Just another day

This week completely flew by! I had so much fun with the kindergarteners! They are getting so excited about the different things they are learning and it's making teaching them so much fun! Today we actually had centers running so smoothly! I was able to take a breather and help those that needed it and I didn't have a zillion people coming and asking for help! It was so much fun! I love kindergarten! One of the new things that I did was with the abc center...I had banagrams and the kiddos matched the letter tiles with an abc chart! Wth the listening center I had checked out, from the library, books on cd for students to listen to and read... It's amazing how well these students are listening! I love experiencing everything with them and being there for their learning! This past week we also introduced a new letter every day and I hope this really helps students in learning about different letters and their sounds. We have a lot of work to do this year! It will be fun!

Survival Week

Well I am happy to report that I survived the first week of kindergarten!
It was so much fun to meet all of my kindergarteners in my class and get the year started! It was also really nice to meet the parents during our Open House night! I'm really excited that our class is already on a roll and already working!
This week consisted mainly of repeating various school and classroom procedures over, and over, and over again! I saw a huge improvement over the week and so did many other teachers! By Friday, we were getting so many compliments in the hall on how well we walked!
One of the coolest things I saw this week was how much fun these kids had during our math time! This week I had students each adding a page to a few class books we did. One of the class books we created were how many people were in our family. I had students draw their families and were able to tell me about their families. We used that concept later that day during math time when I asked students to write their name on post-it notes and place on a graph showing how many family members students had in their family. The kids got so excited when we added names because it felt like a competition between the numbers! I was excited that the kids were enjoying this time, doing "math talks" in complete sentences, and understanding all of the "mini-lessons" that came from our time!

I look forward to all of the other fun lessons we have! I also introduced "silly-brations" from teachertipster.com this week and my kindergarteners had a blast with performing them after earning them as a class!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj8f2R-dTAs

Classroom Coloring

Well, this weekend I have been spending quite a few hours in my classroom, but I think I am finally ready to begin the school year with my kiddos! Of course, I will still probably be doing A LOT more decorating and planning throughout the year! I'm hoping that I stay organized and have my room clean, full of colors, and fun! I'm so excited to meet my students and hopefully make them excited about school. I'm praying that I don't have too much crying, but hope instead, that students will be DYING to come to school every day! 
I'll leave you with a few pictures of my classroom...

Goals

As I near my first day with my kindergarteners, I am getting more and more excited about the new year, the new grade level I get to teach, and all of the kindergarten blogs I have found and discovered! I am totally OBSESSED with finding cool new free things on these sites! As a think about this coming year, I have a few goals for myself during the school year. 1. Start a journal of funny/cool things that kids say (one of my coworkers and I last year decided we needed to start this!!!) 2. Have all learning be fun and interesting for students! 3. Get plenty of sleep! 4. Prepare thoroughly for each lesson taught.

I'm sure I will come up with more goals, but those are just a few to start the year.