Meet the teacher Monday!

Blog Hoppin' is have a week long linky party! WHOO HOOO! Today is Meet the teacher Monday. I put together a little all about me poster with pictures.

Enjoy and make sure to link up to the fun

first week of school!

So I guess it's been a week since I posted...what a slacker!! I have been busy putting my classroom together and getting back into the swing of things this week. We had meetings Tue and Wed and the kids came the last 2 days (but just until 1!).

Here are a few pictures of our first week of school.

Here is an update of our classroom management chart.  I added the 5 bees as our rules.  They are just so much fun.  

This is my new reading bathtub.  My dad snagged it for free!  My wonderful husband and father-in-law helped me clean and paint it.  We did it all in one weekend.  The kids are so excited to read in it.  

All the classrooms in my hallway have B-I-G windows that look into the classroom. So we turn them into nice little displays during the year.  This is my window for back to school.  We are "Sailing into First Grade" for our theme.  Each kids name is written in a driftwood font and their picture is masked with a circle to fit into a porthole.  { I do have to say I didn't make the actual boat ~ one of our AMAZING 1st grade aides drew the design and drew them up for us! }

today we did a fun little graph of how many letters we have in our names.  I printed their names in a fun font and cut the letters apart.  They had to glue them together and write in how many letters they have in their names.  Then we did some comparisons.  Fun little activity from pinterest !

Hope everyone else is have as good a time with back to school as I am!

Blogging Questions!?!?!

Ok so I have 2 questions about blogging this morning....

1} I have been following all of your super amazing blogs.  I have been using google reader but it seems as though the blogs I have added in the last few weeks are not showing up =( 

Is there a limit or do I need to go in and add them by address?  Any ideas what might be wrong here?

2} When I leave comments I like to put my blog address.  I have noticed that some people have their address as a link. 

How do I get my blog address to show up as a link on comments?

If anyone could help me out with these few things I would really appreciate it, still kind of new to this blogging stuff!

My Classroom!!

I have been working so hard in my classroom all week long trying to get it ready to go. Well last week the first grade wing flooded, 2 rooms were not effected {mine was one of them} but the other 3 had to move E-V-E-R-Y thing out of their rooms {and 2 of them were pretty much set up for the start of school!} So I am hoping to get my room done by Monday so I can help out when the others are able to move desks in. Here are a few pictures of whats going on!

This is just outside of my door...they even took out their bathroom doors!

Another hall way shot!

This is my classroom door...I'm trying a new management system this year...The dots are write on wipe off, we are going to put word patterns on them sot he kids can add to them as they find words in books and such.

My desk...its pretty clean but the counter behind it is piled with things that need to have a kids name written on it.

Reading table with a little helper... just in case your wondering behind there is a bird feeder built right into the wall.  I tried to cover it with a calendar but I am thinking I might just put some bird seed in it!

Students desks!!  I found out yesterday I will have 21...not to bad =)

I will post some final pictures of some of my little areas when I get done with it all!

How is everyone else doing with setting up their classroom??

Back to School....Back to School!

So I have to go back to school on Monday (that's only 5 DAYS away!!).  I have been trying to think of all the fun things we do on the first 2 days (1/2 days actually).  It's been so long I am having a hard time to remember them all.

Don't worry I did remember one great activity!  Each year during the first 2 days we make a coloring book!  I have the kids use their black marker to draw a picture on a plain piece of typing paper.  The only rule is that they can't color it in.  They love this because A) they get to use markers B) they get to draw ANYTHING they want!  I do show them some samples, I normally make a page or two for the book.

When they finish I make a cute little cover, send it to central copy and have them make and bind a copy for each kid. 

We used ours all year last year.  They kept it in their desk and pulled it out during fun time or inside recess, and when we had a bit of extra time during the year. 

Little Organizing Idea!

So at our school we have quite a few subscriptions for the kids, and they all have passwords.  Of course every subscription has a different format for the user name and password.  That's too much for a first grader to remember...it's too much for me to remember.

So last year I made this little organizer

A closer look

It was pretty simple to make.
To make the poster:
1. I took some fun library pockets (that I got at Dollar Tree) and but the bottoms off to the size I wanted them. 
2. Then I used tape or rubber cement to place them on construction paper (purple because everything should be purple!).
3. Next I laminated it like any good teacher, and used a razor blade to cut the slit at the top so you could still put stuff in it. 
4. Last I wrote every kids name on a pocket. (I used a dry erase marker so I could change names easily)

Then for inside the pockets:
1. I found these little cards in my room
2. I put the name of the site or subscription on the back (like AR or iXL).  I have all my sites saved on the computer but you could also put a URL if you needed on the front.   
3. On the front I put the user name at the top and their password at the bottom, at first I put UN and PW so they would know which was which but then the kids typed in the UN and PW, so I took that off and they just new the first line went in the first box and second line in the second box.

I also found that when we started AR testing some kids needed help with their testing so they would put a star stick in it that says test so when I had time I could help them take a test.  I also have some that say HELP! and they put those in when they have trouble with a program and I can work with them one on one with that problem as well.

By the end of the year they could work on any one of our subscriptions independently!!