Friday, September 30, 2011

Daily Routines and The Coming Week

I tried a few days ago to share my daily routines with you and had some trouble getting the post to publish. I wanted to share our daily routines with my parents, just in case you were wondering.

1. Morning/Arrival Work: This is usually a coloring activity related to our weekly theme.
2. Carpet/Circle Time: We start with the song "Rise and Shine and Welcome to School Today".  We spend a few minutes talking about what we did over the weekend or the afternoon before.  Then, we talk about what day of the week it is and what month we are in, we sing songs about both of them. Then we do our reading activity.  This includes talking about the cover of the book; title, author, illustrator, looking at the pictures in the book, reading the book and retelling the book.
3. Activity: We do an activity that is related to the book or our theme for the week.
4. Carpet/Circle Time: This time we talk about the alphabet and the letters of the sounds.  We talk about our skill for the week (rhyme, syllables, compound words, etc.) and sing our song for our color of the week.
5. Color activity: We usually try to do an activity that relates to our color of the week.
6. Center Time or Recess: Center time includes: playing with blocks, Lego's, dolls, puppets, dress up, Play Dough, puzzles or reading books.
7. Snack Time: Then it's time to go home
TIME FLIES BY! We often do not get all of these things done, but we do try to do the basics.

The next two weeks are going to be busy, busy, busy! With fall break coming up, we have two short weeks.  Short weeks always mean squeezing in everything we need to get done. Next week our theme will be transportation and the following week is fire safety week, so we will have a fire theme.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Sorry for the delay

I just typed a LONG post full of my classroom schedule only to get an error when I click "publish". So now this will be short and sweet.  I'll save the schedule for later.  SORRY!
One thing that I did want to share was Happy Birthday Johnny Appleseed!  Well...belated birthday.  It was actually yesterday, I didn't get to get on here to say hi.  Yesterday we watched a short video in the life of Johnny Appleseed and colored a page on the life cycle of an apple tree.  Today the kids pasted pieces of torn red paper on a small paper plate.  They were so cute I put them up on my bulletin board! In the days to come we are going to measure apples to see how many cubes tall they are, weight them to see how many cubes equal the same weigh, have a taste test for yellow, red and green apples and graph our class favorites.  Well....that's all for now.  See you again soon!

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Entertainment Overload!

I decided I better stop in for a quick "HELLO!" since it's been a few days.  Time flies when you are having fun.  And BOY HAVE I BEEN HAVING FUN! Thursday night I got to attend a long awaited concert that I got tickets for quite some time ago.  As always, the band, Third Day was AMAZING!  (If you don't know them, check out the song "I Trust In Jesus") This was, I think, my fourth time to see them.  Every time Shawn and I have gone he leaves sad because they never sing his favorite song.  Of course with a band of their magnitude there is no way they could ever sing ALL of their songs in one show.  So Mac Powell, the lead singer, says "We haven't done this song in a while but someone tweeted and asked me to do it tonight..."  I knew immediately that Shawn was about to miss out.  See this concert was for one of my friends and I along with her son and my little sister.  Sure enough they sand that song.  :) Go figure! Also performing was the band Tenth Ave. North.  We saw them with Third Day a while back and enjoyed them but this time they blew us away!  You could tell that they were there for the Lord and it was so uplifting.  Check out their song "You Are More" if you haven't heard of them.  Opening the show was a new upcoming artist named Trevor Morgan.  Trevor is the next Jeremy Camp! He is amazing and I love his song "Jesus Rides the Subway".  After staying up so late I missed the High School Homecoming football game and stayed home to rest. Which might be a good thing because, skip to today and I just got home from seeing one of my very favorite Disney movies, The Lion King in theatre for the first time in years.  I just don't know that that movie could be any better.  I LOVE IT! I remember watching it with my BFF when we were younger and her singing "Hakuna Matata" till I was nearly crazy.  AND... at the last minute, my mother-in-law and I decided we wanted to take my son to see Disney On Ice tomorrow, so we just bought ring side tickets will be going TOMORROW!  Like I said, entertainment overload! But I love it! It's good clean fun and there's nothing wrong with that.
I've attached some links below to the songs that I mentioned.  CHECK THEM OUT!!!!!

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Defining Moments

I've debated on whether or not to write today.  There wasn't a lot of excitement going on.  In my searching other blogs for some creative ideas I came across a quote that really caught my attention.  There have been many times that I have been asked what my favorite quote was and I always tend to freeze up.  The truth is, I've never found a quote that really spoke of who I am, or want to be.  Today was that moment. I finally found a quote that I think will stick with me.  "Teachers who love to teach, create kids who love to learn."  Now THAT, I can live with! This is who I want to be.  The teacher who loves what she is teaching so much and who is so passionate about what she does that she inspires kids to learn. So while today's blog is short and sweet, I think it leaves us all with plenty to think about. Teachers, how can you inspire your students? Parents, how can you inspire your children?

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

First Day Jitters

"First Day Jitters" Well... we hear that a lot.  Don't we?  You may  be thinking, "Hasn't school been in for some time now? Why is she just now posting on it?"  I am referring to my first day on here.  I have been wavering on starting a Blog.  Worried that "I wouldn't be good at it" or even that I wouldn't stick with it.  So here I am ready to take the plunge and I have no idea what to even say.  So let me start with telling you why I have started a Blog.  It is my hope that this will be a tool for me to use to communicate with my Students' parents as well as other teachers.  I have acquired a lot of interest in reading other teachers' blogs. I have found many great ideas to use in my classroom and have found it fascinating because of the resources that it offers to parents.
One goal of mine this year is have better open communication with the parents of my students.  This year I created folders for all of my students.  These folders are the plastic ones.  I recommend plastic because of their durability.  I have already noticed several folders that have been mistreated and know that there is no way that they would have survived otherwise.   In their folders, there are two papers, a daily behavior log and a parent/teacher communication sheet.  The behavior log includes the rules for my classroom as well as the "color chart" that represents each behavior.  (If you are looking for a good behavior plan I recommend going to teachingoasis.com they have several clip chars and behavior logs that are already made that you can purchase for your room.) The parent/teacher communication log is place where parents and I can write notes to one another.  I also want to focus more on positive behavior.  In keeping with having better communication skills I have started sending home "happy notes" on Fridays.  Each Friday I select 2-3 students who have done exceptionally well and compliment their hard work or good behavior.