfall they have been doing.(I'll be posting my A flipcharts later this week so check back)
7. Reading center - This is the first time they are going to this center. So for now they're just going to read quietly on the carpet. We're going to talk about the behavior for the reading center and make an anchor chart to hang there to show them what to do. I'm hoping to incorporate the 3 ways to read a book I have been seeing all over blog world.
I've been trying to introduce a new center every rotation and make sure we practice the activities so the centers will go more smoothly. So this week we're going to get ready to start the listening center on the next rotation. I want to go over the procedures like turning the pages and pushing the buttons. I also want them to complete a listening sheet as a class first. 

Most of the apple centers we're going to do come from Kreative in Kinder's apple literacy and math centers. We're going to use her dice game, her alphabet matching game, and hopefully her apple poem for an art project. Be sure to check back at the end of the week for pictures of our activities.

Random Post!

I don't have much going on this weekend which is actually kind of nice. I think I need a little bit of time to just veg out at home. I need to finish a baby blanket for our P.E. teacher and his wife. They just had their first child a few weeks ago. I started it this summer but just couldn't seem to get it finished once I started getting ready for school. So hopefully I'll finish it this weekend.
I have some school things to work on too. I plan to post some literacy centers for the letter A and my flipchart for my promethean board for the letter A.  I was doing my usual Saturday morning blog stalking and saw a how to on how to make a sign with the student's names. It was on Peace, Love and Learning. So I played around with that this morning. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it but I thought it turned out well. It was pretty easy to do. I did mine on publisher but Donna used power point. 
Check back tomorrow for my A activities and flipchart.

Blogging Project Update

I seriously have the best, most wonderful boyfriend in the world. Monday after I posted my blog about the blogging projects I wanted to work on, he took me to the Dollar Tree, Dollar General and JoAnn's to find some materials for the projects I wanted to tackle. I was looking for some bags to use for the carpet bags (which I'm going to call Gear Bags because every time I say carpet bags I think of carpetbaggers.) I couldn't find anything at Dollar Tree that weren't too girly and my class is almost all boys. I did find some silly straws for the birthday balloons. So he suggested that we go look somewhere else and we went to Dollar General. I couldn't find exactly what I wanted but this is what I found for $ .75 each so I got them.

But not before looking all over the store and obsessing about candy to put in my treat jar I had found. He didn't rush me, he just offered an opinion. I also  bought a photo album to put another idea I had seen into place. This can be found at A Garden of Children. I think I'm going to do their pictures and then their I am sentences they wrote week before last week.
Then he took me to JoAnn's where they had their huge packs of scrapbook paper on sale for $9.99. He helped me pick out some that weren't too girly and even paid for them. So I'm set on scrapbook paper for a long while.

I used the scrapbook paper and the straws to make this birthday surprise for my kids. I'm excited I got it done early. My first birthday in the class is Thursday.
I also finished my gear bags. I first had to decorate them a bit. I only got 10 so the kids are going to have to share because my space and budget are limited. I put a whiteboard, marker and sock for each student in the bag. There is also the basic red, blue, green, yellow crayons for each student and a pencil.

Here's a peek at what's inside them. 
Eventually I'll put their calendar folders when we tackle that project in the bags. I also plan on putting baggies with the math manipulatives that they need. Passing stuff out takes just way too long. So hopefully this will help.
Here's what they looked like when completed and stored.

My favorite blogging projects

I follow over 50 blogs on my google reader and then I have some that I have bookmarked. I love love love looking at what other people are doing in their classrooms. It has helped me be more excited about teaching and it gives me an outlet for my own creativity. But I have a horrible habit of trying to do too much. I have so many ideas swimming around in my head from other blogs, it is becoming a little overwhelming. There are so many things I want to try and make that I can't quite keep up with them all. So instead of awarding my top 10 blogs because I don't think I could choose just 10, I'm going to post some of my favorite lessons and projects that I want to try.
The biggest change I wanted to make in my class this year that I have been inspired from blogging is to work harder with my literacy and math centers and small group work. I have a post about how I'm doing that coming up this week. That's an ongoing major change that I'm making.
I'm a list person. It helps me to make a list of the things I need to do or want to do to actually get them done. So I'm attempting to make a list now of all the projects and lessons  I would like to try and then blog about each one. I'm learning that blogging is giving me a different accountability.
So here's my list in no particular order:

• Carpet bags from Kindergals - I think this will really help organize the kids materials and hopefully make transitions smoother which help my mental state during math time. With the new evaluations that we're going through this year, that is something that is evaluated and right now I stink big time with it.
• Whose in the Club? book from Kindergarten Rocks! I've seen this idea on a variety of blogs. This was just the one I found most recently. I like the idea of having a book for the students to sign when they complete something. I also like the idea of posters around the room but I'm not sure where I'd put them. I'm still mulling over what categories I would have but it's something I need to get on. We still do a Brigance assessment at the end of the year where they need to know their birthday, address and phone number so I can see this helping with that.
• Calendar notebooks - I've seen these all over the blogging world too. I downloaded the freebies at Growing Kinders and have Kim Adsit's packet on TPT on my wish list. I love this idea but I'm a little scared to try it. Right now my kiddos are just not ready. I'm hoping by October they will be and if not then I look at starting this in January. I like the idea of them being more active during calendar time and this is similar to something my mentoring teacher did when I was student teaching. 
• Writing Center - I have seen so many good writing centers and I have all kinds of ideas of what I want to do in my head. I just can't seem to get on it. Some of the sources I want to use are the posters from Chalk Talk and then some word cards with different pictures depending on the unit or theme we're studying. I found some back to school ones  and sentence frames from Teacher Bits and Bobs. 
• Birthday balloons - This is another idea I've seen in various places in the blogging world. I liked this one from Kindergarten Rocks. Using silly straws with a balloon for a present for the kids. I have my first birthday this week so I need to get on this one. 

Here are some lessons I want to do in my class or have already attempted.

• Lunchroom Expectations - I loved this idea at Kindergarten Kindergarten about working on cafeteria expectations. We started this project but haven't finished it yet so I'll post some pictures when we finish. The lesson went really well. They were good at coming up with the good and bad choices. Check this lesson out.
• Germs lesson- Over at Little Miss Kindergarten she has a great lesson about germs. I need to do this lesson this week. I've already got kids coughing all over each other and not covering their mouths. I think this will be a great visual to help the kids remember not to spread germs.
• Tattling Lessons - There are some great tattling lessons out there in the blogging world. Tattling drives me crazy but I have to remember that the kids don't know what it is until I teach them about it. I'm going to start with this lesson from What the Teacher Wants. I also love the idea over at Kindergals for discouraging tattling.
• Kind words lesson - I saw this great lesson on someone's blog which I cannot find right now where they had kids say unkind things to a paper child and crinkle the paper. Then they said nice things and uncrinkled the paper showing how it still hurts the kid. Hopefully I can find where I saw it and give them credit. I love this idea.

So there's my list of my favorite projects and lessons that I can't wait to try out.  Have you done any of these activities or projects? How did they turn out?

Inspiration vs. Stealing

I've read several blog posts where people have created things and then someone else stole it and started selling it. It makes me really nervous about posting things that I've created. Not because I'm afraid something like this will happen to me but because I don't want anyone to think I've stolen their creations. I find myself inspired by the things I see online and want to try to create my own materials to use in my class. I have issues and don't always like to use what other people have done. It seems that I have this need to tweak it a bit. I have been very inspired by Fran at Kindergarten Crayons. She makes these really cool tiny books to practice sight words. Well I worked on this today and figured out how to do it. I'm really proud of myself for figuring out how to turn the pages around.(If anyone has publisher and wants to know how to flip the text, leave me a comment and I'll be glad to share) So here's my question, what is ethical to post? Would it be ok for me to post this little book that I made? I looked at Fran's and then created one with the sight words that we use. Is it ok if you aren't selling it or if it is based off something that they aren't selling? If you give complete credit to the person who created the original , is it ok? I'm very confused by all this. I don't want someone to think I was stealing. I love this community of blogging teachers and love that you can put your questions and ideas out there for other teachers to use. I have always thought the sign of a good teacher is someone who is willing to teach other teachers and to share what they know. When I was in college, I wrote a honors paper about good teaching practices in reading. There were so many amazing teachers that I observed and the best were the ones that dragged out all their materials to show me and copy for me. I want to be one of those teachers but I want to do it ethically. So some advice is needed.

Bloggy Happiness

I spent the day yesterday working in my room and it is finally starting to look like a classroom again. I would say most of my projects were blog inspired.
I created a graffiti bulletin board. This idea came from the blog Minds in Bloom. The butcher paper I put on it will change either weekly or every two weeks. There will be a topic on it and the kids can draw and write different things that have to do with the theme. I think the first one will be summer vacation.

I also worked on my behavior chart. That was definitely inspired by the blogging community. I'm using the clip chart with the positive spin on it. I'm pretty excited about trying this out this year. I'm also using the rules that were posted on The Polka Dot Patch blog. I printed them, added them to cutesy card stock and now just need to laminate and post. I'm super excited to be trying something new this year. I think it's important to change things up so that you don't get bored.

I still have some projects left to work on but luckily I have about 2 weeks before the first student arrives in my room. My brain is a little full today because we had our first day of a staff retreat. It was overwhelming discussing all the new things coming up this year. New math series. New common core standards. New evaluation system. I'm really trying to be as positive as possible this year. This blogging community has really helped me be excited about trying new things and the upcoming school year. But how do you cope with all the negativity you can find in a school? How do you handle the other teachers that aren't excited about the school year? I would love to hear your ideas about how to stay upbeat and positive.