In the beginning . . .

I just took a look at my daughter's new Sabbath school lesson and this month we will be studying the creation!! And as if it was meant to be I just found these visual aides that I (drawings by my husband) made when I taught one of the Sabbath school classes a few years ago. The 7th day though is missing, so I need to make one ASAP. I thought they were perfect.

Could you use something like this to teach something in sequence in your classrooms? Like what?

Creating a clutter free classroom-before pics!

Yay!! So I finally got to uploading my photos from my super messy classroom. We started school again on Monday, and I was not allowed to go into my classroom until the day before, Sunday. So . . . I go happily with my husband and almost 15 month old baby girl to my classroom, ready to clean the top of my desk, dust a bit, and clear out as much of my office as I could.

To my surprise (not so much because it has happened waaaay too many times) my floor had been waxed and of course NOTHING had been put back. So my small little organizing task became a classroom cleanup and rearranging project. I have to say that I am very proud of what I accomplished in 5 hours so that now I am much less stressed out this week, but I didn't accomplish what I originally wanted to.

Here is NOT how I left my classroom:

And the process of purging some things from my office.

So . . . .  to the topic at hand. Here is the embarrasing state of my classroom. This is what I need to work on - how I DID leave my classroom :/

 My new "desk" which I just WANT to use for parents to put things and to store my "teacher items".

The next four are of my office. Believe it or not once there was a huge desk inside where I could actually do work!

 An overstuffed bookshelf which I have now temporarily covered with cloth.

My cabinet full of stuff that I've either forgotten about or don't even know about :(

Ok. That's it. I have faith that before the year ends it will all be much more organized :)



Dollar Spot Tic Tac Toe decoding game

I am so blessed to have such giving parents this year. They gave me a $50 Target gift card for my birthday in November! I wanted to spend it all on the kids, but since times are tough I bought some gifts for my daughter, but I did manage to grab four of these tic tac toe games. There were adorable pink and purple ones, but you know, the boys wouldn't want to play with those.

So this is what I did with them. I've trained taught my students to look up at our choice board to see what they can work  play with after they are done with each of their center rotations (hopefully next year I can convince my partner to switch centers because many times they are just not productive).

Anywho . . . I decided that students could play in pairs but they couldn't place their gamepiece unless they could read the words in the spot they wanted.

I cut up small labels the size of the gameboard circles and wrote different two-syllable, easily decodable words on them. One board has words with 'M' . .

Another words with 'P' . .

Another words with 'S' . . .

And the final with words with 'T'.

These are the first four syllables that kids learned this year. I will change out the words as the year goes on. Hope it goes over well.



Thanks for the Liebster Blog award!!!

Thank you so much to Louanne over at My Kindergarten Kids for giving me this award! I've been so absent from the blogging world since the school year started that this is a welcome surprise, especially because now I get to share the wealth with others :).

The goal of this award is to spotlight up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers.

The rules are:

{1} Copy and paste the award on your blog.

{2} Thank the giver and link back to them.

3} Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.

Here are mine!!!

  

 

Student friendly writing rubric

We of course have the writing rubric that teachers use to grade students' writing. Ours is a 4 point rubric on each of the 6 traits. However, this doesn't help our students in self-evaluating their writing, so a few years back we began using this student rubric.

Students grade their own writing, first with teacher guidance, using the four points of this rubric: I finished and colored my drawing, I incorporated a capital and period in each sentence, I placed spaces in between my words, and I used my sounds to write. For the last part I tell students that if I can read it and it says what they wanted it to say then they used their sounds correctly.

I think there are many other things that I would like to incorporate such as penmanship, a detailed drawing, and word choice, but don't want to overwhelm the students.

What do you think?

What do you use?



Cute way to integrate art with writing

So . . .  our new "not really the principal but has been given the work of principal instead of support teacher" decided that us language arts teachers will also teach art. Well, with the pace of language arts that we have it has become extremely difficult, but here is what my students did once, and they finished in a 20 minute center :)

First, students had to write their sentence. If not, they couldn't paint (some need that motivation). We all wrote the same sentence together. I see a ______. I have a really cute book that shows how to fingerpaint a number of different animals, so as I painted each student's fingers they painted their  . . . can you guess?? After each color they went to wash their hands. What do you think?





Modge Podged Christmas gift

For those of you who might still have a few more days of school and need an idea for a Christmas gift, here is what we did . . . .

 Choose a few drawings that you would like to have your students trace and make enough copies for your students (my largest group in centers is 9 students so I made 9 copies). Tape them down to the table so they don't move. Cut up transparencies in fourths and tape each quarter sheet of transparency on top of the drawing each students wants to trace.

 Instruct students to trace along the black lines with a black sharpie first. (I didn't think they could, but they did very well). Then they can color the rest of the drawing using a sharpie. I really underestimated my students but they did really well by themselves! I wrote each student's number so it could be identified later (since this took a few days total) and placed them in ziploc baggies with their names.

 At a different center each student modge podged 4 fat popsicle sticks in the color scheme of their choice. I just cut up holiday tissue paper (about $3.00 total) into sort of squares and let them at it. Since I'm a bit of a control freak and didn't have that much modge podge I painted all of the sticks myself and them painted them again the next day to reduce the risk of ripping. Students saved these in their baggies as well once dry. 

 Then I simply stapled each drawing onto a piece of cardstock that matched the color scheme of each student's popsicle sticks. Make sure that you place the yarn/string in place BEFORE gluing the packing onto the sticks. I learned this the hard way. Regular elmers glue, just make sure students really hold it in place for a loooooong time.

 And voila .  . . glue each child's photo on a desired spot, have them write their names somewhere with a marker, and done.

 I had them write a very quick little note, to . . .  from. . . . and a drawing inside.

Did I mention I had all of these supplies already, just had to buy the tissue paper? That's why we did it. My partner found these perfect envelopes. We just slipped the frames inside, punched holes in the top of the envelopes and notes, tied with a string, and done (sorry didn't take a final picture).