and the winner is....dear Jason!

Das ist der letzte Post für ein paar Tage - wir machen URLAUB!
In Portugal!
Die liebe Tania von chocolateachuva hat mich netterweise mit Tipps eingedeckt, mal sehen was ich berichten werde.
Damit wir dort nicht irgendwie uns genieren müssen, habe ich noch schnell ein paar Sachen genäht - alles eigentlich vom Boden-Katalog inspiriert.

Ganz woanders hat auch jemand etwas bekommen:

Little Jason from Natural Violet is the lucky one, who will spoil the bib and rattle the bird...and hopefully never have real serious use of the Weleda cream...Thank you for your nice post, Darlene!

Und weil wir hier schon so nett am verlinken sind:

Hier gibt es was zu gewinnen - Stoff natürlich!

Und DIESE Freude werden wir ihr doch machen können, oder?

In diesem Sinn - schöne Zeit und alles, ich muss jetzt ungefähr zum 100. Mal ein/aus/um/wegpacken....(dass zwei Kleinkinder mitfliegen macht die Sachen nicht unbedingt leichter, wollt ich nur sagen, falls es jemand vergessen hätte...)

We are leaving to Portugal, loaded with hints from Tania from here.
I did some sewing for the girls, mainly inspired from the Boden catalogue.
Fabric to win is here and MOST IMPORTANT:
MAKE A GIRL HAPPY - very easy here!

and the winner is...

Unbelievable, amazing, stunning...I just can´t find words for the overwelming feeling I got, when I came back to my blog after my illness-break.
First of all:

THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH FOR YOUR NICE AND HEARTFUL COMMENTS!!!

Like kid1 I got a serious bronchitis and I am still not totally fit, but well enough to come back to our home in Vienna and get connected to internet. We had a tough week behind us, with some visits at doctor´s and child doctors, and finally serious medicine brought us back on the track.

Grammy did a fabulous job, and I really don´t know what to do without her...

So enough coughing and noseblowing - let´s announce the winner:


After writing 200 names on a note, clipping and mixing, kid1 worked as lucky fairy and tataaa:

DARLENE BRUCE !!!

Thank you to all of you, so charming to comment without seeing the give-away.

So perfect surprise to lovely Darlene, here is what you get:

Feature Friday Fun: Casey Harlan from Grow and Enjoy!

It's finally Friday! Not only are we all screaming TGIF {or maybe that's just me? :) }, but today's the day we feature one of our amazing Kinder Tribe members!

Today we are featuring Casey Harlan who wrote a fabulous post all about colors. This is an activity that is not only perfect for the beginning of school, but is extremely functional throughout the entire school year. There's nothing better than meaningful classroom decorations! Take it away, Casey! :)
 

Hello fellow Kinder Tribe members! I hope you have had a great start to your school year. My name is Casey and I am a second year kindergarten teacher in Kentucky. I also blog over at Grow and Enjoy. You can find links there to my other social media platforms and my TPT store.

Today I am going to share one of my favorite projects that is perfect for the beginning of the year!

 

I completed this project with my students for the past two years and it has been a huge success. The students love participating in a project that becomes a permanent part of their classroom.

The color wall project concludes a week long emphasis on colors. It is also part of the students' first homework assignment. Students work with their parents throughout the week to collect examples of different colors.

Some favorite things to bring in are magazine clippings, photographs, fabric, and food labels. You can tell from the pictures below that we get a wide variety of items!

The students bring their items in on Friday. We then sort them as a class onto the various posters. I cut the words for the posters out with a Silhouette Cameo.

Not only do the posters look awesome, but this project also teaches me a lot about the students. One student spent time with her grandmother searching through her sewing fabric. One student brought in clippings of all different color cars last year because he loves cars. Another student brought in Iron Man for the color red because that's his favorite super hero.

I love that each of my students have a little piece of themselves hanging up in our room (even if it is one of their socks!) The posters then become a functional part of our classroom known as "The Color Wall". Students use it throughout the year as a reference for spelling. 

Here is how our color wall turned out this year. I would highly recommend this project for all kindergarten teachers! Students practice color recognition, sorting, and immediately feel ownership for the classroom.

Thank you for the Kinder Tribe for hosting me today! If you would like to follow me elsewhere please check out Grow and Enjoy. You can also search for Grow and Enjoy on TPT or Pinterest  or @caseharlan on Instagram.

 

Our Feature Friday Post: Stacey Brednich from Giggles and Glue Sticks

Happy Feature Friday! 

It's the day of the week that we feature one of our amazing Kinder Tribe members who will share some wonderful Kinder Wisdom with us!

Today, we are featuring Stacey Brednich who wrote a fabulous post all about apple activities. Perfect for September, right? She has integrated so many subjects into her apple theme and she has included the perfect FREEBIE at the end just for you! 

Tis the season for.... Apples!!

Hello, I am Stacey from Giggles and Glue Sticks and I am so excited it is September! Time to bring out all of our apple math and literacy centers and have some apple fun! I am going to share with you some of the activities we do in September all centered around apples! 

  I created this pack to have a quick and easy go-to for a review of muliple early literacy skills. For this month the theme is APPLES, of course!!! For each of the 6 pocket activities, there is a little song to go with it. Some days we have time for the songs, some days, we just go down the pockets and it gives me a quick assessment of what to work on more. But the skills covered are (1) letter identification (where is the worm hiding), (2) word counting/sight words, (3) beginning/medial/ending sounds,  (4) syllables, (5) rhyming words, (6) segmenting and blending. It has worked beautifully for a fun little practice and review!

 Another great apple activity is reading about Johnny Appleseed! And we love QR Code listening centers...such a great way for students to listen to a story multiple times to improve comprehension, vocabulary, and reading fluency!

We also do lots of reading and writing fun with apples! We read poetry about the life cycle of an apple, we write and tell stories with our apple cubes, and we practice letter fluency by reading our apple strips! If you do Daily Five in your classroom, this is a great set to implement apple science into those centers.

I really LOVE math for little ones. There are so many fun, engaging, and hands on ways to teach number concepts to young children! And apple themed games are the best! 

This set has so many fun games to practice early math concepts! Great for centers, small groups, guided math groups....

1

We LOVE our Roll and Race games! It is one of our favorite go to centers and it practices couting, graphing, more and less!! I had one commenter mention that she used these games for morning work! Brilliant. Such a fun way to start the day!

And last but not least....another favorite....and FREEBIE!! Our number line mysteries are great mental math games that help students practice counting and number order! You can get this freebie or any of the other activities mentioned by clicking on the pictures! 

I hope this has given you some apple inspiration for this new month! Happy September! 

Stacey

Literacy Centers and Organization

Hi Everyone!

I am Meghan from Meghan's Pad.  I wanted to give you all a sneak peek at what I am doing during my literacy center/guided reading time this year, and how I have it all organized.

This week {tomorrow} I will have a new class of Kinders that will begin their year with me.  Each year, I feel the need to revamp an area of my curriculum.  This year, it's my center time!  

Centers are a great way, as we all know, to engage students in learning by providing them with hands on learning materials and the opportunity to regulate their learning needs.

This year, I am jumping back on the center wagon, and I couldn't be more excited!  The past few years I have struggled with having to use the district mandated curriculum, knowing that Kinders need more hands on, play based learning.  I have struggled with the early finishers, the no matter what I give you to do, you are going to refuse to do it, and the different learning styles and needs.

After much reflection, I have come up with a format that I think I am going to like, and a format that I hope my kinders will like as well.  Here it goes...

Each day I will gather the children on the rug for a small mini-lesson.  These mini-lessons are going to be based on the needs of Kinders.  These lessons can include alphabet, sounds, building words, rhyming, segmenting, strategies, digraphs, consonant blends, vowel blends, and the list goes on.  I will then have a "have to" activity that the children will need to do each day.  During the literacy block it can be an alphabet center, letter writing center, building word center, reading center, phonemic center.  Each day their have to center will switch, so by the end of the week each child has completed all the have tos.  

After the "have to" center is complete they will either turn it in, or will fill out a small exit slip, so I can quickly review their understanding, along with hold them accountable for doing the center.  Then the children will choose a "can do" center.  These centers will be a combination of old "have tos" and other centers that help to support that centers "have to."

Have I lost you??  I know it's confusing!  Here is an example:  A student on Monday will go to the alphabet center and complete the "have to" center.  Once they are done, they fill out and turn in their exit slip.  They then go to the alphabet "can do" drawer and grab a center, take it back to their seat {not assigned, just where they were working} and complete that center.  Once they have completed all the "can dos" that they want, then they can go to the alphabet "now what" drawer to work on those activities.

The "now whats" are going to be more independent activities that can include "worksheets," or reading.

My hope is that children will continue to be engaged, and will find the learning method that they prefer.

So now, the storage!  I love to organize, and love to buy bins.go inside of bins.  So these are PERFECT!  

         

I love to find bins that I found these bins at Joann Fabrics, and have been in love with them.  Each center fits perfectly inside these 4X6 photo cases {materials and all}!  

        

I am currently putting each center into a small container, and then each container into a drawer system.  This picture was taken before I labeled the drawers.  I have the "can do" centers in one of the drawers and the "now whats" in the drawer directly under.  Each is labeled with the center {alphabet, letter writing, word building, etc.}, and a number {either 2 or 3 for "can do" and "now what"}.

        

I am currently working on setting up something similar for math and our phonics time.

I would love to know how you do centers in your room?  What do the children do when you are in a small group?  I can't wait to hear all the great ideas!!

Teaching Back to School Procedures and a FREEBIE!

Hi Everyone!

   It's Cori from Mrs. B's Beehive!  Today I wanted to talk to you about teaching procedures at the beginning of the school year.

We all know how important it is to set the tone, and clearly communicate our expectations at the beginning of the year.  At the end of the year, your class will be running like a well oiled machine.

By May, I've got all my little teacher helpers organizing things for me just the way that I like them.  I often forget, (probably on purpose) just how much time it takes to get them to that point!  There are so many little pieces of information that I need my students to understand to make sure that the day is focused on learning, and that I am not spending my time running around behind them cleaning and correcting.

I wanted to share with you what my first week's schedule looks like:

Like most other teachers, I read a lot of back to school books. I do a lot of activities around those books and start my preliminary assessments.  In between all of those activities, is the teaching of procedure after procedure.  In the first week I try to prioritize my most important procedures, and go over the ones that will be most effective in establishing a smooth running classroom. (Don't touch the fire alarm!).  Even a simple task such as entering the classroom in the morning, has many different components.


To help myself remember everything that I need to teach them, I made this procedure checklist.  I keep it right next to my first week (and second and third week) lesson plans.  As I teach a procedure, I check it off the list.

There are many times that I find an extra minute here or there in the first couple of weeks, and I quickly scan over my procedures list, and see if there is any information that I can squeeze in to a lesson, to make sure that the students fully understand my expectations.

If you would like a free copy of this Back to School Procedures Checklist, click HERE, or on any of the pictures above.

This list has worked well for me over the last couple of years, and I hope it is something that you will find useful as well as you gear up for back to school!