A Jungle Journey!

A couple of years ago, I hit a roadblock in my teaching journey.  Little did I know that what transpired was not only going to put a spring back into my step, but it was going to transform my classroom and my whole professional career!  It all started when I had a classroom of spunky, rowdy kids. (I know some of you are thinking aren't all 4 year olds rowdy and spunky?) This group challenged me on all levels and kept me on my knees and in prayer the whole year.  The funny thing is, I love the kids who have spunk the most....so who knows maybe this was all in the plan.  At the end of the year I was questioning whether to sign my contract again...then something amazing happened.  I discovered blogging!  I went on an adventure and decided to change the theme in my room.  Well I spent 100s of hours (you bloggers know I am not exaggerating) searching and coming up with ideas, elements and the perfect theme for my room.  In the course of this searching I found this amazing group of teachers who helped me and shed light on my situation even though they did not know it because I was a blog stalker at that time and no one knew I even existed.  As I read their struggles and journeys I began to change my perspective and see my teaching in a new light!  I am so grateful for all I learned and suffice it to say I am a changed teacher and woman!  I want to give a shout out to a few of those amazing women:  Christina Bainbridge, Miss Kindergarten, Vanessa Levine at Pre-kpages, and Annie Moffat.  Thank you for this new journey...and now I am in the blogging world and loving it, loving my job and I say:  Bring on the next challenge!!  Here is my transformed room:

My calendar and job board

My beginning of the year bulletin board.  I add really cute huge letters
and coconuts!  We read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Chicka Chicka 123
and we create a Glyph with our names!  Coming in the fall....

This is my reading center!  I have 2 body pillow out of zebra print, vines
hanging from the ceiling with velcro hanging animals that I picked up
at oriental trading.

This is where I have my centers posted.  I use monkeys with each kids
name to rotate around centers.  Fridays they get to pick their own centers.

This is near the entrance of my classroom!  I love this jeep!

Here is a close up of my jobs.  I change jobs weekly.  Jobs include:
teachers helper, prayer leader, calendar, door holder, flag holder,
line leader, and each of my tables have a table helper.

Circus Bingo

 The Ringmaster (that would be me) brings our first thematic event to the Big Top (our K4 classroom)-
                       Circus of Colors and Shapes!
Circus of Colors and Shapes is held on week three 3 of the new year! This is our first themed event so we make sure our rules, routines, and relationships with our students have all been established. This is also the first time we invite moms in to help run our centers, and they LOVE it!  We have five learning centers for this event and it lasts about an hour.  The students move in groups of 4-6 from center to center, and the teacher tries not to be tied down to a center so she can move around and help where needed.  Sometimes we even have a mom who is the classroom photographer and takes snapshots of this fun event!  The centers are Circus Bingo, Shape Sorter with Jumbo the Elephant, Ring Toss with Sunshine the Clown,  Walk the Tightrope. and Popcorn and Peanuts (finding shapes in a bucket of packing peanuts).  We end the learning centers with ice cream clown sundaes!  It is a great way to let your moms have a sneak peak at all the fun and learning your child's year will hold!

Shape Sort Center
Keep centers far enough apart to give kids room to have fun!

Walk the Tight Rope Center

Photo op area for the memory book!

Moms love coming in to help in the classroom!
This is my sister Alisha and her daughter who I had the privilege of teaching!

You can get our Circus Bingo Unit here!  Here is a picture of the goodies in the unit:

"Fin"tastic Bingo

Want a Spectacular Sea Unit? My bestie and cohort Kim has a fabulous Sea Adventure in her room!   So we decided to create some more things this summer to go with her theme....Our Fintastic Bingo is sure to be an amazing underwater adventure as your students have a wonderful time learning their letters and numbers while playing BINGO! Make sure to use shells, sweedish fish or our favorite goldfish crackers as your markers and this learning center is complete!
We started with Fintastic Bingo!  You can check out the unit on our TPT store HERE!  Please check back for some more Under the Sea Treasures....

Throwback Thursday

Throwback is a great idea from a blogger I just met!  I found out about her from one of my favorite bloggers Miss Kindergarten!  Click on her name if you want to check her out...Anyhow I am sure many of you have heard of the blogger First Grade Parade!

Well Kim and I have not been at this for very long, but I thought I would throwback to our Dinosaur Days....Our kids love this 3 week long unit!  We have a dinomite time making dinosaur eggs, dino glyphs, volcanos, and going on our famous dino dig....Here are some highlights...

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Dino to volcano

We are in our third week of Dino days. Friday is our big Grandparents Day Event. This week we made volcanos out of our old Play do, the students added the secret powder(baking Soda), a little squirt of dish soap, they chose what color lava they wanted and then they added the lava juice(vinegar). The kids loved it. We also made paper plate Dino's. I made a really cute bulletin board with it for our big event. I am also including our menu! Hope you all like it! We had a dinomite time!!

Menu for A Grandparent event we put on



We have a little freebie for you.  You can grab it HERE! or check out the whole unit HERE!!

101 Dalmatians

Our 101 Dalmatian Days unit is Here!  You're sure to have a DOG-GONE good time with our 101 Dalmatian Days Unit! This is one of our favorite units!! From Doggy Bingo, Graphing, and Patterning to Positional Words, and Upper and Lower Case Matching- this Unit is sure to leave your tail wagging!  We made this unit for all of our puppy lovers and it is very homeschool friendly. We spend the week learning about dogs, creating puppy ears, dotted shirts, and eating puppy chow! We end on the 101st day of school as dalmatian puppies with real adoption papers and a visit from.... Cruella! This is sure to be a week they will never forget!

Umbrella Week

It's raining, it's pouring... but we are not snoring in K4!!
"U" is our letter of the week, and we love to do events or thematic units based around each letter. We start the year off with our vowels. "U" week we bring our umbrellas to school and have our (orange slice and bended cheese stick in the shape of an umbrella) under our umbrellas, and then we go on an umbrella parade! We end our parade with songs like "Singing in the Rain", "It's Raining, it's Pouring", and "Pitter-Patter on the ground, raindrops all around". We love to have our centers reinforce letters and numbers in games we play.  You can get our Umbrella unit HERE!   Here are some pictures of our "U' Unit:

Summer relaxing too! 2 Preschool Pals can wait...