Jungle Quilt

So my mom is this amazing quilter and she gave me a quilt for my classroom!!  I am amazed at her talent and so blessed to have a mom who loves me enough to make my room spectacular!  I love this quilt!  It is hung proudly when you enter my room!!

Lioness Arising!

While I was in my room I snuck a couple more pictures of things in my room....Oh and I got this amazing elephant table at my wonderful bestie Kim's garage sale!

This is the elephant!  Isn't is great....

Each year our school has a theme with a verse attached.
This is 2010/2013 theme!

This is my behavior chart!  

Bad picture but I hung vine from my ceiling with flowers from the
dollar store and added a clothespin and bird.  I hang the kids work from the clothespins.

Good or Bad Idea? To teach over the Summer?

Ok, everyone out there... I need to get your opinion on something. This is my "umpteenth" year of teaching, and when I was muuuuch younger I would teach all year then tutor, run a Camp or something that involved children over the Summer. However, as I get older I have found that I need to stay as far away from children over the Summer (even my own at times) as possible! Not sure if this happens with age, or if I am just a terrible person? Let me give you an example.. I was asked to help lead a VBS Bible Camp and I said yes (Liz thinks I've lost my mind) I think she might be right! Well, after four days I realized that the professional in me that wants to make these little ones have fun, but obey... in a 3 hour time frame when they have NEVER been to school, and I have absolutely NO AUTHORITY over them is just a combination for DISASTER! I will admit I have had to let go and pick my battles (the 4 year old sobbing because he does not want to go to the next center, or the child who does not want the cup of water because the cup is a different color) are things that in my head I find myself saying "you get what you get... and you don't get upset". However, I have had to smile and realize that I am not going to change attitudes and behaviors in one week. Although, I do continue to try. It's that same something that makes me tell total strangers in the mall to slow down or kids in a movie theatre to Shhhh! To the complete dismay of my husband I just can't seem to turn it off! So with all of that said... I will try and finish tomorrow with lots of smiles and few tears (I am referring to myself)...

Jungle Fever!

LIONS, TIGERS, AND BEARS, OH MY!!!
It's Liz's Jungle Safari Theme in her classroom!
This is a Jungle Safari Bingo Game that I created for the first week of school to enhance any jungle theme.  You can pick it up Here!

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!!