Monster fun

We've had a great 2nd week in my room...our monster unit was so much fun! We broke out "The Day The Monster Came to School" from Growing Kinders and talked all about expectations for how to act in school. My kids are doing great and really getting used to our classroom routines. And they are GREAT cleaners!! I am the most organized and well planned that I have ever been (in my 2 years and 2 week long teaching career haha) I have lots of pictures to share so I'll get right to it :)

Monster counting practice.  Can I just say one more time how much I love that counting and cardinality is a full on standard in CCSS??

More counting practice! This was so fun...they read the number and glued that many googly eyes to the monster. Great counting AND fine motor skills...double win :)

Color word practice

 

We learned to roll and write...I figured they'd better get used to this activity because they will be rolling and writing all year long haha. Yay for subitizing :)

 We started learning about shapes this week and we made square monsters and triangle monsters. I didn't grab a shot of any finished ones, but we put the shape song and a popsicle stick on the back and they turned into puppets. I had to stop a few shape monsters from destroying each other during dismissal time but other than that they were a great success. You can download the shape songs that my teammate made up at the bottom of the post :)

M is for monster !!

Today we read "Go away big green monster" and made our own big monsters. I think they turned out hilarious!!

The paper for the big monsters is also in the freebie below. Everything else is available in my Monster Madness unit. Click on any of the pictures to see it in my store.

It was a super fun week...and tomorrow Zero the Hero is coming to school :) Good times!



Monster Freebies

2 down, 175 to go!

My first two days have gone well! Yesterday was the usual mix of anxiety and craziness and first day excitement. Today I was able to get a lot of management and procedures taken care of and I'm feeling really good about my group so far :) **knock on wood**

In other news, I just finished up some center signs. Last year we did "clip centers" which was what my kids named developmental center time since they had to "clip" their clothespin on the sign. Once there were three clips on the sign, that center was full and no one else could be there. It was a beautiful system. I wanted to revamp my signs to match my polka dot theme so I came up with these. Click on the picture to find them in my store.

I've had a lot of people ask about some of the calendar elements from the pictures in my last post. I posted part of this set as a freebie last week but have since added the "Today's Number" section so here's the whole set.

Calendar Pieces Updated

Classroom pics and first day of school freebies

Monday is my first day of school...I have 25 new kiddos coming to my room tomorrow ready or not! I have just a few pics of my room to share:

My jobs chart wasn't completely done yet at this point but it shows perfectly the two themes I have going in my room this year. Polka dots everywhere mixed with some monsters (I am going to use Kathleen Pedersen's Monster Manners system)

Here's a shot of most of my calendar wall...I'm super excited about how it turned out :)

I covered my chalkboard this year to get some extra space. Here's a shot of what has turned into my focus wall, writing center and word wall.

Finally, my palm tree is back in action! Last year my AP dropped off two giant carpet rolls in our pod and said "I'm sure you can come up with something for this" and boom...giant palm trees appeared in our rooms :) When I got back to my room in July I found the leaf part crumbled up on the floor and I was so shocked and sad. I'm pretty sure it got moved near the ceiling fan during classroom cleaning and there was a terrible accident haha. But it has been resurrected and looks even better this year (I never actually got the "bark" up on the trunk last year - that was one of the projects that fell to the wayside when I broke my ankle).

I'm really really excited about the year. I threw together a few coloring sheets for tomorrow that I am going to share as freebies. I can't remember where I read this idea, but someone wrote in a blog post about how they like to give the kids a picture to color of how they get home. I thought it was a great idea and I good way to keep them occupied as I am putting colored stickers and bus tags on everyone at the end of the day. You can download the sheets below :)


First Day Stuff

SALE SALE SALE!!!

It's time for the Back to School Sale on TPT...Everything in my store will be 20% off plus the TPT discount. Click on the picture to go to my store...Happy Shopping!!

5 days and counting

Oh my goodness I have been running nonstop for a week. I got back from vacation the night before returning to work. This was great planning because it forced me NOT to spend the last few weeks of summer fiddling around in my room but at the same time it was horrible because my "packing" job from May was a complete disaster and it has taken me FOREVER to get myself together. I have been so busy covering walls, rearranging furniture and sorting through my multiple pinterest boards from the past year haha. I thought I took pictures today but I must have imagined it. I'll post pics tomorrow of my progress :)

I also just finished a cute little mini-unit for The Kissing Hand. Here's a pic of what's included:

Click on the picture to find it in my store!!