Sick day already

Well I don't have much to post as I have been sick for a few days!  In 3 years of teaching at this school, I haven't taken a sick day until Friday!  It was very hard for me to accept that I wouldn't be able to be with my kiddos.  It was only day 3 and it's such a crucial time to get those routines and rules going.  However, after having food poisoning all night Thursday into Friday morning...I just didn't have the strength to teach all day.  I luckily went in to add to my lesson plans.  I do hope to post more about our first few days once I'm more up to snuff....Plus I need to see what my sub got done so I know where to begin on Monday!
One more day to get my strength back and I'll be back in the classroom and hopefully no more sick days!

Procrastinating again....

Well it's the last night before I officially go back and instead of working on my parent letter, I'm making t-shirts and blogging....hmmmm, can we say "procrastinator"???  Hi, my name is Stacee and I'm a procrastinator!  ha ha....anyways, Cindy at Mrs. Gilchrist's Class  made these really cute t shirt transfers and I thought they would make an awesome gift for my teaching partners.  She even made a 100th day of school one!  Michael's has their t shirts on sale this week so I quickly drove down there and bought some shirts for us gals.  Well, I guess I should also explain that when it comes to projects for me, I seem to be like a monkey (like Curious George)  He really tries hard to do something right b/c in his mind it seems right, however he always makes a mess of it and learns from his mistakes....well this project was one of those....see for yourself....

SEE??  I'm such a monkey!  :)  So I guess I'll be heading back to Michael's for another white t-shirt..Tomorrow will be even longer!!!

And I didn't make that mistake again!  I'm super excited to give these to my partner teachers!!  Of course I think I'll wear my upside down one as a joke tomorrow :)  

Head on over to Cindy's Website and make your own T-shirts...really if this monkey can do it, so can anyone :)

Now off to maybe work on my parent letter OR just get ready for bed...hard decision!  Enjoy your week at school or where ever you may be :)

Last weekend of freedom

I have one weekend left before it's official!  The kiddos come on Wed. next week!  I'm excited and a bit nervous...I always get nervous, I think mainly b/c of the parents!  Does anyone ever get that??  I'm pretty excited to be starting in my new room and although I won't get my shelves in before school (actually they said they'll get to it when they get to it...hmmm guess it'll be a LONG while)  I'm working on the messy area behind my desk.  There may be a short term solution so I'm hopeful it works.  We shall see on Monday!  So I brought many things home to work on with adding names to things.  We have a meet and greet Monday evening so I want to have everything in it's place.  (well almost everything)

Has anyone heard of the Purple Hand Pledge?  Well it's a pledge you say daily with students and goes like this, "I will not use my hands or my words to hurt myself or others".  We started implementing this pledge last year and again this year I plan (as well as many others teachers) to use it again.  We usually say the Pledge of Allegiance and then the Purple Hand Pledge. Each child will have 5 purple tickets (they are just purple cardstock cut in thick strips), one for every day of the week.  If they break this promise/pledge they lose a ticket.  Then at the end of the week I would do a drawing of tickets they still had.  Well my bucket last year was pretty lame....so this year I made a really cute bucket....Ready????

TA DA!!!! I painted that lame bucket and then added my niece and nephews handprints and a felt heart in the middle (symbol of the purple hand pledge)

I think it turned out cute and will be a nicer bucket to draw our tickets from!

I hope everyone's beginning of the year is going well!!

Classroom Update and picture overload!

Well I got some things done on Friday and more today!  Although today I spent some time talking to other teachers and about our schedule-so not too much done in the room.  Now that our printshop is in we have boxes of papers to sort and count out--we get to send in some worksheets and such to be printed over the summer, things we may need all year or phonics readers and the like!  I did get some little things done and hooked up my Elmo...Tomorrow will be more productive (at least that is what I keep telling myself)
Here are the updated photos!

My homeworkopoly board!  I'm so pleased how it turned out!  I was able to find a board where I could "edit" some of it. 

I used teacher names for the streets which I thought the kids would get a kick out of--I also didn't want to do brain builders so I made those into places around our school...and since I like to play dodgeball with my kids during PE, I added that one! 

These are my chance and community lunchbox cards.  I really tried to have the chance be a good thing or maybe a not so good thing.  The community ones were more for the classroom, a good thing or maybe not, like everyone misses 5 mins of recess OR whole class gets extra recess.  

These are going to be the homeworkopoly markers. I have them hanging on a rope until they get to start the board.  

A close up....I dyed clothespins and then added a car clip art to each clip.  The green cars will be boys, the blue cars for girls.  I'll put their numbers on them once I have a better idea of my list--(I'm down to 14 kids right now--EEEKKK!) I'm sure I'll be around 16-17 by the time school starts!

Extreme close up! 

My Super Student board!  My plan is that every time a student goes around the homeworkopoly board, the student will get a star sticker, and then after they go around 5 times, I'll hang their clothespin up on Super Students board and start a new clip!  I also think I'm going to use it with the clip chart when they receive 10 jewels.  

This was inspired from Michelle at Fabulous in First --It's not a cute as hers as I do not have tons of fun fonts (yet), but now that I have sink, I can have a fun sign!

My helper board...I love Tigger so I have always done Tiggerific Helpers--I only have 5 jobs really--Messenger, Line Leader, Door Holder, Caboose, and Helper.  My messenger usually took lunch count down to office, but it looks like that we might do it via internet this year, so I may have to re-think that one.  Each student has a Tigger with their name on it and I just velcro it to the board.  I rotate every week and that seems to work for me. 

Thank you Amy at Step Into Second Grade for sharing her balloons for these birthday treats!  I saw this on Pinterest too but Amy was kind to share her balloons!  Thank you Amy!!  I taped my balloons to pencils b/c I had some birthday pencils.  I usually give my kiddos a free homework coupon and I'm thinking I'll do that again this year but maybe next year try something different!

There's my clip chart, 100s chart and noise level chart thanks to Katie at Little Kinder Warriors for sharing those noise level pictures.  So cute!!

Clip chart close up!

Close up!

Here are the desks I hauled all by my little ol' self down the stairs!  All 16 of them!  So that's a view from the front corner of the room towards the door.

A view from the back of the room to the front!

My mess!  These things are mostly my teacher books/manuals waiting for shelves!  SO I hope this week they come as well, school starts next week and I can't have this mess!  

The place where my shelves are supposed to go! Can only hope they'll be in soon!  

Sorry so many pictures--I keep hoping to get this room put together soon, but I keep finding new things on blogs and Pinterest and I want to add more things!  Ha ha..guess that's a sign of my addictions!  Kiddos will be arriving soon so I better get finished! 

UGH!

That's just how I feel about my room today!  I went in today to get more  things done  and I ended up having to do some manual labor!  Ok ok...it was to benefit my room BUT our custodian is kind of on the lazy side of things.  He does what he wants when he wants how he wants....It's kind of frustrating when you are waiting for something to get done.  I could vent about about some of the past BUT I'll just vent about today!  Actually he's conveniently on vacation this week and well many teachers have been coming in to start setting up their furniture.  Keep in mind I moved to a room without any chairs or desks.  SO some teachers are purging their unneeded desks/chairs.  I've been scoping them out!  Well, I asked the custodian who is filling in for ours about starting to move them downstairs.  Well turns out he told her that we must send any desks/chairs to our warehouse so they can inventory them and then they'll send them back!  IT'S SO BOGUS!! We've never sent stuff to warehouse when we just shift it within our building--we ship stuff to the warehouse when we want it out of our building! ( I personally think the custodian didn't want to move them)  So then I had to talk to my principal who thought it was bogus too!  And he said grab any desks you can b/c we are short and some other classes are going to need desks too and there are none at the warehouse to give!  AAAHHHHH!!!  I immediately starting hauling desks to the basement!  By the way...there's no AC in my very old school so it was HOT! So I have 16 desks  and 12 chairs (which of course I'm sure I'll need closer to 20 by the time school starts but I didn't want to be greedy when there are some teachers who are still short)  I'm sure we'll be shifting some more desks/chairs around.  Anyways, that is how I spent my time in my room.  I also took a small table from another teacher getting rid of it and transferred my computers to that instead of the desks they were on.  So I'll be heading into my room again tomorrow to work on the things I wanted to  today.   Yes I'm grateful I have desks, I just wish I didn't have to haul them ALL by myself down flights of stairs!  SO......UGH!  That's how I'm feeling!

More classroom photos!

Well I didn't get much time in my room today.  I had a Common Core Math Standards introduction--Our district is not really prepared for this transition so it's a work in progress but we will be incorporating the new standards!  So today I got some things laminated and am trying a new thing for my Mountain Math board that a brand new teacher at our school inspired!  I also got caught up talking a bit...so I didn't get as much as I wanted to done...(isn't that how it goes when everyone starts coming back??)  Anyways, here are some more pics of my room!

My word wall--I'm not in love with it but I really don't have a big/long bulletin board in this room.  It's also right behind my guided reading table so I'm not sure how that will work.  Guess we'll see...

More word wall...

the other half of it....

My computers!  My kids rotate through the computers daily.  We have a reading intervention computer program and so they get about 20 mins doing reading, grammar and phonics activities.  So each computer has a colored star...when a students turn is over, the next student's name comes up and they will give that student a matching colored craft stick, to signal to that student it's their turn on THAT computer.  It usually works pretty slick.  I also use one computer for XtraMath and so they'll be rotating with that one too.  During Math work stations, they will go onto Sheppard software website (well for now, we'll see how long it lasts)

Side pic for the computers--I'm not excited that the kids will be so close together but I'm hoping it will overall be ok....IF not I may need to make some changes.

Pinterest inspired project!! So another teacher from my school and I are huge blog stalkers and pinterest fans--So we both made these!  I made one first and then showed it to another teacher who liked them and we decided to make some for our friend who just got hired in our district!! After we made her hers...we then tackled our own!  I now have to figure out what I'll store in each one!

Close up!

Another close up!

So there's some more pictures--I've been working on some other Pinterest inspired projects but they aren't quite complete.  More like my ADHD kicks in and then I get sidetracked and it's almost complete except I'm missing something still, so then it's a run to a store and etc...SO I'm really hoping to post more soon!  

Attempting Organization and New Classroom photos!

So there's about 2 weeks left until we go back and I'm still working on organizing my room.  I have been really trying to organize my things and start off on a good note...but I'm sure I'll have some lapses with staying organized!  But little by little I'm working on it.  I even had one of my teaching partners say "Wow, look at you all organized!"  ha ha...I have her fooled :) ok maybe not fooled, but I do have some areas that still need work.  I have been really trying to get my math stuff organized and easily accessible.  We are beginning to incorporate Common Core Standards and so far from what I've heard through the grapevine, our math series doesn't really support it!  So looks like it will be an interesting year in math!  Plus we have all these math workbooks!  I find out more tomorrow when I have the training information class tomorrow!  We'll see how it goes!  So here are some pictures of my classroom! I do like how it's coming along although I'm still waiting for shelves and student desks!

Here's my Mountain Math....I really like using this as part of my math journals.  We do bits and pieces of it. I introduce one or two at a time and do those for a week or so, depending on how well they are getting it.  

These are my "markers" for math games.  I was lucky to grab these from a teacher who was getting rid of stuff.  So I put 2 colors different colors,  2 dice and 2 big paperclips in each container.  (I used to use baggies-LOVE these containers so much better)  

See aren't these containers so cute!  And hopefully last all year!  (We'll see about that)--With these containers, I will put one in each math game station--that way there is always dice and markers at each station.  

More colors! 

These are my math work station bins--I wrote a grant for books and book boxes and I think they sent me too many book boxes because I have TONS left over and I don't remember ordering so many!  Anyways, somehow when I did them last year, I didn't realize my colors and how I have 2 yellows together...(kind of bothers me but I think I'll live)--The book boxes are numbered 1-9 (I do 10 stations, but the 10th is computers)

A close up with my cubes ready to go!

This is my math work station chart.  I have only 2 kids go to a station at time and I try to have them close  or on the same level.  So for example, all the green stars would be similar level, and all purple would be OR sometimes it's yellow and orange who are the same level.  So this way I can call them by star colors for groups--When I move the numbers, I move one column up and the other down...this way they will always go to 2 different stations.  (however somedays they may only get one station if they get called for group)--((by the way, my cat jumped up on my lap for some loving, and hit some key the moved the picture over and I have NO idea what he did!))

Another way to organize some of math materials....another teacher in my building is using travel soap containers!! How cool is that??  I ran right to Wal-mart and bought them-Now the kids won't lose or break the rubber bands!  I was super excited about these!

Here are my math games and materials that are sorted by "subject--I really like how they came together.

A close up...I can't remember where I found these math labels--If anyone recognizes them, please let me know.  I printed them off over a year ago and I think they were used for that teacher's math stations.  I simply am using them to label my drawers.  

The white drawers are filled with more manipulatives and a few other math things.  I haven't figured out how label them since I'm not 100% sure if I like the white drawers.  

So that pretty much sums up my math stuff and my work stations.  I have more pictures of my room to share however, upon reading some other blogs, I was clued in on the 1 post a day rule.  SO I'll save some posts for tomorrow and the next day.