Behavior...Behavior...Behavior...

     They are 5 and 6, their world has just begun and now we expect them to sit down and do their work!  Forget exploring to play, forget long recess, we must learn everything in kindergarten!  No wonder our kids are struggling to behave.  Not only do many of our students face immense struggles, but we also expect them to complete developmentally inappropriate activities and act much older than they are! Kids with typical behaviors struggle to sit and kids who would struggle anyways have an even more difficult time.  As much as I would love to just go back to the old way, I cannot!  My kids still need to learn the skills and strategies they need to be successful.  A principal once told me that my class could, “sit down, be quiet, and do their work.”  That’s great some of the time, but not all the time!  Students learn by talking! I am currently working to find creative ways to let my students learn and play at the same time!  I am collecting resources from EVERYWHERE to makes sure my kids are active learners.

Click Here for Ninja Tags

   One thing I have been using for a while is Secret Ninja Badges.  I cut them up and place them in clip-on name tags.  I choose one-three kids every day during the day to be a not-so-secret ninja. The kids love getting the award and all I have to do is hold it in my hand and they start to listen quickly!  At the end of the day, they keep the tag, but I keep the name tag holder.  They also get a special treat or prize.    

More Magic Please

I’m tired!  I’m worn out.  It’s the night before Thanksgiving and I feel like I missed the mark this year for my kinders.  In the past, I have done tons of fun Thanksgiving activities!  We dug deep into history and built a Wigwam, a Cabin and a Mayflower from appliance boxes. We acted it out, learned poems and had a Friendsgiving in our rooms.  This year, we made a Turkey placemat with our hands and watched Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.  I sit here angry with myself.  I love my job!  I love my students and I LOVE the magic of kindergarten.  But I am STRUGGLING…struggling to find the energy, struggling to get creative and struggling to get out of this rut. I want the MAGIC back.  The amazing crazy creative kinder magic that made me fall in love with this grade 8 years ago.  But the truth is the super exciting activities take time, money, and help.  Sometimes they take away from learning to read and math, but aren’t’ they important?  Shouldn’t we help our students love school?  Shouldn’t we slow down and have some creative fun?  I want my kids to love school, to wake up every day excited to learn.  The problem is most of my sweet ones came to school with ZERO knowledge about letters, reading, or numbers.  I still have 4 kids who don’t know numbers 1-10, and that’s a problem.  However, if it's not fun, I doubt they will learn it!  I am desperate to find ways to bring back the magic and help my kids grow.  

I work in a tough district.  My kids have dealt with many difficulties in their short lives.  Many of them won’t have a “normal” Thanksgiving.  Some of them will be eating very little till they get to school next Monday.  We are bombarded at our school with ideas and ways to make our kids grow.  Sometimes we spend so much time talking about what we could do, we don’t sit down and get it done.  We get lost in the day to day survival.  The kid under the table, the kid who refuses to work, the kid who screams, the kid who has to be at the front, and the kid who won’t talk.  In the middle of solving these problems this year, which we are making great progress...most days; I think I have missed precious moments.  All of my students need me, they all have a purpose, and they all can learn.  Maybe I need to take our class chant to heart, maybe I am the one that needs to remember, ‘I am strong, I am brave, I am brilliant, and I have a purpose.” 

 When I see all the great kindergarten activities on Pinterest, I want that for my kids too!  They deserve it.  It's not fair that they miss out on some of these activities because I am stressed about growth. I MUST find a happy balance.  There is no way for any teacher to do every little thing! Kids need the structure, they need to learn, but they need to play and have fun.  I want my students to learn by doing, I want them to LOVE learning.  I am going to do better.  I refuse to let this rut continue.  My kids are going to learn this year and they are going to LOVE it!  I want them to know that they have the power to achieve anything they want.  I am not going to let the fact that we are an urban district stop me.   I am going to focus on the positive.  Forgetting all the craziness that surrounds us and focus on what I can do for my class to make their kinder year an unforgettable experience that they will cherish.   We started the year with Magic...Now to just get it back!

  

Scoring Kinder work

How to Score Kindergarten work???

So my first year in kindergarten I would give out work, we would complete it together, and then I would put a smile, sticker, or something cute on it and send it home. Many times students would need lots of help to complete work and we would sit with them and guide them through it. I didn’t want to students to ever leave something wrong! I am a strong believer in immediate feedback. We often fixed stuff on the spot.   This is all good…But I found a HUGE problem!  My sweet babies’ parents thought their students were always getting everything right!  Oh no!  So when I had my first conferences or would call for concerns, they were shocked.  I should have known this would happen, but it was a bit of a shock to me!  I adjusted pretty quickly and for the past four years, after helping students I have been writing with teacher’s help on the paper.  This has gotten old…my hand is tired and sometimes it takes a while to this on each kids paper.  

                   This year I have found a new solution!  I sent a note home yesterday. If children receive a star on their paper they completed it individually with little or no help. If they have a smile, they had some help.  If they have a check, they were guided all the way through it or had to fix a large portion of it.  This is quick, easy, and simple.  We had a class discussion about it too!  Now my kids want stars and are trying their absolute best, especially on the handwriting…yay!!!  We discussed that everyone needs help sometimes, even Mrs. Nelson.  So far so good!  Hopefully this new system will save some time, some hand hurting, and encourage my students to do their absolute best!!    

If you would like a copy of the note click here.  

• This is a word doc, so you are welcome to edit it!  It is set a little low because I printed it on super cute superhero paper, so you can adjust it for your needs =).

Bubble Gum Numbers

  This year I want my students to understand numbers inside and out.  We are starting this year with numbers the common core way!   Here is a cute glimpse of what we will do this week!  It’s a face lift to the  bubble gum book I have used the past several years.  My kids love drawing the gumballs and then we share some real gumballs and count how many times we chew and graph the colors too.  Click here for a copy.

Class Room Tour

 Okay so a new year has started and this year I plan to actually keep up with my blog to help me track all the great things we do in our kindergarten room!

 This year my sweet boy has been obsessed with super heroes, hence my motivation for a super hero classroom. I am usually pretty successful connecting with the girls in  my room, but I really want to make sure that I make connections with my boys in the first days of school.  So for the past couple of years I have tried to theme my room in ways that will pull in the boys.  With inspiration from pinterest and my favorite little man, I designed my classroom:

Welcome to room 303!

I drew and painted our giant superheroes with help from my kiddos.

Password

A different word will go on a index card here each week for students to say before they come in the room. After we have been going a few weeks, their will be two or three passwords so I can switch them up on the students.

Super Vowel Friends

I created our super vowel friends in hopes that my students will gain a better understanding of vowels this year. Their names are their short vowel sounds and I am working on little books to go with each super friend. 

Super Reading Area

 Another awesome teacher at our school painted the superheroes several years ago and passed them to me this year. It really brightens up my reading area and saved me some precious time!

 

Daring Data Bear

Our Daring data bear will help us track our classroom data this year. The chart on the left is our sight words. As children master each sight word list their little superhero will go up.  The chart on the right shows how they are progressing in their phonics knowledge. Each child will have a purple target for the things they have mastered and a red target for the items they are currently working on. The superheroes and the targets will have each student’s number on them so info stays confidential.  The chart in the middle will be signed by students once they know all their letters and letter sounds.

Super Hero Centers

My centers groups for the first several weeks will be super heroes.  There are lots of centers on the board, but we usually start with just one and then grow as we learn our procedures.  My picture frames have our weekly sight words and weekly sounds, and I have got to remember to bring get those hanging straight!  We also have word bubbles for our lunch graph which we go over each day. My kids can usually spell and understand more, less, and equal like pros from our lunch graph!

Super Hero Procedures

Our school has school wide rules which are posted as PAWS and our top procedures in our classroom are below them. We practice them each day during our morning meeting using the Whole Brain Teaching method.

Chicka Chicka

 Boom Boom. 

We begin our year with my favorite book. I have been taking their pictures this week in front of the tree and we will post them on our tree with our names. This coming week.!

Super Shapes

I replaced my old shapes with super shapes to go with the theme…just for a fun twist!

Open House Requests:

  I displayed this sign at open house and set out little coconuts with items we needed.

View of the back!

  My table is a mess. I took these pictures after the first day and didn’t think about cleaning the table first!  My science board will have all our fun giant science items and student work.  Our vowel friends are also on the cabinets so that we can post cvc words with the correct vowels on the doors.   

Thanks for touring my room!  Please feel free to leave questions and comments!

Community Helpers

Well…..I guess I am not the best at teaching and keeping up with blogging!  I just get so distracted looking at all the other fabulous blogs and ideas that I don’t get back to posting my stuff!  Plus we have been dealing with an empty  rental house that needed remodeling, a new school to get accustomed too, and so much more craziness. Hopefully I can start doing a little better…now that things are calming down…I think! 

     We have been very busy in the world of kindergarten!  Here are a few things we have been doing:

Community Helpers:

We learned all about the world of community helpers!  Because we must INTEGRATE everything to get it all in we created several math books!

·       The first one is pretty simple…its titled Fire Numbers.  They start by writing the number one and the word one. They draw one tally mark and then they put Fire house on the first page…then they do the same for pages 1-10, a different pic for each number.  They love it and we discuss why the fire fighters need each tool. We talk about fire fighters practicing on the page with the brick on fire

o   Click here for the word document…you have to print how many you need for each page one at a time!

·       FireTruck Numbers:  In this activity kids just cut out and put fire trucks in order 1-15. My kids love to put them on sentence strips and then wear them as hats!

Doctor Match: In this game the kids have to match the correct Doctor bag to the correct Letter Doctor. Each doctor has a different letter and they must sort the bags to match the right doctor. 

·       Community Helpers Teen numbers…

o   In order to help my kids better understand the teen numbers, I created this book with the chance to practice counting, drawing, writing, and understanding ten frames.

Click Here For Book

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Homemade Binoculars

About five months ago I welcomed a former student and her sister into our home.   Since their parents were unable to take care of them, my husband and I agreed to do it.  I loved them and so did my children.

My daughter Olivia became the best of friends with them, and never wanted them to leave, even though their presence had changed her life dramatically.  She now had to share her room with her brother, all her toys with the girls, and of course all the attention.  Then when my husband was deployed in the month following the addition she really clung to them.

 Well a month ago we were able to settle them into a more permanent situation with their grandmother who lives about four hours from us.  I kept Olivia busy all of July so that she wouldn’t miss them too much. Now that things are settling down she is lonely and often wishes they could come back. I asked her today, “what do you want me to do?”  She said, “bring another student home.”  Ahhh! That’s out of the question and highly unlikely so instead, she has become my assistant. She loves crafts, learning, and school and there fore is helping me come up with ideas and creating them.

Oops! You can see our mess...its a result of all day play and little cleaning!

Our project this week was these toilet paper binoculars.  We paint to toilet paper rolls black, glue them together, and hole punch the ends to tie string. 

I had a few of them from a great friend who gave them to me when I started kindergarten.  We decided we need a class set. I originally used them to go on a safari of school during the first days of kindergarten.  She and I thought up more ideas this week…and I am so proud of my girl!

·    Search out sight words

·    Play, “I spy”

·    Search for shapes

·    Search for numbers

·    Be super alert listeners.

·    Visualize far away lands for writing.

 We would love more ideas!   It will be interesting however tomorrow when we go to our neighbors and begin asking for toilet paper rolls. (I threw away my stash when I moved schools this summer)