Thursday, December 5, 2013

Santa's, Candy Canes and Reindeer! Oh My!


During the holidays I tried to catch up and get my room ready for Christmas and collect my thoughts about all the things I wanted to teach for the next 3 weeks.  This first week we are doing Reindeer.  My little ones love learning about animals!  Of course, we had to sing "Rudolph"!  Then we rewrote the song choosing our own names and colored noses. 




 

Since it was cold and rainy for almost the whole week I also revised and made some new Christmas activities for my store on TeachersPayTeachers.  AAAHHH!  I love when I have more than a few minutes to work on my stuff. 

Just click on the images below to go straight to my store!

Christmas Numbers






Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Get Ready to Do a Little Shopping!


I can't believe Christmas is just around the corner! We haven't even carved the turkey yet!  All the sales get me excited about shopping though!! I've been taking down the turkeys at school and putting the trees and lights in my room.  The kiddos will be so excited when they come back!

Check out my store on TeachersPayTeachers on Monday and Tuesday for a Cyber Monday Sale!  Everything at my store will be 20% off!!!!!!!!

All my new Christmas items will be there.  I've been making lots of new things during the holidays!  Can't wait to see y'all there!!!
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Browse/Search:allison+Covington

Monday, November 18, 2013


We have been busy, busy, busy since all the Halloween excitement.  It's about this time of the year that my little ones finally "get it" and we can really start working.  It takes about this long to get our procedures and practicing down pat. 

I consider myself pretty organized (in fact, OCD about the whole thing) but I could not get my math centers managed.  I tried several different ways and nothing seemed to work with my kiddos.  I couldn't figure out how to let them play all the games, they lost pieces, mixed up games, had too many playing the games, you name it.  I couldn't decide if I wanted to group them by levels or give them free choice, And I couldn't remember what to put in all those boxes. 

I finally figured out a system that worked!  I have 15 little darlings (don't be jealous).  so I divided them into groups of 5.  There are 5 centers at each shelf with a colored monster on each box.

They look at the chart each morning to see which shelf they go to.  They can play with the friends that are also at that shelfm  in the space designated for that shelf. Each day I change their names.  I have different levels together so they can help each other and learn from each other.That works best for my little ones.  this way we can keep up with the chaos that seems to come at this time.






As far as remembering what's in each box, I take a picture of the inside of each box and then put them on one page.  Then each year I can remember what to put in them. 

We have been squeezing some Thanksgiving activities in too!
These are our "Thankful" books.  Each child gets a turn to take it home and write and illustrate what their family is thankful for.  They get to share it the next day.  We leave these in our Reading center all year.  At the end of the year after our Publisher's party, I take the books apart and put each child's page in their portfolio.




We also do lots of rewriting stories, poems and songs--making them our own.  They love to read things they have "written".  I wrote a poem for each letter of the alphabet and put it to a familiar tune.(they remeber them better if they are to music).  Then I made a version that gives them some options to make it their own.



I hope to get these up on TPT and Teacher's Notebook during the Thanksgiving Holidays! So check back!

We have been working on our Letters and Sounds book.  Each week we brainstorm things that start with the focus letter.  They draw it and dictate to me.  Some of my little ones are wanting to write the word themselves!




In our rug time we have begun to count by 10's.

And work on patterns.  Whoever is my Calendar Coach for the day gets to choose the correct turkey and make a pattern on his feathers.  They have to explain the pattern to the class before they put it on the calendar.  We get lots of different patterns and it lets them be as simple or complex as their ability lets them.


Last, but not least, for this post, I added the DJ/songleader to my jobs.  Their job is to choose a silly song that we have learned.  They get in the front of the group and lead in the motions and the words.  I usually let them pick 2 or 3. The song cards change out often. This is one of their favorite jobs! 


Thursday, October 24, 2013

We Are Ready for Halloween!


As one of my little ones said today, "We decorated the whole room! Now we are ready for Halloween!"  And by glancing around, I guess we are.  We have done a week of Spiders and this week is Bats.  Next week we will finish up and do Pumpkins and head to the Pumpkin Patch.  Here are some views from our room:


 This is our Frog Counting. Even though we have content areas, we still have a letter focus each week.  This of course was during our "F" week and our "Number 6" week.



Every week we have a number focus and we write a class book to illustrate that number.  Our book for "Number 8" was 8 is Great!  Aren't we lucky we studied Spiders that week.  
 Each child made their own spider and then put the legs on however they wanted.  When they were done they wrote how many on each side.  We talked about different ways to make 8.  This is now in our book center.  





We did the same thing with bats this week.  Our number was 9.  Our book is 9 is Fine!



We used dots on the wings to make 9.



Our Glittery pumpkins on our Art take-home bags.








We made bats our of old black socks and hung them on our windows.  Very Spooky!!



And to finish decorating our room we hung our ghosts that we made in Art class!  


Now we are ready to Trick or Treat!!

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

First Few Weeks


What a busy couple of weeks! Who has time to sit down and write about it?  Apparently, not me!  Here are some things we have been doing in our classroom so far.

 


 
 We are learning about patterns with food, of course.  My little ones love to eat!
 In our class we also do LOTS of rewrites.  We like to take ownership of writing and make it our own.  We rewrote Kimberly Jordano's "Ants" poem and made it our math and writing lesson.

 
During "C" week we still learned about patterns and we made pattern caterpillars with the letter "C". 


 
 
We also made Caterpillar Kabobs.  We made the patterns first on paper--

 
 --then we made them to eat! Yum!  We love to eat our math!!

 
 

Monday, August 19, 2013

Summer's Over! Yay!

I know a lot of y'all are thinking "What?"  Don't get me wrong, I like summer.  It's a great time to recharge my batteries.  But I LOVE the start of school!! As soon as the school supplies start rolling out at the stores, I start getting really excited.  I love setting up my room, coming up with new ideas for my room, getting things ready for my new kiddos and anticipating their excitement!   After 20 years of teaching I still get excited about my job.  My classroom is my "Happy Place."  Here are some pictures of my room set-up this year.  I change it up every year because I get bored. (I have been in the same room for 10 years now!)

This is a view from my desk.  It is our rug time space and the front of the room.


 Our Learning Station and Center management area.  These labels are for sale  at my TPT Store.


 Class Jobs
 This is our behavior chart.  If their monster stays "right side up" then they had a good day and I put a sticker on their behavior calendar.  If I have to fuss, then their monster gets turned "upside down" and they get an upside down sticker on their behavior calendar.  If they are having a really tough day then their monster falls off the board and they get a note home and no sticker on their calendar.


 This is the view from my door.


This is a view of the back my classroom.




 Art Center


 Pocket Chart Center


 "Little People" Center


 ABC Center


 "Home" Center


Reading Center


 Big Book Center


 Another view of our calendar board