Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, a sale, and some freebies!!

Wow last week feels like it went on forever. We didn't get Monday off like we were hoping because Issac turned west but we did have a whole day stuck inside because of the rain...thank God my projector was working that day! (it's currently on a truck being sent out on its second tech call of the year). We also had open house Thursday night and I spent most of the evening Wednesday watching my mom get her finger stitched up after a minor onion cutting incident. This teacher is popped...hooray for Labor Day!

With all that excitement we had such a fun week with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. We started doing "rotations" this week. Just literacy stations for now, hopefully math will start next week. When my kids start rotating in the beginning of the year I feel like I can breathe again. I am in awe of those of you who can start centers the first week of school. We started learning with play centers and got down the routine of staying at your station, cleaning, and safely getting to your next station. This week I added some work stations into the mix so we could start learning staying on task and doing good work. I am not ready for my big rotations yet but my goal is to get there by the time I teach apples in 2 weeks. This week we did 4 rotations with 4 stations so I had bigger groups and it was all done in 1 day...it works for now. The kids did GREAT!

I only have a few pictures to share of some of our stations and some other fun stuff we did.

 Shape trees...got this great idea from Julie Lee :)

Our shape trees with our name trees. So fun and colorful in this corner.

 I used a Fiskars hole punch to cut out these little coconuts to use at this math center. Counting and fine motor practice. You can download the paper from Scribd at the bottom of the post.

 This is from my Chicka Unit. They picked out magnet letters and matched them on the cookie sheet.

 ABC matching fun

 Mr Dale came and cracked a coconut for us! The kids got to taste the milk, eat the raw coconut and then compare it to some shredded coconut. SO.FUN.

Now that I have student work up on my walls my room is starting to really feel like home :)

Finally here's your freebie.


Chicka Counting Trees

Monster fun

We've had a great 2nd week in my room...our monster unit was so much fun! We broke out "The Day The Monster Came to School" from Growing Kinders and talked all about expectations for how to act in school. My kids are doing great and really getting used to our classroom routines. And they are GREAT cleaners!! I am the most organized and well planned that I have ever been (in my 2 years and 2 week long teaching career haha) I have lots of pictures to share so I'll get right to it :)

Monster counting practice.  Can I just say one more time how much I love that counting and cardinality is a full on standard in CCSS??

More counting practice! This was so fun...they read the number and glued that many googly eyes to the monster. Great counting AND fine motor skills...double win :)

Color word practice

 

We learned to roll and write...I figured they'd better get used to this activity because they will be rolling and writing all year long haha. Yay for subitizing :)

 We started learning about shapes this week and we made square monsters and triangle monsters. I didn't grab a shot of any finished ones, but we put the shape song and a popsicle stick on the back and they turned into puppets. I had to stop a few shape monsters from destroying each other during dismissal time but other than that they were a great success. You can download the shape songs that my teammate made up at the bottom of the post :)

M is for monster !!

Today we read "Go away big green monster" and made our own big monsters. I think they turned out hilarious!!

The paper for the big monsters is also in the freebie below. Everything else is available in my Monster Madness unit. Click on any of the pictures to see it in my store.

It was a super fun week...and tomorrow Zero the Hero is coming to school :) Good times!



Monster Freebies

2 down, 175 to go!

My first two days have gone well! Yesterday was the usual mix of anxiety and craziness and first day excitement. Today I was able to get a lot of management and procedures taken care of and I'm feeling really good about my group so far :) **knock on wood**

In other news, I just finished up some center signs. Last year we did "clip centers" which was what my kids named developmental center time since they had to "clip" their clothespin on the sign. Once there were three clips on the sign, that center was full and no one else could be there. It was a beautiful system. I wanted to revamp my signs to match my polka dot theme so I came up with these. Click on the picture to find them in my store.

I've had a lot of people ask about some of the calendar elements from the pictures in my last post. I posted part of this set as a freebie last week but have since added the "Today's Number" section so here's the whole set.

Calendar Pieces Updated

Classroom pics and first day of school freebies

Monday is my first day of school...I have 25 new kiddos coming to my room tomorrow ready or not! I have just a few pics of my room to share:

My jobs chart wasn't completely done yet at this point but it shows perfectly the two themes I have going in my room this year. Polka dots everywhere mixed with some monsters (I am going to use Kathleen Pedersen's Monster Manners system)

Here's a shot of most of my calendar wall...I'm super excited about how it turned out :)

I covered my chalkboard this year to get some extra space. Here's a shot of what has turned into my focus wall, writing center and word wall.

Finally, my palm tree is back in action! Last year my AP dropped off two giant carpet rolls in our pod and said "I'm sure you can come up with something for this" and boom...giant palm trees appeared in our rooms :) When I got back to my room in July I found the leaf part crumbled up on the floor and I was so shocked and sad. I'm pretty sure it got moved near the ceiling fan during classroom cleaning and there was a terrible accident haha. But it has been resurrected and looks even better this year (I never actually got the "bark" up on the trunk last year - that was one of the projects that fell to the wayside when I broke my ankle).

I'm really really excited about the year. I threw together a few coloring sheets for tomorrow that I am going to share as freebies. I can't remember where I read this idea, but someone wrote in a blog post about how they like to give the kids a picture to color of how they get home. I thought it was a great idea and I good way to keep them occupied as I am putting colored stickers and bus tags on everyone at the end of the day. You can download the sheets below :)


First Day Stuff

SALE SALE SALE!!!

It's time for the Back to School Sale on TPT...Everything in my store will be 20% off plus the TPT discount. Click on the picture to go to my store...Happy Shopping!!

5 days and counting

Oh my goodness I have been running nonstop for a week. I got back from vacation the night before returning to work. This was great planning because it forced me NOT to spend the last few weeks of summer fiddling around in my room but at the same time it was horrible because my "packing" job from May was a complete disaster and it has taken me FOREVER to get myself together. I have been so busy covering walls, rearranging furniture and sorting through my multiple pinterest boards from the past year haha. I thought I took pictures today but I must have imagined it. I'll post pics tomorrow of my progress :)

I also just finished a cute little mini-unit for The Kissing Hand. Here's a pic of what's included:

Click on the picture to find it in my store!!

Back in action!

Hello to all my friends (especially all my NEW friends!) I have been terrible about blogging for the last month... I've been traveling non-stop since the first week of July...a few last minute trips that all came together nicely. It's been so wonderful to just get away and let my brain rest!! I get back into town the night before going back to work so I'm starting to get revved up for school.

I just finished my latest set of interactive emergent readers based on Brown Bear, Brown Bear and decided to make it a freebie for all my lovely followers :) These little books worked great with my kiddos last year. There's two different books in the pack with a few options. Leave me a comment if you download...I love to read about people finding my things useful.

Here's the link to it on TPT or you can grab it below form Scribd

Brown Bear Books

Here's some links to some of my other emergent readers like this

And there's lots more in my store!