Classroom Tour 2015

So, I know I'm kind of late to the party on the whole classroom tour thing (how is it already October?!)...... But, I just HAD to share out because I'm a little obsessed with my classroom this year.

Last year's decor theme was "There's-been-a-change-in-plans-and-kindergarten-orientation-is-tomorrow-so-get-everything-up-on-the-walls-as-quickly-as-possible," so it admittedly was pretty easy to top.

Personally, I'm not really a fan of classroom "themes." Don't get me wrong, I've seen them done WONDERFULLY: bees, superheros, pirates, the whole kit-and-kaboodle. However, I am way too particular about decorations coordinating and would probably drive myself literally insane trying to find, say dinosaurs, that were all drawn/designed in the same style (Hi, my name is Lauren, and I may be a perfectionist.... I'm working' on it, people).
As a result of the above craziness, the idea of decorating my classroom within a color scheme instead of a specific theme is really appealing to me. This year, I decided to do neon against black backdrops.  This was my first year setting up a complete classroom. I blocked off an entire week for it, thinking it would probably only take two or three full days. Boy, was I wrong. After five full days, I still felt like I needed another week (or two!). But, school was starting in two days, and I ended up with some unplanned (and admittedly, unwanted) practice in allowing things to be imperfect.
The good news is, I'm so in love with my classroom this year that I plan to keep it 90% the same for next year and only add to it. We'll see how that plan holds up 155 days from now. Alright, let's get going with the tour!

Here's my main wall. This is the carpet where my students sit. There's a lot to take in here, so let's break it down a little. 

On the far left is our reading wall. This will be filled with visual anchors from our reading comprehension and phonics lessons. Underneath our reading wall is our classroom library. My goal for this year is to change the books on display monthly to match our current learning. 

Here are my book bins. I got them at Big Lots, and they are terrific! They come in a wide variety of colors and are super sturdy. The only downfall is that they are a little pricey (about $3.50 per bin). I bought six last year and another six this year, and I'll probably end up buying another six next year! Currently, this is my organization system:

Green- books that correspond to our reading comprehension domains

Purple- FOSS science kit readers

Blue- Science and social studies books

Black- Seasonal Books

Pink (on opposite wall)- Leveled readers

Next to our reading wall is where I display our class birthdays. I got these materials at a teacher supply store. Our alphabet chart is by Mrs. Hoffer's Spot. I've divided our white board into sections using window cling borders I found at Dollar Tree. The far left will hold and display our class stars; when we earn ten, we get a whole class reward! To the right of that, I put up our volume posters. These were created by Reagan Tunstall and range from 0 (silent) to 5 (outdoor voice). My kiddos reference these posters all the time!

Now we are entering calendar territory. On the left, I have our daily schedule. These pieces were a freebie I got with my teacher points from Scholastic. The blank yellow one will be labeled "centers," and the blank blue one will be labeled "snack." My calendar backdrop and pieces were purchased from Lakeshore. The month and year labels were a free download from Babbling Abby.  My weather chart is from the dollar spot at Target (my kryptonite!)

Here on the far right is my All Star Wall. Each student has a clip and their amazing work will be displayed using said clip. I have a quick and easy tutorial on how to make this which I will link here. 

Here's the view from the carpet. I do the majority of my whole class teaching from my rocking chair (it's the same chair my mom used to rock me and my brother as babies) using my mobile easel. I made the book bunting/pennant by laminating book covers and connecting them with ribbon using hot glue. I can do a tutorial for this if you'd like- let me know in the comments!

Our cubby wall! I need to find a nice big number line to put up top. 

Here on the far left, I have the pocket chart where I keep each students stars. The stars are a part of the PBIS program in place at my school. Students can earn stars by showing that they are respectful, responsible, and ready to learn. Below the pocket chart is poster which will display the rewards students can trade in their stars to earn. 

Our math wall, word wall, and science/writing wall. Tucked in the right corner is my area where I post papers about recess duty, dismissal changes, etc. 

Whew! I tried to include everything without making this a mile-long post (I'm not sure how well I did on that front). Let me know in the comments if there are any areas I missed or anything specific you'd like to know more about!

Quick DIY Craft to Show Off Student Work!

Happy almost-March!

So today's blog post is a quickie about how I spruced up one of the bulletin boards in my classroom. To the right of my calendar, there is a bulletin board that I wanted to be our Focus Wall. Our Focus Wall would show our learning objectives for each subject and display the letter, number, and sight words we were currently working on. Well, the problem with that was I had literally 2 days to decorate my room before the start of school, and other tasks took priority. So my beautiful focus-wall-to-be turned out to be a sad, sad bulletin board with 6 pieces of laminated card stock on which I wrote our learning objectives. 

It. 

Was. 

Pitiful. 

In fact, I don't even have a picture of it. For 100-ish days of school, I looked at that failed focus wall and LOATHED it. So, last week, I decided to stop loathing it. 

I took my thumb tacks and clothespins and glue gun and made my way to Michael's. I found these scrapbooking accessories on super-sale and made them mine. :) 

I assembled the clips like this:

First, I glued a thumb tack to the back of a clothespin. 

Then, I glued the scrapbooking tag/speech bubble and glued it to the front of the clothespin. 

I wrote a student's name on the front with chalk, and voila! It took me about 30 minutes to make a set of 24, so I would say this was a pretty quick project. 

This is what the clips look like on the bulletin board:

And this is what our All Star Work wall looks like with actual all star work on it:

I love how this turned out, and I can now look at that board without cringing!

Just to clarify, my one friend doesn't have a piece of work up because I took this pic the first day I put the board up (I was just a little excited haha) and he was absent that day. All of my students are all stars. :)

How do you show off student work in your classroom? Let me know with a comment or picture below!

New Year, New Me (+ a freebie!)

And cue the eye roll.

While I believe strongly in the idea behind New Year's resolutions, I also believe that saying, "This is the year I finally lose those last few pounds!" for the fifth (of fifteenth) year in a row maybe isn't the best use of my energy. (To continue with this example, my health and fitness is an ongoing journey and won't have a specific "end point.") So, instead of making vague goals that will only potentially benefit myself, my New Year's resolutions are centered around relationship building. In 2015, I am going to:

1. Catch up with at least one person I've lost touch with each month
2. Attend at least one MeetUp each month
3. Have one "Treat Yo' Self" moment each month (to build my relationship with myself and the characters on Parks and Rec haha)

What are your New Year's resolutions? Leave me a comment below! 

As a reward for reading a post that has NOTHING to do with teaching, I have a freebie for you! 

This freebie is winter-themed, not holiday-themed, so you can use it all winter long! In this activity, students pick a snowman and measure it against various winter images to practice using the phrases "shorter than" and "longer than." On their recording sheet, students color the images according to whether it was longer or shorter than their snowman. AND, all of the snowmen are different lengths, so they can do the activity multiple times without getting the same results or getting bored!

You can download this activity from my store for free here!

I have to be honest with you... When I made this activity for my class, I was lazy and just printed them on the school computer instead of color printing and laminating them like I usually do. With all the craziness that is December, something had to give. But my kiddos loved it anyway, which means yours won't mind if you take the easy route and black-and-white print it too haha!

I hope you and your little snow angels enjoy it! Hopefully you are having a restful and rejuvenating break and doing nothing work-related (other than reading this blog). See you all in 2015!

December (Okay, and November) in Review

OH. MY. WORD.
Where did 2014 go?! Seriously, 2015 is mere days away, and I have no idea where the time has gone. I'm halfway through my second year of full time teaching, I'm living on my own, and (although I definitely don't feel like it) I'm finding myself leading the life of a "grown up."
In the course of being a "grown up" and being in disbelief that I may actually be a grown up, I have let over a month go by without posting on this little blog. I'm still on track with my goal of one post with pictures each month, but this means that I have A LOT to catch you up on.

Let's start with science. In addition to our FOSS kits, we also get a lot of science through our reading comprehension curriculum. We recently finished up our comprehension unit on plants, where we learned about plant parts, the life cycle of a plant, and what plants need to survive. As one of our review activities, we made a class book. Each student chose one of the categories from above (plant parts, life cycle of a plant, plant survival) and made a page for our book. They then labeled their page, I separated the pages by category, and made it into a little book. Their pages came out really well!

I love seeing their kid spelling! We are working on our letter reversals, but I'm just so proud of how good they are about writing the sounds they hear!

We took a field trip to the Boston Museum of Science in early December. It was my first time there, and we had a blast! Next year, though, I want a pre-field trip field trip where we just practice going up and down escalators... man were those tricky for some of us! Thankfully, they "weren't tired at all" by the end of the trip ;)

We also have been chugging along on our FOSS Animals 2x2 kit. We love our worms! I never think to take pictures of the anchor charts I make (I need to get better at that), but here are some pics of my nuggets being fearless in their exploration of the worms. 

Ahhhh this one is my favorite! She loved the worms so much!

I'm now realizing how long this post is turning out to be, so I'm gonna divide it into two posts I think. To wrap this one up, I'll show you a little of our holiday fun! We had a door decorating contest at our school. We didn't win, but we sure had fun making it! Our theme was "Kindergarten is SNOW much fun!" Ahhh how I love a good pun. 

We made the reindeer out of handprints, and the trees out of our footprints! They thought it was so funny and gross to have the bottom of their feet painted. This was definitely one of those times when being a teacher is just plain FUN!

I'm actually incredibly proud of this. I saw a writing activity on Pinterest where students were trapped in individual snow globes made out of plastic plates. Me and my more-is-more personality then took it to the next level and made the entire bottom half of our door a snow globe! I had each of my kiddos pose like they were playing in the snow. I took a picture of each of them like this and then printed and cut them out. Their expressions and poses were so cute! Some of them were throwing snowballs, some were leaping through the air, and others were shivering from the cold. 

For our holiday celebration, I kept it simple and just did a fun snack-tivity. I wanted to make gingerbread houses, but thought that might be a little complicated for my kinders. So instead....... we made Christmas trees! To do this, I used ice cream cones, frosting, food coloring, and candy. To start, I gave each student a plate with an upside down ice cream cone, a glob of green frosting, a candy star (I think they were technically flowers), and a spork. I showed them how to use the spork to put the icing on the cone, and they were off! 

I intentionally didn't advertise that they could eat while they worked because I wanted at least SOME of the frosting and candy to make it onto their trees. But I certainly didn't discourage them from snacking! 

The finished trees came out so cute! To make sure they survived the trip home, I put each tree in a plastic cup, put some plastic wrap over the top, and secured it with a rubber band. 

SO CUTE!!!!! My goal for my January post is for it to include upcoming activities instead of a review. I feel like that will probably be more useful for you. Let me know if there's anything specific you'd like to see! As always, thanks for reading!

The Arrival of Autumn

Well, autumn has officially arrived in kindergarten. The days are cooler, sleeves are longer, and zip-up fleece jackets scatter the floor of our cubby area (those hooks can be tricky little buggers!). I'm a summer girl through and through, and winter is my arch-nemesis. But...... even I have to admit that fall is pretty beautiful here in New England.

Here's a little look at what we've been up to this past week:

We went on our first field trip as a class to a local farm! Leading up to this trip, we did a mini unit on the life cycle of pumpkins using the resources from Mrs. Hoffer's Spot . 

At the farm, we went through a corn maze, fed animals, and went on a hay ride. Each student got to pick pumpkin to take home, which they loved. Proving that kids will be kids, my babies' favorite part of the trip seemed to be...... the teeny tiny baby hay maze. HA! They could have gone through that thing for hours.

In math this past week, we ended our first module with a number fair! I paired my students up by ability to help ensure both students were doing an equal amount of thinking. Each pair of students got a bin containing a ten frame, a rekenrek, a paper containing a circle to make a "bracelet," numeral cards 0-10, dot cards 0-10, and ten of the following: red/yellow chips, leaf manipulatives, red and white beads, and linking cubes. Each bin also had a folded piece of green paper containing that pair's "magic number." 

On my go, each pair unfolded their green card to discover their "magic number." Then, they worked together to put both the numeral cards and dot cards in order from 0-10. Once in order, the students removed their numeral and dot card from the table.

Next, the pairs had to represent their magic number using all the materials provided. Students made the number on their ten frame, put beads on the bracelet, showed their number with leaves, made a tower of linking cubes, and represented the number with the rekenek. This is what one of the group's stations looked like.

Pairs had about ten minutes to create all of their representations. Once finished, the students put their green card and any extra manipulatives back into their bins. We then rotated through the stations. Students had two minutes at each station to look at the representations and decide what the magic number was. It was great to hear students explaining their thinking to me and their peers! Their reasoning and verbal skills are certainly coming along!

Before we knew it, it was Halloween! The other K teachers and I went all out with our costumes as a cat the tooth fairy, and a witch.

For snack, we made these adorable banana ghosts. I got the idea from Pinterest of course!

For centers, we did my Candy Corn Number Puzzles. You can snag it for free here!

Also....... I just posted my first paid product on TPT! It's focus is on letter-sound correspondence. Students work to match the feather to the turkey based on beginning sounds, beginning and ending sound, or by how the word is spelt. This activity containing "I can" statements and recording sheets for all three ways to play. Check it out here!

I'll be back soon with an update on our Thanksgiving fun!