First Week's Themes

The first few weeks of school is all about rituals, routines, and having fun learning.  So here are a few of the centers we do every year as we get to know each other.

We practice reading with our whisper phones.

Write the Room is an all time favorite!!  The students are on the hunt for some sight words!

Check out these cool glasses!!  I bought all of the glasses used for this center from the Target Dollar Spot or Dollar Tree.  Such a cool way to add to the centers.

All of the students took this center very seriously!  Sometimes its fun to be able to get up and move around while learning.

Here we are working so hard!!!  I like to play worship music during seat work as long as they are working unto the Lord ;) 

Number handwriting centers.  This is a major center to have on hand especially at the beginning of the school year.

Chester themed number matching center.

Once we graduate to Kindergarten Play Dough has a whole new purpose.  Say good-bye to balls and pancakes!  We're making words!!!

I hope you enjoyed the sneak peek into the first few weeks of school!!

Live, Laugh, Love, 2 Teach

Mrs. Williams

New Room, New Theme!

While teaching summer VPK I realized why teachers get  a summer break; and quite frankly, its because We.....NEED....a....BREAK!  Now don't get me wrong, I truly, truly enjoyed working with my wonderful preschoolers; after all that is where I started.  However, as summer break quickly came to an end, it brought with it the start of a new school year.  So, that was my life in a nut shell during summer break....Work Work Work Work Work!!!! 

As you can imagine, I said plenty of prayers about the upcoming school year.  I prayed for a peaceful school year, with a great group of kids and parents.  I even prayed for the year to go by with great finesse and ease......and that's when I got THE CALL FROM THE PRINCIPAL.  Before I go on any further, I am sure their are some teachers out there who dread getting THE CALL, especially one week prior to teacher pre planning.  This call can mean several things: 1) You have been moved to another grade level. 2) You have been moved to another classroom. 3) You have been moved to another classroom and another grade level. 4) You have been transferred to another school. 

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to answer the phone right away. So I was left with a message asking if I could stop by the school for a "talk" before I begin to work in my classroom.  Come on teachers...."a talk."  I was pretty confident I wasn't being transferred, but something told me I just may end up switching rooms.  Now, this something came from the fact that I pretty much had my classroom set up the way I wanted and had just added some majorly cool bulletin boards to the walls.  Well, I did have to switch classrooms, but get this!  I was asked to move into a smaller classroom because I only had 7 kids this year!  I don't think you heard me...7 kids!!! I had more kids in my summer VPK program!  Needless to say, I so graciously and gratefully complied.  I truly believe my prayers were answered.  Although I had to do some moving around.  I would take that deal any day!

So, without further ado, let me share some before and after pictures!

Memory Lane 

 My old classroom was HUGE!!!!  I decorated with the cutie pie Bird Theme I made.  If you need a refresher just click HERE to see my original classroom tour.

Old Classroom 

Now here is a picture of my old classroom as I begin to prepare my new Black and Bright Theme!

My anchor chart wall.  Displayed on the back wall.

My calendar math and rules board 

This is just a smidget of the mess I make on my side of the bed when preparing for anything school related.

New Classroom: Before Pics

Soooooo...This is the view of my new room from the door.  I wonderful person donated thousands of books to the school and this just so happens to be where they were stored during summer break.

This is the back of the room.

The front of the room.

New Classroom: After Pics

View from the door.  My make shift desk (this room was too tiny for a large desk).

Another view from the wall near the door.  My Calendar math and gathering area.

The view form the back.  With our fabulous anchor chart display, student mailboxes, and paper organizer.

The front of the room.  The black bulletin boards will represent a sight word wall and a general picture word wall.

I hope you have enjoyed the mini tour of my new classroom!!  I believe this room is just the right size for the seven kinders that will make their way into my room!

Live, Laugh, and Love 2 Teach

Mrs. Williams

Summer VPK Centers

We have had so much fun in our classroom so far this summer!  I am so proud of these future kinders.  I can already tell they have come a long way!  Here are a few of the centers we have implemented so far.

Play-Dough Center

I love introducing play-dough centers to my students in the beginning of the school year.  We use play-dough to practice our name, letters, sight words, word walls, etc.  We had a blast leaning how to form our letters out of play-dough! Check it out!

Letter and Sound Centers

We have been practicing our letters and sounds every day.  This game is similar to a memory game in which students have to match the letter with the picture that begins with that sound.  It was all apart of our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom center.  I think they enjoyed it!  We are also creating our own alphabet wall with the letters we make during arts and crafts!

Math Centers

We have incorporated so many different and fun activities within our math centers.  I think it will be best to explain each activity as a caption under the picture.  Check it out!

We can now match the color words with the colors!  Yay!  We are reading color words!

This center requires another spin to our color word match.  Now we have to sort our colorful legos, too!

We have learned that puzzles are a great way to exercise our brains.

We can match the number to the amount of items in a jar!

We can add cubes to match the numbers on our flashcards!

We can also become architects with our building blocks!

We have had a blast discovering our new centers!  Thanks for stopping by to check it out!

Summer Plans!!

I will be teaching summer VPK this year and I am very excited!!! Here's why:

1. VPK is where it all started for me!  My very first blog was about my experience teaching summer VPK. Check it out HERE.
2. I have so many ideas of different things I want to implement next year in kindergarten.  I plan on practicing with my VPK students.

I am pretty sure we will have an awesome summer!  I met my students and parents on Wednesday and although many of my students are just finishing up their full year VPK program, they all seemed pretty excited about starting school all over again!

Here is a before picture of the VPK classroom:

This view is from the entrance.

This view is from the opposite end.

I paced back and forth for about 45 minutes before I came up with a floor plan that was comfortable for me.  Good thing I'm changing my kindergarten classroom theme to black & brights this year.  I plan on using my old birdie theme decorations to set up this classroom!

Here are the After Pictures!!!

I hope you are able to notice the difference!  We were able to put up bulletin boards, which were definitely needed.  I hope you enjoyed the tour!

Our Garden and Graduation

Graduation

This year I decided to have a "Moving on Ceremony" along side our VPK's graduation.  Well, the only dilemma was that we had to wait one whole week after school in order to have our graduation ceremony with VPK.  Needless to say, I prayed a lot during that week that my kinders would be ready for the ceremony and remember all of their lines.  Well, they did an excellent job!  I am so proud of them!  

They all look so cute and serious.  They are watching VPK perform. Sorry, I couldn't include any images of VPK, I don't have any media release clearance with them.  They were oh so cute!  You're just going to have to trust me. 

Our Garden

Our garden actually has a funny story that goes along with it:

I have always wanted to start a garden, however, everything I have tried to grow in the past has died.  So, I knew it would be a big risk trying to start one with my class.  I asked just about every teacher in the school if they had a green thumb.  Unfortunately, no one really claimed to have one.  I finally, received help from Ms. Rob, the middle/high science teacher. So both of our classes went outside and filled huge pots with seeds and soil and spoke life into it and commanded it to grow.  Well, two days later, we find our pots dumped out!  We were a little sad of course, but then Mr. Ted, our school/church's head of security, came and told us he did it!  It was clearly an accident, but it must have been a God wink because Mr. Ted knows all about gardens!  He proceeded to give us everything we needed to start our own garden.  We planted cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, and basil.  He even built a garden bed for us!  

Here is the lovely garden bed Mr. Ted made for us.

  He even came by and placed the stakes in, so our cucumber and tomato vines can grow up the stakes.

Our garden grew will beyond our expectations!

Thank you Mr. Ted for helping our garden grow!!!