Super Hero Theme

So I posted the other night that I thought I was going to do a superhero theme in my classroom next year. I'm pretty pumped about it. I didn't have a chance to talk to Chris about it until Friday night and I was going to post this yesterday but I ended up doing a Daily 5 post instead. Anyway, I've decided on 4 group names. I'm going to have The Supers, The Amazings, The Invinsibles, and The Fantastics. I've made some signs to go with these group names. I've also made some small pictures of the groups that I'm going to put on cardstock and laminate to put on my students desks. We can't hang stuff from the ceiling. I'm thinking about changing out the fabric on my bulletin boards as well. One is orange and I can't change it out very easily because my Promethean board was installed on top of it and then one is multicolored. I've been thinking about the whole idea of streamlining my room to only use a few colors for things like that. I'm thinking I might do the bulletin boards in black and then add some accents in red and blue. I don't know if I will or not. I don't have to take all that stuff down so I usually don't over the summer. I also left my student work board up from last year. I hadn't planned on redoing it. But I think I might add some of the tissue paper border I saw on Classroom DIY I think. I do know that I want to make a cape and a mask for the kids to take a picture on the first day of school. Camille at An Open Door has a great post about a super hero project. I'm thinking this would be the perfect way to use these pictures. Check her post out here. 
I was very inspired by Jennifer at Herding Kats in Kindergarten to create a placemat for my class. Hers are super cute but they didn't fit my theme (She has a great Where the Wild Things Are one and a super cute Pete the Cat one.) and I'm going to be teaching first grade next year. So I took her idea and tweaked it to make it work for me. I made sure it was ok with her before I shared it. So I'm sharing the placemat and the group cards. I hope to make some more things with a super hero theme but I don't seem to have enough time in the day to get everything done I want to do.
I like sharing stuff through Scribd because I can see how many downloads it gets and embed the file in the post. But I've had several people say that it doesn't work without having  to pay something. So Click here to get the download from Google Docs.

I started reading chapter 4 of Math Work Stations last night and my head started spinning. Diller shares so many great ideas. I think math Monday will probably have to be on Tuesday again this week to give me time to create some things to go along with this chapter. So be sure to check back for some math freebies.
One last thing, this Thursday there is a bloggy get together for anyone in the East Tennessee area or beyond. We're meeting at the Smoky Mountain Brewery in Gatlinburg on July 5th at 12. If you are interested, please drop me an email so I can give you some directions and traffic pointers.

Super Sleep

Ok so the title should probably be super not sleeping. I was so tired earlier I went to bed and started reading a book. It was a James Patterson and I had to finish it before going to sleep. By the time I finished it, Chris was sound asleep and snoring. So my brain started working and of course that means I started thinking about school. I've been seeing so many cute themes all over people's blogs and have been thinking about what I wanted to do. Originally I was thinking of doing a Mo Willems theme but there have been so many copyright issues, I wasn't sure. Then I started thinking of some kind of Hawaiian theme because I'm now obsessed with everything Hawaii. (If you don't know why, read this post)  
But I have over 3/4 of my class are boys. I already know because I'm looping with my kinders. And boys are really not into flowers and such. I also read a pintersting post from Reading with Mrs. D, I think about a super hero theme. So I think that's what I'm going to do. My theme is going to be Ms. Kerri's Super Students or something like that. Once I thought of that my mind started whirling. So I thought if I came in the living room and blogged about it. Maybe I would be able to sleep. I don't want to do specific super heroes but I do want to have group names. Last year they were animals based off Eric Carle's book. I'm thinking maybe different adjectives. Like the Incredibles. I'm thinking one group could be the supers, one the awesomes, and then I'm at a loss for 2 more adjectives. I guess I could steal the incredibles and have that be one but I'm really trying to stay away from already in place super heroes. I'm sure Chris would help me come up with a couple more ideas but he's asleep. What ideas do you have? I'm also thinking some super hero props for a photo booth for the first day of school. I also searched from some super hero clip art and found some cute stuff at scrappin doodles. I'm pretty excited about this idea so I see some creating in my future. I'm wanting to make a placemat like Jennifer at Herding Kats in Kindergarten made. So check her wonderful ones out if you want to know what I'm talking about. I had some similar last year and loved it. I put them in page protectors with a hundreds chart and it was great. So hopefully, I'll be back tomorrow or today I'm not really sure what day it is anymore with some super hero freebies. I just downloaded my clipart and it's super cute. Now hopefully, I've brain dumped enough and I can go to sleep. If you have any ideas to help with my super hero theme, I would love some suggestions.

A hodge podge of a post

I don't know that I have anything really to blog about. I'm participating in the clutter free classroom's challenge but I didn't actually get rid of any clutter this week. This week's challenge was to begin the purge. I don't know what happened this week but it got away from me. I started cleaning one of my counters. But I didn't actually get rid of anything. I did put some things away that were left over from Christmas. I still have a lot of work to do on it. I planned to take some pictures but I can't seem to locate my camera. That's another problem in of itself. I'm hoping it's just fallen out of my purse and is my car somewhere. So my plan is to finish that counter and the shelves above it this week. Maybe if I work on a little bit everyday I can get it done. So I didn't link up with the clutter challenge this week. Hopefully next week I can do better.
I'm feeling a little discouraged because I didn't work on much this week but yet was there late  everyday. I am ready for next week kind of. I realize that the 100th day is Friday and I"m not really ready. I've asked the kids to send in t-shirts so we can make 100 day shirts. But so far on 2 kids have sent them in. I need to gather some ideas for the day. It has definitely snuck up on me. We have only had 1 snow day this year which is unusual.
I am really struggling to get everything in everyday. I wanted to start Daily 5 this semester and I wanted to work on implementing a writer's workshop type time. While Daily 5 is going pretty well, we're up to 6 minutes on Monday, writing is not going as well. We have written a little bit more since we've been back but I'm having a hard time fitting it into my schedule. It is really hard to accomplish all that I need to in 3 hours. I've already blogged about how discouraged I am with my math instruction. We start a unit on measurement this week and I think I could do a lot of great stuff with it. But it's just a matter of finding the time. So here's my schedule as I put on paper:
8:00-8:20 - Table work time, bathroom break, attendance, lunch count
8:20-8:50 - Calendar and morning meeting. We review a lot during this time and I think it's important
8:50- 9:00 - Phonemic Awareness - we work on our poem of the week
9:00-9:25 - Whole Group Reading, snack
9:25-9:45 - Phonics
9:45-10:05 - Literacy center time and reading group time
10:05-10:15 - Sight word work
10:15 -10:30 - Writing time or daily 5 time
10:30 - Bathroom break and then math
10:50 - Lunch
After lunch the kids have specials and then some of them go home at 12:30.
This is what my schedule looks like when I write it down. But in reality at about 10:50 I realize that I only have about 5 minutes to try to teach math.
I would love to have some input on how I can fit things into my schedule. I've tried some different things with my morning work. On Tuesdays that's usually our sight word practice. I have 16 students in my class right now and 6 of them get pulled out for ELL from 9:15-10:15. It leaves me with 10 students. I've considered just having my phonics lesson as part of my reading group time to give me a little more time. But I also use that time for assessment. If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them.

A day in my shoes

Over at Adventures of  a 6th grade teacher, Miss Klohn is having a her first linky party about a day in your shoes. I thought it sounded fun so I'm joining the party.
A day in my shoes .  .  .
5:20 - My alarm goes off and I hit snooze a couple of times.
5:45 - I finally get up. I fix myself a cup of coffee and sit down at the computer. I check email and blog stalk a little bit. Until I realize I need to get off my rear and get ready for school.
6:15 - I take a shower and get ready for school. I fix my lunch and sometimes my finace's lunch too. (If we forgot to fix him a lunch the night before.)
7:00 - I leave my house and head to school. I only have like a 10 minute drive to work. It's not even enough time for my car to warm up if I don't start it before I leave.
7:15 - Turn on my computers and promethean board. Get the music going for the day. Try to finish things up so I'm ready for the day. Sometimes I go by the library and talk to the librarian about books and other random things instead of doing my work.
7:50 - The bell rings and the kids come in from the cafeteria or the library. I stand at the door and try to get them all to say Good Morning. They work on some morning work at their table. It can be handwriting practice, a little book to make, popcorn word practice or math journals.
8:00 - Announcements, pledge of allegiance and moment of silence. The students continue to work on their morning work while I do attendance and lunch count. My assistant usually checks all their notebooks. The kids also take their bathroom break and answer the morning yes/no question.
Here's an example of some sight word practice we might do. It's rainbow writing for words.

Click here to access this file.  The graphics are from KPM Doodles and Scrappin Doodles.

8:20 - Start Morning meeting and calendar time. This last about 20 minutes depending on what math activities we do. Then we sing a silly song.
8:50 - Phonemic awareness activity - We do an activity with a poem everyday and practice reading it.
9:00 - Whole group reading
9:15 - Snack. My ELL students leave at this time for an hour. So I lose a 3rd of my class. I just realized now that I've lost 2 kids last week the ELL kids are like more than a third of my class now. Plus some kids leave for speech.
9:20 - Word work - we go over all the letters and sounds. Then we use our different strategies to work on words.
9:40 - Literacy center time. The students do 2 rounds of centers and I try to meet with groups and students. Lately I've been just assessing a lot. But report cards are done.
10:00 - Writing time. I'm trying to work more on my writing time and giving it a more workshop feel.
10:15 - My ELL students come back. We do popcorn word practice and then we've been practicing daily 5. Right now we're still working on 3 minutes.
10:30 - Bathroom Break and then math time
10:55 - Lunch - We stay in the cafeteria with the kids. So this time is spent telling them to be quiet, sit on their bottoms, and congratulating them for eating all their lunch. Somehow, I started giving them high fives for finishing their lunch or most of it. Or sometimes just trying something new.
11:15 - Leave lunch and take bathroom break
11:25 - 12:25 - Special Area time for the kids. I eat my lunch during this time and usually run around like crazy trying to do anything that has to be done before the kids come back from specials. I get the kids ready to go home that leave at 12:30.
12:25 - Pick up the kids and take my kids that leave at 12:30 and my fellow teacher's kid that goes home. Take them out to the front of the school. (I have 4 kids that leave at 12:30.)
Come back in and go outside to play if the weather is nice. When the weather isn't nice, we watch a video. My kids are big fans of Kenny the Shark or sometimes we do the Adventure to Fitness.
1:15 - Rest time. I read a couple of chapters out of Junie B. Jones and then the kids rest. I should spend this time lesson planning and etc. But I usually spend some time blog stalking right about now. I also finish my lunch during this time.

We're reading them in order and this is the one we're on. I love Junie B. and so do my kids. This is my only time to get a good read aloud in.

2:00 - Kids get up and have a snack. Then they have some free center time. I try to pull my ELL kids for a reading group and phonic lesson that they missed. I read with other kids. We usually play a game.
2:50 - We go down the ramp to meet the other kindergarten kids. I take kids out to the bus and have bus duty until 3:05. I don't really mind bus duty but I've had several battles with the 8th grade kids giving me attitude. I'm pretty sure they think I'm the devil. And I'm ok with that.
I go back in my room and usually chat a bit before getting to work. And by getting to work I mean staring at my room and trying to figure out what I need to do for the next day and the next week. I waste a lot of time. Sometimes I just give up and take something home and some times I just stay. I usually don't leave school til around 4:30.
I go home and read or watch tv until Chris calls. When he calls and tells me his on his way home, I start dinner.We eat dinner and spend some time cuddled up on the couch. Since we're newly engaged, we're pretty mushy and gushy. I usually fall asleep and he wakes me up to tell me to go to bed. I go to bed and he locks the house up and goes on to his home.

This is Chris and me to a tee. We are goofy and have a lot of fun together.

That's my typical day. It's really not super exciting. But life in kindergarten is never dull. It just seems dull when you read about it.
Today on the other hand is not a typical day. It's MLK day and that means no school. I'm going wedding dress shopping today with my mom, sister, and future mother in law. My 18 month old niece Sophie was going to go but we decided they dress shop people would probably hate us if we had a my wild niece running around.

See she's a wild woman. This is one of my favorite pictures of her. Ok for reading through a day in the life of boring old me. I'm leaving you with a couple of pictures of dresses I like that I pinned on pinterest.

Wish me luck today. My wedding date is June 16 so I need to find a dress soon.

Thanks for reading all about a Day in My shoes. Check out Adventures in 6th grade to see what it's like in everyone else's shoes.

Plan for my clutter

Well it's week two of the clutter free classroom challenge. I didn't remove one bit of my clutter this week and the great part is that according to this challenge, I didn't have to. I just had to come up with a plan. I'm great at coming up with plans. It's the carrying out the plan that I'm not always successful at. I love making lists and planning things. I found this great calendar for decluttering your house on pinterest. I copied January, February, and March in a calendar and I've yet to do one thing. It has small tasks for each day. I got behind and then trying to catch up wast too hard. Maybe tomorrow I'll tackle some of my clutter in my room. That's my bedroom not my classroom. I don't have to tackle that clutter yet. Although I don't know what the challenge is next week.
So here are my rules for things to get rid of:

• I haven't used it in kindergarten or first grade. I teach kindergarten one year and then first the next so if I haven't used it last time I was in one grade or the other. I can get rid of it.
• I have more of said item than I can use in a loop. I have a plethora of sharpies and pens that I've had since my first year teaching. They were donated to the school I was at then. I've moved them more than once. I use them but I have an excessive amount of them.
• It is damaged or broken. 

Those are really all I've got. I like having the paper copy of something I'm going to use. It is easier for me to have it in a file when I want to copy it then to have to print it off again. I also have a shelf of things that the kids have given me over the years. I like this shelf. It reminds me of why I do what I do and it makes me smile. Plus the kids like to see it.
The things that I don't need anymore are either going to be donated, recycled or I'm going to take the teacher books to a used bookstore.
I haven't really gathered any materials to help me purge and organize. But I did make a list of the places I want to work on. I had thought I would try to take an afternoon a week or every two weeks and tackle one of these places. This week I saw lots of places I should have probably taken pictures of to show some of my clutter. I'm definitely more aware of it than I was before.
If you want to join the fun of the clutter free classroom project, check it out here.

Clutter Free Classroom Challenge Linky Party

Does anyone else ever feel like that I have way too much to post about? I have so many ideas in my head that I want to post and then there are all kinds of great linky parties out there. I thought I was pretty organized in my classroom and my home was really what needed some help. But when I returned to school on Thursday and saw the mess I left my room, I changed my thinking some. Then the kids came back on Friday and I started taking pictures I realized I had a huge mess to deal with. So here are my pictures:

This is my file cabinet for first grade. Instead of filing things away last year I just stacked. Then I didn't want to deal with filing it at the end of the year so I crammed it in a drawer. I've been trying really hard not to do that in Kindergarten this year.

 These are my shelves. They are fairly well organized but I still have some things to get rid of and it definitely isn't pretty to look at.

 Here's my reading group table but it ends up being a catch all. By the end of the day I have piles everywhere. I definitely need a system for this.









This is my storage cabinet that I knew I really needed to work on. It's where I store all my things the students bring in and then a bunch of other stuff. I'm actually not even sure what is in there. I'm hoping my playing cards and some other games are in there because I haven't seen those at all this year.






Here's another picture of the cabinet. You can really see the clutter in this one.

This area is where I keep all my resources for the week but it needs some serious help. I get so frustrated trying to find things and keep it clean.

  This is my desk area. I have way too much stuff crammed on my desk. It needs some help big time. I'll clean it off and then it's cluttered again in no time.

So here are my before pictures. I can't wait to tackle some of these areas.
 Check out the other classrooms participating in the linky party here.

Clutter Free Classroom

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.

Classroom Update

So my big grand idea of starting centers this week didn't work out so well. But I think I've gotten them all introduced and we'll be ready to start them on Monday. That will probably be better for them to start them Monday and do the full five day rotation. The only kids I haven't had a chance to introduce stamping to yet are my ELL students. They have their pull out ELL time during center time. In fact, they miss a whole hour of literacy learning. I have to live with it. I hate that I won't really have them for any small group time.
The gear bags are working out pretty well. We've only used them once and it was a little chaotic but I think it will get better as we use them. It was way better than passing out all the materials one at a time. I finally finished my birthday display. It's from looking at lot of different displays.
Last night was Open House so I wanted to get as much finished as possible. . I'm loving my scrapbook paper bought at JoAnn's Monday. I've been using it for everything. I made the Hiss game on Kindergals. But instead of using the snakes as the backs of the cards, I used scrapbook paper.  I have a limited supply of ink and copies so the scrapbook paper worked pretty well. I tried to keep with an animal theme. Check her game out. It was free and my kids have really enjoyed. I realized after playing it with my afternoon games that I taught it totally different than Kim Adsit had created it. But it worked anyway. It is helping me see which kids have ideas about letters and which don't.
I introduced the kids to Pete the Cat this week. They loved the story but I was so disappointed that I could show them the video. It was blocked and when I tried to use the trick I saw on a blog that was blocked too. I'm going to try downloaded the video at home on my laptop and bringing it in. I have bought Fran's Pete the Cat unit and DeAnna Jump's unit. I love the ideas in both and plan on doing a little Pete the Cat each week for a while.
Overall my week was good. Most of frustration is subsiding and the kids are really doing a great job. They make me laugh and smile so much. Next week we jump into the meat of our reading series. The first three weeks of the Treasure series is slow paced and introductory. Next week it starts to move a little quicker. The series teaches a letter a week. I've already introduced all the sounds and I plan of reviewing them everyday but just focusing on the one letter. Check back Sunday or Monday. I plan to have some M resources. I'm debating about making my first unit to sell on TPT. I can't quite decide but I will definitely have some freebies.
Hope you have a happy happy Friday! We get out at 2 pm because of traffic from a car show so I plan on it being a great day!

Last lazy day of summer

Today is my last real day of summer. Teacher workdays are Monday and Tuesday and School starts on Wednesday. I've been in and out of my classroom for the past few weeks but today I'm enjoying being lazy. Of course, the school is closed and I can't go in but it's good to have a day to be lazy. I've enjoyed my summer but am really excited to start a new year.
Yesterday we had a training about our promethean boards at school. There was a lot of information given and a lot of I had figured out on my own just playing around.  But I did learn a couple of really neat things. One being how to allow 2 kids to use the board at the same time. I'm super excited that my board has that built in already and can't wait to let the kids try it out. That information would've been great to know last year when my kids were all clamoring to us the board during free time. I also learned about creating profiles so kids don't have access to all the editing tools when using a flipchart. I'm pretty excited to try this trick out too. I am thinking about making some cheat sheets to help with these things if you're interested in seeing them, leave me a comment and I'll email them to you.

I was also working on some of my beginning of the year letters that I send home with the kids, including my  behavior letter. Because I'm changing my system this year, I had to rewrite my letter. I'm using the clip chart that is all over the blogging world. I realized that I still had some kinks to work out in the system. I'm not sure if kids can move back up the chart once they've moved down to the negative side of the chart. What are some of you that are using this same chart doing? I originally thought they could move from a negative behavior to more positive but I feel like that would be difficult for me to keep track of. Some other opinions would be very helpful.
I'll leave you with the beautiful popcorn poster my sister made for me.

We call our sight words, popcorn words. I plan to put this poster up on a board in front of the meeting area and writing center. I'm using Mrs. Miner's popcorn word set she has in her tpt store to get my template for popcorn kernels with the words on them.Go to her website to find it. I was excited to find someone who uses the same reading series and calls the sight words popcorn words too. Well I'm off to enjoy my last lazy day of summer!

Classroom Update

My sister came yesterday to help me with a few projects in my room. She's super creative and I love any excuse to get her and my niece to come to Gatlinburg. The night before I made my tissue paper and canvas sign for the outside of my door. It turned out really cute but it was difficult to make. I used mod podge and the tissue paper tore easily when it was wet. But it looked really good when completed. I stapled gunned a ribbon to the top of the canvas and hung it up beside my door.

My sister's task was to make coconut trees for my Chicka Chicka Boom Boom display. We are reading this book the first week of school and I wanted to the coconut tree for my reading center. The first day of school the kids are going to decorate the first letter of the name and put it on the tree. I plan on keeping it up all year. She did an awesome job and it looks amazing.

I went to Wal-mart this morning to get a few things and ended up getting more things that I had planned including a new set of Sharpie Fine Point Markers. They had 80s glam colors and I just couldn't resist. Anyone else addicted to buying sharpies. I love them!

On a non class related note, my sweet niece is turning 1 tomorrow. I can't believe she's already a year old. As any good aunt would, I've been buying her books since before she was born. For her birthday, I made her a container full of magnetic letters, numbers and some blocks. I used all my crafty inspiration from other blogs to make it look cute with paint and stickers.

A week from tomorrow is the first day of school, I can't believe it's almost here.

Lamination woes!

I'm not really sure what I spent my day at school doing. Aside from a few kindergarten screenings, I really am not sure what I accomplished. I did get my bulletin board outside my classroom done. I loved the post over at clutter free classroom about ways to display students' work. Click her  button to see all the neat ways other teachers are displaying things in their rooms.




I'm using a combination of the ideas I've seen. Each student has their own space with a clothespin to pin up their work. I'm still unsure about how I'm going to identify their space. I loved the idea of the chalkboard tags but I'm running out of time. I'm thinking I'm going to put each child's picture on their clip. Any other creative but easy ideas I'm missing out on?
 Here's what it looks like so far. My theme is Ms. Kerri's Busy Kindergarten and my boyfriend came up with the title for this board. He's clever like that.

I also laminated my center signs, rule signs and behavior chart. Which apparently I'm not so good at laminated. I accidentally laminated 2 of rules signs together. I'm not sure how I managed to do that. I was able to peel them apart and now I'm going to have to laminate them again.
I've still got to figure out a few things like how to report my kids' behavior each day in the simplest way. One of the other teachers suggested using a color dot on a calendar to report it. I like this idea but I'm also thinking about having the student color their own square in a calendar but I'm not sure they'll be able to do that at the first of the year.
I'm also trying out centers again after a while and I'm not sure how to show my kids which centers they need to go to. I would love any suggestions for how you do this in your classroom.
I love hearing other people's ideas and suggestions.
On a side note, I'm pretty excited about my 15 followers.

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.

Crafty Cubbies

I finally finished the redo of the caddies for supplies on the kids' tables. They looked really rough before and they look much better now and fit in with my Eric Carle theme. This is what they looked like to begin with. The kids had colored all over them and drawn on them two years ago. After working so hard on them this year, I'm going to have to really be firm about treating them respectfully.

My groups are busy caterpillar, busy lady bugs, busy spiders, and busy fireflies. I painted the insects on the top shelf and I was pleased with all of them except the fireflies. It wasn't until I finished that I figured out how I should have painted them. I put the group name on one end and then used the primary (well almost primary. I know green isn't a primary color but you know what I mean) to make polka dots. That matches the other things I've made. I'm pretty excited about them and am so glad I finally finished them. It took a lot longer than I thought to spray paint them white and the fact that I tried to buy cheap paint at Wal-mart that didn't work at all.
I've been seeing some really cool caterpillars made out of lanterns and tissue paper balls that I really would love to make next. My problem is we're not allowed to hang things due to the fire Marshall. If I could figure out away around it that would be next project. But since I probably won't, I think my next project is going to be turning a canvas into a sign outside my door. I'm torn between painting the canvas or using tissue paper or scrapbook paper and doing a collage kind of like Eric Carle's artwork. But I have a little time to decide. The craft store here in Sevier County doesn't have any canvases so I'll have to wait to I go to Knoxville at the end of the week to get a canvas. Which do you think would work best? What crafty projects are working on to get ready for school to start?

Ommmmm! Namaste!

I went to school today and I don't feel like I made much progress. Anyone else feel like they have to make a huge mess before anything comes together? I definitely made a big mess. I did get a cabinet organized, got all my picture books reorganized and brought a couple of projects to work on at home. I'm house sitting for my parents this week, but I ran home to grab a few things and found this wonderful surprise at home.

I'm pretty excited about trying out yoga with my class this year. I like doing it myself and did a few moves with my students last year. But I did a little research and found a  lot of evidence supporting the use of yoga in the classroom. It has health benefits as well as helping them focus and stress relief. I've always done movement breaks and start the day with stretching. We'll see how it goes. I'm excited about it so that's a step in the right direction. What do you do to help your kids have break?

I plan to start on spray painting my table caddies today. Wish me luck! I had no idea what kind of paint to buy at the hardware store. It was a shot in the dark. I'll be sure to post before and after pictures when they are done.

I'm so excited! I'm so excited!

So I have a blog that I keep up with for all the thoughts I have in my head. I recently wrote about struggles with teaching on there and it inspired me to start looking at teaching blogs. There are a ton of teachers out there blogging about their wonderful ideas and things they do in their classrooms. So, here I am giving it a try and starting my own. I've now spent 2 days just looking at blogs and grabbing ideas and getting more and more excited about the upcoming school year.
Right now I'm working on a new theme for the school year. I think I'm going to focus on Eric Carle's books. My kids are in groups and in the past they've been colors, days of the week, and last year they were fruit (to try to encourage healthy habits.) This year I'm thinking : Busy Spiders, Hungry Caterpillars, Grouchy Ladybugs, and Lonely Fireflies. Each group has a organizer from Really good stuff. I used them 2 years ago when I was in Kindergarten. (I loop so I keep my kids for Kindergarten and First grade.) They look pretty rough from the past class. I'm thinking of using contact paper to cover the wood and then decorating it with picture of the animal of the group. Well that was what I was thinking but now I'm thinking of painting them white and then painting an insect to go with their group on each one.
I did create some nameplates that reminded me of Eric Carle.

What do you think?