Meet Lily (and an ABC Center Idea)!

At the beginning of the year I knew I wanted to have classroom jobs.  I decided on the jobs before my kiddos started.  My jobs include: Line Leader, Door Holder, Caboose, Teacher's Helper, Messenger, Center Inspector, Scrap Monster, Supply Star, Librarian, and Gardener.

For the longest time, I didn't have a gardener because I was too lazy to get a plant!  I finally went to Kroger and bought a mini rose plant on sale.  I have a serious brown thumb and kill EVERY house plant I own.  I have much more luck with my gardens outside which is nice for my neighbors. :) 

Today I introduced the plant to my kinder friends and we brainstormed a list of names.  In the end, we decided on Lily.  Here are some of the other ideas my friends came up with.  Just for entertainment!
Rosie, Plant-Plant, R2D2, Beyblade, Plantie, and C3P0.  (Can you tell I have a lot of boys in my class?)  So without further ado, here is LILY!

Please cross your fingers for us that Lily survives and thrives in Room 24!

In other news, I've been trying to think of some multisensory center ideas and saw this pattern block activity on Pinterest. 

Source: makinglearningfun.com via Emily on Pinterest

I printed out the sheets and mounted on red construction paper.  I also added ABC flashcards that I printed free from ABCTeach.com.  My students will use pattern blocks to "build" the letters and then practice their phonics chant for each letter.  For example, "R, /r/, rabbit!"  Here is what I ended up with for this ABC center:

I'm sorry they are sideways.  I've tried a million (aka 4) times to rotate them and they are rotated everywhere except when uploaded to blogger!  As you can see, I have some cutting to do since I just laminated them.  Any volunteers?! ;)

What I Wore Wednesday...plus some more!

To start, I have a horrible picture of what I'm wearing today.  I know the picture is bad....I took it with a cell phone in minimal light....sorry!  Shirt is from Forever21, cardigan from Express, basic black pants, silver accessories....nothing too crazy!  After wearing this outfit, I feel like the shirt looks a little maternity-esque.  That's ok with me though, don't judge.

Now that the ice from the snow and ice storms is finally gone....I figured it was time to post a few pictures!  During this storm, we had two snow days in a row!   It was nice but I was glad to go back after two days off!  The super windy storm caused our trashcan to blow/slide half-way down our street!  Here is a pic of my sweet hubby going to retrieve it.  Also a pic of one of our bird feeders....poor guys didn't have food for a few days since their feeders were frozen shut!

Now onto some school stuff.  Yesterday I woke up feeling exhausted for some reason.  I haven't been sleeping well and I did NOT want to get up.  I wore my hair in a pony and felt super gross and tired.  I went to cafeteria duty that morning and a little girl said "Mrs. P, you look so pretty today!"  Made my day so much better!  :D




I've been blog-stalking a lot lately and have found a ton of great ideas to use with my kiddos!  One fun activity I found is a making words activity.  This activity is great because it can easily be modified for higher level and lower level.  If needed, you can even tell the students to sort their words into 3-letter, 4-letter, etc.  My kids had fun making challenging words!  You can find the activity here over at Mrs. Carroll's blog!

I also found another fun activity for comprehension.  Unfortunately, during my crazy blog-stalking fest, I went download crazy and can't remember where I found this one.  If you know, please let me know so I can give credit!  EDIT: This activity is from Mrs. Patton's blog!  You can find it here!  Thanks Mrs. Patton!  This was easy to make and the kids love quizzing partners or playing teacher and quizzing a small group!

What activities have your students been loving lately? 

Finally Friday!

I woke up this morning and had NO voice.  Literally.  I left our bedroom to get some medicine and when my hubby called to ask if I was already leaving, I couldn't answer!  Luckily after some Mucinex and tons of cough drops, my voice seems pretty much back to normal.  Teaching was rough today but luckily I have some understanding kiddos!

I think I've mentioned on here before that I'm doing some after school tutoring with K/1 friends.  It's been tricky for me to find activities that will work for all the kiddos when we only have an hour each week!  I decided to focus on sight words and fluency because it seems like that would be beneficial for all of the students.  I found a great site with free printable sight word "keep" books.  The site also has a ton of other great resources for Kindergarten!  Check it out if you haven't before: http://www.hubbardscupboard.org/index.html

I tutor in our school media center so I have to take all of my materials with me (difficult)!  I made a mini word wall that I can easily transport.  I made the word wall on my computer and had it blown up to poster size at Staples.  It's laminated so I can write on it with dry erase markers or vis-a-vis if I want.  I also decided to create student word "walls" that the students can fill in each week and take with them at the end of our tutoring so they have a word wall at home.  Here are some pictures....

One of my reading groups has been working on noticing patterns within different books.  They were having some difficulty so I decided to have them compare and contrast two books by the same author.  We started out with two similar books so it wouldn't be too frustrating.  Here is our finished product:

I can't remember if I've talked about our Reader Ratings board or not.  Every week, we have a new read aloud and the students get to vote whether or not they would recommend the book to their friends.  I do sets of 4 books and each "set" focuses on one author.  So far, we've read books by David Shannon, Jack Prelutsky, James Marshall, and Mark Teague.  Our next author is Steven Kroll.  We discuss the author's writing style and the author's voice in the books.  The kids love to vote!  I modified this idea from a website created by Mrs. Newingham and Mrs. Gordon.  They have a ton of great ideas for your classroom!