Classroom Tour 2014

Hello everyone! It's FRIDAY! Totally my favorite day of the week! As promised here is a tour of my classroom this year!

 This is the view of my room looking from the door. Other than an area to the right, this is pretty much it. My classroom is small compared to many Pre-K classrooms but with our 3 year old classes maxing out at 14 the space suits us perfectly!

 This is a small reading area and our morning command center. When the kiddos unpack their bags they come in, drop their folder in a bucket and flip their card in the pocket chart. One side has their name and the other has their face. Every morning it starts on the name side and they have to find their name and flip it over to find their face! I mix it up as the year progresses to make sure they are learning their name and not just memorizing their spot. The pictures make it self checking and its a great way to see attendance at a glance!

Our cabinets where all my important teacher resources are kept - note the Keurig Machine! ;) I've been organizing my teaching resources into binders this year and I LOVE it! I keep one binder per letter of the alphabet and one for our monthly colors numbers and shapes. This helps me find things so much more easily and makes planning with my coworkers a breeze! 

I also love using the plastic drawers for organizing weekly work. I have one drawer for each day of the week and one To-Do. I put all the things I need my assistant to do in the last drawer and as she finishes them she files them into the weekly drawers. Each day I just need to open the drawer and everything I need is there!

Our whole group area. Here we do morning meeting and calendar every day as well as do alot of fun things on our Eno Board! 

Want to know one of my favorite things about whole group time? Using pointers!Its just one of those things that I couldn't wait to do as a kid and I get a kick out of it still! I started making pointers out of pre-painted wooden shapes after seeing this post on First Grader... at Last! a few years back. This summer I decided to add a pointer for every letter of the alphabet to reinforce the sounds each week. Now I have a big bucket of beautiful glittery pointers that the kiddos and I both absolutely LOVE!

 This is a closer look at my small group table and our focus board. I put the skills we are working on each week as a visual reminder for the kiddos. At this table I do work with 3-4 students at a time in differentiated groups during our center time.

 I work in a Catholic school so we have a prayer table integrated into our room. Next to that is the kitchen center. One of the struggles I have with such a small room is center time. There is not a lot of room for kiddos to spread out and play so I mix some permanent centers like the kitchen and reading  with other more portable tabletop centers.

 I hope you enjoyed getting a peek into my home away from home! Before you leave I want to show you what I made today. I present you with Mr. Muncher!

Isn't he the cutest? I made him using a small swing top trashcan and laminated card stock with a little hot glue. I plan on using him each week to reinforce letter sounds. I purchased these letter cards on Amazon to use with him which are very sturdy laminated small cards perfect for little hands! If you'd like to snag the sign I made for his front you can get it here.

I hope your weekend is getting off to a wonderful start!

What I've Been Up To...

This summer has brought a lot fun exciting changes. The biggest being that I got MARRIED!

 Super wonderful and exciting! We went to Disney World for our honeymoon and spent the rest of the summer fixing up our apartment!

As all things do, our wonderful summer had to come to an end sometime and now school is back in full swing. I am very fortunate to work at a school I love with some absolutely amazing people so it wasn't too much of a hardship! I will be posting a classroom tour soon but right now I'm linking up with Oh Boy Fourth Grade for my September currently. Here it is!

Listening:  My husband and I share a mutual love for video games. It's his way of unwinding after a long day. Usually he plays with friends online and I sit next to him on the couch with my laptop on Pinterest or blogs. Its wonderful that we are happy just to be next to one another on our respective screens.

Loving: I was out of school yesterday and today with a nasty stomach bug. I HATE being out of school! Yes, being sick sucks but mostly because the fun lessons I have planned don't get taught! I'll be glad to be back with my kiddos tomorrow!

Thinking: While I was sick as a dog yesterday I was trying to be somewhat productive and was looking up Pre-K things on Pinterest. I think I'd really like to incorporate a word wall in my classroom. I would like to focus on adding pictures & words that begin with the letters to reinforce letter sounds all year long. The only problem is space! My room is so tiny!

Wanting: I am very much over summer. Which is a pity because fall like temperatures don't hit until late October or November in Louisiana. I can however still dream of the days when I can pull my cardigans, scarves and boots out of the closet and do simple tasks without breaking into a sweat.

Needing: Oh the couch. My foe and friend. So comfy especially when you add a husband and a cuddly pooch. 

Trips: I've been dying to go to London and Versailles for years now. London because I love everything British and Versailles because I find Marie Antoinette so very fascinating! I also want to go to New York just to go and see what all the fuss is about!

Hope you have enjoyed seeing what I've been up to! Don't forget to click the link above to post your own September currently!

The Very Busy Classroom

I am so excited about this year! We have gotten off to such a wonderful start and I am having such a blast teaching these kiddos! I'm finding that my 4 years of kindergarten teaching experience is very helpful in planning where I want the kids to be at the end of the year. Our curriculum is a letter a week and a shape, color, & number a month so I've been adapting my stuff to fit the needs of my 3s.

Here's a little bit of what we've been up to!

 When we were studying the letter A, we made applesauce in the crock pot, turned ourselves into astronauts and learned a new song, &  practiced writing A!

 

 

I just LOVE how these astronauts turned out!  We used small pieces of foil and of course tons of GLITTER!

 

One day we made applesauce in the crock pot and although some of my kiddos weren't too enthused about it, I thought it was DELICIOUS! I got the recipe here.

 

We loved getting to dump the ingredients into the crock pot. Our room smelled so good while it cooked all day. 

We also got to taste some fresh apples with our apple taste test. We tasted red, yellow, and green apples and recorded if we liked them or not on our worksheet. In between tastings the kiddos put their hands on their heads so that we could all taste at the same time. It was a lot of fun!

Apparently I got so into B week that I totally forgot to take pictures. Silly me! But I didn't forget to take pictures when we learned about the letter C! 

We made our very own Pete the Cats complete with different colored

shoes! It was a great activity to practice recognizing shapes and following directions!

We also learned about clouds and went outside with our cloud catchers to find different types of clouds in the sky. 

This week we learned all about the letter D and had a lot of fun! We made dotted dogs and delicious donuts. The donuts helped us practice our gluing skills because we had to dot the glue to add the glitter sprinkles. One of our favorite projects was wearing duck feet made out of craft foam. We waddled all the way out to recess!

Thanks for stopping by and checking out what we have been up to!

Hope your school year is getting off to a great start!