Wordless Wednesday

It's Wednesday ~ and time for Wordless Wednesday hosted by Sugar and Spice!

 

 

My lava lamp!  One of several lamps I have in my classroom.  What do you do to create a homey atmosphere for your students?

Spring Clean Up Blog Hop

I am very excited to be a part of this fun blog hop!  I try to keep my classroom neat & organized.  It really is a lot of work keeping things neat when you have eighteen busy little kiddos hanging around all day!  I have created spaces for my literacy activities that are kid friendly ~ and are usually pretty organized at the end of the day.  Here are some pictures of the different areas in my room where literacy takes place.

This is our Writing Station.  It features a round table & lots of writing activities and words.  The tree on the left was inspired by Rocket Writes a Story ~ Rocket collects words & displays them on a bush.  We post words that aren't on the word wall or easily spelled.  Other words are collected on chart paper & on book rings that are stored in a bin.  The basket on the table holds pencils, erasers, crayons, glue sticks, scissors,  highlighters, and a stapler for the kids to use when they write.

                                                         

Close-ups of the Writing Station.  The orange bins sit on top of the Manipulative Center's storage cabinet.  They hold various writing activities.  The yellow inset shows our Write the Room materials.  The other pictures show what is on the counter behind the table.  More bins & stackable paper trays hold lots of choices for writing practice. 

Our classroom library is in a prominent place of the room.  I like for books to be the centerpiece of our day.

I use little tubs to store my "I Can Read It" type books, my leveled readers are in the green & yellow bins on the cart.  Our colorful book bins are arranged on top of the shelves.  I put numbered labels on them rather than student names.  This way I don't have to relabel them each year.

The back of this cabinet is seen in the library.  I was so excited to get it last year to hold my Word Work activities.  My Kinders are able to grab a tub, and take it to their seat.  More Word Work activities are in the baskets (from Target's Dollar Spot) on top of the cabinet. 

 More Word Work area!  I like to provide my students with lots opportunities to work with words.  Baskets, bins, tubs, and little buckets from the Dollar Spot help to keep everything organized.

I keep a binder & clipboard at my half circle table to keep track of my Strategy Groups & student data.  

Get a copy of the planning pages HERE. 

 Tools for my Strategy Groups are kept within reach at my table.

 I created this colorful storage unit for my letter cards by covering the drawers of a tool bench organizer with washi tape.  Now I can easily get the letters I need ~ and easily put them away!

I hope you enjoyed your tour of my Literacy Spots!

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Now, hop over to Smack Dab in the Middle for some more ideas! 

May Second Five for Friday

Hello Five for Friday fans ~ I'm back!  It's been a few weeks since I last joined the linky fun, and I'm glad to be back with Doodle Bugs for this fun linky party.  :-)

                                

This week just flew by!  We worked so hard and had so much fun.  I'm starting to get a little sad that the school year is coming to an end ~ only 24 more days left!  My little cuties have come so far since the beginning of the year, and have made such an imprint on my heart.  It is going to be hard to let them go.  But, I am overjoyed at the progress they have made!  Here is a peek at the fun we had this week.

 

 

 

Baking with the principal.  This week our feature story was Bread Comes to Life ~ a book about how to make bread.  I was reading this book to my kids when my principal came in with the dreaded iPad.  She stayed (and evaluated me) while we had fun with this book.  Happily, I was given a good review.  She also evaluated one of my teaching partners while she read this book to her kiddos.  I guess hearing this book two times provided inspiration to her inner baker.  She asked us if we would like her to pay a visit to talk about baking bread with a bread machine.  She is a very good baker, so of course we jumped at the chance to have her give a guest lesson!  Here are some pictures of our baking fun.  Our classroom smelled so good all day as the bread machine worked its magic! 

 

 

Penny Necklaces.  We worked with money all week long.  To celebrate the fact that they can identify coins, we made these cute star necklaces adorned with a real penny.  It was so cute how excited the kids were to get a real penny! 

Writing!  I am blown away by the writing that my little cuties are doing!  I have never had such wonderful writing ~ and such excited writers as I have this year.  I want to do the Happy Dance every day when I see how excited my kiddos are to write & read the wonderful pieces they write!

A little Shameless Promotion...  Hop over to my Facebook page for this month's Freebie!

Sale!  Need I say more???  My store will be 20% + off.  Please visit, shop, and follow.

I am also excited to be a part of the Spring Clean-Up Blog Hop!  Check back on the fourth to see my post.

And, finally... here's my May Currently!

 

 

Have a great weekend!

  

Wordless Wednesday

I can't believe it's Wednesday again!  Here's another link up with Sugar and Spice.

The Manipulative Center.  Do your kids get time for free-choice activities (AKA play)?

I Like Money!

                                            

 I am linking up with Teaching MOMster for her Math Madness Wednesdays linky party for the first time!

We are learning about money this week ~ with the help of a fun Dr. Jean song & my new Piggy Bank product.  We began singing Dr. Jean's "Money Song" last week so the kiddos would know the words before using their new piggy banks & coins.  They learned it very quickly, and sang it during snack & free choice centers! 

These two pictures show the little cuties with their coins in position, and ready to go.

As we named each coin in the song, they held up the correct coins.  They really had fun, and of course wanted to sing the song several times.  I recorded it ~ oh, my how they love to see themselves performing on the "big screen!"  I have found that any time we can sing a concept, they seem to learn it quickly!

Click HERE to purchase.

My set includes everything you need to create your own "piggy bank," and coins (penny, nickel, dime, quarter).  Also included are cards for your pocket chart, a sorting mat, anchor chart & eight pages of differentiated worksheets.  And, it's on sale until May 1st!

Springing into Science Blog Hop

I am excited to be a part of this fun Science themed blog hop.  As a busy kindergarten teacher, I find that I don't have a lot of time to devote to all things Science. Literacy & math take up lots of time.  But, our Kinder kids recently had the opportunity to participate in a special presentation by our county Soil and Water Conservation department.  My Kinders got to be Soil Scientists for an afternoon!

 Our guest presenter, Mrs. Benson, taught us about the types of soil in our area.

 Each student was given a "soil" sample made from kitchen ingredients such as cornmeal, cocoa, and flour.  After observing the samples with their eyes, ears (shaking the containers), and noses, the kiddos got to feel their samples.  Mrs. Benson gave the kids words to describe their "soil."  Rough, smooth, powdery, etc.  Some samples included cinnamon ~ which smelled much better than real dirt!

 Before adding a spoonful of water, the Kinders were instructed to give a practice stir in the air.  Mrs. Benson explained that soil scientists add water when studying soil.  The samples really did mimic different soil types ~ the cornmeal was like sand, and the cocoa/flour mix really looked like real mud!

After stirring their little pots of "dirt," the kids had fun trying to make mud balls.

I plan to schedule this presentation with my future Kinders.  What a great, hands-on way to learn about our Earth & be scientist for the day!

Thanks for visiting!  Check out my post about our recent Science Fair project, and enter to win $20.00 worth of items of your choice in my TpT store. 



 

 Hop over to Sweet Integrations for the next stop on the Springing into Science Blog hop!

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April Trade and Grade

It's time for the April Trade and Grade blog hop!  I paired up with my talented daughter, Sarah of Kinder Cakes, for this fun hop.  I'm guessing that we are the only Mother ~ Daughter match up!

This month Sarah sent me her fun Under the Sea themed Literacy Stations set.  This set includes so many great activities nine fun activities ~ all aligned to the CCSS!

As I have mentioned in previous posts, my kids love Write the Room!  Sarah's fun anchor words Write the Room cards were a great addition to our collection!  I like the record sheet ~ the kids had to figure out where the words went based upon the shapes.

Seaside Sentences ~ I like to have a set of scrambled sentences available for stations/Daily 5 work areas.  I think that having lots of opportunities to build sentences has really helped my kiddos in their own sentence writing.  Sarah's set has colorful cards with cute pictures.

Short vowel practice.  I like how Sarah has included a coloring element to many of the activities ~ students color the pictures to match the circles on the cards.  I have found that this simple addition to the page keeps the kids from rushing through their work. 

Long Vowels!  I like how there are both long & short vowel activities in this set.  The short vowel activity was in last week's word work station & is now available in the Daily 5 word work area.  This week the Kinders worked with long vowels during stations.  Click HERE to see the post about my Literacy Stations/Daily 5.

We always need CVC practice!

Beluga Beginning & Ending Sounds.  This set has a combination of one and multi-syllable words which is great for differentiation.  I used this set in my stations groups ~ I used the single syllable cards with my little strugglers.  They wrote the letters on a white board rather than on the record sheet.

Rhyming cards ~ we played a memory game with these cute bubble & fish cards.  A worksheet is included.

Crabby Blends ~ This cute activity was in one of this week's literacy station.

This set includes one more activity that I don't have pictures of (sorry!).  A fun real & nonsense word sort features sunken ships.

As you can see, Sarah's Under the Sea themed Literacy Stations set includes enough activities for lots of learning!  Get your sample HERE.

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An InLinkz Link-up