Welcome Back!

Whew!  With these new little ones, it's hard to sit down at my computer for even a couple of minutes!  And when I get home it's worse!  I have two teenagers (who don't drive yet) that need to be taken to all their activities.  And somewhere in there I have to cook supper, say "hi" to my husband and play with my poor dog who has been alone most of the day.

I am looking forward to having my students in a routine soon and things will go so much smoother.  I forget how long it takes at the beginning to get those routines and procedures down.

Here are some pictures of my room for this year.  It looks very much like last years with a few minor adjustments.

We are still the Monster room!

First of all, I am a little OCD about organization.  Otherwise I'm crazy looking for things and my room feels chaotic.  It also helps my wee ones be  more independent if everything is organized.

Our Art center is always open for my little creators!  They love going here all year.  I change it out each week and have different materials for them to explore.  They are excited to go see what I put out each week!

I have all my books organized by theme so that I can reach them quickly!  (and file them away quickly)

I have 3 table in my room and they each have a color.  Each table has their own color coded trays, buckets and monster.   The students at the tables share fat markers and skinny markers and the trash tub.

Each child has their own art tub that holds their crayons, glue and scissors.


There is table leader each day that is responsible for putting away their table's markers and emptying the trash tubs.  They also make sure the chairs are push in each time we leave the room.  It takes a while to train them with these responsibilities, but the independence later is sooooo worth it!

These are our alphabet boxes.  Each week we bring in an item that starts with the letter we are studying.  We match the items up with our alphabet cards.  This is great independent activity that we do daily. Our mailboxes are on top.  This is a fantastic(organized) way to keep up with their papers--and you guessed it--they can do it themselves.  I love fostering independence!  Can you tell?

Here is a picture our letter focus wall.  All things that have to do with our letter this week go here and we can review at a moments notice.

This is our writing center and our pocket chart wall.  We haven't gotten to do these yet because we are still learning procedures for each center.

In the mornings when they first come in, they can can pick "Monster Tubs".  These usually have games, or activities they can do with a small group.  The activities and games are repetitive and predictable so I am not having to explain directions everyday.  They put their tag on one of the monsters and then go get that tub.  At the end of the day we mark out the monster they went to so that the next day they have to choose a different color "monster tub".  This ensures that they go to 5 different tubs each week.  At the end of the week we erase all the marks and start over on Mondays.
I got this idea from another teacher(I can't remember who) and I made my own that was easier for my littles to do.

Our Promethean board is a time saver and a life saver sometimes.  We can do our shared writing, play games at center time, practice writing, read poems and show examples of how to do certain pages right here.  It is also great for looking on the computer for interesting facts about our topics for the week.

We have been learning about alligators and the number 1.  We did our alligator art in combination with our Alligator Poem Rewrite.    Click here to get the poem.

This week we are learning about Bears and the number 2.  Our math this week was "Bears in Pairs".  We matched up our bears, practiced sequencing the numbers and then tracing them.