Attention Target Shoppers

Attention all Target Shoppers the school supplies are out and the dollar bins with supplies for teachers are back! This is what I found on my trip this week! Name plates for summer school,hand prints for cubbies, mini dry erase board erasers (my kids love these! I bought a class set last year and I want more! They held up really well!), and name tags for the first week!

These dry erase erasers are amazing!

I bought some of the boards a few years back and they've lasted or I don't feel bad about pitching ones that get ruined.

Ta ta for now remember never leave a teacher unsupervised in the dollar section!

-Lindsey

Summer School Classroom

Well another summer teaching summer school is well underway! I'm 2 weeks into the 4 week session. This summer I'm teaching 1st grade (well intro to 1st grade) and have 21 kids on my roster. Only 15 of them have shown which is fine with me. The kids have breakfast and lunch at school and then have reading and math with me.

So here's my room this summer in reality it's a kindergarten classroom but I've tried my best to transform the classroom that I'm guest teaching in into a 1st grade room.

I hope everyone is having a great summer! Two more weeks of summer school to go!!

-Lindsey

Engaged!!!!

hello my blogging friends! So I've been disconnected from the blogging world this spring and i got engaged!!  Over Spring break while vacationing in San Diego my boyfriend popped the question and I said yes! 

So needless to say its been an exciting spring with new adventures for the two of us! 

This month I moved in with my fiancé and internet is finally hooked up so I can get back to blogging, pinning, and well wedding planning!  So what have we done? we chose a venue (Yay!) on the Chesapeake bay and have a date for the beginning of next summer! 

So things are finally moving forward I'm so glad I have a full year to plan!

- Lindsey

STEM day

We had our first annual STEM day at school. My Kinders learned how to make Gak (thank you to my blogging friends for sharing your experiences with them.

We made Greenhouses and planted seeds.

And we had our local weatherman from NBC4 visit and talk to the kinders about his job and how he helps the community. I highly recommend getting in touch with your local news station and getting your weather person to visit! 

Every grade at school did a variety of activities associated with our curriculum throughout the day. The kids loved it!!

OT on a promethean

I never considered the range of accommodations I could provide to students now that we have a promethean! For my students getting OT our board has been awesome allowing the hands on practice for fine motor tasks, manipulative activities, confidence building and writing (shown)! Now I'm getting more motivated to fill out a TPT for an iPad for the classroom!

Yay!! Look at what I had installed!

Look what I had installed last week!!! Now where do I start! Membership to Promethean Planet acquired.
Basic calendar routine is underway this week. Can anyone suggest a flip chart to replace my "weather bear" where my kid dressed my panda with clothes to represent what they should be wearing to school? The only thing I found on Pro. Planet was a person one and I'd prefer an animal. Any words of wisdom please send them my way!



- Lindsey

3D Figure Recycling Project

So mid March at the end of our geometry unit my kids have a huge STEM project given to them. Our class collected recycled materials for about two weeks prior to initiating the project. Then I give them an open ended project to plan, design, and build something using the recycled materials. The only requirements for the project is they must use at least 6 containers. On Day 1, I read them a book about architects and how they use blueprints to design buildings and my little designers get started drawing their plan. We discussed how parts of our body and buildings and other things are made of 3D shapes and we needed to include those in our design. You can see one of the kids designs in the photo below.

 Day 2, I let them go to it! I had sent emails home prior weeks asking for rolls of masking tape so I had one for every two kids. They started cutting and taping and I let them do their thing! This is when you really see their creativity come out! Yes, I support with their taping and help to make sure the tape sticks. 

 

Day 3 some kids were done taping and we just put some reinforcement tape on it and others needed the full day to finish building their design. Before being allowed to paint my kids have to go back to their design and identify what colors they will need to paint their project. This helps me with what paint to put on the tray and well get them thinking about where they are going. 

 Painting lasts 2 days the first day we talked about making a "base coat" and then the second day I handed out detail brushes so they could add details like spots, stripes, and windows to their projects. I use the big butcher paper on the first day of painting because they ARE VERY MESSY and the butcher paper really soaks up the mess.

 

 The last and final day my kids have to write a story about their finished project to read to the class. They were so incredibly cute and were so proud of their completed projects! I was too! I had all sorts of things built from people to giraffes to a school bus to rockets to a castle! Here is the finished product of the original design I showed you earlier!

100th Day 2012

Granny Whyte and Granny Kramer showed up to teach on the 100th day this year! The kids loved it! Our 100th day celebration was the first week in February! I tried a new idea this year to help with management by having a morning "menu" of activities and afternoon "menu" the kids could choose from with activities for them to complete! Such an upgrade! My slower workers were able to move at their own speed and get ones they wanted done and my faster students worked on them all and had a great time staying busy!








- Lindsey

Hibernation

We read Bear Snores On and compared it to a Non-Fiction book on bears. My kids then wrote and illustrated to show bears in the summer and winter. This one was So cute I had to share!

I am back! Plus a freebie and TPT updates!

Hey all my blogging friends I'm back and what a crazy fall I've had! I had my hands full to start the school year but overall have a great group of kids. Then this past weekend I fell at a wedding and hurt my ankle and foot causing me to take 4 days off this week while I was at home with my leg up. I'm attempting to return tomorrow on crutches since I'm going stir crazy at home. So I thought I'd announce my return to blogging with a freebie! 
So in our kindergarten classes we use colored glue to help students with fine motor development and to get them excited about using glue bottles correctly. To make colored glue, take a bottle of Elmers and add a few drops of food coloring. Shake it up and leave it upside-down overnight to let the food coloring to move through the bottle. So the kids use the colored glue to make dots on seasonal pictures they have colored. We let them dry on the heater and they take them home the next day.
So here is my October Bat Dab Will Do Center for my blogging friends. Hope your kids love it as much as mine do!
Also since I've been home for the week I started gathering and bundling the different handwriting and alphabet sorting activities we do at school to share on Teachers Pay Teachers. I posted my Alphabet Handwriting Practice Set that we use for morning warm-up activities. The second set I use in small group to work on sorting and fine motor tasks with dabbers and letter recognition. We use the large letters to do an end of the week fun letter activity like turning the A's into apples. I've posted samples of both items and many others on my TPT site. Please let me know if you like them and as I go through my computer I will continue to post more!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Alphabet-Handwriting-Practice-Set

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Alphabet-Handwriting-and-Sorting-Pack-2

- Lindsey

Sorting Rubber Ducks

My rubber duck sorting collection continues to grow and the kids love it!

Question of the Day Graph - Need help!

Hey bloggers I need your help! My team has talked about doing a question of the day to graph with our class this year and I'm trying to come up with the best way to do this. There are products out there that are made for this like these two from Really Good Stuff... but... I'm going to have up to 27 kindergartners and neither of these are the most kindergarten friendly. Plus I'm told the yellow graph's magnets don't stick very well even though there is enough space for my class.

Pre-K Pages Graphing

Does anyone know what this is from?

So I'm looking for ideas of other products or something I can make to have a daily graph. I don't have a Promethian or Smartboard.  I don't have a ton of magnetic blackboard space and the kicker is how to fit up to 27 kids.
If you've done class graphing that can be changed everyday to a new question in your room or know of a picture of something like on the web please link up with me. I've been searching pinterest and blogs for ideas but keep coming up empty handed. Help!
-Lindsey

Summer School

Well after the horrible thunderstorms last week delayed our start, summer school finally began this week! I'm teaching kindergarten in a 2nd grade classroom so as you can imagine everything is a bit big for my kiddos but they like it! Here are a few pictures of my room. Updates to come about my experience with the 4 and 5 year olds in a bit!








- Lindsey

End of the year!!

5 more days to go!! Today was my last regular Tuesday of the year, next week our last day is a half day!! So tonight I worked on my end of the year gifts for the kids. Many thanks to Pinterest for ideas as Target's summer section for the $1 crazy straw water bottles!


I also used my Scholastic points to order each of my kids a copy of the book, I Knew You Could!



Let's just say what I learned this year is that having 23 kids adds up to making everything more expensive instead of the 17 kids that I had last year. I love them all but don't know if next year when I'll have even more kinders if I'll be able to continue to afford all the fun activities I do with them. Guess I can't worry about that now. TTFN!
- Lindsey

Dinosaurs

So a little while back my math dinosaur which I used for addition and patterns appeared on Pinterest and I have been asked for the pattern to make it. I will first say the original idea is not from me, I found it online somewhere last year, but I do have a tracer for the body.If anyone knows who I got it from please let me know and I'll link up to give them credit.
























So I took a picture with hopes that it would help!

I'd recommend saving the picture of the tracer and putting it in a word document and stretching to get the right dimensions. He is 16 inches long and 6 inches tall. I hope this helps teachers who were looking for my dinosaur!



- Lindsey

Mother's Day project

So I've been brainstorming for Mother's Day this year and thought I'd post one of my projects I did last year to help others with ideas.



Last year I also had the kids make a breakfast in a bag with oatmeal and tea but I think I'm going to pass on that project this year and am looking for new ideas. Any good ones out there?
- Lindsey