Sunday, September 27, 2015

Peek at my Week- Five Senses

Happy Sunday friends!  The plans are ready and I'm linking up with Deedee from Mrs. Will's Kindergarten for a Peek at my Week!

 This week is all about the senses in our room.  I've seen this book floating around on some blogs and I found it at the library!!!
It's fabulous!  It's gives such great pictures of so many different things for each sense which is great for all my English Language Learners.  We are going to read it over 3 days.  Tuesday/Wednesday we will do sight and hearing and then practice each and add examples of each to these giant sense posters that I have.  Wednesday/Thursday we will do touch and smell and practice each and add ideas to the posters.  Friday is taste test day!!  I love the taste test!  It's something we do every year and I never get over the bitter baker's chocolate because the kids get so excited for chocolate and then all spit it out!  HAHA!

Here are the plans:




I'm planning on doing 5 days of literacy centers, BUT that all depends on how early I can get to school to make the copies I need :-/   Happy Teaching!!

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Peek at my Colorful Week

Happy Sunday friends!  I'm linking up with Deedee from Mrs. Will's Kindergarten for a Peek at my Week!



 This week is all about colors in my classroom!  Which means we also start Science this week- WOOT!  The kids always love science, and I do too.  We will be making our rainbow water bottles this week for our window.  I can't seem to find a picture from previous years... SOOOO check back on Friday I guess :-)

We are going to be catching up on our Letter Raindrop projects that were on the plans for last week.  A Monday morning accidental fire drill pushed everything back a little for the whole week so we are going to get to it this week.  You can read more about it HERE on the Peek post from last week.  I'll be posting all about them later in the week as well.  I was inspired by some art we saw in Venice last summer :-)


We will be reviewing Respect and reading this book this week:
It's so cute! The monsters reek havoc on the town until something finally asks them to PLEASE stop.  It's all about saying please and listening when someone asks you to stop.  What a great lesson.

Here are the plans:




I hope YOU have something fun planned this week.  Happy Teaching!

Friday, September 18, 2015

Five for Friday- first of the school year!

Happy Friday friends!  It was a great week in my classroom.  It was week 2 but they are already doing so great. (although they DID need a talking to about how to walk in the hallway today...)  I am really enjoying my new class!  Today I'm linking up with Kacey from Doodle Bugs Teaching for my first FFF of the school year!
 I spent this week learning more about my kids.  Things they like to do, foods they like to eat, etc.  I traced each kid and then they had to draw their face and hair.  I printed a picture of something they like to do, wrote a word they used to describe themselves, and then they drew a picture of their favorite food.  It was really cute with them sprawled all across the floor working on these projects!  Now I just have to cut them all out and hang them on the wall before Monday evening and Back to School Night... Maybe I should have brought them home with me...


 We have been working on name recognition, naming letters in our names, and writing our names.  After reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom we made Chicka Name Trees! I love this project!



 Our new school motto is "Running our road to success!"  I love it!  So I made a new themed behavior chart for us.  It's SOOOO cute!  The kids were getting used to it this week.  Next week we start coloring in daily behavior charts for the parents to see... then they will really get why yellow and red are so bad!
Oh, and it's not just blue- its Sapphire!! See the jewel on top and everything? fancy, huh? haha!
 Writer's Workshop is in full swing!  And while my students need another mini lesson (or 2 or 3) about what a teaching book is (not a narrative!), I was really proud of how they worked.  We came up with a name for our group of writer's- the Sonic Writers!  (I may have scewed the voting results because it was the best name they came up with...)

One of my boys was writing about race cars.  I helped him sound out Race Cars and he wrote what he heard.  We made a VERY big deal about today and all the Sonic Writers Whooped it up for him! It was so cool to see.

 I LOVE my school and I LOVE my staff.  We've had a few (5!) rough years.  But now we have a new principal who is amazing and are getting our groove!  Here's a picture of just a few of us (seriously, just a few.  We have 900 kids and sometimes it feels like 900 staff members too!) wearing our college and university shirts today.

Hope you have a chance to relax over the next couple days.  Happy Weekend!!

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Peek at my Week- All About Me

Here we go with week 2 friends!  Week 1 was a success except for the raging sinus pressure I now have from the new germs... So Stuffy...  But an all over good week.  19 friends showed and hopefully the last 3 will join us this week.  I like them sooner rather than later.  Anywho, on with the plans and a Peek at my Week with Deedee from Mrs. Wills Kindergarten!



 Our theme this week is All About Me.  We will be reading some wonderful books and then I will be tracing every child onto butcher paper and cutting them out in order to decorate.  Why would you do such a time consuming and labor intensive thing Heather? Well, I found this Pin and thought the cutout was really cool.  

So we are going to do it this week.  They will color the face/hair to look like themselves and then the body will be decorated with things that they like or can do, and words they use to describe themselves.  They should turn out great!

This week also brings 2 of my new favorite books:
 The Numberlys is about a group of characters that live in a world that is all numbers and they end up building letters and it's beautiful.  I actually almost cried the first time I read it- ridiculous right?!?! But it happened in Barnes and Noble... 


 Al Pha's Bet (get it- alphabet!! HAHAH!) is about Al Pha coming up with alphabetical order.  He bets himself that he can do it and he does and the king loves it! YAY!  Super cute.

SOOOO  After reading these 2 amazing books it will lead into a letter raindrop project.  My hubs and I went to Italy last year for our 5 year anniversary (LOVE IT!!!).  While in Venice (don't want to go back...) we happened to peak into a courtyard and saw this:



How STUNNING!!!  I was mesmerized!  And I REALLY wanted to make them in class last year.  Lets just say we did not have the chance to do it.  So now I'm making it happen.  I'm going to show the pictures to the kids to get them inspired and then we will create!  I'll do a post just about these later on :-) 

Here are the plans:




 Now that I look back at it it looks like alot.  We will be busy!  Happy Teaching!

Monday, September 7, 2015

Peek at my Week 2015-16

It's time! It's time!! It's finally here!  This has been a wonderful summer but also the longest summer ever...  Not starting until after Labor Day really drags things out.  Some of you have been in school for a month already! What?!  But it's finally here and I am so excited.  Not only is it going to be a great year but I am actually going to start blogging again.  I know I've said this a few times over the last 9 months, but now my heart actually feels like it's in it :-)  So, to start things off right, I'm linking up with the fabulous Deedee Wills from Mrs. Wills Kindergarten for a Peek at my Week!



I'm hoping it will be a great 4 days!  We are starting slow this year, which will be good.  We have a new schedule this year, which I am actually loving!  The kids stay in our room for 2 hours before leaving.  In the past, they were there for 30 minutes and then went to specials.  The day will be split up nicely- calendar, literacy block (readers workshop and guided reading), lunch, recess, phonics, writer's workshop, specials, snack, math, and then play!  

I'm using what they are calling I/E (interventions and enrichment) for Phonics at this point.  It might stay that way all year.  We usually don't do I/E in kindergarten so hoping this will work.  We are continuing to use the Fountas and Pinnell book Phonics Lessons for this.  


It's so wonderful!  We got it half way through last year and I fell in love.  Such great lessons that are easy to put together and really make a difference.  I'm so glad we are starting out at the beginning with it.

And this year one of my teammates is putting together Writing plans for us.  I usually start off the year a little different, but I am sticking to her plans because I know they will be fabulous and we will actually get into writing next week. YAY!

This is what it looks like this week:




Hope your year either starts off good or is going nice and smooth if you already started.  Happy Teaching!