Classroom Tour Part 2

I can't believe it's already the fifth week of school. Well, actually I can. It has been non-stop in our little corner of Kindergarten and my students are accomplishing some amazing things. It's been several weeks since my last classroom post where I gave you sneak peak of how my room is looking this year. Well, welcome to part two of that tour....

 

I already shared our discovery station but I thought I would show you what it looks like now full of my students' special treasures. They love exploring and observing these nature items during station time.

The art station was a work in progress last time so I didn't share it. Here it is now with my student's artwork prominently displayed. We read the book Ish by Peter H. Reynolds and my students created their own "ish" paintings with watercolor. I have two easels hanging on the closet doors and plenty of art supplies (watercolors, markers, colored pencils crayons, glue sticks, scissors, etc.) that they can easily access.

 

Above our windows, is another art project that we did a couple of weeks ago. My students used paint chips to cut out shapes and they worked together to glue them down to create a mosaic. Sorry the picture is hard to make out. I stole this idea from my friend, Liz. You might want to stop by her blog, My Life in Projects. She has amazing ideas!

This is our word wall that our class is "building" together. We began our process the first couple weeks of school by writing each uppercase and lowercase letter. We then, matched those to the pre-made letters. Each week, we focus on a high frequency word and we add those as we go. 

A favorite part of our day has definitely been our writing workshop! In our writing workshop, my students are authors who make books. We made some charts to help remind us what authors do. The first one, Ways Authors Write, show my students that they can "write" or make books even if they don't know how to write words yet. I share my favorite wordless picture book with them called, Good Dog Carl by Alexandra Day to show them this. The next chart,  When I'm Done, simply offers my students ideas for what to do when they finish a book.

We have also begun our reading workshop and the students are doing independent reading several times a week. To help my students believe that they are readers I teach them these three ways to read a book. I like to use photographs as visuals for my charts to help my students remember what they are about. When I taught this lesson, for example, I took pictures of the books I used to model each thing and added them to the chart.

Here is our meeting area. I do a great deal of my teaching from my easel. Next door to the easel, I have a little end table that I "rescued" from a thrift store. I gave her a nice coat of paint and now she holds a basket for our favorite read alouds.

Here is the meeting area from the other direction. My students love to sit on these Ikea benches and I love having them for storage. They house baskets of books and literacy work stations. They also serve as seating for two of our tables, which is a great space saver.

 

Last but not least, here is an overall snapshot of the room. Dangling over the meeting area, I have a branch with the students self-portraits. On the back of their self-portraits I glued a black and white photograph of each child. They love staring at it and finding the pictures of themselves and their friends.
 

Well, there you have it! I hope you enjoyed my classroom posts. I will be back soon to share some of the exciting things we are doing in Kindergarten.

 

New House Happenings

A lot has happened since my last house post. Things seem to drag along really slowly, at times, and then a lot will happen at once. The biggest development lately has been framing. It is actually starting to look like a house now!

 

They put down the sub floor first and then started putting up the exterior walls.

 

 

 

We have a lot of windows and I'm obsessed with taking pictures of them. I am so excited that we will have so much natural light.

 

 

                                    

Once they put up the exterior walls, they put in all of the interior walls. I know it just looks like a sea of wood at this point.

 

 

We have stairs now, too!

 

 

After framing, the roof went on. Like I said before, it actually looks like a house now and with the rooms framed, I can actually start thinking about furniture and space planning. Love, love, love!

 

 



Give Dad a Hand

Today is Aaron's 31st birthday. I can't believe it! This means that I will be turning 30 in the near future. Sigh. We were just teenagers in high school when we met and it's so weird to think about how much time has passed. But, enough with the nostalgia. Let's talk about what this post is really about.

I wanted the kids to give their daddy something personal as a gift this year. I've seen the baseball handprint idea floating around Pinterest and thought it was super cute. Aaron loves his sports so I thought this would be a sweet gift for him from the kids.

We gathered our supplies...

 

Since Audrey's hand is bigger, we decided she would paint her handprint on a football.

 

 

She chose to write I love you daddy (I helped) and she signed her name. I also added the date.

Then we did Will's handprint on the baseball. That was an experience! He and I had paint everywhere at that point and picture taking just wasn't happening. On the baseball I wrote...

Dear daddy, I can't wait to play ball with you. I added his name and date, also.

All finished! I love them. I want to track down some of those display cases to put them in. We can put them in our basement down the road, which will sure to be covered in sports decor if my husband has anything to do with it. Happy birthday to the best daddy and husband in the world!

DIY Chalkboards

I came up with this idea while my students were sharing their hopes for Kindergarten last week. One of my students mentioned that she was hoping to be able to use the chalkboard this year. I was actually a little surprised. Since I have a white board, I haven't actually used my chalkboards in years for anything other than display space. At the same time, I thought that giving the students access to chalk and the chalkboard would be a great writing station activity. Then, I thought it would be even better to give the students access to their own personal chalkboards. I've had these blue magnet boards for awhile. I do like them for when the students are working with magnetic letters; however, I had more than I would ever actually use for that.

 

 

I gave some of them a good coat of chalkboard paint. I didn't even prime them (I was lazy so hopefully I don't regret it) and the paint went on really well and dried very quickly.

 

 

I can't wait to introduce these to the students. I think they are going to love writing on them. Plus, I decided to keep one at home for Audrey to use. Check out how I made it  into a sign that she held when I took her picture as she headed off to school last week.

 

Relaxed Updo

I have been so bored with my hair lately. I feel like everyday it's the same thing -- blow-dried, straightened, and most days pulled back into a ponytail after only a couple of hours. So, I wanted to do something different for a wedding that we attended on Satruday. I decided to spice it up a little with a braided updo.  

I pinned this tutorial and thought it was a super-chic look.

 I had no idea how to do a fishtail braid and these pics weren't helping, so I googled it and found this YouTube video.

Gotta love YouTube! 

Well, my plan was set but getting out the door with two kids in tow is hard enough and my best laid plan fell through the cracks. I ran out of time and never got to work on my hair. I didn't let that stop me, however,  and figured I could just do it on the 20-minute drive to the ceremeny. So, if it's not perfect it's because I literally did it while going over bumps in the car.  

Once we arrived at the wedding, I had Aaron snap the above pic so I could see what it looked like. He made some comment about the pic ending up on my blog and what do you know? Thanks for the idea, babe!

Updated Lamp (Well Maybe)

I don't claim to be a DIY expert. In fact, most of the projects that I do have about a 50/50 chance of turning out how I originally planned. But, half the fun is playing around and seeing what happens. Well...I played around this week with a lamp that I want to use in my classroom. I'm not a big fan of bright florescent lights in my room. I like to have lamps to create a more homey atmosphere. Plus, I'm convinced the dimmer lights make for calmer, more relaxed students.

 

I inherited this beauty awhile back. I honestly don't even remember who I got it from but it has been in my classroom for the past six years. And for those past six  years I've cringed at the country apple and the nasty green dust collector that we'll call a lampshade.  

 

 

 

I decided that a fun way to update the lamp would be to paint it with chalkboard paint. After wiping all the dust off, I gave it a good coat of Zissner 1-2-3 primer. This stuff is amazing!

 

 

 

 

After that dried, I a sprayed on two coats of Krylon chalkboard paint. Oops. I forgot to take a picture of that step. Oh, well. You get the idea.

 

 

Now it was time to focus on the shade. I thought I would get creative and attempt to reuse the existing shade. First, I took off the ugly green fabric. I found this curtain that my students had spilled paint on and I  decided to use it to cover the shade. Don't even ask me how I did it. It quickly turned into a 7th grade craft project gone wrong. I used spray adhesive to get it to stick to the shade but let's just say it didn't go as well as I had hoped.

 

 

Here it is put all back together. Not bad, huh? I thought it looked pretty cute. Especially if you don't notice the seams where I had to overlap the fabric. But then...

 

 

...I turned it on. Hahaha! So bad! What was I thinking? Clearly I didn't think this one all the way through.

 

 

So, needless to say, I need to rethink the shade. I actually recently picked up a lampshade in Ikea's as-is section for $5.00. It's too large for this lamp but maybe I will get lucky and find something that will work. I will definitely keep you posted and will show you the final, final product at home in my classroom.