Name Game and Sight Words

Hello blogging friends!!  I must apologize for my sporadic posts lately.  Things just haven't been right in my world since my mom died!  I had so many plans and ideas to start the year off, so many things I wanted to get started and try!  Then life smacked me upside the head and I've been trying to recover ever since!!  I would like to give a huge thank you to all of the people who still check my lil' blog and read my posts!  I am going to continue to try and do better!!

This past week we have been doing a lot of work with our names.  My students completed a cute name activity during their Independent Group Time this week.  They were given a typed outline of their name, which I made simply by choosing my favorite font in PowerPoint, making it large enough to cover the entire page (without going off the edges), and then choosing the 'text outline' feature to create an outline of their name.  I gave them choices of tissue paper they could use to fill the letters of their names, and they each chose a different way to fill in their letters.  Here are a few pictures of the activity that we did!

 

I used one of my favorite fonts, called 'Doctor Soos Bold'.  I found it as a freebie onine a while ago, and a sweet teaching partner pointed out it was spelled wrong.  I'm thinking it's spelled that way so it doesn't violate copyright laws.  

 Here are the buckets of tissue paper that I had available for my littles to use.

This is a sample of some of their completed work.  It was interesting to see the different styles and methods my kiddos used to fill in their names with tissue paper!

On to a freebie!!  In my room, we are working hard to learn our sight words.  I have created a few coloring pages where my littles must follow the code to color in the pictures.  I'm working on getting them together as a pack and adding it to my TPT store, but for now I only have a few done.  I'm sharing one as a freebie!!

Please leave me a comment or two to tell me your favorite ways to teach sight words!!

Room Set-up

Thanks so much to my followers who have stayed with me through this process they call grieving!!  It's still really hard for me to deal with, but I'm working on it.  My mom was one of my 3 official followers, and I remember the week before she died she told me how proud she was of the fact that I started a blog.  So, in the spirit of my mom, I'm going to try to get back into the world of daily blogging.  I know that's what she would want!
   I'd like to share with you some pictures of my finished (almost) classroom.  Since mom died two days before school started, I missed the entire first week with my Littles.  I'm still in the process of catching up!

This is my Environmental Print ABC wall, located on the wall right inside my classroom door.  This is NOT my idea!  I first read about it on the Growing Kinders blog and just had to try it out for myself!  I had a hard time having parents send in labels, so I recruited members of my family.  My mom was a big help with this project, and I'm glad I get to remember her every time I walk through my classroom door!  I also found a great resource to add labels, since I was having a hard time finding them.  Joey Barnes has a great Environmental Print ABCs Freebie over on TPT, and I used that freebie to fill in some of my letters.  If you look closely, you can see that some letters (like I,U,V) really needed the help of Joey's freebie, so thanks a zillion Joey!!!

This is my Art Center next to my Sensory Table.  My easels are covered with cheapo plastic tablecloths from the Dollar Tree, which helps to keep the chalkboards under the cloth free of paint.  My Sensory Table has two sides, and currently it is full of paper scraps and scissors so my Littles can practice their cutting skills.  My amazing teaching partner Heather thought of that idea, and I LOVE it!!  (So do my kinders!!)

This is the front of my room, where the SMART Board is located.  After my first year in kindergarten, I asked to have the Board lowered since it was installed WAY TOO HIGH for my Littles to reach the top, and I was nervous about having them stand on stools while they tried to use the Board!  On the top of the wall are the number cards for 0-20 (which is our focus for the first marking period) and they contain the number word with a matching numeral and set of dots.  I hot-glued the number cards in the order they would appear in a ten-frame instead of a straight line.  We do  A LOT of work with ten-frames in kindergarten, and having them displayed in this way helps my kinders to remember the formation.  My bulletin boards are covered with fabric.  I have found that fabric fades A LOT less than butcher-style paper.  I have used the same pieces of fabric for at least four years now, and they are still as bright and crisp as the day I put them up!  The green board is my Math board, and right now has the 2D and 3D shapes we are focusing on, as well as a poster of rhymes for writing the digits 1-9 and a Touch Math poster that shows the digits 1-9.  There is also a spot for a Math Word Wall which we will add to throughout the year.  The yellow board is my Language Arts board and contains the short/long vowel posters as well as a Word of the Day poster where we display various sight words we are working on.  Next to the LA board is a color words display.  The blue kidney table is where my little do their Independent work.  My Computer Center is located in front of the Math board, and up in the corner is where our TV is mounted.  We watch our 5th Grade Friends perform the daily announcements every morning.

Here's a shot of the front right corner of my room.  Behind the blue dividing wall are the lockers where my littles keep their things.  In this picture you can see most of my ELA Centers, including the Reading Center, Interactive Pocket Chart, and Listening Center.  Right now we are using the Pocket Chart Center to play the Name Game that I blogged about a few weeks ago.

This is a shot of the back left corner of my room.  You can see the Dramatic Play Center, as well as a bulletin board I'll use to display our Star of the Week's poster.  You can see the other half of the Sensory Table as well as the filing cabinet that contains our Behavior Clip Chart.  My desk doubles as the Magnet Letters Center, and the door behind my desk leads to one of the other kindergarten classrooms.  The blue table you can kind of see in this picture is where my littles do Art Center projects that don't require the easel.  For example, this week we studied the letter P so my kiddos made a piggy craft using the letter P.  The chalkboard is usually where I put our objectives for the day, including our daily schedule.

This is the back right corner of my room.  On the chalkboard is the small calendar I display in order to meet our State Validation requirements, but all of our Calendar Routine and Activities are completed on the SMART Board during Morning Circle Time.  Above the chalkboard on the wall is our classroom birthday display.  The blue bulletin board is our Sight Word Wall, and I'm still searching for ways to make it more interactive for my kinders!  The star burst next to the Word Wall is our Job Chart, and underneath that is our BLURT! Board.  Behind the stacks of chairs are the Blocks Center and the Science/SS Center.  The brown trapezoid tables are used for the Writing, Phonics, and Math Centers (during different times of the day).  Our Write the Room supplies are found there too.  My littles LOVE LOVE LOVE the Write the Room Center, do yours??  That door leads out to the playground that all three kindergarten classes use, as well as our morning and afternoon pre-k class.

This is a closer shot of the Science/SS Center, and the shelves that hold many of our manipulatives and interactive learning games.

Here are our classroom mailboxes, where my littles put their folders every morning and I can easily pass out papers.  The empty white wall space underneath the clock will eventually contain our Sight Word Rainbow displays.

Due to everything that has happened in my life lately, I TOTALLY missed posting pictures of the awesome package I received from my Mystery Blogger for the Back to School Blogger exchange.  My AMAZING partner was Kelly Brown, a kindergartner teacher from NC and fellow blogger!  She did a superfantabulous job of finding items to go with my theme of Dr. Seuss and dragons!!  Thanks so much Kelly!  

  Thanks again for bearing with me through this process!  I hope you enjoyed a glimpse into Room 130, and I will be adding more pictures as the room changes.  I'd like to leave you with a shot of my furbaby Isis, who was spayed on Monday.  She definitely does not like the Cone of Shame!!

Grieving

Sorry blogging friends, I haven't been able to get on and post much about anything lately.  My mom died very unexpectedly on Saturday the 24th, and ever since then it's been a crazy and sucky week for me.  I was not at school for the first day or even the first week of my littles, and I haven't had time to even think about school before today.  I head back to the classroom tomorrow and am hopeful that the hustle and bustle of a new school year will allow me to focus my energies on something besides my grief.  I do apologize for leaving any of my followers hanging over the past week.  I will attempt to do much better!!

Professional Development

Yesterday was the official first day back for teachers in my county.  Students in grades 1-12 start school on Thursday, and students in pre-school through kindergarten start next Tuesday.  Early childhood teachers use those three days to have entry conferences with our kinders and their grown-ups.  Yesterday, today, and tomorrow are days my county designates as professional development days.  I'm sure that most, if not all, schools have professional development days.  In my county, we attend back-to-school meetings to get the latest updates, as well as meet with other grade-level teachers across the county to discuss changes in curriculum.  Many schools are starting their first year with the Common Core Standards, however my school is going into its second year of Common Core so we feel more comfortable with it this year.  Not that we feel like we've mastered it yet, but we're working towards that goal.  I was wondering how other schools handle the beginning of the year.  Do you have days designated at the beginning of the year for professional development?  And if you're Early Childhood, do you have days set aside to have entry conferences with your incoming students?  Or is this something your school does over the summer break?  I would love any feedback!!

   I've been working hard on getting my room ready for this year's group of students.  So far I have a total of 19, 10 boys and 9 girls.  I've been working a little bit each day in my room to finish getting it set up, and I am almost finished.  In my classroom, I have a lot of different items that have a student's name on them.  Things like locker tags, mail box tags, BLURT! board tags, behavior chart clips, etc.  I laminated all of those items so that I could get as many years' worth of use out of them as I can!!  I brought all of these things home with me today in order to clean off the Sharpie marker so I can write this year's names.  I decided to clean them off using a Magic Eraser instead of the EXPO spray (which I LOVE too!!).  I had not realized just how many things in my classroom need to have student names written on them...needless to say my fingers turned black before I finished.  I have included pics so you can get a visual of what I'm talking about here.

 Doesn't it kinda look like I suffered a REALLY bad case of frostbite??  It got under my nails too...ick.

Here's all of the different things that I use in my classroom that need to have a student's name on them.  Don't forget that each item you see is one of 19!!

  For those of you starting with your kiddos tomorrow, have a SUPERFANTABULOUS year!!

Setting Up My Room

Holy Moley, long time no blog!!  My apologies to all!!  Been trying to suck the last bit of summer out of the past few weeks.  Don't know about y'all, but I'm headed back to work tomorrow.  My kiddos will come for their first day of kindergarten next Monday!!  Got a lot to do and a lot more planned, make sure to keep checking back!!  Here are some pics of my classroom as it waits patiently for me to finish getting everything set up!

 

This picture shows the view of my classroom from the front door.

Here is a shot of my storage closet!!  Room for improvement, but SO MUCH BETTER than it was!!

 This picture shows the lockers that my students use to store their belongings.  We spend some time the first week of school learning how to open and close them QUIETLY!!

 Here's a shot of the front of my classroom, you can see the SMART Board mounted to the chalkboard on the wall.  We spend A LOT of time learning how to use that piece of technology, but my littles love it!!

 This shot shows the side of my classroom located under the windows.  There are plenty of shelves behind all that stuff, and the door that leads to the outside playground.  I'll be getting our AWESOME custodians to help move around the heavier furniture.

 This is a shot of the back of my room.  I use fabric to cover the bulletin boards because it doesn't fade.

 This shows the back corner of my classroom, with a connecting door to a kitchenette as well as a connecting door to one of my team mate's classroom.

This is the butterfly bush located outside of our back door by the playground.  It got HUGE over the summer, ad there were SO MANY butterflies in it.  I really hope they are still there when my kiddos start!!


In order to wish everyone a great year, I have joined up with the Back To School TPT sale, where EVERYTHING in my store is 20% off.  Please stop on by!!

What's In A Name? - Name Game Rounds 1 & 2

     In my room, our year is split up into four marking periods.  During each marking period we are given a topic of study, and we spend the entire marking period on that topic.  Our first marking period is called 'Great Beginnings' and we spend time learning about the rules and routines of the classroom and the school.  We also spend a lot of time learning about each other.  One of my favorite things to talk about is our name.  We do so many fun activities learning about our name, as well as the name's of our classmates and our teachers.  During the first few weeks of school last year I chose a name of a student and that student came up to the front of the room, we chanted their name, looked at it, an counted the letters.  My littles seemed to enjoy working with their names, but I felt like I wasn't doing enough to help them learn the spelling of their names.  Since I knew I wanted to change up how I completed those beginning of the year name activities, I decided to do some research to see what ideas my fellow educators had to say about this.  I found some wonderful ideas, so bear with me!! 
      While flying along through the amazing world of blogs out there, I stumbled across a link to an amazing little gem, the Meacham Name Game.  I am sure there are quite a few people out there who already know (and use!) Mrs. Meacham's awesome name activities, and I would love to hear how you use name games/student of the day/etc. activities!!  I'd like to share with you my thoughts for using this awesome activity!  I'm definitely starting with Rounds 1 and 2, and will be making sure to post about how this works in my classroom!  Here's my plan:
  Round 1: I will start with having a small bucket with each student's name on a stick.  The fist stick I pull (on the day before, I will secretly choose who I want to be the Dragon of the Day so that I can get their portrait papers ready) will be the first person to participate in the Name Game, also known as Dragon of the Day.  This student will be asked to come to the front of the room while I write his or her name on a sentence strip, then cut the name apart by letter, placing each letter in the correct order into a pocket chart.  We will chant each letter of the name as if we were at a Raven's game: (for 'Gary') "Give me a G" and they would chant back 'G!' When we chanted the last letter, I would ask them, 'What's that spell?' and they would shout back 'Gary!'  I don't know about y'all, but my littles LOVE to be allowed to shout in the classroom.  I would then introduce the best part, that they are going to get to draw a portrait of their Dragon of the Day.  First, I will model for them how to draw the portrait using shapes and the colors to match what the Dragon of the Day is wearing.  This helps me to show them how they should use shapes to draw a person.  For the first round the name of the Dragon of the Day will be printed on the bottom of the paper (which is why I need to secretly choose the Dragon of the Day before the grand ceremony of the stick-pulling) with lines so the students can attempt to copy the Dragon of the Day's name.  Even if they can only trace over the letters of their friend's name, that's fine.  I would model this during Whole Group Time so that they could complete their portrait's during the beginning of their Independent Group Time. 
   Round 2:  This round will require some prep-work.  Each student will need a small pocket envelope with their picture on each and their cut-apart name inside.  We will also need to create a large class graph with a photo of each student and the numbers 1-10 across the top (though probably less since I don't think I'll have anyone in my room with 10 or more letters in their name, but ya never know!!)  This round starts the same as the first round, choosing a stick, then putting the letters of that student's name in a pocket chart and chanting.  We will add introducing the name puzzles and then place those at one of the ELA (English Language Arts) Centers.  Next, we'll count the letters of the Dragon of the Day's name and then place a dragon picture under the correct number for the amount of letters in that student's name.  As we complete this round, we'll compare the letters in our names to see who has more/less/same.  Please stay with me through the first few weeks of school so you can see how this looks in my classroom!!


  Outside my classroom, I spent Friday at the County Fair with my nephew.  He is old enough, and tall enough, to get on all of the rides by himself now.  He was determined to ride every ride there, and he did a pretty good job of conquering each ride!  I think the only one he didn't do was the Loop-the-Loop roller coaster, but everything else he ROCKED!!  His mom and I weren't thrilled with how HIGH up he went on some of the rides, but he did AWESOME!!  Hope you're enjoying your summer with the ones you love!!

Star of the Week

   Happy Friday everyone!!  Does anyone else have trouble keeping track of what day it is during the summer??  There are times during the summer where I have to stop what I'm doing and literally think about what day it is!!  Since today is Friday, I thought I'd talk about something I do every Friday in my classroom.  Every Monday, I tell my littles that I will be looking for a student who does a super awesome job of showing the Bainbridge BEs.  Those are our PBIS expectations.  For those of you who aren't familiar with the PBIS program, it stands for Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support.  It is a discipline program focused on positive reinforcement of desired behaviors.  If you Google PBIS, you will get TONS of links to different sites.  While the foundations of the program are the same no matter where it is used, schools tend to tweak it to meet their needs.  At my school we focus on three key behaviors: Be Respectful, Be Responsible, and Be Safe.  All of our rules and routines are based around this three principals.  My school does many things to help our students stay engaged with this program, and I will talk in depth about our PBIS program at a later date.
    In my room, one of the ways we utilize PBIS is to encourage a Star of the Week.  This is something that one of my team mates had going in her room, and I liked the idea.  Our school mascot is a train ('Engineering Great Futures') so last year I purchased a set of train-themed posters from Really Good Stuff.
 

Click on the picture if you're interested in the posters!

   I sent one of these posters home with my chosen student on Friday, and they had the entire weekend to work on filling it out.  They could decorate it any way they chose, and use any pictures that would help tell their story.  My team mate had her students create their own posters, using whatever materials they chose.  This year I am going to try it her way.  I like the idea of the students being able to be as creative as they want with their posters, and I know that they will love to share them with their classmates.  I plan on sending home a letter with the chosen student which will explain the project to their families.  Also in the letter will be the information that the student should display on their poster.  Their name (first, middle, last), birthday, family, pets, favorite holiday, what they want to be when they grow up their favorite food, color, and thing to do.  Families will, of course, be able to add anything else to the poster that they wish to share with the class.  When the student brings the finished poster back on Monday, we will spend some time at the end of the day having the student share their poster.  Then it will hang on it's own special bulletin board for the entire week, so that everyone in the class will have a chance to study it.  I am in the process of making a sample poster that will tell my littles all about me, and when I get it finished I will post a picture of it.  For now, I'd like to share with you the letter that I plan on sending home with my Star of the Week.  Feel free to use it in your classroom (I made several different versions), and leave me a comment to tell me what you think!!  You can get this freebie one of two ways.  I'm trying Google Docs for the first time, so to download it via Google Docs click here.  In order to get this freebie through Teachers Pay Teachers, click on the picture!!  <I've never used Google Docs before, so please let me know if it works!!>

Finally, I'd like to share with you what's going on OUTSIDE my classroom.  Some of you may remember that my furbaby Isis had her second birthday on Monday.  I shared with you pictures of the presents I got for her.  Well, yesterday she ripped into her birthday bear.  I was hoping it would last a little longer, but she just HAD to get that squeaker out!  There was some stuffing she scattered around the living room floor (and I had bought the bear 'cause it was advertised NOT to have any stuffing) and she pulled out the knotted ropes that made up the toy's structure.  It looked disturbingly like she ripped out the poor guy's intestines!!  For those of you that have furbabies at home, are they 'moderate chewers' or 'strong chewers'?  I buy the toys labeled 'For strong chewers' but they don't seem to last very long around Isis.  I know that, as a pit bull, she has incredible jaw strength.  However, there HAS to be a toy out there that will last for at least a week.  Any suggestions from you puppy parents who have 'strong/powerful chewers'??  I need all the help I can get!!

The stuffing I thought this bear DIDN'T have!!

The ropes she pulled out of his belly look too much like she disemboweled the poor guy!!