Five for Friday!

 

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday! Here are my five random things!

 

 Here is my sweet boy, Ryder...he has that sad "My Mom is going back to school" look about him! This has been a busy week! Putting those last finishing touches on my room and trying to remember how in the world to teach! Haha...I always think I'll forget how! It's also been a busy one for the back to school dreams! In last nights edition, apparently I enlisted the help of my husband to sit with a friend in need! Not sure he wants to sign up for the role of my classroom aide just yet!

 

I had Kindergarten Orientation this week! I got to meet 16 of my new little munchkins! So cute and wide eyed! Only one cried...and cried...and cried! Aww! She'll come around! We read The Kissing Hand and did this little writing activity. I was curious to see who would be able to write their name! Woohoo...lots of them could!!! So sorry...I didn't remember to take pics of the finished product! They were so sweet! I traced their hands in the little circle and we put heart stickers on top! I was so happy with how they came out and the timing was perfect! We were just finishing as their parents came to pick them up! You can find the packet in my TPT store if you are interested!

 

This little washi tape cork board is something I want to make for my room mostly because it's adorable! Click on the picture to go to Miss Kindergarten's blog for the how to! I think I might use it for student of the week or something like that!

 

I made this little self portrait/ name sample activity yesterday. We like to use the writing boxes in the beginning of Kindergarten. So I'm taking this opportunity to teach them how to start writing at the smiley face and stop at the stop sign! This really helps to avoid the backwards name writing! It's so funny to me when they do that...I couldn't if I tried!

 

I also finished up my birthday bags. I like to have them all ready to go in case I'm not super teacher on the day of one of their birthdays! Sometimes we forget! I made these little mini fold over cards and wrote happy birthday messages inside. I like to give them ice cream money for a special treat on their birthday! Easy and they love it!

The Mini Birthday cards and the Self portrait are freebies in my TPT store! Happy Friday!!!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Jamie-Neely

Munchkin Land Tour!!!

 

It's pretty much ready to go! All I need now are some cute little  munchkins! So here is my door..sorry the pic is kind of dark!

Here is the view when you walk in! I love my big room!! And I love my wall of windows!

 

Here is my peace table! All ready for peace making moments! My reading teacher and special ed teachers also like to use this table to work with students one on one.

 

These are my line up stars! Hopefully this will make getting 18 wiggly four and five year olds into a line much easier!! We walk in two lines, a boy line and a girl line. This helps so much because the lines are shorter and closer to you! No more losing kiddos around those corners!

 

Here is my math corner again!

 

Here is my library...excuse the plastic covering! The books stay covered until I teach them how to use the classroom library system!

 

Here is where most of my teaching takes place! On the wall behind the easel are all my wipeoff graphic organizers. Easy to rip off the wall, erase, fill out after a story, and hang back up! Don't you love my aqua duct tape carpet squares!?!? I don't have one of those cute carpets with the different colored squares to sit on, but this will get the job done!

 

 This picture isn't great either, but it's my CAFE board for Daily 5. The two big posters are the Barabara Milne ABC song and my sight word reference poster. It's super helpful, we put highlighting tape over the ones that we have learned so far. My student of the day also gets to point to the words as the class reads them. The kids have the mini version of this chart in their book boxes to practice during daily 5. The picture clues really, really help! The mini poster can be found in my TPT store by clicking below!

 

This is my desk area/guided reading table! See my giant penguin back there?? One of my former munchkins brought that huge thing in on the first day of school one year! So cute! Well that's about it! Hope you enjoyed your tour! Happy back to school everyone!

Who in the world am I?!? I now have a math board!!!

 

So my goal for the year is to be a better math teacher! I hate math...I have since first grade when my teacher said she would chop my fingers off if she caught me using them! I was a pretty literal and trusting child, and so I was terrified of her for the rest of the year! Hehe...didn't stop me from using my fingers though! I used to do it in my hair, under my desk...you get the idea! Anyway, it was always hard for me and I didn't love it EVER! Even as a teacher, it's still not my favorite! But I really want to get better! I want kids to not be scarred for life about math and numbers! So this year I devoted a whole section of my classroom to math! This is huge for me people! I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out!

 

This is my Number Talk wall!!! Number talks are the big thing at our school this year. I think they will be great, but I couldn't think of a way to start them when most of my kids can't tell a letter from a number yet! My, what interesting conversations we would have! Haha! So I created this little mini bulletin board set to help us get started. Haha...notice I included fingers! They've served me pretty well as a strategy! ;)

I'm going to use it to show them all the different ways there are to make numbers! I just stuck them in sheet protectors and plan to let the munchkins come up and use a dry erase marker to represent the number we are "talking" about! I also made cute little cards that show all the different ways to make numbers up to 20. I thought I could attach velcro to the back and to the middle of the blank side of the board...but I may just end up using them in a center instead.  Haven't decided yet!

 

 I also made these little number poem cards to have a visual to go with those cute little number poems! I thought it would be handy to have them on the board as a reference for when the kids get stuck on how to form a number! 

On the pocket chart, I plan to put all of my math vocabulary cards for the different units we will be studying! Now it's all in one spot, and somewhere deep inside I feel like I have begun to conquer the math monster!!! The Number Talk Wall and the Number Writing Poems can both be found in my TPT store, by clicking on the pictures below! 

Kindergarten Cuteness!!

 

I mean how cute is this!?!? I did Kindergarten screenings today...yes, they are still pouring in to be registered and therefore I have no class list yet! Ahh! Anyway...freak out over! But this little guys self portrait reminded me why I love what I do despite all the stress! So adorable!!! Just thought I would share this little smile maker with everyone today!  

Taming the Wild...

 

Oh kindergarteners! There is so much wild in some of them at the beginning! My classroom management is pretty simple and easy to keep track of! I know the clothespin charts are popular right now, but I just worry that some of my friends who find trouble easily will end up "in the red" a lot. I worry about what that might do for their self esteem.

So instead, I use a couple of different tools...

1. Setting Limits in the Classroom- This book is AMAZING! It gives you all kinds of scenarios and ways to respond. I just love the language. It's all about putting the responsibility back on the student and getting rid of the power struggle. It gives logical consequences for misbehavior. It also makes use of the warning, which I love especially in K, because a lot of the time they don't know what they are doing is unacceptable. So...it might go something like this....

Laila is poking another student in the back. You would say, "Laila, you can sit with your hands on your lap or you can sit at your seat. What would you like to do? 

"I want to stay here!"

"Ok, show me what you need to do to stay here with your friends."

Minutes later...Laila is poking her friend again. "Laila, you need to sit at your seat for five minutes."

I always set a timer so I don't forget about them!

2. Timeout- I'm a big fan of time out. If it's for just goofy/not paying attention behavior, I always just send them to their seat. That way they can still pay attention to the lesson. If it's for something more major than that, I have a chair in a more private place that they sit in. Time out is always just 5 minutes. Any more than that, and they just get mad  and more difficult. I want to restore them as quickly as possible. When the timer goes off, either myself or my aides will conference with them quickly and out they come!

3. The Buddy Classroom- If a student is making a lot of noise in time out, I send them to a buddy classroom for timeout for 10 minutes. Sometimes if we take away their typical audience, it calms them down faster!

4. The Practice Pass- I also use the practice pass . I hand these out after a student has already been warned. When you receive one you have to practice the correct behavior on your own time- recess or snack. If the behavior occurred in the morning, they practice for 5 minutes of recess. If it happened in the afternoon, they practice during the beginning of snack. I've had my aides take kids in the hallway to practice correct hallway walking, I've had them just sit quietly at their seat for five minutes. During this time, they also write or draw a note home to their parents to let them know about their behavior for the day. 

5. The Work Pass- These get handed out when a student has not completed their work due to goofing around. If they receive one, the work is completed on their own time- recess or lunch. 

These passes are handed out to the child and they put them on top of their table. That way when lunch or snack comes around, all you have to do is scan their desks to see who has one. I feel like it makes it more that child's business rather than posting it up somewhere the others can see it.

If you are interested in these passes you can find them in my TPT store by clicking on the picture below!

 6. The Peace Table- This is a life saver when it comes to tattling!!! I can take a lot, but I can't take the tattles!!! So I very intentionally teach how to use it. If a student does something to upset another student they say, "We need to go to the peace table!" And if someone asks you to go, you have to go! We don't want anyone to be upset with us, even if it was a mistake or an accident.

Once there, there is a stuffed animal that they hold and he helps to be the moderator. The child has to inform the other why they are upset. "I didn't like it when you..... " Then they pass the animal to the other student who responds with "I'm sorry!" Then they shake hands and say FRIENDS! 

In the beginning, it is a bit of a novelty, and students go a lot! BUT it does wear off and it will be a lifesaver for you when they come up to tattle, you just ask "Did you take them to the peace table??" And off they go! Yay!!!! It's pretty amazing to see them learn to handle conflict at such a young age. They are totally capable!!! This is the sign I attach to the peace table, you can find it in my TPT store!

These things have really worked for me!! That and MODELING, MODELING, MODELING!!!! Thanks for hanging in there with me! This got kind of long! It was helpful for me to start thinking about these things too before going back!! Ahh!! Just a couple more weeks!!!

Tissues, tea, and sweet dreams for munchkins!

 

This is so my island...covered in teacher stuff instead of food! I've been a busy bee today!

 

First up, tissues and tea! This is just a little something to hand out to parents on the first day. There are always a few that are pretty teary eyed at the idea of leaving their baby behind in our gigantic school building! So I created this label and attached a pack of tissues and a teabag with ribbon. 

  

 

 If you would like the labels, you can find them for *FREE* at my TPT store!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Tissues-and-Tea-818414

 

 

The next project is the cutest thing ever, and the best way to get your munchkins excited about school before they even come! I found this idea on pinterest last year! Yay for pinterest! The poem inside is really adorable. I attached a baggie full of confetti stars inside. These are for them to sprinkle under their pillow the night before they come to school! So cute!! You can find the original idea/free printable at Sunny Days in Second Grade!

Throwback Thursday!

I'm linking up with Cara at the First Grade Parade! And I haven't been at this blogging thing long, sooo...I'm using a post from just last week! This post was all about Math Sprints...stressful little things! I'd love to hear some feedback from some of you on whether or not your schools are doing sprints and how you manage them, what you think of them, etc....

********************************************************
Have you heard about sprints?? I hadn't until late last school year. Sprints are a timed math fluency test. I'm still not so sure I love them...they bring back horrible memories of the mad minute for me! One whole minute of awfulness where I got to struggle with the likes of multiplication and division! And the red circles all over my paper when it came back...shudder! Clearly, I have some math baggage people!

Anyway, to give a sprint you time your students for 1 minute. They get as much as they can completed and when they hear the timer, they put their pencils down. Then you get them up and moving for some fun math counting and movement. This can be as simple as doing a few exercises and counting while you do them, or putting on a math youtube video and letting them jump around and dance. Below are some that my class really loved last year. They can all be found on youtube!

 

 

Anyway, after your break you will set the timer again for students to finish. Apparently, a good sprint is supposed to be just hard enough that no one in your class will finish it completely. I always had a couple of those smarties finish though! If they finished within the first minute, I just had them turn it over on the back and write their numbers as high as they could go. 

One of my issues with sprints is that kindergarteners aren't so happy with the idea of stopping something when they're not done. You will hear lots of cries, "But I'm not done!!" I do have to say that once they got used to it, they did do much better with that. You just tell them that it is practice for them and them alone and that not finishing is ok. I also had issues with students starting before I said to start. I just started taking papers away and telling them they couldn't "play the game" because they weren't being fair to others or themselves. This only happened a few times and then they knew I meant business!

This year, I plan to do a "Tortoise and the Hare" theme to introduce sprints. I would much rather the students go at their own pace and get more correct, than to be so concerned about finishing first! I definitely want them to strive for accuracy above speed. Although maybe that is in direct contrast to the overall purpose of the sprint! Whatever! ;)

And furthermore, I will NOT be marking their sprints with red circles! In fact, you don't even have to grade them yourself! After finishing a sprint, you go through it together as a class. Students mark smileys next to the ones they got correct. Then apparently, you are supposed to have students stand up for getting 1 correct, 2 correct...blah, blah, blah until the few are left standing. I always skip that part though! I feel it is enough for them to know how many they got right themselves. And I really don't want to spread a competitive spirit amongst my munchkins. Soo...yeah, I don't do it! My own math issues surface again apparently! 

I have created a packet of sprints for kindergarteners in the beginning of the year. This packet only goes up to number five. I intend to created numbers 1-10 soon! If you would like to purchase it, it can be found at my TPT store, http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Kindergarten-Math-Sprint-Bundle-for-Numbers-1-5-812324  

If you just want to get your feet wet with sprints, I also posted a freebie, http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Counting-with-Dice-812337

Happy sprinting!

I heart crafting, organizing, and coconut almonds!

 

Today I worked on my little corner of the world in my classroom! The dreaded desk area! Ahh! I really should have taken a before shot...nuts I say, nuts!!! I was going for a home away from home look! I am in LOVE with my ribbon chandelier!! Yay for that lovely little idea from Abby at The Inspired Apple! I really should take a close up of it too! It came out super cute!!

 

After finishing that project, I munched on some amazing coconut almonds...yum! I'm pretty sure they're better than candy!! And I'm pretty sure I will buy them forever and ever!

Then, I finished the Teacher Toolbox! And it came out so stinking cute! I am so excited to have everything labeled and easy for not just me, but the other adults in my room to be able to find!! No more digging around in the black hole to find a paper clip! The labels were FREE from, Kristen Doyle at Chalk and Apples. You can find them here in her TPT store, http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/EDITABLE-Teacher-Toolbox-Kit-Turquoise-Dot-Theme-272592. And the best part...they are totally editable! You can even use your own favorite font! And why yes, that is a Harry Potter sorting hat sitting all cute on top of it! I'm most definitely a Gryffindor! :)

And before calling it a day, I hung my cute little banner! This was also inspired by Abby at the Inspired Apple! She has some great instructions on how to make this cute little guy without sewing a blessed stitch! You can find them here, http://www.theinspiredapple.blogspot.com/2013/07/tbt-no-sew-fabric-bannerbunting-tutorial.html.

What are you making for your classroom?

Math Sprints...Munchkin Land Style!

Have you heard about sprints?? I hadn't until late last school year. Sprints are a timed math fluency test. I'm still not so sure I love them...they bring back horrible memories of the mad minute for me! One whole minute of awfulness where I got to struggle with the likes of multiplication and division! And the red circles all over my paper when it came back...shudder! Clearly, I have some math baggage people!

Anyway, to give a sprint you time your students for 1 minute. They get as much as they can completed and when they hear the timer, they put their pencils down. Then you get them up and moving for some fun math counting and movement. This can be as simple as doing a few exercises and counting while you do them, or putting on a math youtube video and letting them jump around and dance. Below are some that my class really loved last year. They can all be found on youtube!

 

 

Anyway, after your break you will the timer again for students to finish. Apparently, a good sprint is supposed to be just hard enough that no one in your class will finish it completely. I always had a couple of those smarties finish though! If they finished within the first minute, I just ad them turn it over on the back and write their numbers as high as they could go. 

One of my issues with sprints is that kindergarteners aren't so happy with the idea of stopping something when they're not done. You will hear lots of cries, "But I'm not done!!" Once they got used to it, they did much better with that! You just tell them that it is practice for them and them alone and that not finishing is ok. I also had issues with students starting before I said to start. I just started taking papers away and telling them they couldn't "play the game" because they weren't being fair to others. This only happened a few times and then they knew I meant business!

This year, I plan to do a "Tortoise and the Hare" theme to introduce sprints. I would much rather the students go at their own pace and get more correct, than to be so concerned about finishing first! I definitely want them to strive for accuracy above speed. Although maybe that is in direct contrast to the overall purpose of the sprint! Whatever! ;)

And furthermore, I will NOT be marking their sprints with red circles! In fact, you don't even have to grade them yourself! After finishing a sprint, you go through it together as a class. Students mark smileys next to the ones they got correct. Then apparently, you are supposed to have students stand up for getting 1 correct, 2 correct...blah, blah, blah until the few are left standing. I always skip that part though! I feel it is enough for them to know how many they got right themselves. And I really don't want to spread a competitive spirit amongst my munchkins. Soo...yeah, I don't do it! My own math issues surface again apparently! 

I have created a packet of sprints for kindergarteners in the beginning of the year. This packet only goes up to number five. I intend to created numbers 1-10 soon! If you would like to purchase it, it can be found at my TPT store, http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Kindergarten-Math-Sprint-Bundle-for-Numbers-1-5-812324  

If you just want to get your feet wet with sprints, I also posted a freebie, http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Counting-with-Dice-812337

Happy sprinting!