Kindergarten room of my dreams!

Thanks to everyone who helped me with labor or purchased supplies! This classroom is a dream come true! I love my room, students and job! Here are some pictures of my room near taken just before school started. 

Classroom Listening Center Table

I love listening center! When I taught kindergarten before I had wonderful selections of books and interactive activities. But I struggled with keeping the materials and equiptment in an manageable system that small group to small group didn't need me to get them going. This year I have a plan. I have always seen and loved the listening center table at Lakeshore, but it's out of my purchasing power personally and professionally. So I made my my own. 

Here is a picture of the lakeshore table I love so much!

Here are some photos of the table I had made. It is not an exact replica and the top of my table is marker board, I like that better. 

New teaching assignment, classroom, theme, and decor!

Back to kinder!

I am so excited I miss kindergarten. Here are some pictures of my new classroom as I received it in June. 

I love the classroom theme of superheroes but also wanted colors that were versatile so I went with lime green grey and black felt. I also got new carpet thanks to my mother and aunt Linda . Check it out:

Black chalkboard paint and lime green wall!

Polka curtains grey with lime green dots

Grey paint and black felt for my calendar time and other daily reviews 

Long windows are white curtains with black dots. 

Unique feature in the classroom was highlighted in lime green accent. 

Here is a pick of the same wall from across the room. 

Here are some pic stitches to help you compare:

Now to get the rest together!!!

Coupon Class Went Well

Just a short update on my little coupon workshop. I had 8 or nine people attend, that was exciting! My Power Point kept me focused. I was nervous and fumbled some... If I do it again I would like to add a slide about getting one's first grocery store trip ready. Offer up a time to all go to Homeland together like a field trip. Give everyone just a quick little check list that allows someone to feel more prepared, and a little less nervous about their first trip to the store. I really pushed the coupon closet website as that the shopping list service I use.

I had two people who attended tell me they left the workshop and went to Walmart to buy the supplies they needed to start their own box. I also had teachers in my room that had not been in there before, always a plus when your new to the district :)

Character, Setting, Action!!

I love the story The Meanest Doll In The World. I love to teach about social issues through literature  Meanest Doll can help children learn how to deal with characters like Mean Mimi in their own lives.  In the end The meanest doll causes so much trouble for the other dolls they start making plots to capture her! However, the meanest doll falls into her own trap, as she gets caught she pays the price for her behavior.


Here is a sample of the story from the book.

I make a brief stop in the book where the dolls are making plans to catch Mean Mimi. Meanwhile I insert a special Reading Rainbow's Stay Away from the Junkyard episode and Michael Ives!(available at Discovery Education) At the end of the storybook Burton introduces us to Artist Michael Ives who makes a moving story box~ and we have inspiration for a project!!

This clip is not the whole episode from Reading Rainbow 

is a sample of the story book, not the Michael Ives vignette. 

The Assignment: Create a moving story box, or diorama if you prefer,  that shows your plan to catch Mean Mimi, lesson focus on character setting and action. We did this in 5 steps:

1. create a written plan to trap Mean Mimi
2. confer with teacher about the plan
3. setting day: create the setting in our story box
4. create the character of the story box
5. create the action of our story box

*Like  Michael Ives, we create our diorama with materials we already have, we don't purchase new things! 

When we finish the boxes we finish the book, my kids were shocked that the nice dolls trap plan wasn't needed after all, and we have a talk about  how the Mean Mimi character, and people acting like her are setting their own traps!

Oh, The Cleverness of Me!

My Expo Marker container. This is how I made it:

I first found old Expo marker lids that were no longer needed.

 

I purchased fake flowers and a large fake leaf as well as a tin pot off the clearance isle at Big Lots!

 

I plugged in my hot glue gun and got busy! 

Then, cut through the middle of the fake leaf and detached it from the stem. I glued it around the front edge of my tin  pot making sure that it was high enough to see but short enough to not block the pretty flowers. I put an old lid on a fresh Expo bottom leaving the fresh Expo lid on the top and eyeballed it...  I glued it at the bottom and at the top so it would stay in place well. 

Then, I cut the flowers of the stem and glued them to my fresh Expo marker lids. 

Then I took my old lids and glued them point side up in my tin pot. 

When the glue dried I connected the fresh Expo's to the glued in lids flowers up! the Expo's just pull right off the old lids glued in the pot when it is time to use! 

Note about the front,: I used some left overs and found a place for them instead of throwing them away!

Easy Peasy!!!

Welcome To My Classroom

Welcome sign magnet for my portable building classroom door.

Indoor bulletin board shared with another teacher my frogs are on the left.

Been  a while. I got the keys to my classroom and been working hard getting my new school/year off and running. It has been quite a journey finding all the things I want and need for my new room. I was really given a lot of freedom in how my classroom was to be put together and even what I do as far as instruction as  long as it is grounded in standards I am good.

What a dream, I think I have my dream job at my dream school! What could be better than that! I am hoping that you enjoy the pictures I am sharing of my classroom. Let me briefly describe the process in which I chose what I chose. Let me start with my carpet area. The best way to describe this area is to admit I am addicted to Velcro. I put a felt wall up and bought two rugs to try to fit my students on a teacher chair that I have used since I broke my knee in two places a few years ago. So far I have a place value depositor, coin and bill changers. ordinal number depositor, number line to144 in an ABCDEFGHIJ pattern, count by book based on pattern of the number line, calendar, 9 weeks Fry words,  story retelling, Whole brain teaching rules, and CAFÉ menu.

   

Teacher area. Coming from kindergarten really helped me understand the use of space being driven by the needs of children. I was so glad to see that my classroom did not have a teacher desk! I was able to put my two pink file cabinets that have one small supply type drawer each on it for pens ect underneath my horse shoe table. They lock too which makes it nice desk like feature. I also have several small metal shelves to put my supplies and the students reading group supplies on. I put the teacher computer directly behind the horse shoe. I have also have a fridge and microwave. Also have a small grey shelf to fit my copy machine on. Instead of having a desk top calendar I found a dry erase wall sticky one. I also put all my degrees, high school diploma, and two university honor society certificates up.

Daily 5 Centers:

Reading center is always the corner stone of my classroom. I believe the reading center should be the place where all the children want to go because it is so inviting and well loved.  It is where read to self and read to someone starts, where IPICK takes place. Where my students grow a love for reading and learning! I have always had the two kimmi Ikea chairs and they are the focal point when designing a new reading center in each of my classrooms. I found them at a thrift store, as well as the purple round chair. I also have a small coffee table for my center, often putting special books on it for children to look at. The shelves are all grey in my classroom so they do not overwhelm the children with color as I like colorful things, grey goes well with everything.  I found a rug at Big Lots that fit my area perfect and matched the color of my Kimmi chairs perfectly. I had two areas between the shelves so I fit a tree in each to go with my outside pondy critter theme.  I have printed and hung cute frog daily 5 reminders around the room.

Writing center is more of a supply center. There is not a lot of room in my classroom and with the importance of reading center to my philosophy of teaching so goes writing as an important counterpart. First I wanted to start off with a writing desk with a lamp that would hold supplies for my students to use during daily 5 times. They will have to take it back to their desks for working on but that should work fine.  I got the cute lamp at TJ Max on the clearance isle for $10! I have book making supplies, fancy scissors, pencils, sharpener, colored pencils, markers, special papers, pads, glue, construction paper, and an electric stapler.

Word work is a supply shelf a bulletin board and a pocket chart. The supply shelf will have the activities on top each week that I want them to do during work time. There are supplies hidden behind the froggy pink and white fabric curtains so I can easily sit them out.  The bulletin bard will have a boggle/word twist the kids can do, and the pocket chart is for our weekly spelling words.

Listening center has a radio and a few supplies in it. The school is really lacking in supplies and activities for listening center; thank goodness I have a chapter book on cd that we can start with.  I have a record player but at some point the needle got broken now I have to find a new needle to play music with L.

Word work and listening centers are the two grey shelves on the left wall.

I am lucky to have one white board and one chalk board. I have a projector and screen but right now it does not work at the moment.

Other areas of interest: My focus wall, and my made from scratch closet with word wall doors!

inside of my closet

word wall hides the interior of my closet

So that is my classroom, I hope you enjoyed looking!

Chapter 6+ My New Room!

This weeks hostesses are:

Looking in from a door at the south east corer

looking from the north east corner

It was an amazing week for me! I finally got to see my room. I am in a portable building, That’s great for me I love not having the distraction of the hallway. I was right next to the office last year and I had visitors and interruptions all the time.  Previous to that I was in a portable and loved it.  Seeing my room was like going to Disney World I was so excited to see where I am going to spend my next school year with my students! I can see it is going to be challenging place. There is no water, sink, drink, and toilet. There is no continues awning from building to portables, there are tons of steps, steps up to the building steps down to playground.  The portable itself is smaller than the other two classrooms I have had, but I can deal with that. I am going to have to be really selective on what and who things are put away. Storage is going to be an issue as well. I was told starting 8/1 teachers can come and work in their rooms and I cannot waste any time. I have to get in there roll up my sleeves and get started. I have had the D5 centers on my mind so I am going to talk about all three…

Classroom Storage

One of the reasons I started off with my new classroom is how concerned I am about having a listening center.(I know last week’s chapter right) I am hoping I will get listening center items checked out to me as there was not one listening center activity or piece of equipment in the classroom.  I am not going to have tons of money to sink into my classroom as my former district was on a year round schedule and my last pay check and first pay check is two months apart.. However, if there is no listening center things to be had it is an opportunity for me to seek out new and innovative listening center items for the students.  One of the problems I had in kindergarten was that books were never long enough for me to get through the guided reading rotations we were doing and the kids would need something else to do. With older children they can listen to chapter books, hopefully we won’t have the same problem. I also reread Diller’s Spaces and Places this summer and she had a box of things she called the “instead” box. If technology is not functioning, if you are done early do something from the instead box! That would have solved my problems in kindergarten.  

This week’s chapters were work on writing and word work. I like that the writing center is suppose to foster a love for writing I think all too often we expect children to love out lessons and our lessons should foster a love for something… I think the human brain loves to be creative; stifling this need to create makes things less enjoyable. I know it works that way for me now. For example, at my last school we had very little freedom in anything even our bulletin boards were cookie cutter! I never looked forward to putting together bulletin boards, lesson plans, and other forced or coerced activities thrust upon me in a dictated way. I know children feel the same way.  

Word work is going to be more challenging. I really need to dig into the reading curriculum at the school to wrap my head around what we are going to be doing. I know I can come up with games and other word projects that are appropriate to what we are learning even if I have to spend some money (I don’t have) for my word work center. Some of my kindergarten things will likely still work like my spill and spell game I found at a thrift store. I have an up words game also found at a thrift store. I guess this will be a wait till 8/1 and see when I start arranging my room and start the fun task of unloading all my school stuff in my tiny room with no storage J think positive thoughts Gebhart, you got this!