To put it mildly, our first week of kindergarten has been a little hectic! Our first day was supposed to be last Monday, but was cancelled due to flooding. Then, we had about a million and one kids register for kindergarten during the first week, so I was the overflow class until we got another teacher hired. Let me go ahead and sing the praises of all of you who are out there teaching 25+ kids! After teaching 18-20 for the past 4 years, 27 felt like I was in the looney bin! It took us forever to get anywhere! I'm saying extra prayers for y'all who don't have caps on class size daily now!
Although we were a little cramped, we did have fun and managed to get a few things done. Here's what went down:
We took first day pictures {thanks to Michelle over at Apples and ABCs for the sweet K idea!} and had Jitter Juice to celebrate our first day...

We learned all about what we should and should not do with the help of Lyndsey's Kindergarten pack...

We started a little alphabet introduction with the letter Aa {our new series does a quick intro of all letters before going back and diving deep}...

We rainbow trace each letter and glue something on it that begins with the letter. We put glitter on vowels.

We practiced sorting letters {you can get this here or in my bundle here}

We also sorted letters whole group {this is in the packs linked above as well}

We also started working on shapes and began with a circle since it's one most kids know when they come to us...

This is a super simple graphic organizer we did together...the kids had their own to fill in

We sorted shapes into circle and not a circle {the kids also had their own cut and paste version of this}

We painted circles using marshmallows...the kids loved this!

We made our first shape person! I love these little guys and it gave us some great cutting practice as well as practice talking about the properties of circles.

These activities {except the painting circles} are all in my You Better Shape Up pack.

We've done lots more and I hope to blog about it this week...how have your first weeks been??

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Vickie

So, life threw us a bit of a curveball this weekend and due to some major flooding, we had to postpone our first day of school until tomorrow! Boo for rain!!
I did sneak up to school today to get some last minute things done and snapped some pics of my room to share (sorry about how dark some of them are...I moved to a new room and haven't figured out the lighting just yet)
My new room is actually in a building, but I haven't quite figured out exactly what I want to do outside my door, so I just put out my big apple and hung my door hanger. I also made a ribbon curtain that I'm in love with!!

 The view from the door {it's by far the biggest room I've ever had!}

When you walk in, to the left are my writing and reading centers...

The I can cards and mini picture cards are from Lori at Teaching with Love and Laughter and the conventions and punctuation posters are from Lyndsey at A Year of Many Firsts. I love the idea of hanging the cards with mini clothespins {Thanks Deedee!!}

Love this rug I found at Wal-Mart and my cute little shelf my granddad bought me my first year of teaching! We'll add anchor charts throughout the year to this space.

On the back side of the shelf in the reading area are my play center buckets. Beside that is a closet {don't hate me, but I have 3 huge closets!}, that I turned into a home center.

Our first homework assignment will be bringing in environmental print for this area

On around, there is a sink area that we'll hang good work above, the computers, and art center

Next is my small group area and teacher area, neither of which are super cute {I kind of ran out of time!}. My word wall is on the windows above so that a little bit of the PE playground could be blocked ;)

Endless stacks of beginning of the year forms!

Going on around to the front of my room, I have my calendar and white board, shelves with workshop and math tubs, and another shelf with my theme books.

Love this smartie jar a new sweetie gave me! It matches my Smarty Pants from Abby perfectly!

Love these Kid President quotes! You can get them here for free!

Still with me?? Told you this room is huge! On the last wall I have three bulletin boards...one is for work, one is for birthdays, and one is seasonal. Underneath is a long shelf with cubbies underneath and then beside it is a little shelf that I keep wipes, tissues, emergency stuff, etc.

A few more random pics...

Love my chair pouches my granny made!

Ready for the first day!!

Whew!! That was a lot to take in! All of the alphabet, number, color, and shape posters are in my Primary Punch pack on TpT. You've still got some time to stock up during the big sale, so hurry on over!
I'm off to bed to hopefully get some sleep before we start tomorrow!

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Vickie

Where in the world did the summer go?? I feel like I blinked and it was gone. I had grand intentions of writing lots of blog posts, getting things ready, getting my craft on etc., but life just sort of happened and it didn't get done. I can't make any apologies though because I was busy with this cutie pie who just happened to turn 9 (yes, 9!!!) months old last week!

Teachers have been back at school a little over a week now and just like all of you, we've been busy with meetings, learning a new reading series, meeting parents, and meeting our sweet kids.As busy as it is and although with a little one, its a little harder to have it all together, I still LOVE this time of year! Getting a new group of sweet little babies is so much fun!
I had planned on going to work at school today, but it has rained all dang day, plus my little one decided to grow out of her play clothes almost over night, so I made a change of plans and went to Target! While I was there, I picked up some more black ink (story of my life!) so I could print out just a *few* more things before the kids officially start on Monday. I hope to have a little classroom tour ready for you tomorrow after I go and get some finishing touches ready. {Nothing like last minute, huh?} In the meantime, here's what we'll be working on next week:

Our reading series (and let me go ahead and say it is going to take some time to get used to having one!) does a quick intro of letters the first 3 weeks, so we'll be doing lots of quick and easy activities!

We'll use these to sort letters each day then at the end of the week, I'll just use the first letter cards and we'll sort the letters we've learned. These are in my sorting pack or part of my alphabet bundle.

These will be an easy activity for us to learn how to follow directions...especially with cutting and gluing! The top two are from my sorting pack and the bottom is from my Amazing Alphabet (also in the bundle).

I'm also going to s-l-o-w-l-y introduce workshops (literacy centers) so that I can get our diagnostic testing done.

We'll start by talking about our rules during workshops. I love these posters from Kristen's Literacy Centers Pack!

We'll mainly be doing some super simple centers like this one (that still has to be laminated!!) from my Back to School pack.

In math, we're going to be learning about 0 and 1 and circles. I'll be using activities from my Nifty Numbers pack as well as my Shape Up pack.

Super easy activity pages that hopefully won't be too hard for the first week! We'll also do the sorting activity whole group with big colored cards that are in the pack.

I can't wait to make these! There are patterns for 11 different shape craftivities in the pack!

I'm hoping that we get time to work on our goals and I love this sheet from Alisha over at The Bubbly Blonde.

This is from her Kickin' In Kindergarten pack and it is full of cute ideas!

I thought I had almost everything ready for Monday until I saw this cute freebie poem and idea from my sweet friend Kristen over at A Day in First Grade. I think I might be making playdough tomorrow!

Now, I'm off to fill my wishlist over at TpT...the big Back to School sale starts tomorrow and I know I'll be stocking up on lots of good stuff!

Thanks to Krista Wallden for the button!

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Vickie

If you're like me, the beginning of the new school year is filled with lots of excitement, a little anxiety, and a lot of fun buying back to school goodies to create your "perfect" classroom! I think getting my classroom ready is one of my favorite things to do and just like many of you, I have my go-to products that I have to have to help me have a great year. To help you find some new must haves for your classroom {or remember some of your favorites}, I've teamed up with a fabulous group of bloggers to bring you this year's Back to School Must Haves e-magazine {a big thanks to April over at A Modern Teacher and Melanie at Schoolgirl Style for heading this up!!}.
Click below to read all about our favorites {and lucky you, you can click on the pictures to get to the product!} and to find and follow some new blogs!

Now, I've got to get back to getting my room ready! Pictures coming soon :)

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Vickie