Procedure Fun!

Oh my word!  I completely forgot how exhausting the beginning of the year is.  I just sat down on the couch after dinner and almost fell asleep.  That was at 6:00.  Who else is having this same problem?

This week has been beyond full with teaching procedures.  My little pumpkins this year are needing a lot of extra practice with procedure practice.  We have been practicing walking through the hallways, holding the railing on the stairs, and sitting criss-cross applesauce.  I have not taught any "curriculum" yet and I am 100% ok with that.  I think it is so important to focus on teaching procedures and routines in the classroom until the students are so familiar with them that they are second nature.

Yes, you may lose a week or even two of "teaching time", but in the long run you will gain it all back.  Once my students have these procedures and routines down, I am able to teach for so much more time because I am not having to constantly remind them of these.

Now, throughout the year, you will need to go back and reteach those procedures from time to time.  It is important to do this especially after long breaks (like winter break, spring break, etc.).

What I love the most??  My new principal just said today in our staff meeting how important it is to just focus on procedures and routines.  She said when she taught 6th grade that she spent two weeks just teaching procedures and routines.  It made me realize how important this is not just in kindergarten, but in every grade.

I want to leave with you with something to ponder that my principal said.  She said that when she taught sixth grade she realized that her students knew how to walk in the hall, go through the lunch line, and play on the playground as fifth graders, but she needed to teach them how to do all these things as sixth graders because no one had done that yet.

Do you teach procedures and routines?  How long do you spend doing this?

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I survived my first week (barely)!

Oh my goodness....the first week is over.  I have never been so tired in my whole life.  On top of that both myself and my kiddos got sick this week.  Yuck!

We spent the first week assessing students so that we could split them into two classes.  Just imagine 48 kids in one classroom with two teachers.  That is what I experienced all week!

The first day we took this cute pictures with the students.

We split the kiddos last night and had the whole day today with our own class.  We were not able to accomplish much though because we had a early out because of the heat.

I am looking forward to next week where I will pretty much be teaching and practicing procedures all week long!

How soon do you start your curriculum?  I like to take at least a week to just teach and practice procedures.  After that I usually start on Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.

Now I am off to take a nap.  Still exhausted!!

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Meet the Teacher

I am excited about Blog Hoppin's Back to School linky this week.  I am going to try to link up as many as days as I can, but can't promise anything because I go back to work today and we all know how exhausting the first week of school can be!

FAMILY

I have been married for 11 years.  I could not ask for a better husband.  He is kind and sweet and the best father in the world.  He is definitely my rock and the calm to my storm. and hav

We have two wonderful children who keep us on our toes!  My son is going to be 10 soon (he likes to remind me any chance he can get that he will be double digits) and my daughter just turned 7.  At the moment, they are both playing soccer which takes up most of our evenings, but I wouldn't have it any other way!

FRIENDS

I have the best friends a girl could ask for!  I am beyond lucky to have so many supportive people in my life.

I can't forget my blogging buddies.

THINGS I LOVE

I don't get much spare time, but when I do....I LOVE to read, bake (cupcakes are my specialty), golf, and in the summer relax by the pool.

This year for our anniversary my hubby got me golf lessons.  I am super excited and I have come a LONG way!

I love to bake.  It is a stress reliever for me.  I usually don't eat what I bake though which is kinda weird.  Here is a cupcake wedding dress I made for my cousin's bridal shower!

Well I am off to my first day back to school.  We have professional development all day today, unpack your backpack night this evening and then the students start tomorrow.  I have a feeling I will going to bed early tonight!

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Student Supplies Organization

In kindergarten, our students sit at tables (which I do love), but unfortunately every year I find myself in the predicament of "Where do I store all their supplies?"

Have you ever been in same situation?  I am here to help. I am going to show you how I store and organize all my students supplies.

First of all, my students sit at tables so they do not have a desk that can easily store their supplies.  Each student brings their own crayon box, but they do not keep a lot of items in it.  Here is what the student crayon boxes look like.

At the end of the day, my students put their crayon boxes on their chair so that our custodian can clean the tables really well.

At each table I have a "table tub".  What is in our table tub?  I like to keep items that the students need throughout the day, but are too big for their crayon boxes.

Here you can see the supplies I keep in their tubs.

Since my students have three notebooks in the tubs.  I color code them so they can easily grab the one they need.  I have a table captain each day and that student gets all the notebooks for the table.  (For example:  I will tell the table captain to grab all the green science & social studies notebooks.  The captain grabs them and then passes them out to the table.  This also helps students learn each other's names.)

Some supplies are too large for our crayon boxes and we don't need as often so we keep them in our cubbies.  I like to keep the students' coloring books in their cubbies because we only use them during special times.  I also use the cubbies to pass back papers after I have checked them.

All of our other supplies (like markers and colored pencils) are community supplies.  Here is where I store them.

I have a bucket for each table.  When the students need something like markers, the table captain grabs a basket for their table to share.

I like having supplies that are not used often in a different place.  This helps to avoid students using items like markers when I want them to use crayons and so on.

How do you organize student supplies?  I would love to hear!

If you enjoyed this bright idea, you can follow me on Facebook or Instagram to get even more bright ideas at your fingertips!

For more bright ideas, browse through the link up below to choose a topic or grade level that interests you!

An InLinkz Link-up

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Classroom Reveal......Finally!

Normally I work a little bit here and there throughout the summer in my classroom, but this summer was completely different.  I had an extremely busy summer and didn't really get a chance to get into my classroom until the end of July.

I feel like I crammed a lot of work into a little bit of time and I am proud of the final product!

(You might notice that some of my room did not change from last year.  I liked how my room was and just wanted to enhance what I already had going.)

Here is a picture of what you see when you walk in the room from the front door:

The students come in through the back door after hanging up their backpacks.  Here is what they see when they come in:

Now let's take a closer look at some of the areas.

On the left side is where I do my lunch count.  (Each student has a magnet with their name that they move to the appropriate choice).  In the middle, I use that space to put up vocabulary words we learn within our thematic unit.  On the right is my word wall.

Writing center:  As we learn about how to write, I will add charts and posters here on the board.  I don't like to overwhelm the students.  I prefer to add items to my boards as we learn them instead.

This is on the left of the writing center.  I use this board to put up a picture of each student and underneath their picture I put their name.  The students use this as a reference when writing.

This is my guided reading area.  See that blue flower painting?  Yep, I painted that.  (Just don't look too close ;)  I went to a Vino Van Gough type painting event.  It was a lot of fun!

Student Work Display

This is where I will post our decoding strategies as we learn them.

Next to all of that is my teacher "desk" area.  Each year I get rid of more stuff in this area and I love it.

Our carpet area:  I am loving that new chair I got.  It is from Walmart and the perfect pop of pink for me.  :)

Here is a close up of my curtains because I am beyond proud of them.  They only took me forever to make, but it is my first big sewing project.  On top of the shelf is finished early work and puzzles.

Next to the carpet, under the windows, is our reading area and classroom library.

Above the library is our focus wall.  I put our "I can" statements for the day under each subject.

Behind the carpet is our calendar area.  I have to admit that this area is not quite finished.  In the blank space on the right I plan on adding "Today is" and a weather chart.  I just forgot to bring them to school today.  Oops.

 Above the calendar are our ten frame number posters.

Above that the shapes and colors posters.  (Once again, that darn glare wasn't helping my picture taking skills)

I am pretty happy with the overall outcome of my room.  I love having all my bulletin boards the same background and border.  To me, it provides a calming effect not only for me, but also for my students.  Now I just need to finish up my lesson plans and I should be good to go for next week.

Teachers go back on Monday and then students start on Tuesday.  Are you back in school already?  If not, when do you start?

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Want to Win??

Want to win something for your classroom?  What teacher doesn't?

I am teaming up with the fabulous ladies over at Rhyme to Read to offer you a fantastic giveaway.

We are giving away the app for FREE to one lucky reader.

Yep, you read that right the whole app for FREE!

I wrote a review of the app on my blog that you can check out right {here}.

Last year, I did not find this app until the end of the year, but I am beyond excited to start out with the app right away from the beginning of the year.

As you can see, there are 20 different stories for the students to read with this app.  As the number of the story gets larger, the text becomes more complex.

The stories are each focused on a particular word family.  I love that because it promotes rhyming, which is a skill that my students frequently struggle with.

I plan on using this during my Daily 5 literacy centers.  My students will get to use this app for Read to Self.

I find giving the students something to read on an iPad makes them more eager to read than just reading a book.  It is just different and more exciting for the students.  I love anything that gets my students excited to read!  Don't you?

What are you waiting for?  Check out my rafflecopter below so that you can try to win the app with all the stories included for FREE!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Back to School Giveaway and Blog Hop

I am teaming up with some great bloggers for a Back to School Giveaway and Blog Hop.  Each day a new blogger will post some back to school tips or freebies.

We start back to school in just over a week.  Teachers go back on August 18th and students will come on August 19th.  I wish I could say that I am ready, but at this moment I feel anything but ready.  My room is *close* to being done, but I need to finish up my plans for the first week.

I don't know how your school places kindergarten students in classes, but in my district we do things a little different than most places.  When kindergarten students come to school the first day, they are not assigned a teacher.  Instead all the students are together.  Throughout the week, we assess the students, find out what services they need (ELL, Speech, Resource, etc.), and see which personalities should be together or apart.  Once we have all this information, my teaching partner and I sit down and put the students into classes.  It is quite a process, but it is the best way we have to evenly separate the students.

How do you separate the kindergarten students into classes?

I promised some freebies so freebies you will get!  ;)

I have some freebies in my Teachers Pay Teachers shop for the beginning of the year.  {Just click on the image to download.}

Our district is big into cooperative learning and I absolutely love using it in my classroom.  It really helps build a sense of community.  Here is a cooperative learning freebie:

Another freebie is my shape poems.  I use these at the beginning of the year and it is a good reference for my students throughout the year as we introduce 3D shapes.  (I have lots of other fun freebies over in my TpT store too)

Now for the giveaway, you will want to head on over to Sarah's blog and enter the giveaway to win some fabulous back to school prizes.

Tomorrow you will want to check out the post over at 3 Teacher Chicks to see what they have up their sleeves.

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August Currently

It's August first which means it's time to link up with Farley!

Listening:  I recorded Project Runway last night and am finally catching up with the show.  So far, I like the new season.  Anyone else watch this show?

Loving:  This desk skirt I made for my "desk" at school.

Thinking:  It's getting close to dinner time.....what should I make?

Wanting:  I really don't want to cook tonight.  Who wants to come cook for me?  ;)

Needing:  We are getting ready to give our bedroom a makeover and I am loving this picture.  I am thinking of a gray color scheme with pops of teal/turquoise.  I will also be creating a small office space in one corner so I need to make a trip to IKEA soon!

1st day:  It is going to be here before we know it.

Head on over to Farley's link up and to tell about your currently!

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