Five for Friday

I think I have linked up with Doodle Bugs Teaching maybe once or twice for this very fun party, Five for Friday. I'm so excited to be linking up today. I actually remembered to take a few pictures from my week. Plus I'm off school today so I had time to blog. Chris has a conference for work in St. Simon's Island in Georgia so I used a couple of personal days and tagged along with him. As soon as I get this post written I'm headed to the pool overlooking the ocean.

So here are my pictures from the week:

1. Last night was open house at school. It was a long day but I enjoyed getting to know some of my families better. I have my kids for 2 years so it is nice to get to know the families really well. I had about 6 families come by. One of my sweet little girls brought me this bag of seeds. She was taking the seeds out a bell pepper and wanted to bring me the seeds. So she did. That's what I love about kindergarten. You get very thoughtful and random gifts.  

2. Last year I bought some of these zipper document folders from Big Lots. I thought I would use them to store centers or activities in and I never did. But I bough more at Big Lots this summer. So as I was working on organizing some things last week I pulled these out. I'm using them to store: stuff to copy, to laminate, today's work, writing center materials, word work materials, and then I used 2 to store everything my sub would need. I'm loving them except I can't seem to peel the label off them. If I could I would make a prettier label. But they are very functional even if they aren't pretty. This one is my word work activities. Right now I have mixed my play centers and my learning centers. It worked well. I worked with a group on word work and an assistant worked with a group for writing. In word work we did some letter matching and in writing they worked on their names. Then I have a group at the reading corner, computer, home center, blocks, imagination station and sensory table. I paired them up because 2 is about all I can handle working together. Currently they are going to one station a day. I hope to get them going to 2 after this week. I also need to change some partners up. 

3. We made our first graph this week. We have been learning about colors so I used this activity I had gotten in Fran Kramer's Pete the Cat unit. They colored  shoe their favorite color. My favorite color is purple. I'm not surprised several of my girls picked that color too. 

4. More Pete the Cat fun. We've been working on recognizing, counting and writing our numbers 1-10 for the past 2 weeks. I introduced them to roll and cover games. They played by themselves for this first round. They did well and we're engaged so I think it was a success. This game is from Little Miss Kindergarten. (I looked and looked for the freebie on her blog but I couldn't find it)

 5. I'm not above bribing kids. The last time I was in kindergarten, I read a post over at Deedee Wills blog about quick treats and every since them I've used them a ton. I usually use some kind of seasonal candy or m and ms. But with all my food allergies I have in my room, I'm using skittles. It amazes me how thrilled kids are with one skittle.

So that's my Five for Friday! Leave a comment and let me know how your week went. We're diving into our math and reading series next week and have our first field trip. I am going to try to be back with a Peek at my week but we will see. Head over the Doodle Bugs Teaching.
I'm headed to the pool with my kindle (and maybe the book Conscious Discipline)

Organization love and a freebie

I don't really have the Sunday Blues; it will probably be more like a case of the Mondays when my alarm goes off. Once I get up and get going it won:t be bad. I just am dreading having to get up to an alarm in the morning. I don't think I've set an alarm once this break and it has been so nice. My husband's alarm has still been going off but I can just ignore it. Tomorrow won't be a bad day. It's a workday so hopefully I can work and actually get some things done. My friend that just got married isn't going to be there so that should cut down on some of the chatting. I also have a follow up appointment for my knee. I'm off the crutches but having some awful swelling my leg and foot. Currently my foot looks like Fred Flintstone's foot. So I refer affectionately to the foot as Fred. I have a few random things for you tonight.
Since it's the new year, I'm trying to get better organized. It's a constant struggle for me. I do pretty well at school but at home it's a different story. Being married and having to share my space helps some. I also now finally have internet at my house so I'm really going to be serious about blogging and creating. To do all these things, I of course had to go shopping for some things to keep me organized. Yesterday we went to TJ Maxx which is always fun and not Chris's favorite place to go. (He hates it) I had seen these organizing things for desks there a few days before. We got one for our mail and then I of course found lots of other things I wanted. It's much more fun to get organized with pretty things. I got a divided organizer for my bathroom ane then these gorgeous black and gold notebooks. They came in a pack of 3 and were only $4. Here's one:

I'm using one to write down Bible verses as I read this new Beth Moore study I started last night. We also went to Books A Million after the TJ Maxx stop. I had 2 gift cards and it didn't take me long to spend that and more. I love to look at their sale items. I found 2 valentine's books on sale: Curious George and Tucker's Valentine. I was originally going to take them to school but I think my niece Sophie will like them more. I might have to go back and get a couple more copies; for my other niece and my class. They were that cheap. I also got another really cool notebook for only $2. It had a B on it and I just couldn't pass it up. I had seen someone's organization new years resolution post about a notebook they used and I was inspired. (I can't remember who it was. If this looks familiar, let me know.)
I split the notebook into several sections and it's going to be my go to book for keeping notes about future posts I want to write, my to dos, math ideas, reading ideas, and unit ideas. I just used small post its to make the tabs.

Hopefully it will keep me organized and focused. The last thing I needed to help me stay organized and together was a pouch for my portable hard drive. I usually kept it at school Monday-Friday and then brought it home on the weekends. But now that I have internet at home, I want to bring it back and forth. I wanted to keep it protected and it needed to be cute. My sister in law sells 31 so I asked her if she had any small zipper pouches she wanted to get rid of. I'd buy it. She wouldn't let me pay her. She's a good one.

I love 31! It's kind of a problem
So I have all my stuff to keep me organized and I've done a fair amount of organizing and cleaning at home. Tomorrow I'll tackle school. Or at least some. I need to get my lesson plans done first. As part of my OWL, I am really trying to be more intentional with my planning. So tomorrow I'm going to do some small group planning. I've got 2 books I'm working on reading about differentiated Math instruction and small group reading.

This is the book I'm working through now. I'm not that far into but I'm jumping into the planning aspect with 2 feet. I created a couple of pages to see if they will work. I haven't tried them and will probably change them as I get into it. But I thought I would share them with you.

Click here to check it out. Let me know what you think. I would love to hear how you keep yourself organized and how you keep track of planning for groups.
I'm linking up with Manic Monday at Classroom Freebies. Be sure to check out all the other freebies there.

 

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.