New Year, New School, New Room! {Before}

It's here folks! Another school year has snuck up on us! Last year this time I was on maternity leave and I had seriously forgotten how exhausting it is setting up a classroom! It's especially a challenge this year because I am starting over, FROM SCRATCH! Last spring after 9 years at my current school, I accepted a new Kindergarten position at a great school much closer to our home and spent the last month or so of the year driving all my stuff home from school. 

I can't even tell you how many trips I made with a car full of stuff!

Now that August has slowly crept up on me, I'm tasked with moving all of that stuff out of my garage and into my new room. And you know that's only half the battle. Once it's all in there I  have to organize and find a place for it all, choose a layout, and of course, DECORATE! 

Thankfully I've got a big, open, bright space with plenty of room and lots of natural light thanks to some HUGE windows. We're going to have so much fun keeping those windows decorated! 

I've spent some time (in between summer fun with my family) crafting and shopping for my new space. My son is now an errand pro. If it carries classroom stuff, we've been there! Target, Walmart, Michaels, Joanns, Hobby Lobby, Ikea....

She asked if I was a teacher.... what do you think tipped her off?

Here are some BEFORE photos of my new (empty) room! See what I mean about a huge, bright space?

Those two doors on the far wall attach to another Kindergarten Teachers room who I got to meet this week. She's super awesome, so I'm excited to work next to her!

I've been so inspired by Maria Gavin's room which she's shared on her Blog Kinder-Craze and I'm definitely going to incorporate some of her great ideas, as well as black and brights color scheme!

Click the picture to tour Maria's amazing room! 

 I can't wait to see how it all turns out and of course, show you! 

A Life Update

Hi Friends! 

Wow, it's been a long time since April! 

I spent the end of the year packing up my room and organizing to have a long term maternity sub for about three months. Organizing exactly what I want them to cover week by week was necessary since my class runs on a different track than the other kindergartens at my school being an accelerated class. It was a LOT of work. But now I don't have to worry about it while I'm gone. 

I finished out the school year on a Friday and by the next Tuesday our little guy was here! I made it to the end with four days to spare.... it was a close one! 

Our little guy arrived on June 10th. 

Unfortunately he was admitted to the NICU for a few days after that for Jaundice. It was a rough few days. 

Thankfully we were discharged just a few days (and a few thousand dollars) later. 

Since then our days have been a whirlwind of feeding, changing diapers, rocking a gassy baby, and sleeping in small increments in between. It's worth every second. 

It doesn't leave me with much time to work though. I've only gotten a few things accomplished. I did create a new color by letter pack with a back to school theme. Click on the picture to check it out. 

I've already started another one with a fall theme but I only get about one page a day done ;)

I also updated all my decor packs and they now all include month cards and table numbers. To celebrate they are all on sale through Sunday night! Click HERE to see all my classroom decor. 

I have just a few more decor packs I'm working on that will hopefully be done before August!  

Sorry this has been short, but little guy is napping and I never know how long that will last! 

Animal Research Projects!

This week our class began group research projects to accompany our animal unit in science! Each group is composed of three to four students who are working together to research one wild animal. I have groups studying monkeys, lions, elephants, and giraffes. So far they have started K,W,L charts to access prior learning:

And have researched their animals different body parts, habitats, and diet.

For our research we have mainly used Pebble Plus Books, (seen in the pictures) which are excellent non-fiction books written for primary students. If the information they are looking for is not available in the book, we look it up on the computer or Ipad.

We will continue researching together for one more week, then the students will be mounting their research onto poster board and presenting their group projects to the class. I can't wait to show you the finished projects!

This fabulous resource is from Creekside Teacher Tales. She is a second grade teacher, but the pack is easily adapted for younger students as well!

Five for Friday {11/2/13}

It's Saturday. I feel like you should expect that from me by now. It's also November. How did that happen? The flu/cold/allergy ugliness has hit our house, which explains my blogging absence. The last time I posted we were wrapping up our five senses unit, and learning about apples. I'm still hoping to blog about apples, but who knows when? Since then we've studied matter, setting, spiders, pumpkins, and next week we're starting Veteran's Day. The rest of November will be full of bats, Thanksgiving and Hannukah! (It's super early this year!)

We survived our first field trip.... to the pumpkin patch! It was a very fun, relaxing, and HOT trip!

This is one of my favorite writing prompts we've done. The kinder-pups wrote about how Christopher Columbus was brave, and then made a connection to a time they were brave. 

This week was Say no to drugs week and my class one first prize for our door decorations! 

This was such a fun Matter experiment! We popped each balloon to see what was inside. It's from Hope King's Matter Unit!

Here's an entry from our reading notebooks from when we were studying spiders! This cute foldable is from Deanna Jump's Packet. 

I hope to get another post in this week!!

Our Fabulous Five Senses!

We've finished our first science unit on senses! We had such a blast learning about each one and what they can tell us about the world around us. We used lots of fun activities from Kindergarten Smiles 5 senses pack, which she just re-did to make even cuter. (It was already adorable!)

Up first we learned all about our ears and how they take in sound waves to the brain to tell us what we're hearing! We played this fun sound bingo game where I played sounds off the computer and they had to listen and cover up what made that sound if they had it.

Next we learned all about our noses and how their are teeny tiny hairs in there (not your nose hairs!) that carry smells to the brain to tell you what you're smelling. We played a fun guessing game where I soaked cotton balls in four different extracts - lemon, orange, mint & maple) and we guessed what they were! 

Next up was touch! I filled four different bags with a frozen popsicle, a conch shell, cotton balls, and a metal bracelet and the kids got to feel without looking. 

For sight we played a fun fame of I-spy and then the kids recorded down what their object had been. We learned how the pupil shrinks and grows to accommodate more/less light, and also about different color irises. I'm the only one in my class who has blue eyes and not brown so whenever I knelt down to work with kids that day I found them staring at my eyes :)

Last we learned about taste! We talked about different tastes - sweet, sour, salty, spicy, bitter. And then we did a taste test! Their little faces when they tried baker's chocolate (bitter) were so funny! But I did have one kid say that was their favorite! I forgot to take a picture :(

We wrapped up the unit with a fun popcorn experiment where we listened for how it sounded cooking, how it smelled, then once it was cooked we observed how it looked, felt and tasted! 

And that's a wrap! Onward ho to Matter!!

We had so much fun with this pack, make sure you check it out! As much as I love making my own things the beginning of the year is so crazy and I was feeling so stressed and it was so nice to be able to print and go!


Our Popcorn experiment, is mine. You can find it here: