Classroom Day 4 - More Pictures :)

Friday dawned bright and early... my 3 year old was burning up and only wanted his mommy to hold him - so my idea of spending lots of time in the classroom didn't happen.  My husband was able to give me a couple of hours though of daddy duty before he had to go off to work, so in 2 hours I finished up some projects.  You might have seen some of these pictures over on Instagram or on Facebook yesterday.  So... here is more pictures of my classroom from yesterday.    

This is my classwork bulletin board.  I still need to add the pushpins, but it's almost ready to go.  Usually I only put up cardstock, but this year I found those adorable birds at Office Max and had to get them.  I think it dresses up the board nicely.  :)

Here's my VOICES board.  It was originally going to have FACE strategies too, but all my writing stuff kind of took over.  The french fries cups are going to be synonyms that the tables brainstorm - and we will get in some thesaurus practice at the same time.  Planning on switching them out with different words once a month.  

This is the left side of my front wall.  My Lego calendar came down, and instead I have a gigantic desk calendar to write big on.  I tend to write huge anyway, so now there will be more room.  There is room on the far left to hang the Star Student's poster, and above is my school timeline ready to go.  We brainstorm the best parts of the month the last day of the month and write it on a dicut that gets placed up on the timeline.  

Here's the front wall.  The whiteboard hasn't been sectioned off yet, but I love how everything has come together.    

I finally put up the whole brain teaching posters to start the year.

... and my hand signals are now up.  

The FACE strategies are now up too.  

My storage units are all sorted too.  These black ones have task cards and activities in the 5 drawer ones, and the 3 drawer have reading activities (fluency books, science/ss connections, spelling sorts, word work, and a drawer full of my thesaurus').  

The math bulletin board has also started to be put together - it starts off pretty plain but will soon be covered with anchor charts.  

Below the math bulletin board is all my math drawers - Math Facts, Mixed Fact Assessments, and lots of manipulatives.  

Overall, it was a good day and I'm feeling pretty comfortable with what's left to do.  Isn't it crazy how much stuff needs to be done in a short amount of time on top of getting everything organized paperwork wise to start out the year?

I hope you all have a great day!  

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January Monday Made It

It's that time again!  Monday Made It with Tara.  I enjoyed it so much this past summer - those Mondays that I could just blog hop from one website to another pinning all those fabulous ideas.  Then school started and I can't just relax in my pj's anymore - yes, I'm still sad about that - Christmas break was wonderful!

Well this past month I have been filling up my little store on Teachers Pay Teachers.  That's mainly what I've made.  I've created quite a few things for my kiddos - and they seem to be appreciative.  The other day we were playing Scoot with our Mid Year Math Review and they asked me where I got the game from.  I told them that I made it myself (since for the majority of the fall my answer was from other fabulous teachers).  They actually thanked me!  After I picked up my jaw off the floor, I decided that I WAS a creative type of person who really does enjoy making things.  Yes, I finally convinced myself. 

Okay, so here is some of the stuff I've been making:

  

Banners for Whole Class Incentives - They spell the words on those special weeks to earn a class prize.  

 

Math Review - Double Digit Multiplication, Long Division, Math Facts, Mid Year (Factors, Rounding, Place Value, Division, Multiplication)

There are other things that I've uploaded too over at the store.  

Thank you for your support and encouragement!  

The other big thing that I did for school was changing around a wall and creating a brand new word wall.  In the past 2 1/2 years that I have been in this classroom I have despised this section of the wall.  They moved my TV over to this area 2 years ago and it has always been a weird set up as some of it is tucked behind it.  Not to fear though - what a difference it has made with bright paper.  The ABC cards on it are actually Tonya's Portable Word Wall from TPT.  I had bought it planning on making it portable, but then they were the perfect size. 

I hope you have a wonderful day!   

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Welcome and Word Walls

Yesterday was fun!  I enjoyed talking to so many of you through the comments, email, and on Facebook.  If you grabbed a freebie, I hope it will help you in your classroom.  

Welcome to the new followers of this little blog!  Before I dive into everything I wanted to show you around on here... Over on the right side there is a lot of stuff to help keep me hopefully organized and to hopefully give you resources you need - Labels/Lists from the different past posts, Buttons to my Pinterest, Facebook and TPT store, Different pages that I have posted pictures, and Buttons/Blog Links to the places I like to head for resources.   

Last night I couldn't sleep because I started thinking of my plan book.  You know - the one that I've been avoiding for the past 13 days.  I was thinking about how we just started the Medicine unit right before we left for vacation and how I really want to create a Word Wall in my classroom to house all the words - not just the 5 or 6 from the week.  I didn't have a clue where I could put it because I'm really out of space on my walls, but it's important to me to find room.  

Now at the beginning of the year I had every intention of using this cursive alphabet for my word wall - but it didn't work!  I mean, it started to work, but then the spaces were all off and the words were tiny.  Ultimately, it didn't work the way I thought it could.  Now that entire board has been redone to include both my FACE of a Reader and VOICES strategies.

I'm thinking that I will either take the squares that I normally put the 6 vocabulary words (and all the other vocab), and instead hang fabric in that area to create another bulletin board - or I will post them on my cabinet doors (since I moved the stuff off of those to put on the actual Reading and Math boards).  I won't be back in the classroom until the morning before the kiddos walk in the door, I'm almost guaranteed that it will be pulling teeth to get my own boys up and ready for school that day, so I'm expecting this project will have to be tackled after school or during prep.  

Like I said - I couldn't sleep - so I created Word Wall Vocabulary and Definitions for my new board in the different units that we study for Reading.  They are based on the stories that we go through.  Maybe you study the same units?  I posted them as a 5 unit bundle as well as individually over at TPT.    

At present, I am dealing with 3 boys having 3 different tent/forts set up all over the downstairs of my house.  Tonight is the last of the Christmas celebrations - I think this is #6???  I did open up my plan book and had more planned for next week than I remembered.  Isn't that always a good sign?!  Hope you have a great day!

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Minimum Days Mean Rearranging The Classroom

Every year it's the same issue that I have.  I can not just leave well enough alone on minimum days.
I do the same thing at my house and it drives my family crazy with the constant rearranging.
Parent conferences are this week, and after spending all day on Monday in my classroom, I just wanted to change everything around - at least on the bulletin boards.
So Tuesday and Wednesday I spent a good portion of my prep time standing on a chair.
Here's what I did:
I moved my FACE pictures to a smaller board and my FACE cards to share my VOICES board.  I updated my stars from the VOICES board to laminated lined paper so I could add the colors of the Rainbow Edit directly to those reminders.

The VOICES and FACES information also got a makeover.  I decided to laminate the beautiful circle letters from Ladybug's Teacher Files.  Before I had them in sheet protectors, but I'm trying to make it a tad smaller in size to combine both the boards.

I moved my Reading vocabulary pictures (on the colored card stock) up from below the board to the side of the board.  That allowed me to be able to post my Making Connections and Story Map poster boards up high above the board. 

I also was able to stick up some more anchor charts of the different reading skills (Compare/Contrast, Cause/Effect, Predicting, Visualizing, Asking Questions) on the other side of the top of the board.  I decided to take those FACE cards of those skills and stick them on top of the anchor charts to help kids make the connection.  

I moved my Science vocabulary to the front of the room.  It's just on a pocket chart, but I really want vocabulary to be all up front since it's what we are working on right now.  This pocket chart switches between Science and Social Studies depending on what we are studying.

I moved my entire Math wall to the big bulletin board on the back wall.  Now there is room for more anchor charts.  I like that it is on an actual board that has fabric, and that most of the stuff is now at student eye level instead of way up high above the board.
I love it ...at least at the moment.  :)  
Hope you had a good day - last day of parent conferences!

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