Clndr.

Part of another project I made for myself, was to clean out the files on my computer that are buried in deep dark places of my hard drive.  I came across some pictures of my classroom at the last school I was at.  I was transferred 2 years ago to my current school so that I could teach 1/2 day Kindergarten in ONE building and not have to travel between 2–I did that for 5 years, so I was glad to give that up.  Although I miss some of my colleagues terribly from those buildings, God was working in a mysterious way and had big plans for me when I moved–I was able to fully come into my own, and be seen and recognized for the teacher that I am, instead of the crazy young teacher who runs from building to building to teach Kindergarten.  I feel truly blessed to be at my current school and hope to be there for a long, long time!  Here are some of the photos from there.  They are of the classroom, areas in the classroom, 100’s day, writing center tent, word wall, cowboy theme, calendar area, bulletin boards about winter/eskimos/snow. Most are self explanatory, but if you need details, e-mail me (fuzzlady77@hotmail.com).

P.S. The snowflake and snowman pattern block shapes you see are part of a seasonal set that I made, and I will post them once I can get back into my classroom–they are in the file drawers there and they are cleaning my room this week, so I can’t get in!   I’ve also created an apple, pumpkin, scarecrow, shamrock, heart, and flower.  The kids use them to practice filling in pattern block shapes, and then graph their results on the Pattern Block Graph (math tab and home tab)

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I had a question yesterday about what the layout of my classroom looks like so I made up a little drawing.  This is only a tentative design, because I moved classrooms this year, so this is what I have in my mind that it will look like.  Things can always change!  I added a bench this year to my room instead of my usual chair–I wanted to be able to have the student who was the special helper/birthday person sit with me and have enough room.  I will probably end up using the extra space for some calendar materials storage as well, and probably the read alouds for the day will sit there as well.  Here you go…you can click on it for a bigger view or e-mail me (fuzzlady77@hotmail.com) and I can send you a bigger copy.

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I’m often asked about what activities I do with my Kinder. kids each day during calendar time.  Here is a listing and the order that I prefer for the activities.  I also include our Morning Message into our calendar time.  All in all, it ends up being about a 45 minute block of time (but the kids are up and moving at various times)

Putting the date on the calendar (the children repeat the day of the week, month and date) I would say, “Boys and Girls, today is Wednesday (Wednesday), August (August) 11th (11th), 2008 (2008).  They say the parts in parenthesis.

We sing the Days of the Week Song (Dr. Jean has some great versions!) and the Months of the Year song.

We then check the weather and record it on our Weather Circle and Weather Graph

We add a straw and count how many days we have been in school.

We add a penny (and trade any coins necessary) and record with numbers how much money we have (will be the same as days in school count)

We add a “ones cube” from the base tens blocks. We will trade as necessary throughout the year.

We count to 100 by ones, fives, tens and eventually twos (2nd semester).  We point to a 100’s chart as we do this.

We sing our ABC song-to the tune of Jeopardy and point to our ABC chart as we do.

We practice our “Frog Words”–sight words (this year they will be Rainbow Words).  I choose a word of the week and we look for that word all week in various places.

We begin our Morning Message.  I write the message for the children 1st semester and then 2nd semester, they “share the pen”.  I am a purist when it comes to the Building Blocks framework and stay as true to the MM ideas in the Building Blocks books. We do various activities with the Message:

-hunt for individual letters

-hunt for words

-hunt for patterns

-hunt for punctuation

-hunt for days of the week

-hunt for missing words

-count the number of sentences

-count the number of words

-count the number of letters

-other activities as the fit

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These are general pictures of my classroom from the 2007-2008 school year.  I have since moved classrooms, so I will post this year’s photos as soon as I get everything set back up!

My store cart, storage area, general classroom shots