I always had a hard time figuring out a way to store my big posters. Most teachers in my building take 2 big pieces of tagboard, staple around three edges and then tape over the staples. That’s what I did for years, but I hated it. The posters would always rip, stuff would always fall out. So let me tell you that I was THRILLED when I found this on Amazon.
They are called the deluxe bulletin board storage pockets. They are awesome! They are a little more expensive, but I think they are totally worth it! I used this link to purchase them, and they were a little bit cheaper.
I still need a couple more, but I tried to sort out my posters by month. I put all of my posters, bulletin board pieces, games, etc. into each pocket. I love that they are clear and have handles!
Do you have an ingenious way to store your bulletin board pieces and posters? Share!
Friends, I have posted a new project on Donor’s Choose. If you are interested in donating a dollar or two to my project, I would appreciate it very much!
First, sorry about all the hullabaloo on my background paper – I know it’s wonky! We’re working on a fix!
Last week, I showed you how I organized my center materials. Today, I am going to show you how I organize my books! It certainly isn’t anything spectacular, but it works for me!
Like, I said, nothing spectacular! I just use regular old bin and throw the theme books in there.
I know books are a challenge figuring out how to organize them. We all have too many, and space is always limited! I have a tiny room, but I am lucky enough to have a little storage room to store some of these things. If I didn’t have a storage room, all of these tubs would either be on top of cabinets or at home in my garage!
I would love to hear how you manage and organize your books. Like up below with a blog post you have written about how you organize your classroom books. If you don’t have a blog, just leave a comment!
Friends, I am SO very excited to be attending this years I Teach K Conference in Las Vegas, but I’m also SUPER excited to be one of the hosts of the Vegas Teacher/Blogger Meet-Up on July 10!
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
Would you like to go? Please RSVP to our meet-up {here}.
Last year, I sorted my sight words into sets of 10 based on the order of introduction. Each child started out with 10 red words {you could really start with whatever color you want, it was just easier for me to do it in rainbow order!} when they learned those words, they got the next set of 10 and added them to their word ring at home and at school. I decided that I wanted my word wall to correspond with the colors of the cards…so for the past several weeks, I have been working on this pack. But, here’s the BEST part….you can add your own words too! AND you don’t have to handwrite them OR print out labels! You can type directly onto the PDF and print them out yourself. Yay!!
The kids loved adding the new cards to their word rings, and it really helped me know who knew what words. A quick glance at their sight word rings showed me how many words they knew. I assessed them every week (I promise it only takes a few minutes!) so each child was learning the words at his or her own pace.
This year, I am going to kick it up a notch and give them another visual incentive – in the form of an ice cream cone!
At the end of the year we will have an ice cream party to celebrate all of their hard work of learning their sight words! HOW FUN?!!
I also included in this pack a few different alphabet cards for your word wall. I think it’s super important (especially in K) to have a picture cue for each letter as well as a properly formed letter. I LOVE my fancy fonts, but for our littlest kiddos, they need to be simple – especially for the word wall.
If you are interested, you can check it out {here!}
I’ve tried a couple of different ways to organize my centers and game pieces, but I think I’ve found something that works. It’s been a year-long process, but I am totally happy with the results!
I use these storage containers that I purchased at Target. I have seen them in the Really Good Stuff catalog as well. They are kind of spendy – about $4-5 each, but I thought the investment was worth it. And, like I said, I’ve purchased through out the past year, so it didn’t FEEL like I was spending so much!
I put each unit into one container – sometimes I am able to fit more than one. Both math and literacy centers go into the container.
I keep everything that I might need for that week’s centers in the container. Center cards, dice inserts, manipulatives, master copies, and answer keys. I also keep the black line master’s in a file folder in my filing cabinet, but I wanted to have a copy here as well – just in case!
I either clip the pieces together or put everything in a zip top bag.
What works best for you for organizing your center supplies?
I’ve saved the best product review for last! I am super excited about this one too, and I know you ALL will love it.
Learning Resources sent me this amazing document camera to try out for them:
It is so sweet, and tiny, and lightweight! It is called the Luna Interactive Projection Camera. I had a document camera in my room, but anyone in the school could use it. How do you share a document camera?!
This document camera plugs right into you computer, and once you install the software, you are good to go. (Of course you will need a projector too).
The COOLEST thing about this document camera? It takes pictures! It takes video!!
We had tons of fun using the Luna for shared reading of our little books. I projected a little book on the screen and the children followed along and read as I pointed. Here’s the best part -- we LISTENED back to what we read! I could walk around and listen to kids reading as the video played back, and we could talk about how we all sounded when we read. They thought it was the coolest thing EVER!
(That’s not me – this is a picture from Learning Resources )
The Luna can also take pictures, so, if we are working through an art project or directed drawing together, I could take pictures of each step. Later, I could import them into a flipchart or a document for my later reference or for a child that may have missed the activity.
The only thing I disliked about the Luna? You had to have the projector plugged into your computer. With my other document camera, I could just plug my projector cable into the document camera and I’m good to go. I don’t always have my laptop plugged into my whiteboard.
Here’s a video showing more of what Luna can do.
The Luna is priced at an affordable amount for schools at $199.00. But, wait…..you can WIN ONE!
Learning Resources is giving away a Luna Interactive Projection Camera to one of my very lucky readers!
If you haven’t already checked out Learning Resources and all of their great products you can do so at one of these places:
Happy June to you! I feel for all of you that are still in school! I hope that you are almost done! I had a lot of requests for a June song, so even though I am not in school, I quickly made one up for you.
If you download, please just leave a little comment below. Let me know how many days of school you have left! Good luck with your last few weeks/days!
After {this} post a few weeks ago, I had many request for my journals. I decided to re-work them, organize them, and put them together in a complete set for you. This baby is huge! There are 12 journals in this packet based on the method that I wrote about in that post.
Each journal will have a cover page, the “what page am I on” page, and corresponding numbered pages. The writing pages start off with just a box for illustrations, and then move onto lines and handwriting lines. As the year goes on the illustration box becomes smaller and more room for writing is left. I also included writing pages without numbers if you prefer to do it that way. The packet is hefty, but only print the pages that you need. Remember, you will only need to print one book a month!
While I was doing that I decided I needed to update my portfolio pack too! It’s SOOO cute now, and it corresponds perfectly with the We {Love} to Write pack!
If you have already purchased this pack, you can re-download the NEW pack at NO extra charge! Yippee!!
If you have any questions, make sure to contact me. I have plans to put together a calendar wall pack, as well as a pack for calendar books this summer too. And stay tuned for Fix-it Up 2 and Fun with Numbers 3! Busy summer for this lady!
About a month ago, I was listing to a rebroadcast on Doctor’s Radio (Sirius/XM), and they were discussing challenging children/students. It was late at night, and my family was on a four hour roadtrip. The kids were sleeping, and my poor hubby was forced to endure the broadcast.
However, the broadcast and book intrigued me. It was written by a behavioral analyst and a child psychologist. We all have had challenging students. Some are students that we can “handle” are some are students that make us pull our hair out and gain 10 pounds, right?! Maybe this book will answer some of our questions and give us some insights into why some children behave the way they do and give us some possible solutions for the behaviors.
As soon as I got home, I ordered the book and added it to my ever growing summer reading list. I would love to hear if any of you have read this book!
Do you portfolio? {I wrote a post about portfolios last year too. You can read it here.}
This year, I had the kids do the portfolios a little bit different. Instead of only giving them a page at a time to complete (which can be an absolute beast to get organized at the end of the school year if you don’t keep up on filing!), I put all of the pages inside of their three ring binder. This worked out PERFECTLY. The portfolios were ready to go at the end of the year, and I only needed to add monthly writing samples from their journals. (Which I am working on – they should be ready to upload to TpT by the end of the week!).
I didn’t have time to snap many pictures – (I’m sorry!), but here are two!
I put any extras – like their memory books and other writing samples in the pockets.
Everything is in chronological order starting with September. They fill in a calendar page, an alphabet page, and a number page. At the end I also include a few writing samples. It’s so fun to look through all of the pages and see how much they have grown.
On the last day, we had our Parents, Pirates, and Portfolio day. Parents came in, we watched the slide show, cried a little bit, paged through their portfolio’s and said good-bye for the year.
This year, I found this book in the Scholastic book orders and included that with a copy of the slideshow.
Many of my kinders I won’t see next year since their families are being transferred to a different air force base. It’s bittersweet, but I am glad they have a little piece of Kindergarten to take with them!
I am super excited to be a part of this book study hosted by my good buddy Deedee Wills! We will be diving into Katie Wood Ray's Book, In Pictures and in Words. Do you know Katie? If you don’t you MUST meet her! She is the guru of writing, and is fantastic!
I’m always wanting to learn more about writing with little ones. Writing time is my absolute FAVORITE time of the day.
So, are you going to work through this book together wish some of my favorite bloggers!!?? Read the details below:
When does it start?
On June 22nd, Deedee will launch the book study on her blog. Then each week another blog will host a section of the book.
How do I participate?
You will want to follow the blogs who are hosting the chapters (so you won't miss anything).
If you have a blog: You can create a post (using our guiding questions) and link up with the hosting blog.
If you do not have a blog: You can simply comment on the blog with your reflections.
The beautiful thing about blog book studies is you can check in whenever you want. If you have plans during this time of year... no worries... The information will be here waiting for you!
What is the schedule? Deedee created a book mark to help you along the way. It has the hosting blog, dates, and guiding questions. Simply print it out and keep it with you as you go through the book study.
Giveaways? You bet! We will give away gift certificates for books from We have more exciting news about this book study soon! Yipee!
Are you SUPER excited?? Comment below and let me know if you are going to join in! Quick….click away and go buy your book NOW!
I feel privileged and blessed to be able to teach the children of the men and women who serve in our US Air Force. I teach on an Air Force Base, and I see the children’s sacrifice’s EVERY day. Thank you for your service to our country, and the sacrifices you make each day for our freedom.
As we enjoy our bbq’s, families and celebrations….remember all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country and honor those who still continue to give for the protection and freedom of our country. Raise a glass in honor and a say a prayer in thanks.
We had the BEST last 4 days of school this week. The kids had SO much fun! They were all very well behaved (can you believe it!) and were engaged in learning (yes, learning!) the whole week. I am SO proud of them. I think it helped that our beach centers were TONS of fun!
A wonderful friend of mine shared with me that she had decided to do a pirate theme to end the year. That got my brain spinning! I ended up staying late on Sunday night to prep some fun pirate stuff – I am SO glad I did!
Here are some pics of what we did over the last 4 days:
We read LOTS of pirate books! The Pirate Pete books were definitely a favorite! It was REALLY funny when he was searching for the “booty.” Oh man.
If your school has access to Tumble books, both How I Became a Pirate and Pirates Don’t Change Diapers by Melinda Long are on there. The kids love “watching” books on Tumble books!
We also have fun subtracting with pirates!
We made these ADORABLE pirates that were inspired by {this} as seen via Pinterest.
We used Crayola’s skin color paints (on a paper plate). For the hat, I just traced the plate and a piece out of the middle so the hat was about 4” high. (Make sense? I got 2 hats out of one circle). The “ties” are just 1” x about 6” maybe and the kids just cut those in half. I used my handy dandy circle punches for the dots on the hat and the eyes. I used a larger circle punch for the eye punch and just trimmed the top part off. It was a SUPER simple project. I just all of the circles when they were working – just walked around and punched circles for each table! Don’t you just love the pipe cleaner earring too?! We hung them from the ceiling for a couple of days and they were SUPER cute!
My kids can NEVER get enough of these games! The first one is a sight word game in which I hide the treasure chest behind one of the cards, and they have to read the sight word to find it.
This is another fun game in which they sit in a circle and pass the treasure chest around. They pull out a sight word and if they can read it, they put it in the middle – if they can’t it goes back in the box. There are other fun “action” cards in the game as well. These are both in my Swashbuckling Sight Word Games pack.
I found this AMAZING box at Really Good Stuff a couple of weeks ago on CLEARANCE and I knew it would be perfect for this game! I just used a basket before, but this makes it EVEN MORE FUN! I printed the cards a bit smaller for this game – I just printed 2 pages on 1 and it worked perfectly!
and we played this game from KinderbyKim (Kim Jordano). This is in her Pirate Pack. I modified it slightly and cut out circles and added tally marks for the kids to pull from the treasure chest (ahem, a paper bag) because I was short on time. But, she does have game cards to play this game included in the pack.
After we read Deanna’s book from her Pirate Pack, we talked about what we would do if we were pirates.
On our last day, we had SO much fun dressing up as pirates!
We made hats and we all even had eye patches! I wish I could show you how cute their faces were! They were adorable!!
We also played “Parrot, Parrot on my Head!” So.Stinkin.Fun. If you haven’t heard of Katie and Company, you need to stop what you’re doing NOW and go over to her website and check out her goodies!
I actually pinned the parrot hat on my shoulder for most of the day, and the kids thought it was hysterical I’m sure Julie will be at I teach K in Vegas, so be sure to save room in your suitcase! Her stuff is A.MAZ.ING! I already see some new things that I don’t have! ahhhhhhh!!!! Intervention, please!
We also went on a treasure hunt. SO. FUN. How lucky was I that someone was throwing out this treasure box. My thermal bag from 31 fit perfectly inside of it. I put the scavenger hunt cards all around the school and we came back to popsicles! FUN!
Here’s a little pirate booty for you! If you would like the Scavenger hunt cards – here they are!
To end the day on Thursday, parents were invited in for our portfolio day. I’ll post more about our portfolio’s on another day. It was a PERFECT end to the last day of a great year!
I’m certainly going to miss this year’s crew, but I’m excited for more adventures in Kindergarten next year!
PS – I’m thinking that I need to make some Pirate themed math and literacy centers for next year – are you interested??
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I’m sure Julie will be at I teach K in Vegas, so be sure to save room in your suitcase! Her stuff is A.MAZ.ING! I already see some new things that I don’t have! ahhhhhhh!!!! Intervention, please!
