My very 1st thematic unit!

I am so excited to share with you guys my very first "big" unit!! Holy Moly- I have been working on it for a while but have finally finished! =) You can see my earlier post with some samples of my kids work that went a long with the unit. Please check it out and leave me some thoughts! :)

Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!!

Rufolf & **Freebie!!**

Well today was a good day! I am pooped, but it was good. I was so happy to see my kiddos this morning, hugged each one as they walked in. I was suprised when a few brought up what had happened Friday. We talked about it but not at great length. I just reminded them of what we need to do if bad people like that were to ever enter the building and how serious it is even when it is just for practice. They all handled it really well, most not really understanding what the others were talking about.

We, as I am sure everyone else is, are talking about Christmas this week! Such a chaotic fun week! =) We have half days, well... I say half days but we get out at 10:45... so, not sure how half t hat is but whatever. So we are cramming in a whole lot into this week!

Today we read Rudolf and discussed character feelings and how those feelings might change throughout a story.

You can grab this freebie here
We also FINALLY (my kids have been dying) to read Pete the Cat Saves Christmas! :) Oh how they love them some Pete. After reading I came up with this little craftivity and writing to go along with the book. They turned out pretty cute, I might say! =)

Tomorrow we are talking about Santa! =) Ill be sure to post some more tomorrow! 

heavy heart

All morning I have been watching news coverage, reading CNN and of course facebook. The more stories that come out about the shooting at Sandy Hook, the heavier my heart becomes. I cannot imagine. It is so scary to think that could have been my school, my best friends school, any of us bloggers school. In a field that you would think is completely safe to go to work each day and then something like this. I pray for healing, understanding and peace to the families, community and our nation.

with a heavy, heavy heart.

Outta this WORLD/ MIA much??

Goodness!! I have not writeen in forever!! :( This yea has definately been....different.... to put it nicely! I haven't had time to even think about blogging and shareing what is going on here. Things appear to be slowing down a little bit (knock on wood) so, I am going to try to get back into the groove of the blogging life.

This week we have been learning about SPACE! They have loooooved it- I feel they always love those science units. We have talked about the sun, moon, stars, astronauts and ofcourse...aliens! I wanted to share some pictures of the thigns we've been doing, along with some activities! I have been working on a space unit, because-- come to find out there isn't much out there for kindergarten! So, stay tuned! =)

Moon facts in our science journal. 

We read Moustronaut and learned about text-to-self connections and character feelings. It was such a cute book and the kids enjoyed it. They did a great job inferring how the mouse might be feeling! 

some of our anchor charts

we learned about syllables last week so we did a little spacey syllables activity! =) 

We wrote facts about the different things we learned about in our science journal after have a class discussion and creating an anchor chart. They did great! 

I am hoping to have this unit posted in the next week or so!! I am so excited to share it with you. I am also hoping to share some of the fun things were doing this week... it's Gingerbread week! =)

Marvelous Monday

Can I just say YAY for good Mondays! =) Today was awesome-- kids were great (overall), got a lot done, **ALMOST** done testing, kick boxed, and had a good Math monday meeting. <-- rare

So, just a quick post and then I will stop procrastinating on what I need to do... My class this year is special. I love me some low babies and the Lord placed A LOT of them in my lap this year. I have 15 non-readers. To some of you that might not be a big deal, but I am spoiled and the population I work with are usually relatively on top of it. This year, not so much. I am trying to feel half glass full here, and think to myself-- a) REAL Kindergarten! b) more growth and c) I love the reward that comes from all this.

One thing I've noticed is the coloring. HOLY MOLY! We have aliens, monsters and purple people eaters when we do self portraits! So I whipped up this little page for my kiddos and we did a step-by-step how to draw a self portrait. (yes.. we needed step-by-step) They turned out pretty cute AND have helped a lot!

I will update this with a FREE download of this sheet when I have a second at school since I don't have it on this computer! oopsies!

Laminator for my house?! YES, please!

OK, so I know it's been forever and a day since I've posted, and I was planning on getting on here and sharing what we've been up to a little later, however I stumbled upon an AWESOME giveaway! Hop on over the the wonderful Rowdy in Room 300 so you can enter to win a LAMINATOR for your house! Im totally jealous of all you teachers that already have this at home, I would love, love, love to have one of my own! =)

That's all I've got for now, I am heading up to school to work for a bit and will share some of what's been going on a little later. I hope everyone is relaxing and enjoying their weekend! =)

I SURVIVED

Ok- Let me begin this post by saying....
a) I love my job.
b) never fails every year I ask myself "why do I teach kindergarten??" the first month or so of school.
c) my large glass of wine is really working wonders on my post first day therapy!

My class roster had 27 on it. 19 showed. It was WONDERFUL. I will be getting 4 newbies tomorrow however. hahaha. Everyone else had more kids show, most classes were running 23/24... so I thought why not--- I am gonna get the kids sooner or later?! Why not just take em sooner.

My kiddies were, interesting? I always ask people to ask me again in 2 weeks. You know, once the deer in the headlights look is off their face! =) Overall SUPER sweet. I even had a girl talk to me about church, Jesus, God and praying!! (I work with a predominantly Indian population, so it's rare that a child approaches me and asks me if I pray or go to church!)

Anyway- I am revamping my week in reading... to better meet their needs and am totally gonna share some things on Friday! Just trying to survive until then! =)

Heeeere we go!!!

Well, I am about to crawl in bed and try to get a good nights sleep so I can be up bright and early (coffee in hand) ready to go for all 27+ kinder babies that are going to walk in my door tomorrow... yes, you read that right... 27+!!!!

I'm excited though. I think it's great that we as teachers get 2 "new years" every year... 2 new fresh starts! I am in need of one, and think this year is going to be great! I tried very hard to find a new job but God opened no doors, I believe he kept me at Freeman for a reason. I cannot wait to see new faces and my precious old familiar ones of kiddos from years past.

I hope everyone has a wonderful new school year... whether you began already or have new kiddos walking in your room tomorrow morning.

Hopefully I will have a little more to share tomorrow, until then off to bed I go! =)

=) Why I do what I do

This is a video from a few years back, but I watch it every year before school starts. I think its amazing and always brings a tear to my eye! I hope everyone has a wonderful school year (or is having a wonderful school year! )

just a little reminder...

technology tip tuesday

Good Evening all! =)

I JUST got home for the day... yes... at about 9:30. Really??? Gotta love the beginning of the school year, right? Plus my bestie got home from a long weekend so we met for dinner at 8. After all of our inservice meetings... today was great! Inservice... well, I will just say, it was long!

So today's topic for teacher's week is technology tips! I wanted to share one of my favorite iPad apps with you!

I LOVE this app and have gotten my co workers addicted! I would share pictures of my old class but i deleted yesterday while cleaning my iPad during training (productivity at it's finest, I say!) However, this app is great! You can input all your student data that you need-to-know and even have a cutie patootie photo of them with it at their desk! I really used the grade book feature but even more so the emailing feature! I made a "parent group" for mass emails since I like to be earth friendly and go green as much as possible! Anyway- this app helped me to limit paper usage and stay organized when it came to kid information. Love it and would suggest it to anyone! =)

Another favorite techy thing of mine is Brainpop Jr. OMG- my kiddos LOVE this website!! We go to the computer lab every friday and they always begged towards the end of the year for freebie friday so they could go to "moby" (the robot) You must check it out if you have never visited the website!!  Full of great, quick, informative videos that engage the kids... and even includes games, follow up activities and so much more!

Well, we have what we call convocation tomorrow morning so I best be off to bed!! I hope everyone is having a wonderful week. If you haven't already linked up-- jump on it! =)

Teacher's Week & My first week back!

Today was my first day back, well... inservice! Thank goodness no kiddos today because I could NOT sleep last night and was a little exhausted this morning. We have inservice ALL week and meet the teacher Thursday night. It's a beating... I assume inservice is the same at every school... just a beating! However, beatings aside, today wasn't a bad day at all! It was nice getting to see our new principal with the entire staff and get a feel for things. Its going to be a busy busy week thought!! Gotta love the first month back, sigh. I am proud to say, long day aside, I sucked it up and went to my kick boxing class! LOVE IT and so happy I went-- great way to start the week! =)

Alright, so apparently- it's Teachers Week! Which I find fitting since it's our first week back to school (atleast me) So I am linking up! I am just LOVING all these back-to-school links, yay for meeting lots of new friends! =) 

Ok- Must Have Monday!!! These are a few of my favorite things... let me begin with one I already mentioned in my post-- 

I am addicted to Turbo kick! I have been going Monday & Wednesday... I want to start Saturday too. Such a great work out (870+ calories tonight) and fun!! 

Lip Smackers-- or I like to refer to them as "magic smelly sticks"-- OH the things kids do for these puppies on their little hands! I used to just call them smelly sticks, but they seriously work MAGIC.

My appletv... I would DIE of boredom without it! Best.gift.ever.

My Nikon DSLR- enough said.

Diet DP- I love it. I have tried to give it up, several times, and fail. It is just so scrumptious! =) 

My iPad- I am always using this at school... couldn't live without it now. I use it in meetings, tutoring, classroom management! 

My lovely lap top (can you tell i am a MAC person?!)- I can't stand our school computers so I bring this puppy with me to school daily to work on stuff! 

Anyway-- what are your must haves? Link up!!! 

And have a fabulous week! :) 

Summer Lovin...

Well, as today is the last "offical" day of summer I found it appropriate to blog and join this linky party! The Joys of Kindergarten is hosting this linky party, so you should head on over and link up!

Alrighty--- so my top 5 would be...

1. Getting my works outs in whenever I got around to it! I loved going around 10:30. No crowds, got to sleep in, but still start my day in a healthy way. I really learned to love working out this summer! I lost 15 pounds so far... still have more to reach my goal but it's a start! =) Starting Monday my crazy work out schedule begins... Tuesdays/Thursdays alarm will sound at 5am and Ill drag my zombie self to the gym for some cardio before school. Hopefully I stick with it!! Monday/Wednesdays I have kick boxing! (my new love!)

2. sleeping in! OMG- i have gotten myself on a weeeiiiiird sleeping schedule that is for sure!

3. spending my days with this handsome fella....

4. days filled with nothing but netflix marathons

5. POOL DAYS!!!! I will definitely miss the sun!

Despite all these things, I am very excited to get back to school!! I have spent quite a bit of time up there this summer working on things, so I am definitely ready to get back into a routine, meet my kiddos and to have a fabulous year! We actually start our inservice, as I believe most of us Texas teachers do, on Monday & I'm a little anxious! We have a new principal this year & a lot of new teachers! We had a huge turn over this year-- I believe there are atleast 10 new teachers. eepa! Most Def going to be a year full of newness.

Wish me luck!! All you Texas teachers... enjoy your last weekend and I hope you have a great week back =)

Made it Monday #2

Ok, so once again-- I am posting my "Made it Monday" on Tuesday but what the heck! Yesterday was BANANAS.... I was up at school in team leader meetings, interviews, and I dont know what else I was doing until after 6!!! I don't know where the time went. I have been going to kick boxing on Mondays at 7:30 too, so I didn't get home and sit down until after 10 once everything was said and done. PHEW- needless to say, I didn't have time to post!

Last week I worked on this number posters to go with my class theme. I am going to put them up on my TpT store here within the week, I have a few last min touches I want to add before posting. However, here is a preview!

I also made these days of the week book boxes to use for my copies and activities for each day. I originally wanted to get the plastic shelves with the drawers but figured I had these and could cute-t-fy them for free and get the same purpose served.

I thought they turned out pretty cute! 

Anyhoo- back to work I go. Just wanted to share real quick! I am going to post some of my pictures of my room (better ones) later on this evening! Stay Tuned! =)

How do YOU plan: linky

SO funny I should stumble onto this linky party as I am making sure I have all my plans in order to meet with our new teacher tomorrow to go over some things with her. =)

So I am joining up with Mrs. Stanford's Class on this linky party on how you plan!

First of all, my school is departmentalized...however, I am self contained. Explanation: 1) I LOVE being self contained. I have done both ways and prefer having my own kiddos, all day...just me. 2.) we have an odd amount of classes (5) so someone's gotta do it, guess it'll have to be me! (sidebar: we will most likely hire another teacher and have 6 classes, however that teacher will be on the opposite end of the school in the 5th grade hall, stinky-- that's how I spent my first year, I feel their pain!)

Being self contained definitely has it's down sides too... My district began this past year having any and every kind of meeting you could imagine. We have PLC meetings (professional learning community) once a month for LA & Math. Then we have LA Mondays and Math Mondays once a month as well. (is it just me or are these meetings a complete waste of time 97% of the time????)  So there is a lot of --- "what did you think about this unit" or "how is your kids writing going"... chit chat.

THEN on top of those "district meetings". We plan as a grade level once a week- go over any important events coming up/discuss what the other departments are doing... math shares their curriculum with LA and vise versa so no one is in the dark. We also meet once a week as subject areas (yes... sometimes that means 3 meetings a week for me... errrrrrrrrr......) I am responsible to "head" our LA meetings, all in all I just facilitate and take notes for our principal. Years past, I will be honest-- subject area planning was not anything spectacular. This year we have a brand new teacher who I plan on mentoring in a sense, and helping her get the hang of kindergarten. I wasn't lucky enough to have an experience like that, so I hope she finds it helpful. In these meetings I hope that we go over COL (our online curriculum) expectations, what we are REALLY doing and integrating themes into curriculum. We also spend a great deal of time talking about our low babies and our tutoring time which is called tiger time. WE share struggles, ideas, etc.

ADDITION:::
Heres a preview of what my lesson plans look like. We have to submit our lesson plans on our campus drive to our principal. So I figured it was time to make the change from handwriting plans to typing on my computer. I am pretty happy with how the lay out turned out! = ) My plans are 2 pages, this is just the morning page, the afternoon is on it's own page. I keep my Guided Reading in an entirely different binder because I store my books in folders while theyre checked out (will blogg and share about that soon!) I am currently working on my personalized "teacher binder" which I will keep all my hard copy lesson plans in for the year.

Anyway, I am pretty excited to go and hop around other people on this linky to get ideas for our planning time. I think itll be great. :) If you haven't linked up--- get on it!

Classroom Tour Linky

I am linking up (again!) 

This time with Brigid from Brigid's Daily Lesson Log and her Classroom Tour Linky Party

A little tour/preview of my room.... what Ive accomplished thus far

My cute little tattle monster! =)  click the link to see more and how-to!

We have "learning targets" we have to display for the kids to see daily. We write them in "I can...." form. This is where I post mine. 

My favorite area... the library nook!

library nook (another angel)

Math Workshop Shelf

My naked word wall!! Looks so weird wordless!
I got my cute letters from live, love laugh everyday in kindergarten...even better they were FREE!

listening center

writing center! 

So I have A LOT more to add, but I wanted to join this linky party and share what I've done thus far. I am hoping to be all done by Tuesday next week so hopefully I will have ink and be able to share all the FINISHED photos! =)

Currently...

I am linking up with Farley from Oh' Boy 4th grade...

Makeovers & First Day of Kindergarten Linky Party!!

Let me start with this!! I am so very excited that I got a bloggy make over today! =) Alicia from Dreamlike magic has the cutest templates it was hard to pick one but I decided on this one. YAY for make overs !!!

Anyway, I am teaming up with Rachel from Teaching with Z on her first day of kindergarten linky party! I have been browsing around reading what other bloggers do on their first day and it's so interesting to see all the different ideas! You can join the party too by linking up-- just click the picture below....

So Let me begin by saying this-- my team and I start our work way before the little ones come walking into our rooms. The thursday night before school starts our entire school has out "Back to School Bash" where we meet the kids and their parents, get their transportation information & are completely overwhelmed and hardly remember who we meet are so great at remembering each and every precious child's name, need, and interest!! Thank goodness for my trusty iPad/check lists...right?! 

Following that night, literally...back to back... on the Friday before the first day of school we have a Kindergarten Parent meeting. We go over all the "to do's" for our parents, what to bring/not bring, uniform, lunch, schedules, personal independence (going to the bathroom alone!!!!) etc. We hold off on curriculum because we don't want to overwhelm... we like to save that for September Open House! Of course, the parents you typically NEED to be there, are not...but it helps some. 

On the first day I plan A LOT, knowing that I most likely will not get through it all but it's better to be over prepared! =) My day looks something like this (this is a ROUGH sketch!)

7:40-8:00 Meeting students at door. Once they come in the room they can color on the coloring page. 

8:00-8:20 Morning Meeting (Get-to-know you: pass tiger/name game)

8:20-8:30 How/where do we line up?? 

-practice walking in hallway

8:30-8:40 Calendar

8:40-8:55 READ miss Bindergarten

9:55-9:05 Bathroom

-practice lining up (where, what it looks like)

-where are bathrooms/behavior in bathroom/what do we do after

9:05-9:40 Math Workshop

-how many people are in our class? 

-Intro to MWS Rules/Procedures

-manipulative exploration

-clean up/check in

9:40-11:00 CATCH/RECESS/Lunch

11:00-11:40 WWS: 

-Read: Look out kindergarten here i come. 

-after reading talk about how we felt the night before. 

-Complete first day of kinder page. ***COPY FOR PORTFOLIO****, then make a class book.

11:40-12:00 DEAR TIME--- I will be taking first day of school pictures at this time. 

12:00-12:15 ABC song

-ABC punch

- Can you write your namE?! Have kids write name on Large piece of paper save for mosaic activity. 

12:15 split class for specials. Line up by color group. practice going to teachers door. 

12:30-1:15 SPECIALS

1:!5-1:30 bathroom break

1:30-1:50 Read the kissing hand. & 2 ways to read a book

-Launch daily 5: read to self. 

-book manners. 

-kissing hand activity? 

1:50-2:30 Read the Crayon Box that didn’t get a long. 

-Discuss how we treat our friends.

-Above the line/below the line.

Friendship chain.

2:30-2:55 pack up, dismiss EARLY to make sure all students have tape and are in place.

PHEW--- again, those are a rough outline. I will be posting my first week plans here in a week or so when I have **fine tuned**.

Hope you found some of this useful. I will leave you with this freebie that goes along with the book "Look out Kindergarten, Here I come"-- you can download by clicking the picture!

{MORE FREEBIES!!} First Week Behavior Chart & Student Information Page

Goodness- I am on a roll or something tonight. I am meeting with a co teacher to go over all the book keeping, management stuff so that when we meet as a team we are ready to go. So I've spent a lot of the night working on things I send home the first day of school and/or behavior charts. I want to work on my first week unit... but I am just on a roll with all this management stuff currently! Anyway- I hope these are useful. The first item is my "August Behavior Calendar" (if you want to call it that)-- we start school on August 27th, so it's a whole week. I figured why spend time making an entire Calendar when I can just make a week! We spend so much time going over rules, procedures, etc. that I usually don't have any behavior problems what-so-ever, but I usually don't introduce my clip chart until the end of the week... so this works perfect.

My Clip Chart (minus the clips!)

You had a good day (usually EVERYONE) or a bad day- simple as that. I also feel parents have loads of questions that first week of school, so I included plenty of room for notes.

The second freebie is a Student Information sheet. We have a very culturally diverse community so there are probably some sections on here you wouldn't typically see (i.e. food allowances, religious holidays, languages) We send this home & keep it for the remainder of the year. It's great, I totally prefer pulling this out over going through TEAMS trying to get information! =)

I hope you can use these! =) ENJOY!

Lastly, and then i promise I am done for the night and relaxing, check out these great blogs for some giveaways!! Could be your lucky day, you never know! 

First is a $25 iTunes gift card from Math is Elementary

And the Second is a $25 gift card to TpT from The Elementary Adventure! 

Ok! I am OFF for the night!