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!!

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!!

 

 

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

Paws for Praise

We are the Tigers!  So, for our good behavior outside the classroom, I made a "Paws for Praise" board.  When another adult praises our classroom for walking in line, being quiet in the halls, sitting nicely for spirit assembly, having good lunch manners, etc., we put up a paw print.  When we reach 5 paw prints, we have a popcorn party.  We got one last week!  Great job to my sweet little ones! They almost always try very hard to have complimentary behavior.  They are so excited and proud when someone (other than me) recognizes their efforts.  I hope we have several more before the end of the year!

Spring Fever

It's finally warm-mostly!  In Louisiana we only get a few "perfect" days during the year.  And by perfect, I mean sunny and about 75 degrees.  In a few weeks, it will be so hot, we won't want to step a foot outside.  Air conditioning will be our best friend!  We are playing outside as much as we can for the next few days.  Spring also means I get to do some of my favorite units in my class --weather, farm, pirates and zoo!  I hope I can keep my energy level up.  I know my kiddos will be energetic for the rest of the year! 

We studied about Weather during "U" week.  We had so much fun bringing our umbrellas and doing all our activities with them.  These were our Math Umbrellas. 

 

They could choose to sort by shape with all one color.

 They could choose to sort by color and shape.

 They could choose to sory by color.

 Or they could choose by shape with all different colors.

 

 

This week we started our Farm Unit.

  Here are our bags that we will take all of our Art home for the unit. 

 We learned cow facts today, so we made cow bags as our art work.

Wow!

Wow!  I haven't been here in a while.  Life has been crazy! I now have a teenager living in my house.  I can't believe my baby is 13!  Also, our school drama program is putting on a production of "Little Mermaid" and that has kept us busy every afternoon for a while.  It is going to be a fantastic show! 

                                                 Here are my two girls at birthday lunch!

As if that isn't enough, our entire faculty is writing a curriculum for our school.  We have been teaching it for years, but it has never been officially written down.  By the end of the year, we will have a basic curriculum written for PreK3- 8th grade.  It is a lot of work!  I spend my free time looking at standards, skills, assessments, and content for my grade.  And yes, during all this time, I am doing what I love most---teaching!  We are learning so much as we get ready for Kindergarten.  It's amazing how much they grow and mature during the semester break.

This week is "Q" week.  We have been painting with Q-tips.  They love painting of any kind.  Anything to get messy!

 

I have also been buy writing and uploading some new things to my TPT store.  Today I got the "Questions of the Day-Part 2" uploaded.

Hopefully life will slow down a little so I can show you the fabulous things my students are learning!