What's New This Year....

One of the ever changing things in my classroom is the technology. This year we will have 3 student computers and 5 iPads in each classroom for the kids. And we now have a cart of computers to use with our kids. I'm onto the exciting challenge of how to manage them and what I want the kids to do with them!!!

Last year we did a bit of piloting with the iPad. K - 2 grade apps were put on each iPad and we were able to look at and use the apps. The biggest challenge I had was the kids finding the app I want them to be on, Which was always changing. By the time we would get the morning reading app figured out it was on afternoon math. AHHH!!!

 So this is the plan for this year. I am going to take a screen shot of the apps I want to use and magnet it to the board.

So this is a sample of what will go on the board. Easy to see, easy to find. Less time explaining, more time learning!

I'm BACK!!

I'm back after a long and very eventful school year. This past year my little family go a little bit bigger. We had a very precious little girl in March. So that was the biggest part of my year but I also finished my masters in Educational Design and Technology. Now that things are a bit more routine and settled I hope to be able to post more!

This is our little family coming home from the hospital!

LOOOONG time no Post!

It has been FOREVER since I have posted on here...Talk about a slacker.

I'm going to try and post a few things I have been meaning to get on here since the start of the year over the next week! Here is what we have been working on!

First I wanted to share a little activity we did at the start of the year. We have been doing a few author studies in my class. We learned about monarch butterflies which I used Eric Carle's "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" for. Then we read some of his other amazing books.

One of my teacher friends has a video about how he makes his art but I'm sure you could do it without the video. It talks about how he creates these big pages of pattern paper to use. He creates different colors and patterns. Sometimes with an idea in mind and sometimes just to paint. When he has all his pages done he cuts them and lays them out as whatever is in his book.

So I had all my kids paint pattern pages with their water colors. Then we cut them in half and they chose 2 patterns to make an animal out of.

Here is how they turned out!

After we made the animals each kid wrote a story about them to put in their writing folder for the end of the year too!

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??