Back to school

It's almost that time of year again!  I'm having very mixed feelings about going back after spending all day, every day with my sweet Rae.  A huge part of me just wants to stay at home with her and, not going to lie, homeschooling her through kindergarten has crossed my mind.  I'm so in love with showing her new things, making her nutritious breakfasts and lunches, reading whichever books she hands me, and just watching her grow up in front of me.  This summer has been so rewarding and I don't want it to stop.

But I know that I love teaching kindergarten.  I remember being so thankful for a career that I love and being surrounded with children that I love even more.  I remember the times that I laughed so hard my principal peaked her head in to see what was so funny.  I remember feeling the love from heartfelt "thank you's" from parents and former students.  Teaching really is the most rewarding career I could have chosen and I am forever grateful for the opportunity to touch so many lives.

I decided to take a walk down memory lane today to try to bring all of those great memories to the forefront again.  Trying to help myself prepare for the weeks coming up ever so soon.  These are a few of my favorite moments from my classroom...

This is one of my very favorite back to school activities where the kids listen to No David then write about what David can do in the classroom.  This student thought that David can play and listen to the teacher.  Precious!

These are a beautiful way of teaching the children about community.  Each layer is a different part, starting with "self" and ending with "state".

Experimental play is so crucial in kindergarten!  I like putting magnets out in the beginning of the year.

Real world objects are fun and what can be more fun than comparing and contrasting pumpkins at Halloween!?

I loved watching my students complete my first worksheet that I ever made for Teachers Pay Teachers.

My favorite graph of all time!  I still have this folded up in a cabinet.

 Fostering a love of books is one of my main goals as a teacher of young children.  Here, they are drawing the covers of their favorite books in preparation for book reviews.

This is my all time favorite bulletin board display.  We started off our Spring unit on plants with a reading of the book Tops and Bottoms and made our own garden with descriptions of what each plant is, like "flower", "root", or "stem".

 This was a Pinterest victory!  Sight words scroll by on a digital picture frame. 

 These chick glyphs are so silly, what's not to love?

 I love to listen to students working cooperatively.  Here, they are writing about their favorite part of Bear Snores On.

Our countdown to the last day of school is legendary with a small strip of paper inside each balloon detailing a quick and fun activity for the day.  

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Prepping for long-term sub

Not only have I been busy nesting at home, I have been very busy preparing my classroom for a long term sub.  No easy feat and especially cumbersome when you are as OCD as me!

I started prepping my filing cabinets by organizing all of my papers, trashing obsolete ones, and making copies.  My kindergarten team is seriously ready for the first 9 weeks with all of our copies! I made 25 copies of each paper since I don't know my class size.  You can see the large labels in the picture above, I like these because it makes things so much easier to find than the normal sized file labels.  Plus my brain is kind of funny in that it remembers colors associated with certain titles, might be a little freaky but sure makes it easy to find that orange-colored Pete the Cat file.  I also attached sticky notes to certain worksheets if I tend to do something differently than the directions or if I know a book that goes particularly well with it.  I'm going to be honest, there are a bunch of sticky notes in my files!  I have a problem with relinquishing control... there I said it!

I placed my learning centers in my filing cabinets as well.  This is new for me, normally they are just in a plastic crate in the order that I use them.  However, I want my sub to know exactly when the appropriate time is to use each learning center which is why I placed them within my chronologically ordered filing cabinet.  I made hot pink label papers for all of my centers, you can see them evenly spaced in my cabinet picture above.  I glued the title page to the outside of the file and placed all of the papers and materials inside like so...

Each paper has been copied and clipped to a baggie with the contents for that activity inside.  By the way, I adore Julie Lee's centers!

I then went through and labeled my bins where I place the students' extra school supplies.  I never labeled them before because this was my kingdom and I already knew where to look for supplies, no sweat.  But imagine how frustrating it would be to have to look high and low for an extra glue stick because the sub placed them somewhere else.  Hmmm, maybe that's just my own personal nightmare. =P

I went completely nuts with documenting where things go, even the students' things like writing tablets and math workbooks.  If you have a system figured out that works for you I think it would be nice to come back to that same system already established in your classroom.

The documentation continued with my schedule.  I know that schedules look nothing alike from year to year but this will give my sub something to go off of.  This is probably one of the most time consuming parts of beginning a year and I want to make it as easy as I can for my sub.

Finally, I went around my entire classroom taking pictures of where furniture is located.  Each August I come back to tables piled up in a corner, cabinets turned around against a wall, and chairs stacked to the ceiling.  It is a crazy few days rearranging my classroom each year!  I might spend hours tweaking the location of a freaking bookshelf because it affects the location of my computers 20 feet away.  So this year, I got up close and personal with the location of everything in my room so that things can just be rolled, carted, and pushed back to where they should be.  No more guessing and moving 10 times.

So that's how I have prepared my classroom for a long term sub starting at the beginning of the year.  I've come to terms with this small amount of control over a situation where I seem to have none whatsoever.  

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Countdown to the last day of school

We are in the final stretch of school and have been draggin' butt with grades, tests, and long writing assignments.  I decided that we need a little pick-me-up to get us through the final days of school.

Check out what the kids saw on Tuesday morning as they walked into our class...

Their eyes nearly popped out and nobody could close their mouth.  It was hilarious to watch everyone round the corner and stop halfway in the door.

I have 22 balloons hanging from the ceiling for each child in my class.  Each balloon has a small strip of paper with a quick but very fun activity for the kids to do that day.  We count down the days by popping one balloon a day and doing the activity inside.  The balloon is popped by the child whose name is written on the crepe paper streamer taped to the balloon.  Some of the activities I have are "Play hot potato" or "Shaving cream creations".  They all take less than 15 minutes but the kids get super excited each day to see what they get to do.  It's a blast!

This week was also Teacher Appreciation week.  My kids and parents were amazing!  I feel so spoiled and very much appreciated.  I don't think I could have dreamed up a better group of kids to have during this time in my life.  They are so special and loving which is a good thing because this momma is starting to really look forward to relaxing by the pool all summer!

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Teachers Pay Teachers

I have recently started making my own units to sell on www.TeachersPayTeachers.com.  If you are a teacher and have never heard of this website you need to go to it right now!  Teachers Pay Teachers is the best thing to happen to my teaching career; it is full of beautiful units made by teachers and sold to teachers.  What I love the most is that sellers are just normal teachers and are easily reached if anything needs to be tweaked in their units.  No more white out and crooked copies!  

Go check it out and, while you're there, please go to my store too.  Look at what I have so far, become a 'follower' of my store and you'll also receive notifications when I post new items for sale or freebies.  

Falling for Numbers

A Handful of Love [FREE]

Turkey, Turkey punctuation book [FREE]

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Kindergarten, what?!

I am still in shock. 

S  H  O  C  K

Last week I learned that I was being transferred from one school to another and from one grade to another.  And not just a little transfer in grades, I'm talking from one end of the spectrum to the other.  I'm now a KINDERGARTEN teacher!  My old school hired too many first grade teachers but I was the last one hired so I was transferred to a school that needed a kindergarten teacher and a first grade teacher from my old school took over my old fourth grade class.  Make sense?  I know, it doesn't make a whole ton of sense to me either. 

Even though my fourth grade students miss me very much, I keep receiving emails from them, I know that they are very happy with their new teacher and I'm UNBELIEVABLY more happy as a kindergarten teacher!  I had no idea how much I was missing the little ones and all the adorable things that I can do with them.  Crafts, paints, picture books, oh my!

I am literally on pins and needles waiting for Christmas crafts to come around, not to mention all the cute falls crafts I can make right now.  I did a little browsing around one of my favorite blogs, One Pretty Thing, and came across these SUPER CUTE and easy crafts.  Click on the pics to follow the links.

Plaster spoon bugs.

 

Pipe cleaner finger puppets.

Hand print spider!

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First Weeks of School

What a great first two weeks of school!  Everything is unbelievably busy but I'm actually still alive and doing well.  I'm so glad that my second week was better than my first week... if we keep up this pace, I should be sitting very pretty by the end of the year!  So proud of my kids.

I am also very proud of this board outside my classroom!  I made the tree leaves out of sheets of foam in two shades of green.  The sheets of foam come in large, rectangular sheets and I cut them out in random, wavy cloud shapes.  I then glued them together on the ground and, when they were FINALLY dry, I stapled them up on the wall.  The trunk is made from brown paper and the picket fence is made from white foam sheets.  I'm a huge fan of foam sheets!!!

I love having groups, although the kids have to search for their desk every morning because I'm still playing around with their seating arrangements.  I'll get it figured out soon.

My desk!  So happy I could hang my "Welcome Friends" flag, it used to be hanging outside the front door of our old home. 

Every day I place extra copies of papers in these folders.  Makes taking care of make-up work easy!

I love these pens, so easy to make and they look so pretty.  Plus, I get them back every time!

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Give a Hoot

I am so in love with owls now!  Ever since getting that wild hair to make my own thank you cards, I can't stop thinking about how I'm going to carry this theme on to my teacher career.  I can just see my future classroom now.... owls everywhere!  And not just any boring, run-of-the-mill owls, but colorful and funky owls.  After a little browsing through Etsy, I've found my perfect classroom accessories.  

 Magnets by Leearthaus

Steel Memo board by EkohDesign 

 

Wall Decal by WowWall

Book shelf by MapleShadeKids

Plush bookends by AprilFoss

 CrAzY owl clock by Zanzara

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Valentine craft

This is mostly just a note-to-self kind of post.  I SO want to do this with my own class of kids.  Wouldn't parents just absolutely love receiving this valentine?  I love how simple and relatively easy to clean up this craft is... just be sure to do it right next to a sink for quick hand washing!

Click on the image to see full instructions. Pin It Now!