Can be overwhelming...right??

Hello! I've been so inspired again this week by all of the great ideas shared on teaching blogs...how about you? In fact, I spent a couple of hours this morning pinning science ideas. I have a few activities and ideas I am going to try to do with my class... I love this idea of doing a collage of leaf rubbings with each table. Have you visited Little Miss Hypothesis? Talk about science inspiration!!  I love reading her posts!

Off the science topic...how about those Kindergals, Kim and Megan!! Awesome ideas for writing in this post. I downloaded the freebies from their site and used them this week. WOW! My kids did a great job! We just did the favorite things; Monday we are going to work on favorite things to do. I am going to add these sheets to their writing offices, which we are building little by little.  I love all of the great writing ideas out there...you know how you feel after you've been to a great conference or workshop and just want to get back to your room and try all the stuff you learned???? That's how I feel after reading some of these great posts and seeing ideas all over Pinterest!!!

We celebrated our first Zero the Hero day this week and are working on the Kinderlit booklet again this year; love it! Here's our first project:

We also used the Smart Pals for the first time for number writing practice. These are great for practicing any concept...I plan to use them a lot this year. They are new and we got them to go along with our Singapore Math series.

 

Another great inspirational site: Kindertastic. I ABSOLUTELY love how she has her writing and word work centers organized.

You can read more about her activities here.

I have hundreds several ideas floating around in my head of projects to complete and centers to organize. We could work 24/7 on school stuff, couldn't we??? Hence, the title of this post!! I guess that's what makes our profession so great...sharing ideas to help kids learn. = ) We all want them to succeed. Thanks for checking in and have a great Sunday!

Magnetic Letters Center Freebie

I have several magnetic letters in my room. Some of them are sorted by letter in a small tool caddy. I also have 2 buckets of letters: one for uppercase and one for lowercase. The children can use the letters to build words, but this early in the year, many are not quite ready to that. I made this sign to give them ideas (and some structure!) of how to use the letters. I've downloaded so many awesome printables from great blogs, I thought I'd share this. = )

Week 2!

Hello! I have a few pictures to share from our second week of school! We read Chica Chica Boom Boom! and did the "letters in my name" activity from Deanna Jump's site. Here's our version:

We painted the palm tree with watercolor paints.

We used our watercolors to paint a picture for our "Ready for Kindergarten" booklet. Don't you just love the comments you hear while children use their watercolors....the "oohs" and "ahhs" of watching the water change...LOVE it!

We made a poster of things God made...this goes with the first unit in our Religion book. They cut pictures out of magazines. We sorted and labeled the pictures on a big poster.

We started our "growing brain" experiment!! I know...it's not the best pic, but they do love checking the brain each day to see if it grew!!

Other fun things going on this week included: using big books with pointers...

And playing the ABC Popcorn game...These are popcorn die cuts with letters of the alphabet on them. Students choose a piece of popcorn, name the letter and put it in their container. Later on, they can name something that begins with that letter sound.

Hope your week was fun and exciting, too! Thanks for checking in!

First Week!

Whew! We've completed the first week (which was really only 4 days with Labor Day on Monday) of school! It was busy but fun! I did the Peacemaker/Peacebreaker activity; that fit in beautifully since we say a Peace Promise everyday.  The children decorated our Peace Promise after the activity.

(I teach in a Catholic School, so prayer is a huge part of our day!)

I LOVE having the children's work on display...we all know that despite all of the decorating we do before school starts, their work completes the room.  When my class came for orientation days last week, they each colored a picture of a person with his/her name on it. I hung these from the ceiling to display their work.

I always do the "Who lives in your house?" glyph (found on Shari Sloane's website) the first week of school. They are displayed in our classroom.

We read Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten and completed a graph with the question, "How do you feel about starting school? Excited or Nervous?"

Overall, the week went well! We are working on rules and procedures...you what I mean, I'm sure!!

I want to share a couple of CUTE pics my sister sent. She teaches Kindergarten, too, so when we get together watch out! It's a lot of teacher talk!!! Too bad she lives 6 hours away!! She has a popcorn themed classroom this year. She bought containers from Dollar Tree to store books in her reading center. Isn't it cute???

 

I keep telling her she needs to start a blog, but she says she's not "techy" enough!! I thought this was too cute not to share! Thanks for checking in and have a great day!

Writing Center Update