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

Friday Randomness

I really hate coming up with titles. I can't ever think of anything clever or funny and that's what I'm going for.Yesterday was our first day back for teachers and then today is the first day back for students. I got absolutely nothing done. It was a work day and I all did was talk. We spent a good part of the morning talking about my engagement and my fellow Kindergarten teacher, Sarah's engagement. It was good but I still have a ton of things to do to get ready for next week. I am about as ready as you can be for a one day week. I had to get up early this morning to create something for the kids to do for morning work. I couldn't find anything that I liked or that suited my mood. So I used some clip art from KPMdoodles and created this letter matching activity.

Click here to download from Google Docs

It's a super simple activity but a review of some of the letters we've already talked about. I'm guessing review is going to be a must today. I plan on reading about bucket filling, talking about New Year's goals, and playing a number game (No idea what number game that's going to be yet). I'm hoping it will be a laid back kind of day which means chaos will probably ensue. But I am excited about seeing my kiddos.
My second random thing of the day is I got an email to review a program from K5 learning. It's a math and reading program for home use. I've never done anything like this before and I thought I might give it a try. This is what their website says:
K5 Learning has an online reading and math program for kindergarten to grade 5 students.  I've been given a 6 week free trial to test and write a review of their program.  If you are a blogger, you may want to check out their  open invitation to write an online learning review of their program. 

So I'm going to give this a try. I hope to take some pictures of my areas of my classroom that need help to participate in Clutter Free Classroom's challenge. You can read about it here.  So I might break the rules and post twice today but more likely I'll post in the morning.

And one more random thing. I use Google Reader to keep up with my blog stalking. Here lately it won't update completely. Every few days I'll have a ton of old posts that I have never seen before. It's kind of weird. Anyone else having that problem.

Ok I lied I have one more thing or two. My giveaway ends tomorrow. You can win a lanyard of your choice of colors, some hand cream (all hand made) and my cupcake unit. Check it out here. And I'm having a sale in my Teacher's Notebook store. I have finally sold my first item which I was super excited about. Apparently I'm saving for a honeymoon. (At least that's what Chris tried to tell me last night.) That's probably not a bad idea.

This is really the last bit of randomness. I enjoyed the comments on my Dr. Jean and fluency post. If you have any other fluency ideas, I'd love to keep this discussion going.
Happy Friday to all those who have had full weeks. I guess it's happy Monday and Friday all rolled into one for me.

Kiss your brain!

     Last week I joined the linky party at Clutter Free Classroom about how I spent my winter break. (You can check that post out here.) I blogged about a song book that I made using the Dr. Jean songs we sing every morning. I attended a workshop by Tim Rasinski right before break and he was a big fan of singing everyday. But he said the kids needed to see the words for it to be reading. So I got the idea to create a song book. Camille at The Open Door suggested that I just email Dr. Jean and ask her if it would be ok to share it on my blog. So I left Dr. Jean a comment on her blog and with my email address saying I wanted to contact her. She emailed me that day and gave me her email address.(Thanks for the suggestion Camille) I was so excited to get an email from THE DR. JEAN! I'm going to back up and give you a history of my love of all things Dr. Jean. When I did my internship (year long student teaching) in first grade, my mentoring teacher was all about Dr. Jean. I think she had attended a workshop led by her. This was the beginning of my love of all Dr. Jean. When I taught 3rd grade, I didn't use her music as much but in kindergarten and first grade I use them all the time. I love Dr. Jean's blog as well and all her other ideas. I've been dying to meet her and this past fall she was in Tennessee for a conference but I couldn't get the money to go. Hopefully this summer I'll have another opportunity. Ok back to my story at hand. So I emailed Dr. Jean my song book and my reason for creating it. And she emailed me back the very same day. The subject line read Kiss your Brain. She told me my songbook was adorable and that when I posted about it on my blog to let her know so she could link up. I was so excited that I texted Chris all about it (He does such a great job of understanding all my crazy kindergarten teaching blogging self) and called my sister to tell her. I was dying to blog about it but I already had posts planned for the next few days. (The emailing occurred on Monday but this won't post until Thurs.) I'm super excited to share my song book I created and even more excited that Dr. Jean emailed me and was a nice as I would have thought she'd be.
    I 've been wanting to share some of the ideas that I learned about from Tim Rasinski. The workshop was all about fluency and word study. It gave me a ton of ideas and was very developmentally friendly. So I'm going to try sharing an idea a week and how I'm going to use it my classroom.
       I spent a lot of time last year when I was teaching first grade, working on fluency with my class. It was nice to here that it was a research based method I was using without even knowing it. I can also see some places that I can improve in. Mostly about the sources that I'm using to practice fluency. Rasinksi talked a lot about reader's theater and having kids perform things they are reading. I really like this idea. I don't think my kinders are ready for Reader's Theater but I can see using Nursery Rhymes to work on fluency. This was the routine he suggested for working on fluency:
Monday - Introduce material and read it to the kids
Tuesday - Choral reading of material
Wednesday - Read on their own
Thursday - Dress Rehearsal
Friday - Perform
Right now I do phonemic awareness activity everyday using poetry. Right before Christmas break, we worked on one poem for the whole week doing different activities with it. I got the idea for what I was doing everyday from Leslie at Kindergarten works (You can read all about her wonderful strategies here. If you haven't read her routines on poetry, you should. ).I think I add in the reading on their own, and performing the poem. I'm thinking maybe part of their homework might be to work on a poem every night at home. I could start out with nursery rhymes because kids don't have as much exposure to them anymore. One of other strategies that Rasinksi talks about is having kids read along with recording readings. I'm exploring what I could do with that. I have 6 out 18 kids in my class are ELL and this strategy is suppose to be good for ELL kids. I'm not sure how to make this accessible to my students. I'm thinking if they have access to the internet then maybe on my website or some kind of podcast.
So this is a long rambling post. For sticking it out with me you can download my song book from google docs.

Click here to download the file

Please leave me a comment if you download. I love comments and the diaglogue created by blogging. I would love to hear your thoughts on fluency instruction. I'll give an update on how these strategies are working and an new strategy next week.

Teacher's Notebook Sale and Freebie

I finally finished my Letter Detective packet and posted it to Teacher's Notebook. It took me forever to get it done for some reason. I've been working on it for months. In honor of finishing the packet and updating my packets that were already up, I'm having a 20% sale. So check it out. And here's a freebie to try out my letter detective unit.
Click here to go to this item in my Teacher's Notebook Store.

Click here to get this freebie.

Please leave me a comment if you download this item and use it. It's nice to know someone out there is getting something out of my creations.

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.

How I Spent my Winter Vacation

I had this whole post written yesterday and I thought saved and scheduled to post this morning. But when I looked this morning, it was no where to be found. No idea what happened to it. So here I am on New Year's morning writing it again and watching Mad Men on AMC. I should probably be doing something more productive like showering and getting ready for church or making breakfast but this is much more enjoyable.
Over my Winter vacation, I haven't really been that productive. At least not quite like I planned. I've blogged a lot thanks to all the great linky parties out there. I reached over 100 followers before the new year and am having a giveaway. (Check it out here. It's open until Jan. 7) I've become a contributor to another wonderful blog, The Best Endings. It's all about books and reading. I'm so excited about this venture. Check the button out on my sidebar. If you like to read, it's a a great blog to check out. I've already downloaded a sample of a book recommended and will probably get the book. I've been reading The Daily 5 and some other books on my new Kindle. I am enjoying Daily 5 and can't wait to implement some of this in my classroom. I'm still looking for some answers to some questions. So if you're willing to help, please let me know. Holly at Crisscross Applesauce in First Grade has some great posts about Daily 5 on her blog. So I've read some of those.
I've downloaded some clip art to use in some packets but I haven't made the packets yet. I did update my items on Teacher's Notebook. Hadar from Miss Kindergarten suggested that I show some pictures of what is in the packet so I've fixed those. I've worked a little bit on a letter detective packet. I hope to have it finished and some freebies to offer by tomorrow. I also made a song book to go with the songs we sing everyday. I went to an amazing fluency and phonics workshop right before break and this was my interpretation of on of his ideas. I would love to share it but I'm not sure if I should. They are all Dr. Jean song lyrics that I got from her website. Does anyone know if it would be ok to share?

I've spent a lot of time with my fiance and family. I'm still getting used to using fiance. We got engaged the Friday before Christmas and I am so excited and happy. We're planning to get married in June at the beach. I haven't really started wedding planning yet. I've also gotten to spend a lot of time with my niece Sophie. I love her to pieces and she's always learning a new word or song. It's so much fun.

Here she is pointing out my eye. It's one of her favorite things to do.I'm going to miss not seeing her every couple of days. I still have a few more days of break. I don't go back until Thursday and the kids don't come back til Friday. So I have more day of fun planned with my beautiful niece. I also have one more day of shopping planned with my mom. And a birthday party for my fiance planned tonight.
I could have written a post about the things I should have done or need to do. I still need to do my lesson plans. I still need to make my flipcharts for the next few weeks. I still need to write Thank you cards. I still need to put clothes away and clean my room.I still need to clean up and organize all my craft supplies that are now all over my guest room. I did a lot of crafting for presents and now I need to get stuff put back away. So good thing I have a few more days of break left. How did you spend your break? Link up with Clutter Free Classroom.