Five for Friday {November 8}

I'm linking up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs teaching for Five for Friday.

 

 

I am fortunate to have several parents this year who currently serve in the millitary or have at some point in the past. I definitely wanted to do something to honor their service and thank them for the sacrifices they made for our country. I remembered saving Simply Kinder's Military freebie and knew that I just had to make a display with that this year.

Here is the finished product. I seriously love the way it turned out! It pulls at my heart strings to see how blessed my classroom is to know and love so many veterans.

 

We also read the book Hero Dad and a few exerpts from Letters to a Soldier.

Please don't forget to thank a veteran not just Tuesday but everyday! They deserve every bit of honor and gratitude!

This week, I dipped into how I teach phonics and some resources I use when teaching letters and letter sounds. To check out that post, click here.

The Mister and I closed on our first house Thursday and we are so excited to make that house a home! We aren't moving in until next weekend so we are spending this weekend cleaning, painting and dreaming of all we can do to make this house ours! Pictures will come soon but here is a quick pic of us Thursday night!

 

 

This is SO me right now. I'm tempted to set up all of my Christmas stuff before we even move our furniture in the new house! I have never had a real Christmas Tree and the Mister thinks that is ridiculous so we are going to have two trees this year! How many trees do you put up? 

 The Mister and I got pictures done a week and a half ago with my sweet photographer friend Amanda Castle. She was our photographer for our wedding and she is seriously amazing! Check her site here. She posted a little sneak peek on Facebook the other day and I love it! Absolutely cannot wait to see the rest!

 



Phonics Fun

In Kindergarten, how letters are taught or introduced can be a touchy topic to discuss! I have seen everything from people swearing by the letter of the week philosophy to teaching multiple letters in a week to not teaching letters individually but doing more of an approach where all the letters are taught.

 

The county that I teach in adopted Fundations which is a phonics curriculum created by Wilson. Last year was the first year of implementation and like the first year of any curriculum, I was definitely overwhelmed. Fundations is a strict program that lays out 30 minutes of phonics instruction daily. This was the first encounter I had with a script-like program and honestly, it rubbed me the wrong way. The "Fundations gods" told me exactly what to say and when to say it. That's SO not how I do things. However, I followed the curriculum and noticed that the kids were really picking up the letters and their sounds so I couldn't really complain too much. :)

 

Each letter in the alphabet has a keyword and as we review the letters during Fundations time, we say the letter-keyword-sound all the time. For example, we would say "a-apple-/a/." Here is an example of what one of our posters looks like so you can see the keywords.

 

 

 Fundations teaches the lowercase letters first and then uppercase later on. When I realized that, my mind was blown. Why in the world would you separate uppercase and lowercase letters? It was a big mystery. Thankfully, after some additional training, that mystery was explained. Did you know that uppercase letters make up only 10% of print? I had no idea! So Fundations focuses on lowercase first and then teachers uppercase at a quicker pace. Also, if a child knows any letters when they enter Kindergarten, typically they know uppercase letters.

(Just so you know, my kids are still very aware of the uppercase letters. We typically sort uppercase and lowercase letters and practice writing uppercase letters as well. Don't tell those "Fundations gods!")

 

Fundations also teaches two letters a week most of the time. The first week of school there is only one letter taught and last week there were three letters in one week. We all made it out alive! ;) Before Fundations, my grade level taught one letter a week. One letter a week sounds nice because you can revolve all your centers, crafts, poems and all sorts of thing around that letter. In reality though, if you teach one letter a week students won't be introduced to all of the letters until 3/4 of the way through the year. That is way too long in my opinion! I am loving teaching two letters in a week now! The kids can totally handle it!

 

Outside of our Fundations time, we do a lot of things to reinforce the letters that we are learning. I have an ABC center like the one below. Kids get to sort the letters and pictures based on the first sound.

 

I use Cara Carroll's Interactive Alphabet Notebook and seriously love it! Check it out!

 

As a class we come up with a list of words that begin with the letter sounds and I obviously work with the letters in small groups too!

 

A few weeks ago, I searched for some fun videos about the letters that we were learning about because honestly, Fundations isn't always very fun. I found ABC Mouse's letter videos on Youtube and I just love them! I think we have watched the video for every letter we have learned since then! The kids are totally engaged and get so excited when one of those videos come on. Here is one that we watched today!

During the video, every single one of my kiddos said "ewwwww" in unison when the word kiss was mention. I love me some kinders.

 

Do you do Fundations? I would love to hear how you teach the letters in your class!

November Currently

It's November already?! Seriously? Where did October go?

 

Although I am in utter amazement at how fast this year is going, I am thrilled to link up with Farley at Oh Boy Fourth Grade for November Currently!

 

 

Listening:

The Mister and I are about to close on our first house this Thursday so I am listening to him pack up our guest room while he is listening to Pandora! Don't worry, I am going to help as soon as I am done with this post! We aren't moving in completely until the following weekend so we have some time before everything has to be packed up! Completely excited and amazed to start this fun new journey in life with him!

 

Loving:

Y'all, North Carolina fall is no joke. It is seriously beautiful here! On the way home from church, the color of all the leaves were practically screaming to be adored! The cooler weather has added to all the fun too! Bring on the fleece lined leggings and caramel apples!

 

Thinking:

I need some more blogging in my life! I was going to not even mention how long it has been since I posted on Chalkboard Charm but I am hoping that calling myself out will somehow motivate myself to find some time to share what I have been up to lately with my Kinders. The past month has been a whirlwind of parent teacher conferences, Open House Night, report cards, creating, and house searching!

 

Wanting:

Since our new house has a fenced in backyard, we have started to look at possibly getting a dog. It is so exciting to think about having a furry friend at home but obviously it is a huge responsibility so we are taking our sweet time before getting one of our own!

 

Needing:

With the move right around the corner, I have to start getting myself and our apartment organized! Organization is not a quality that I bring to the table! Ha! I am hoping I will be a little more motivated to keep our new home organized and cute since it will be ours!

 

Reading:

Y'all, I'm just going to keep it real. I am not reading absolutely anything currently. I'll be honest and say that summer is the time that I spend the most time reading. I can't hardly find any time to read during the school year. Well, that is unless reading teacher blogs count! :) I do somehow find a way to do that!

 

I hope you guys have an awesome week! I promise you will be hearing from me more soon!



I'm back!!!!!

 I have missed you!! I am a horrible blogger and I haven't blogged in nearly four weeks! Getting the classroom set up and continually teaching procedures has taken over a lot of my free time these days and the free time that I have left, I spend getting some R&R. I am totally feeling like everything is falling into place now and the kiddos are getting it too so hopefully you will hear more from me next week!

 

Last Friday was a rather cloudy and drizzly day and we were the only class that went to the playground for recess. My kiddos were loving the face that we had the WHOLE playground to ourselves. I decided that I had to take part in the fun that the kids were having! Needless to say, they thought it was hilarious and begged me to go on every single piece of equipment. These sweet smiles were cheering and applauding my every move!

 

myheartmelted

 

The Mister and I have been renting an apartment ever since we got married. Our lease is ending in November so we decided that we would look into purchasing a home of our own. We started the whole process about 2 weeks ago and it has been a crazy ride! House buying is exciting, frustrating, exhausting, and so fun all at the same time. How all those emotions can be rolled up into the adventure called house buying is beyond me.

 

We have been learning about Apples this week and by golly, my kids loved it.

 

I made this little apple anchor chart last week and never got around to printing out labels so I smacked it on my easel and Mr. Expo marker and I became good friends. Keeping it real.

 We made applesauce and my room smelt like fall all day long.

#itwasheavenly

#applesauceintheclassroomalldayeveryday

 I found these cute sorting mats last year and I couldn't wait to use them again. I can't remember where I found them so if it is you, let me know! I would love to give credit!

 

The kids most absolutely loved Deedee Wills' Apple Poem this week! We put it in our journal, found all the letter a's in the poem and sang it probably a hundred times! This totally reinforced one less and once it got to zero apples being in the tree, we sang it together in our saddest, most dramatic voice ever. I'll be real, it was more giggling than singing but it was too much fun! The kids were eating it up!

 Y'all, I have a confession to make. So, every year, we sample each color of apples and we graph the flavor that was the most popular. Originally, the vote went: red-5 green-9 yellow-8. Neither I nor my student teacher had voted. We analyzed the data, talked about how had the most/least and how many more were needed for each color to have the most.

 

 Now let me tell you, the green apples that the kids sampled were by far the most sour and tart apples that I have ever tasted.{like I made the wildest face when I tasted them} I just couldn't stand the thought of those apples representing my class majority. So I just decided that I would use some teacher power and see if we couldn't have an upset in Room 106. So Mrs. Nihart and my student teacher took part of the class survey. Let me clarify, I did not sway my student teacher's vote in any way, shape, or form. {or did I?}

 

Needless to say, yellow won. YAY! ;)

 





Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. "Swat It" has quickly become all the rage in our classroom. I have used it for letters and numbers. When I use the game for letters, I say things like:

"Find the letter T."

"Find the letter that makes the /t/ sound."

~or~

"Find the letter that is the first sound in the word top."

 

With numbers I say things like:

"Find the number 6."

"Find the number that is one more than 5."

Eventually I will say, "Find the number that is the sum of 4+2."

 

My kinders ask to play this game all the time. I introduced it whole group but now I have moved it to a center so that they can play with their center group.

 

Happy Students=Happy Teacher

 

Yay for the weekend! I hope you have the best one!



Monday Made It! Freebies Galore!



It's time for Monday Made It! I had initially intended for this post to be a Five for Friday post but my Friday/weekend was completely full with all things crazy! I had to come back to the drawing board and reevaluate so here we are!   

This is going to be a huge post because you will find 5 freebies in it! In return for the 5 freebies, I ask that you follow me on Teachers Pay Teachers and give me some meaningful feedback!

 Are you as excited as I am?! I surely hope so!!!

You know that saying, "Better late, than never." Well this freebie definitely is falling under that category.

 

Most normal people have certificates to send home on the first day of school showing parents that their student had a great first day. This year my to-do list on the first day of school had 794 things on it so the first day of school certificates just didn't happen. If this sounds anything like you, sending home certificates at the end of the week is a little more doable. In the pack, you can find certificates for Preschool up to Fifth Grade. I have included both color and black and white certificates as well as full page certificates and certificates that are four to a page.

 

Since you are probably well into your school year, I know that you might not be able to use these this year but I am making them a forever freebie so you can use them for years to come. Click on the picture for the product!

 

 

Can I tell you a secret? This year will be the first year that I have ever displayed my students' birthdays. I know! I know! I am horrible! I always see so many teachers with the cutest birthday displays so this year I am determined to put one up for myself!

I was totally inspired by Hope King's Classroom Décor Packs, specifically her birthday display. Here is some eye candy. I found these on Pinterest. The first picture is from Hope King's blog post about her Décor Packs and the second is from Sailing Into Second's Classroom. 

 Click here to see Hope King's Décor Packs.

 

 I didn't need a whole pack of décor, just the birthday display so I decided to use my color scheme and make my own version.  I currently use turquoise and lime green in my classroom so these had to match! If you have a specific color scheme that you would like to make, I would love to help! The turquoise and lime green birthday display will always be free but the new color schemes will put up for sale soon! Click on the picture to go to the freebie in my store!

 

 

During morning meeting, every day, the class and I recite our 5 classroom rules. I have motions that go along with the rules to help my kinder friend remember them and to make them have more meaning! I saw Maria Manore's classroom rules displayed in the most precious frames last year and I just knew that I had to have something like that of my own! Here is Maria's Classroom Rules.

I found some frames at Michaels and made some rule posters of my own! This is what mine ended up looking like!

 

 If you would like a copy of my Classroom Rules Posters click on the picture below to pick them up in my TPT store.

 

One of the greatest things that I have done in my classroom is possibly the simplest thing that I have done. Three words: Line Up Numbers.

 

I simply cut the numbers out, laminate them, and tape them to the floor with packaging tape. It seriously makes the straightest line and is the best for Kinders who are just learning what a line is! These numbers can be used as a number line or labels. Click on the picture to go to my store for the freebie!

 

 Lastly, I have made a poster for my class to keep track of how many days we have been in school! I printed and laminated it and now have it posted with my classroom calendar. You can see it in my classroom here.

 

Click the picture to grab the freebie!

 

 

Have a great week guys! If you have any color scheme requests, let me know!