Sports Bag Letter

Just trying this to see if I can get it to work. I am sharing a picture of the letter for my sports bag. I originally wrote about some of my homework bags quite awhile ago, and would like to share some of the pages I have made. Thanks for looking! Here is a screen shot of the document:

What we've been working on...

Hello! I thought I'd share a few classroom photos of things we've been working on in the past month or so. Of course, we've been working on all kinds of patterns.

I am using the "Zero the Hero" packet from Kinder Lit. Here are a few of our first few "Zero" projects:



We did M&M graphing.


And we made a scarecrow glyph.




I also have some fun October games and activities available for the children to use during free time; we made this candy corn art project. They look really cute hanging from our ceiling.




Hope you enjoyed a glimpse into my classroom. Thanks for looking and have a great day!

Classroom Party!

Hi! I thought it'd be fun to link to this party at Kindergarten...Kindergarten! I've had so much fun looking at all of the creative classrooms out there. Teachers are great at sharing! Here a few photos of my room:


This is our "build a word center." I have magnetic letters in the container on the shelf, sorted by letter.


This shelf holds our math manipulatives, math books, and file folder games/activities related to math.



A picture of our birthday graph....


Here are some of my classroom pointers for the children to use for Read the Room. Right now I have the children's names in the pocket chart.

This is our reading area...I also have some pillows and reading buddies for the children to use.
This is a suitcase in our dramatic play area...it holds dress up clothes. I have a very small classroom. Our elementary students moved into the high school building, so I just have an average size classroom...no sink or bathroom, although they are close by. My dramatic play area is kind of small, so the suitcase helps me keep everything in a small area.

Thanks for looking! Hope you enjoyed seeing a little bit of my classroom. Feel free to browse around my blog for other classroom ideas! Have a great day!

DJ Inkers and a few more pics...

Hello! I entered a contest at DJ Inkers a few weeks ago. I LOVE their clip art!! I didn't win the contest, but thought I'd share a pic of my entry:


I made cards for the pocket chart that show our "special" classes for the day, like Music and P.E. That way the children can see what we have when they come in the morning. I laminated the sentence strips so I can use a dry erase marker to fill in the time of the classes. You will find all kind of fun ideas if you visit the DJ Inkers website!

Classroom organization

I am participating in ABC and 123's organization party! Here is a picture of how I organize my markers and colored pencils for the art center:

As you can see, I have them sorted by color. This makes it easy for the children to find the color they are looking for. It's also great for rainbow writing (writing a word, letters, names, etc. with the colors of the rainbow). I just used milk cartons, cut off the top, and put 6 of them in a basket to sort the colored pencils. The markers are stored in a container that is usually used for silverware in the dishwasher. It has 6 compartments.

This photo shows how I have my letter stamps organized. I got this idea at a kindergarten conference I attended a few years ago:


The letter stamps are sorted and stored in tool caddy. I labeled each of the drawers with the letter that's inside. I had about 3 sets of letter stamps, so there are a few stamps in each drawer. For example, there are 3 upper and lowercase A's, in different "fonts" or letter styles in the "Aa" drawer. This makes it so easy for children to stamp names, words they know, etc. It is very easy to maintain because the children can help sort them if they get mixed up. Here is another photo:



Thanks for looking and enjoy the organization party!

A few classroom photos

Hello! I've been working in my classroom and took a few pictures.
Here is the world map and landmark cards I posted about here.





This is my reading area. The small baskets on the top of the shelf are sorted by character. The others are sorted by subject/theme: animal books, abc books, etc. I also have other book baskets around the room with math/counting books, social studies/science books, religion, etc. The yellow tub to the right of the shelf holds the big books.




Thanks for looking and have a good day!

I Spy Bags

Hello! I made a couple of I-spy bags for my classroom. There are several good tutorials on making these, like this one...and another one here. I actually made mine, then thought of searching for a tutorial! I really like the way they turned out.


Here is a photo of it empty; I used felt to eliminate having to deal with the rough edges of fabric.
The tutorials online use cute fabric, but later (after I made mine!) I saw really cute printed felt at Hobby Lobby that would be great for these.

Then I added rice and some plastic objects. I am going to use this bag for beginning sound recognition. I printed a sheet with the letters that begin each object. The children have to cross off the letter as they find an object that begins with that sound. I had these red toys in my closet at school for some time...I think they were from an older activity, but I'm not sure where they came from originally.


I also filled one with magnetic letters. This will be used for letter recognition or can be adapted to beginning sound identification, (give the child pictures, have him/her find the beginning letter), finding the letters in one's name, try to find the letters in ABC order....etc. This would also be a great activity to put in a literacy bag with an I Spy book...so many possibilities!



Hope you enjoyed seeing these. I am off to work in my classroom. Three weeks from today is our first day of school!