Tell All Tuesday: My Dream Classroom

Tell All Tuesday is a link up hosted by My Day in K and Teach.Talk.Inspire. This is such a fun linky where we get to learn a bit about each other and share a bit about ourselves!

This week is all about your dream classroom. How fun!! i know everyone has thought about what they would want to add to their dream classroom! Now is a chance to share your big ideas!!

My dream classroom would be big. Lots and lots and lots of storage space for books and everything else a teacher has. Surrounded by windows that let in lots of natural light, but also has black-out blinds/curtains for all those glow in the dark lessons! Enough room for the center activities to not overlap with each other and plenty of spots to put cushy chairs and pillows for reading and getting work done. Walls I am allowed to put holes into and a ceiling that I can hang stuff from. Bathroom in the classroom as well as a small kitchenette with fridge/freezer, stove, sink, cabinets. 

A bright, colorful space that is warm and welcoming to students and makes them excited to come to school every day!!

I would DEFINITELY do as much as I could with my dragon theme! I have made A LOT of the dragon-themed decor for my classroom, and I am really in love with it!!

 I made our classroom door tags, complete with their name on a crayon.

 These are my classroom mascots, the inspiration for my decor! I have big plans for these guys this year!!

 I made a dragon-themed alphabet line, with a dragon holding an image of something that begins with the letter on each card. The vowels are in red ink and the consonants in black.

 Close-up o the ABC line.

 Above the SMART Board is my number line. It features the numerals 0-20, and each poster has the number word, numeral, and matching set in a ten frame.

The sets in the ten frames are created with sparkly gems and jewels, because dragons LOVE sparkly gems and shiny jewels!!

My schedule cards feature dragons, and our day is tracked by moving the dragon down the rainbow to his castle.

My Word Wall features letters created using rainbow letters. I love the scribble effect, and rainbows fit perfectly with the magic of dragons!

If I had unlimited funds and could add some fund theme pieces to my classroom, here's what I would do!

Check out all of these dragon pillow pets!! They would be perfect to scatter around the room and students could use them to sit comfortably on the floor while working.

Oh my goodness, look at these seats!!! I'm loving the dragon furniture!! What kinder wouldn't love to curl up in one of these chairs with a book during Read to Self time?? I would have these all over the room, enough for everyone to have a dragon seat!

Thanks so much for reading about my dream classroom! You can link up too and share your dream classroom!!

Make sure to swing back over and see who else is sharing their dream classroom! A lot of great ideas are being shared!!!

You can still link up for Spotlight Saturday, a Teacher's Show and Tell for favorite products, activities, resources, tips, tricks, techniques, ideas, and anything else about our classroom lives that we want to showcase!

Five for Friday on a Saturday CLASSROOM REVEAL Pt. 1

Hey everyone!!  So sorry I couldn't post yesterday, but I was knocked down flat by a migraine.  I had to lie down as soon as I got home from work, and I slept until this morning.  Luckily I woke up migraine-free today, thank goodness!!  Those things are THE WORST!!!!

Since I couldn't yesterday, today I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her Five for Friday linky party.  I am going to share some of my Classroom Reveal with you!!

These numbers are a creation of Krista Wallden.  She's awesome.  Go check her out on TPT!!!

Here is my Dragon Alphabet Line.  I know it's hard to see, what wit the glare of the lights and the fact that my phone doesn't have the greatest camera.

I tried to crop it so it would give you a closer view, but it's not all that much better, sorry!!  I have all of the vowels in red and the consonants in black, and each vowel poster has a picture for the long and short sounds.  Plus, 'C' and 'G' have a pic for the hard and soft sounds. I placed the alphabet line on the cork strip that is attached to the overhang part of the ceiling.  This overhang marks the spot where the floor of my classroom turns from carpet to tile, and my kiddos walk underneath of it every time the line up at the doo. My kinders are getting a kick out of how many dragons I have around the classroom!!

I also created a Dragon Number line this summer.

Here is a zoomed in picture of part of the number line.

I have Lil Dragon holding the numerals, and each is rainbow-colored.  I also have rainbow-colored letters to match the numbers, and used the letters to spell out the number words.  I also have a ten-frame (or double-ten frame) on each poster, and inside the frames are different gems and jewels.  We all know that dragons LOVE all things shiny and sparkly.  I have a poster for numbers 0-20, and they are in a line along the top of the wall above where my SMART Board is located.

Something else that I completely changed in my room is where I keep my word wall and schedule board.  For the past three years, I've used the chalkboard at the back of my room to display my calendar, schedule, and objectives for the day.  My Word Wall was displayed on the bulletin board attached to the right side of the chalkboard.  This year I decided to swap the two.

Here is the bulletin board that used to hold my Word Wall.  Now, it has my calendar, schedule tags, and objectives.  This calendar is really for display only, as all of my calendar activities occur on the SMART Board.  I use a Wikki Stix to create a circle and show them what day of the month it is.  My schedule tags have a dragon theme (of course) and are labeled with the name of our activity as well as a picture to go with it.  For example, the 'Lunch' tag has a picture of the cafeteria and our 'Music' tag has a picture of our Music teacher.  The black frames are going to be where I write my daily objectives.  Oh, and on the left side of the schedule tags is a rainbow ribbon with Lil Dragon at the top and a Castle at the bottom.  I move the dragon down the rainbow as we get to each part of our day.  My kinders can 'see' how much of the day is left by looking to see how much rainbow the dragon has to travel until he gets home.  This system has really helped answer the 'when are we going....' questions.

The new schedule board was relatively easy to create.  The most time-consuming part was putting black construction paper inside the frames and hanging them with ribbon.  Now, the new Word Wall was a bit trickier to create.  First, I wanted to give it a border.  I used painter's tape and hot glue to attach the border.

This part was tricky because I had to make sure I got the border attached to the hot glue before it cooled, while at the same time not getting any hot glue on the chalkboard.  It took a while, but I like how it turned out!

I used a rainbow border, since it fits in with my room's theme and I sort my sight words into groups that I label with colors.  I also created headers with rainbow letters and a rainbow border, and attached a magnet to the back so I could put them on the chalkboard and easily move them around.

Our district is currently working on choosing 150 sight words and arranging them into groups/levels.  I am so grateful for this idea, since we will ALL be teaching THE SAME WORDS AND IN THE SAME ORDER!!!  How helpful for kinders who switch schools mid-year, and how super to have it already organized for me.  Once the final decision is made and the lists are given to teachers, I will be adding the words to the wall.

I am lucky enough to have several bulletin boards in my room that are 'real' bulletin boards, attached to the walls of my room.  There are two large ones on each side of the two chalkboards in my room, as well as three long, thin boards.  I use each one for something different, and am very grateful to have them!!  However, I quickly realized I would need even more.  So, I decided to make some.  The yellow board in the picture is one of the large bulletin boards that are attached to the walls of my room.  The blue board is one I made myself, by using painter's tape, hot glue, bulletin board paper, and borders.  I have, so far, made four of these types of boards in my room.  In this picture, the large yellow board will be my ELA board, and the large blue board will be for Math.

Does your classroom have bulletin boards and/or cork strips?  Did they 'come with the room' or did you have to buy/make some of your own??

Don't forget to hop back over to Doodle Bugs Teaching to see who else has linked up for her Five for Friday linky.  There are some really great tips and tricks being shared, plus some great pictures and stores!!  :-)

Five for Friday on a Saturday

Goodness Gracious, where did the week go???  It was my first official week back to school, which means 3 days of meetings and prep work and then two days of kindergarten entry conferences.  In our district, grades 1-12 return back to school 3 days before pre-school through kindergarten.  This allows we Early Childhood teachers to have entry conferences for our incoming kiddos, since many of them have never been to school before.  I am very grateful to be given this time!!!

It was definitely a busy week for me, and my kiddos haven't even arrived yet!!  I missed quite a few posts this week, and I do apologize for that!!!  I am getting myself 'Blorganized' by using the 'Organizing Bundle' for all things blog and TPT created by the amazing Schroeder Shenanigans in 2nd, and that should definitely help me be more organized and on-schedule with my blogging!!!  :-)

Even though it is Saturday, I am gong to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her weekly Five for Friday linky party!!  I am going to share with you five different things from my week, then you'll get to hop on over to Doodle Bugs Teaching to check out all of the other Five for Friday link ups!!

(Rainbow Scribble Numbers from Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah Designs)

One of the things I'm carrying over from last year is the way I set up my student-data folders.  We are not required to keep folders on our kiddos, however I like being able to have info on my kiddos that I can easily access.  Each student gets a hanging file folder.  Inside each of those are 5 different colored file folders.  The plain manilla folder is for student information, including their medical concerns as well as parent contact info.  Red is for work samples, which can be referenced throughout the year to demonstrate growth or to record progress.  Yellow is for assessments, which is where I store the paper copies of the various math and language arts assessments we give the students throughout the year.  Blue is behavior, which is where I keep copies of any office referral forms, parent contact for behavior forms, as well as their monthly behavior calendars.  Lastly, green is where I store any and all parent notes that are sent in throughout the year.  Everything from requests for information to car rider notes.  I make a copy for myself and send the original to the office.  This picture has last year's kiddos, which means on Monday I'll be working on making folders for this years Dragons.

I created a birthday display that fits my dragon theme.  I used some super cute birthday cupcake graphics from the ever-amazing Krista Wallden.  I really like how they turned out!!

I just love how January's cupcake sparkles!!  

St. Patrick's Day is my favorite holiday, and I love this cupcake!!  The wonderful fonts by Lidia Barbosa are from her Phonics Fonts for Teachers Bundle!!

I love September, since it's the start of school AND my birthday month!!  :-)

Here is a pic of one of the many 'lamination graveyards' that showed up on my floor this week.  I have to tell you a bit of a horror story, though.  When we were first able to get into our classrooms the week before last, we learned that the school's color printer AND laminator were BOTH BROKEN!!!  This gave many of us severe heart palpitations.  However, this story does have a happy ending, and no I did not have to go pay someone to laminate everything for me.  Our district has this AMAZING department called Print & Distribution, and I was able to email them PDF files of my classroom set up stuff, and they printed it out in color, then laminated it, and then trimmed off the edges!!!  After that, they shipped it off to my school.  We have a school-to-school mail delivery system called 'The PONY', which is delivered and picked up every morning.  When I came to school Monday, I had my first delivery.  Throughout the week, more and more of my stuff came to school and I could get it cut out and put up.  On Thursday our laminator was fixed, and Friday morning the color printer started working.  I'm hoping to get caught up on my printing soon!!  :-)

I have been able to get all of my entry conferences completed, with only four no-shows.

This is the table where I had my parent conferences.  The kinders came too, and I had different special educators and interventionists working with my new kinders.  They were given a VERY BRIEF assessment, which only included numbers, counting, shapes, colors, and had them write their name.  We do a much larger assessment, the ELS, starting in the first week of September, so we didn't need to overwhelm them with letters and sounds when they'll be assessed on those in a few weeks.  You'll notice my table is COVERED with papers and forms.  I tried to make them in as many different colors as possible.  This way, I'd be able to see if the parents got all the colors.  And yes, that is a frosty cold Coke sitting next to me.  My first conference was at 8:15, so I needed the caffeine jolt!!

My last number has been saved for a non-classroom related photo!

Watch out world, we have a CRAWLER!!!  My Little Lilly is now mobile!!!  There is no stopping this baby girl now!!!  I just hope we can keep up with her.  She will grab WHATEVER she can get her little hands on, and then it goes right into her mouth!!  Love her so very, very much though!!!

I hope you've enjoyed my randomness from this past week.  Please don't forget to head over to Doodle Bugs Teaching to see who else linked up for Five for Friday!!  Enjoy the rest of your weekend!!!

It's Almost Time....

Howdy all!!  I hope you have been enjoying this weekend, for many of you this is the last weekend of summer.  For others, you've already started back!!  I head back to work on the 18th and my kinders come on the 26th, so this week I've been trying to get a lot of work done for my classroom this year.  If you follow me on Facebook, you have seen pictures of the various things I've been working on for my classroom.  I am making progress, and even better my county has this AMAZING department called Print & Distribution.  The incredibly wonderful folks who work here print out my creations in color, on cardstock, AND laminate them.  WHAT!?!?!  I told you it was AMAZING!!!  :-)  Here are some of the things I have sent them so far!!

Classroom Decor

Since I am going through an Extreme Classroom Makeover this year and going with a theme of dragons, I have had to start FROM SCRATCH.  While this has been incredibly time consuming, it has also been amazing to be able to create things exactly how I wanted them to look!!  Here are a few several pictures of what I've done so far for my room!!

An alphabet line, with the vowels in red and consonants in black.  Also, each vowel as a picture that represents the long and short sound.  In addition, the C and G posters each have a picture that represents the hard and soft sounds.

I've made a year's worth of monthly behavior calendars.  My kinders will color in the box to show which color on our behavior chart they ended up on at the end of the day.

I created labels for my Daily 5 Book Bins.  The borders of the colors match the colors of the boxes (the blue card isn't shown in this picture).

Tags for our schedule board.  I use real pictures as often as possible to help my kinders understand what each one means.  These are still a bit of a work in progress because I'm waiting on some new clipart from one of my FAVE designers...more to follow!!

These are the tags I'm going to use on my Word Wall.  This year I am totally changing how I use my Word Wall, including its location in the room.  I am moving it to a much larger space, and am creating new word cards too.  I can't wait to share the pictures with you!!!  <I haven't set it up yet.>

My brand new number line, which features dragons along with the numerals 0-20 as well as the word, and the amount represented by gems inside of ten-frames.

These tags will go out in the hallway and be used to display student work throughout the year.

These tags will go on their individual lockers.  Their picture goes into the frame, and their name will be on the tag underneath.  

These are going inside of the stand-up book bins I use as their mailboxes.  Their last names are underneath the rectangle.

These are going on the outside of the front door to my classroom.

Dragon eggs to attach to clothespins to create the clips for our behavior chart.  Super cute, right??

Job wall tags.  I tried to include a picture to represent each job in order to help my kinders understand what each one was for.  Also, I will be putting Velcro into the white boxes to attach their dragon tags.  I realized I have A LOT of jobs...may need to rethink how I handle classroom jobs.  Just not this year!!  :-)

I will be attaching this little guys to the job wall tags.  This will show me who has which job, since they practically ALWAYS forget...and I do too!!

Prepping for Entry Conferences

Besides getting everything ready I will need for my classroom decor, I have had to prepare for the Kindergarten Parent/Teacher Entry Conferences.  In our district, Early Childhood students start school a full three days after grades 1-12.  During this time, Early Childhood teachers have a chance to schedule a brief meeting with the incoming students and their parents.  This is when we learn what our kinders are capable of as well as where they are coming from.  We are VERY LUCKY to have these days, and I am SUPER GRATEFUL for them!!  Here are some of the forms I have created for these conferences.

This is the front of the checklist I created to help keep me on track during each conference.  Ideally, they are only supposed to last 15 minutes.  I have learned to talk REALLY fast!!  There is a lot of information to go over in those minutes, so I wanted an outline of sorts to help remind me of what I needed to tell them.  

Here is the back of the form.  I'm not going to have a form for every child, just one that I'll keep out on the table to help me stay on track.

Here is the front of the Parent/Guardian information sheet I ask each family to fill out.  Once upon a time, I was able to just say 'Mom' and 'Dad', but times they are a-changing!!  Sometimes my kinders are being raised by grandparents, aunts or uncles, one parent, two men/women, or even foster parents.  I wanted to create a form that was generic enough to be used by anyone who might be taking care of and raising my little dragons.  There is a space for the parent/guardian's name as well as a space for their relationship to the kinder.  Also are spaces for their email, cell, work and home phone numbers.  I use the circles to have parents rank the way in which they would prefer to be contacted.

The back of the form is more specific.  I ask how their child will be traveling to and from school each day, if they can have their pictures taken and displayed through various forms of social media, as well as ask if they may want to help out this year.

My student information forms are a bit longer.  I ask for important information like allergies, medical concerns, family members at the school,

I ask parents to share with me what their littles are excited or nervous about, what they enjoy doing, how they feel about books and reading,

what their littles favorites are, as well as how they as PARENTS feel about their babies going to school.  I ask them to share their excitement and concerns with me.  I feel that having this information allows me to get a more well-rounded picture of where my kinders are coming from.

Finally, I created a Classroom Volunteer Form.  Each of the families that indicate an interest in helping out with the classroom this year will receive one of these forms.  It asks if they are able to help from home or able to come into school and help out, as well as a schedule of when they are available.

The back of the form lists different ways they can help support the classroom projects and celebrations, as well as a section where they can indicate an interest to participate in our school's Career Day.

SSHHEEWW!!!  I made more than I had realized!!  Thanks for sticking through and checking everything out!  Even though I did so much, I still feel as if my To Do List is still so long....  I have some more work to do before I am able to get into my classroom, which I hope to be able to do this week!   On the 18th I will officially be back in school!!

How did your classroom set up go?  If you haven't set up yet, do you know what theme you'll be using this year?  I would LOVE to hear all about it!!!