Friday, August 17, 2012

Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom! AND a classroom donation!

I have had a great week spending time assessing my new kindergarteners!  It has been nice to spend time one-on-one with so many of them.  I hope that they are as excited as I am about this year!

We have a new addition to our classroom....a chicka, chicka, boom, boom coconut tree!  We will spend a lot of time reading the book
Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom by Bill Martin, Jr.  Now, we have our very own coconut tree!  The kids will have a chance to add letters to the tree as we learn and practice each letter and the letter sound.
Thank you, Gail for the materials!  Thank you, Mr. Pfister, for helping build the tree!



I got the idea from a wonderful kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Jump.  Thanks Mrs. Jump for the inspiration!

I will send home a Scholastic Book Order form during the first few weeks of school.  Look for Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom!  It would make a great addition to your child's home library.

We also had a large donation to our classroom this week.  Over the summer I created an account through a non-profit organization called donorschoose.org.  I created two "projects" for our classroom.  The projects consist of items that I think would enhance the learning of the students in my class.  I got an email yesterday saying that three donors had contributed to a project and that the project had been fully funded!

A shipment from Lakeshore Learning Materials should be arriving in time for the students!

Here is a picture of our new learning materials.  We will use these pieces to practice retelling familiar stories.  Retelling a story is an important standard that all kindergarten students should be able to do by the end of the year.

Lakeshore Storytelling Kits - Set 2

Once school beings, the students and I will work on creating thank you letters to the generous donors of our project.  I know your child will love using these materials!

A reminder: The Back to School Ice Cream Social will be Monday from 1:00 - 3:00 p.m.  You may bring your child's school supplies at that time. 

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Classroom Tour

I was excited to welcome all of my new kindergarten kids today at Kindergarten Camp! 
This is what their new classroom looks like!

Here is our outside bulletin board.  All of the student's names are listed on the treasure map!  As you can see, we have a pirate themed classroom this year!


This is the view from our classroom door.  Soon there will be a Star of the Week on display!


These are pictures of the student's mailboxes and our classroom library.  The pirate ship will be used to display the center rotations for each school day.




This is our take home library.  Each week students will be able to choose books from this bin to add to their take home book bag. 


This is our whole group learning area.  We will read, sing, and use the Smartboard while we are on the carpet.


This is a picture of our classroom behavior chart.  All students will begin each day on the green section, "We Arrr Ready to Learn".  Students have the opportunity to move up the chart when they demonstrate good choices. 


This is our Popcorn Success Wall.  We will refer to our sight words as "popcorn" words because they should "pop" right out of your mouth!



This is our writing center and a view of our word wall.  As we learn new words, we'll place them on the word wall.  The word wall will assist students as they begin to write independently.




This is a view of our classroom from our library.  We have four tables for the students.  We refer to each table as a color: red, blue, green and yellow.



This is our guided reading table.  Each day groups of six students will come to this table for small group reading instruction.



Thank you for stopping by to visit our classroom!  Check back often to see what we are learning!