Ex.haust.ed.

That is what I am! Tomorrow is a Professional Development day, so no students. Hallelujah...I need these precious three days to build up energy for next week!

Made it Through Week 2...

27 kindergarteners who miss their mommies + never having been to school before + a cramped classroom + a cold = a tough week.

But I survived week 2! Barely!

OMG

This school year is getting off to a rough start! That's all. I just need a pep talk. Feel free to leave comments!!

Ready or Not...

School is back in full swing on Tuesday. There is a lot left to do and some things won't get done by Tuesday, but I'm feeling okay with that right now. My room isn't perfect, but it's good enough for now. I've definitely made some progress in there.

Before:

After:

Pictures are a bit dark, I was getting ready to leave & had already turned the lights off!

Little classroom library area in progress

Blurry, but paper & borders are finally up.

Math materials organized & labeled

Calendar , easel, and Polyvision board area. I'm excited because I'm going to be using calendar notebooks with my kids this year and using the Smart board for Calendar time. I was able to embed days of the week, ABC songs, etc. into the calendar program. Fun!

The first day is always so stressful- having new kids enroll & get added to the class list throughout the morning, making sure I know how kids are getting home, making sure no one pees their pants...

I will be glad when the first month of school is over and we're into a good routine! As of now, I'm excited to meet all my kinders!

Small Progress...

I worked in my room for a few hours yesterday & while the room doesn't look very finished, I got tons organized. I basically took everything out of my closet and organized supplies into labeled tubs so I could actually see what I have in there. I only got paper up on a couple of walls and I haven't even bought border yet, so I still have tons to do! But at least the student tables are cleared off!

Pardon the bad iPhone pics!!

My classroom looks like this...

I went in to school yesterday to work on my classroom. It's funny how "working in my classroom" usually equates to creating a disaster area for me. People kept coming in my room yesterday with raised eyebrows which secretly said "Wow, your room looks terrible & you probably won't get it done in time. Glad this isn't my problem!!" But in the end I don't stress out too much because I know this is how I work. I like to reorganize pretty much everything and rearrange my room. Last year I really didn't have much set up time and I had moved to a new room, so this year I really needed to get things organized!

One change I'm pretty excited about this year is that I'm getting rid of my teacher desk! The thing was a huge clunker that took up a huge chunk of the room. Instead, I'm going to use my reading table and the counter & shelves behind it to organize my desk supplies. I think my room will look so much bigger without the desk.

But here's how I left my room last night:

Here's my former big ol' desk. It used to be in that corner. Now it's waiting to be removed from my room...yay! My student computers are now set up along the wall, under the blue bulletin board. If you notice, all my alphabet charts were still up in the room because my class had summer school. Luckily, I had some help taking everything off the walls yesterday!

Organized chaos? Nope, just chaos for now.

My room has to be ready for parents by tomorrow. Hahaha. No really. I foresee a long day of work ahead of me...Wish me luck!

It's August!

Can you believe it? The summer is just flying by. I had a PD for school today and I have to say, it kinda stressed me out. Not the actual PD, but it got me thinking about how much stuff I need to do to get ready for the year.

I've been keeping a Google doc of To-Dos for this upcoming school year so at least all the thoughts are organized and not floating around in my brain! BTW, I use Google docs for pretty much everything.

I just need another two or three months of summer vacation & I think I can get everything done...

I came across a great kindergarten website and that's led to finding more & more awesome teaching sites. Here's just a few:

Clutter Free Classroom

Kindergarten Works

Miss Kindergarten

Donors Choose Project!

My new Donors Choose project was just accepted and posted to the site! Check out my proposal for a new MP3 Player Listening Center!!

Livin' Loud with a New Listening Center

Summer Reading

I'm pretty excited because my Amazon order arrived yesterday afternoon (yay for free overnight). I was on the hunt for some good kindergarten resources. One of my personal goals for next year is to become better at differentiating, better at planning literacy centers, and to start doing math centers. I found some great resources to help me get started.

The book that I may be most excited about is called "Kindergarten in Photographs" by Jasmine Greene. It looks like a super easy read with tons of color photographs to give you ideas. Just skimming through, I already got some fun new ideas.

I also ordered "Literacy Work Stations: Making Centers Work" by Debbie Diller. This is a book for K-2. I've used this resource before and there are tons of great ideas for literacy centers to use throughout the year. The ideas make centers more manageable, in that you're not changing every single component each week.

I didn't know that Debbie Diller also made a book about math centers, but I saw it and decided I better grab it up. The book is called "Math Work Stations: Independent Learning You Can Count On, K-2". This one also has color photos throughout the book.

The last book that I got is called "Differentiating Instruction in Kindergarten" by Cindy Middendorf. This one doesn't look particularly interesting at first glance, but I'm hoping to get some generic tips that will make my year easier!

So there you have it, some books to keep my busy this summer in addition to my reading for class (boo) and some books I want to read for fun!

Happy Fourth of July weekend everyone...one of my favorite holidays!

Exhausted!

Nothing much new here this week. I should be writing my paper right now, but I have been staring at the computer screen, zoning out instead. I think I'm exhausted from the heat. Teaching kindergarteners will do that to you. Teaching kindergarteners in 95 degree heat the past two days will definitely do that to you. So I think the theme for this week is survival!

P.S. I got home from work yesterday and let Laila outside. I checked out the window a few minutes later & Laila had knocked her pool over and was sitting inside it, waiting. So funny, she wants to get in her pool everyday when I get home.

Zoooooooooo!

Yesterday the kindergarten classes took a trip to the Detroit Zoo, which I was pretty excited about because I have never been before! It was the perfect way to spend a sunny Friday at the end of the school year. Apparently about a million other schools had that same thought...it was incredibly busy!

We were slightly disappointed because the lion exhibit was closed, we didn't see any tigers, and the monkey exhibit was being cleaned but we did see a lot of animals. I just realized that we never saw elephants...I wonder if the zoo has any?

A giant anteater. Creepy!

We thought the polar bear up on the hill looked pretty depressed in the non-arctic "Arctic Ring" exhibit. Polar bears just seem like they should never see grass. But a docent we talked to assured us that polar bears can live in a wide range of temperatures, like those that live in Canada. Still, he looks like he'd love some snow.

The kangaroos did not move at all. Must've been too hot?

We (the kindergarten teachers haha) were a big fan of the giraffes. Sooo pretty!

This picture doesn't quite capture how amazingly blue this bird's head was. Did you know that the zoo doesn't own the peacocks? They just come on their own!

I wish I could show you how cute the kindergarteners looked while they watched all the animals!

Hard to see, but zebras grazing. The one in the middle is a baby! Did you know that zebra mother's keep their babies away from the group for

the first few days of life so the baby can learn its mother's stripes, smell, and sound? Aww.

Part of the Kindergarten Team

We had a little drama trying to get all the groups back onto the bus on time, but all in all it was a pretty smooth trip.

Teaching Writing in Kindergarten

As a former second grade teacher, coming into Kindergarten has been an eye opening experience. Everything is a new experience for these little ones- including writing time. I've realized that I need some more resources besides just Lucy Caulkins to get me going. This book, Teaching Writing in Kindergarten, caught my eye in the Scholastic resource catalogue. I think I might use some of my book order bonus points to buy it.

Busy, Busy!

Wow, I've been exhausted lately! I forgot how much energy the first month or so of a school year can zap out of me! Ever since we went back to school, it's been go go go. I had about a day and a half to throw my room together after moving classrooms this year. For some reason, we had 2 (FULL!) weeks of Professional Developments before the school year started and Zero work days in the classroom. Yikes. Let's just say that my room is still not setup to my liking quite yet. This is what my room looked like about a week before I had students coming in!

Scary, I know. I'll have to post some pics of my room as it looks now.

My first two weeks in Kindergarten have been exhausting. I am soooo not used to kids crying to go home, pooping their pants, and generally not knowing how to do one single thing by themselves. There are parts I love so far (like the cuteness of 4 and 5 year olds) and some things that I'm having to adjust to (shoes constantly untied, not attempting to cover their sneezes etc.). 8:30-4 has never felt so long! Especially since we teachers have to pull lunch and bus duty on some days this year.

Have I mentioned that I've also started my Masters program? And we have a puppy? So...when I get home exhausted from school, I fall onto the couch and nap, right? Wrong. Walk the dog, feed the dog, homework, keep the dog from knocking things off counters! I've never loved the weekends so much!!