Grandparent's and Special Friend's Day 2015

Just a couple weeks ago we had our annual Grandparent's and Special Friend's Day!  It was so fun and sweet to see my adorable kiddos with their grandparents and friends.  They were so excited!  We set up centers around the room that they could do at their leisure.  The centers were coloring, puzzles, a handprint craft, a fall tissue tree craft, and leaf rubbings.  It was a great day!  Here are some pictures to share:

Super cute!

2015-2016 Classroom

Whoa!  It’s already week 5 in our school year and I feel like our first day of school was just yesterday!  I promised an updated post about how my classroom turned out.  I decided to do a nautical theme this year and have gone back and forth on how I feel about it.  I think I like it!  Stay tuned for a more informative post as soon as I get my life together!  It’s been a whirlwind, but a good one!  My class is ADORABLE and so much fun! :)

I decided to do something a little differently with my silent reading set-up.  This year I have a chart on the wall for the children to see which books they can read, (red, blue, or green).  Over the past few years I have had a book bin for each individual child and with bigger classes it really takes up a lot of room.  I'm hoping this system will allow more book opportunities for children and less prep time on my end.  The colors have different levels: approaching, on-level and advanced.  The children look to see which they can choose a book from during silent reading.  After they read 3 books from the bin, they can then look at a book from our ABC's basket, our library book basket, or a book from our classroom shelf.  So far I like the system.  The only thing I would do differently next time is put a color sticker on the books so they remember where to put the books back.  They get a little mixed up and that drives the OCD person inside me completely insane! :) 

I'm excited how it turned out but in the pictures it looks a bit like a crayon box exploded in my room, but at least it's not boring! :)  What do you think?

Welcome Back!

"Welcome Back" has more meanings than one!  Welcome back to a new school year, but also welcome back to me who has been MIA for awhile.  I apologize for the radio silence as I have been finishing my grad work this past year!  My goal is to keep up with my blog this year now that I am done and have some time on my hands!
We are approaching the first day of school which is September 2nd for us.  This week brings teachers working like little worker bees to get their classroom ready.  I have some work to do based on these pictures:

Stay tuned for pictures of the final product, I won't share what my theme is just yet!
For now, I have nothing interesting to share but in just a few days I will post about organizing my classroom this year and some new TpT products for the teachers that read this!  In the meantime please enjoy this cartoon that made me laugh...

Oceans of Fun!!

    I decided to embark on a new unit project!  I have always wanted to take my ocean resources and create a “kindergarten friendly” ocean unit for my classroom.  While looking for educational resources to effectively teach children about oceans through a scientific lens, I found myself asking this question a lot, “are current teaching practices really doing justice for science topics?”  I have to admit, initially I just wanted to find a unit that I could download and print and put into a beautifully organized binder, smile, and be done!  However, I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for in a cohesive science unit. 
    Many times in kindergarten, teaching science topics can be hard to convert into kid-friendly, so we as teachers tend to rely heavily on picture books and a few specific aspects of the topic at hand.  As an example, when teaching about the Arctic, we might read Tacky the Penguin and a non-fiction reader about penguins and then do a “can, have, are” writing activity.  “Have, can, and are” lessons are great and I do them often, but the Arctic has many things to learn about besides just penguins; there are hundreds of animals, aspects of life on the Arctic, the geographical locations and landforms, etc.  One thing I have been realizing as a teacher myself is that it is important to engage children in all aspects of something I am teaching, not just a few.  So when I decided to make my own “oceans unit,” I wanted to teach the children more about the ocean as a whole than, for instance, just a lesson about sharks or dolphins through a story and graphic organizer.  I wanted them to have a unit that would have them understanding the ocean and all the unique and interesting qualities through scientific thinking.
    When creating my ocean unit, I thought first about the objectives I wanted to have for after the completion of the unit.  Then I broke it down into objectives for each lesson.  I came up with these lesson:

The children begin by learning about the five oceans and some information about the make-up of oceans and characteristics.

They also learn about the ocean zones and the animals that are found there.

Learning about coral reefs and pollution allow them to understand how they can help the cause of saving the ocean.

Click on the picture to buy my 10 lesson ocean unit on TpT! :)

Happy weekend!