Welcome Back!

It has been a long, hot summer here in Louisiana!  My poor blog has gotten no attention.  My kids have though! They have been at summer camps off and on all summer.  Our pool hasn't even gotten much use.  But now it's back to business.  School has started here and it's my favorite time of year!

I just love the first days of school.  I love the way school supplies smell and look all organized.  I love getting my classroom ready for all the little darlin's that are coming. And I love meeting all my little sweethearts and getting to know their personalities.

I have seen lots of people putting pictures of their classrooms up.  It makes me want to do better and be a little more organized (although my co-workers already think I'm crazy organized)  Each year I rearrange my room and do some different things because I get bored with the same thing year after year.  I have a small classroom so I have to make the most of each little nook and cranny.

This is my PreK-4 classroom this year (so far!!)
This is my view from my desk and it looks towards our calendar area.

 This is our "Measure Me" wall.  Every couple of weeks I change out the unit of measurement on the wall and take a picture of the kids beside it.  They count how many units tall they are and we leave their pictures up for about 2 weeks.  They love to have their picture taken and measure themselves and each other.  I hope to have this set up at my TPT store by the end of the week.  It will have the units of measurement and the picture cards for each unit.

 This is the view from my door.  You can see the block center, the Little People center and the kitchen center.

 Another view from my door way looking at my back wall.  Told you I use every available space.  I don't think I can put anything else in here!

 This view looks at my desk area and our carpet area.

 Ok! So I am sooo excited about my All About the Number board.  The theme in my room is monsters and thanks to Krista Wallden at Creative Clips, I have the cutest monsters to put on my board!

 Also, thanks to Creative Clips, I made some precious name tags for my tables!! I have 3 tables and they each have their own color monster.  It coordinates with their shelf in the back of our room where their supplies are located.

 These are the supply shelves in the back of our room.  Each table has their own baskets of supplies.  Each child's alphabet boxes are in the middle shelves and our Math Station boxes are on the bottom of the shelves.  

 This is our Art Center and Pocket Chart center.  We obviously don't go to those centers at the same time.

 Here is our writing center.

 Our Alphabet Center

 And this is our rug time area and reading center.  We spend lots of time here.

Check back soon to see what we will be learning and doing in our class!  We have some exciting things planned!!

Book Talk Tuesday

Like most good teachers, I LOVE books!  I can never have enough (even though my own two kiddos say I have plenty).  When I find a good author and illustrator, I want to get all the books they have!  I'm so glad Deanna Jump decided to have this link up on Tuesdays!  I love getting new book ideas.  I am making my list  now for the next school year!

I  love the books Rumble in the Jungle and Commotion in the Ocean.  I love that every page has great rhymes while teaching some facts and the illustrations are off the charts!  They are so bright and bold.  I teach PreK so the pictures have to be pretty incredible to hold their attention.  We go back to these all year!












                           




I can't wait to go buy some new books this summer and start making some plans to teach them to my kids. I'm a total school nerd, I know!

Summer or just Spring Break

We just finished Spring Break and it felt like SUMMER! As much as I love my job and my kiddos, it was hard to come back and get in the groove. Everyone has Spring Fever.  The up-side is that there are only a few weeks til actual summer!  Give me about two weeks of summer and I am ready to come back!  Here are some projects we did for Easter.

 Our Easter Art Bags

 Our super cute Easter bunnies!

We have been talking about weather and so each day my calendar helper has to not only decide what number they need, but they have to decide what the weather is too.  We have been counting and graphing our weather for the month of April.  You can tell we have LOTS of sunny days!!

Our next big unit is Zoo!  I can't wait!  Stay tuned!

I have several new things at my TeachersPayTeachers Store!
Click on the pictures below to purchase!

I told you I have been busy!

I came up with a new concept for independent games.   It may not be new to some of you but it is for me and it is working wonderfully with my little ones.

First of all, I am a teacher "hoarder".  I hate to throw anything away!  Can you relate??  I had a ton of frosting cans so I created "Can It" games.  They are simple matching and memory games for lots of different skills.  I put them in frosting cans.  I put the language arts in the cans with red lids and the math games in the cans with blue lids and the concepts.

My kiddos can go get a game and grab a partner whenever they finish their work, or we have small groups, or there are visitors in our room and I need to talk to them.  The instructions are basically the same for each can, so they know what to do.  They can choose what skill to work on--literacy or math, and then go have fun learning!

I have loaded the beginning sounds games  and the addition games to my store.  Hopefully I will get the rest of them loaded this weekend.

I also made the labels for the cans and they are FREE at my store.
Start baking and saving those frosting cans! (or you can have your children bring them in for you)


In the addition and subtraction cans I put counters in the can so they already have counters to solve the problems and don't have to ask for any or look for any.  Make it easy!!

I also put a new Silly Snakes Sounds game at my store

And SWIPE!  It's played like battle and it's great for comparing numbers! 

Oh how I wish I was a better blogger!  I can't ever seem to find the time to post anything!  I am always busy making things for my classroom (my brain is usually in overdrive), teaching my kiddos and running my own children to and from their activities.  I don't know how these other teachers do it.  I need a secretary!! We have finally been getting to enjoy a little Spring here.  I am so thankful.  I like warmer weather and the sunshine makes me happy!.

I feel like with all the snow days we have had, that we really have to hurry to get everything in before the end of the year!  Here are some things we have been up to in our classroom:

We celebrated Mardi Gras as our Pre-K3 class had their annual parade.  We love catching beads and dancing the music!

We did our Louisiana Unit that week and learned about the foods, products and state symbols.  This art project made us all hungry for some crawfish!  I am so glad it's finally crawfish season!

We love to have celebrations around here and St. Patrick's Day was no exception.  It fell right on our "R" study week.  How wonderful was that!  We studied about rainbows and did lots of rainbow activities.

 We even tried to catch a leprechaun in our Leprechaun catchers!  They were WAY to sneaky!

 Maybe if we dress like one, we can trick them into coming back!

Snow Day???

This is what we woke up to this morning.

Now, we live in Louisiana.  We get "Hurricane Days" and the occasional "Ice Day" , but "Snow Days" are pretty much unheard of.  We are now on our 3rd snow day in a week.  We are not sure what to do with ourselves.  Each year we make snowballs out of paper in our classroom and have snowball fights inside.  This year, it didn't have it's same impact.  My kiddos were talking about their "real" snowball fights.  We make snowman pictures and read snowman stories, but honestly most of my kids have never seen or built a snowman.  I can't wait til we get back and hear all about their snow adventures!  I know my own girls have had a blast.  We have one hill in our city in the park and I think most of the city was at that one hill with their makeshift sleds--innertubes, boogie boards, rafts, laundry baskets, political signs --you get the picture--no sleds here! Ha!

It is absolutely beautiful!  I'm enjoying it from inside sitting by my fireplace working on my school stuff and new things for TPT.

Stay warm and check back soon for some pics from our classroom! 

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!