A Manic Monday Freebie

Happy Monday!

I have just begun my 4th week of school today.  I have to say I have one of the best classes ever.  I was sitting at a table today, just watching them.  It was so wonderful.  Everyone was on task doing what I had asked them to do.  There was a hum in the air of little ones hard at work.  I was very impressed.

Because of my good fortune of having such a terrific class this year, I have decided to share the graph I made with my class last week as a freebie.  The students graphed their favorite color.

Here is a picture of it:

Click here to download my freebie to make this graph.

Check out the other freebies at Manic Monday.

Thank you for visiting my blog.  I hope to see you again soon.

A Reason to Write - Parent Journals

Well, I have survived my first week of school.  It was only 4 days but, that is long enough for my little kinders.  I love my class.  They are doing a wonderful job of learning all of the rules and  procedures.  Most of them are catching on very quickly.  We are going to have a great year!

My school is focusing on teaching writing this year.  I know that when my students have a reason to write they are more likely to want to write.  So after much careful thought and a little luck while looking for a file on one of my jump drives, I found an idea I had used several years ago.  I had my students write in Parent Journals.  A Parent Journal is a spiral notebook where the students write (or draw) a note to their parents/grandparents/their family.  Then whoever the note was written to writes a note back to the student and returns the Parent Journal the next day. I had my students write in the journal on Friday and take it home.  Hopefully, each of my students brings the journal back on Monday.  The the students can share their journals and responses with each other.

Here is a link to the note I attached to the front of the spiral notebooks.  It is in Word, so that you can change it to suit your needs.  

Parent Journal Letter

I have linked this freebie with Manic Monday at Classroom freebies.

If you are unable to open the letter, please email me or reply to this post and I will email it to you.  Thank you for visiting my blog today.

My Bulletin Boards

Woohoo, I woke up this morning and checked my blog to find out that I have 100 followers.  YAY!  I'm so excited that 100 people have chosen to follow my blog.  Thank you so much for your support.

I promised earlier this week to share my bulletin boards that are in my classroom with you.  So here goes....

I made this bulletin board based on one that I found on Pinterest.  It is on Mrs. Saylor's log.  One of the teachers across the hall let me borrow her Dr. Seuss bulletin board stuff and I printed out the words and attached them to Dr. Seuss scrapbook paper that I found at JoAnn Fabrics.

Here is another one....

This is my Family Tree bulletin board.  My aide cut out the apples on our die cut machine and she made leaves for the tops of the apples and wrote each students' name on an apple.  I took pictures of my students and their families at our Meet the Teacher/Ice Cream Social night.  I am going to print them out and put them on the tree so my students can see the pictures on the first day of school.  I'm hoping it will help some of my kinders not miss their families so much.

This is my job board.  I have the students' names on hands attached to popsicle sticks.  Then I put the popsicle stick in one of the job's pocket to show the students who is doing which job each week.  I purchased the banner at the top at The Dollar Tree.

This is my Parent Information board.  My classroom theme is children's literature so I found The Very Hungry Caterpillar fabric on Ebay to use for the top and bottom border.  The banner at the top I purchased at The Dollar Tree for a $1 of course.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog today.  I hope to see you again soon.

Pictures of My Classroom

I am so embarrassed.  I was doing so well with posting on my blog at least once or twice a week this summer.  Then I am back in the classroom for just a couple of weeks, getting my room ready (not even teaching) and I can't manage to get one blog post in.  I'm so sorry and I will try to do better as the school year begins.

Onto my classroom, I have many pictures to share with you.  Last night was our Meet the Teacher/Ice Cream Social.  I met almost all of my students.  It is going to be one of my best years ever.  (I have 20 students and a full time aide.  I am a very lucky girl.)

The sign my daughter made to welcome my students.

My whole group area with the Phonics Dance cards on the wall.

My cubbies with new cubby clips.  An idea I found on the Organized Classroom blog.

I used name tags I found at JoAnne Fabrics, instead of printing ones (I already used a bunch of color ink in my printer and this seemed like a better idea for me).

This is my lunch board.  The students put up a magnet with their name on it to show if they are buying lunch or packed a lunch.  On the shelf, is everything I need to put together my G.O. (get organized) binders.  There is always something else to do, isn't there?

My library center.

The "smart cookies" that each student received after finishing his/her Lake Ontario Scavenger Hunt.  I found the idea on the Dilly Dabbles Doodles blog and adapted it to my classroom.

Thank you for sticking with my blog and coming back to visit me.  I will post pictures of my bulletin boards later this week.  (I promise.....)

My 3rd Monday Made It

Three weeks from tonight, I will be getting ready for my first day of school.  I went to school to really begin getting ready.  I had my daughter take pictures after we had begun moving stuff around.  (I am "picture-taking" challenged, so I have learned to have her take pictures.  And I forgot to take pictures when were first got there.)

Here are a few of the pictures:

This will be my calendar wall and my whole group carpet.

My library center is the white shelf in the corner.

This is my mess that still needs to be cleaned up.

But at least my furniture is where it needs to be (besides the tables).

Hopefully, I will be able to post pictures of my room looking done (or almost done) at the end of the week.  I need to get my room pretty much ready by next week, because I have the kindergartners comes in for beginning of year assessments next week.  I don't want to scare them with a crazy classroom.

I have also linked up with Monday Made It.

I know there are many Teacher Toolboxes all over Pinterest.  But I would like to add mine.  The teacher across the hall and I worked on them last Wednesday afternoon.  I think they came out looking very good.  The "toolboxes" we used had been used before and had sticky stuff on the front of the drawers.  So we laminated the signs on the front of the drawers and used velcro to attach them to the front of the drawers.

My Toolbox

Check out all the other wonderful things on Monday Made It.

Monday Made It

Thank you for looking at my classroom today.

My 1st Sale

I love to buy things on sale.  That might be why Kohl's is one of of my favorite stores.  I bought a cardigan, a pair of pants and a blouse for under $40 yesterday.  I save $109 according to my receipt (and the salesperson).  It really is like "getting paid to shop".  (Not that my husband ever looks like he really believes me when I tell him that.)

So since I love a sale, I have decided to join TpT sale that is taking place today and tomorrow.  I have 20% off all items in my store plus with the sale that TpT is having, that makes everything 28% off.

Click here to go to my sale.

I am going into my classroom tomorrow and trying to get furniture moved around and put where it belongs (with the help of my 2 teenagers).  So hopefully, I will be able to share some before and after pictures of my classroom with you next week.

Enjoy the sale!

What To Do With ALL Those Tiny Erasers?

If you are like me, you have difficulty not buying those packages of tiny erasers in the Dollar Spot at Target or the ones that are only 88 cents at Walmart.  I admit that I have a ton in my classroom.  And (shhh... don't tell my husband) I bought more of the ones at Walmart.  The ones for back to school are soooooo cute.  Who can resist?  And they were only 88 cents.

Here is a picture of the ones from Walmart and some of the ocean ones I have.

So to make me feel a little less guilty about buying something that maybe I didn't really need.  I made an activity to go with the erasers.  It is a paper for the students to sort the erasers on and write how many he/she has of each eraser.  To differentiate, you could have some of the students color in the circle of the largest number or the smallest number.  You could also laminate this worksheet and have the students write the numbers using dry eraser marker.  

I have made this a freebie for those of you who felt the "pull" from those cute little erasers and bought them.

Click {here} to get this freebie.

I have also linked up with Teaching Blog Addict's Freebie Friday.  Make sure you visit them and grab some other freebies.

Thank you for visiting my blog today.  Come back soon.