Organizing your day

This will be short and sweet. I know that many teachers use filing trays or the cubby type boxes from Lakeshore to organize materials for the next day, but I found these magnetic pockets a few years back (I think Lakeshore) and they work great, especially since I have limited counter space. I just use one for each day of the week.



Making clear pocket strips for cents!

So we only have about 5 minutes in the morning to do calendar. I don't teach math so it's not a major focus of my day, but it is a good way for students to begin their morning, so I wanted a super quick way for them to be able to read and identify the days of the week, months of the year, and seasons, and place them on the calendar independently. And of course for cheap. So I decided to make the above mentioned on cards, laminate them, and place them in a pocket chart behind my teaching easel so that I can just turn it around after calendar.

Then I had my regular calendar wall but instead of having students write the days, months, and season (because it just took up too much time and writing them wasn't my focus), I decided to just write the sentences on sentence strips and have a spot for students to just pick and place the correct answer.

I didn't have anything appropriate so . . . .

I took a transparent sleeve (the ones you put in binders) and strategically got 3 pocket strips out of it. Just cut it up and staple to the wall. Cut the front part in a U shape so it's easier for students to place the cards, and voila! Sorry I didn't take a closer picture. They are the shiny things on the wall :)

I'm sure I must have seen or heard of this somewhere, but I have no idea where. But it was just what I needed.

Kung Hei Fat Choy!

Happy Chinese New Year!!!

Here are one of the crafts that my students created to celebrate Chinese New Year. It's so simple but they love it. Unfortunately the one in the middle didn't follow directions very well :/ You know.

We also had fun watching some videos related to Chinese New Year. I've posted them here. Maybe you can use them as well.

Chinese New Year Song

Dragon Dance

Lion Dance

I don't know what this says or means, but my dad sent it to me last year for Chinese New Year, and on youtube it says Chinese New Year Song. But I love it cuz the girls are so cute :)

This would be sooooooo cool for my kinders to perform next year! A teacher can dream, right?



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!!!