Rules

I LOVE my classroom rules. I think they are short and to the point. My hubs actually designed these and uses them in his classroom. there are even hand signs to go with them!

Rule number 1: Follow directions quickly. (hand motions: put palms together as you move your hands like a snake)

Rule number 2: Raise your hand to speak. (hand motions:raise one hand in the air and make a talking mouth motion with the same hand that is in the air)

I generally leave off the 'permission' part but this year I learned exactly why I need to keep it; they raise their hand and just start talking! No waiting to be called on! lol. I guess that's my fault, I always forget how specific I need to be. It's like 1st day of Kinder amnesia, ha!

I just realized that I didn't get a full picture of Rule number 3: Raise your hand to leave your seat. (hand motions:raise one hand while making a snake motion with the same hand that is raised)

Rule number 4: Keep your hands and feet to yourself. (hand motions:hug yourself)

Rule number 5: (I always have them say this one really LOUD) KEEP YOUR TEACHER HAPPY!!!! (hand motions:draw a big smile in your mouth area with pointer finger of each hand)

Number 5 is their favorite by far and I tell them that following rule number 5 is the same as following all the rules because that makes me HAPPY :))

A Tour

For the first time in my 6 year teaching career I did not have to move schools, grades or classrooms. I got to stay in my room the whole year and the following year (this year). Isn't that awesome? The things we take for granted... moving classrooms SUCKS! Even though I didn't have to move or anything, I still walked into a bit of a disaster which took me an entire day to clean up. The mess was from the summer clean up crew, who in my opinion, made more of a mess than they cleaned in my room. But , hey, I didn't have to move, remember?

Anyway, come tour my classroom! My room was not meant to be a Kinder room. There are no bathrooms in the room (gasp!) and there really is nothing to it's shape- its rectangular. That's about it. My school contains 2 Kinder rooms, but there are 4 K teachers so 2 of us were lucked out. The best part about my room is the WINDOWS. Ohmygoodness, the amount of light that is poured into my room is tremendous. Plus our school is located in the foothills, so the few we have of the mountains on a non smoggy day is nothing short of amazing.

Here is my library center. I have 2 pillows there for relaxation. Once my own children give up their bean bags, I will have those, but until then...

I finally, FINALLY came up with a way to organize my books. I still have yet to make labels for them, but they are at least organized in a way I understand and the kids are able to put the books back in the correct place. I have 6 baskets and 'book doctor' basket (the red one at the top). Each basket has a small sticker that corresponds to the sticker on the basket. The 'book doctor' is there because pages are always falling out of books and what not and it drove me bonkers that they would always have to come find me, no matter what I was doing, to tell me about this book. This way, it keeps us all sane. :) and I get to it when I get to it.


This is my math wall/calendar wall/morning meeting area. My husband (who is a teacher) came up with this fabulous idea to make the math wall easy enough to leave it up for the whole year. He's a guy, he hates changing boards. I like it, but just to make life a liiiitttlllee easier, I thought I'd try out his idea. FAN.TAS.TIC. I have every standard that is taught in our curriculum on the wall! No more changing walls! I just out an arrow pointing to what we are learning now, I have another wall with student work and VOILA! an all in one math wall :) My favorite thing ever :)
That rocking chair there was the chair I used to rock my babies in when they were small, now it lives in my classroom :)

A view from my rocking chair. The orange/pink wall is my language arts wall. I have 3 going at once...a lot less time changing walls is great! You can see my "Kissing Hand" wall back there and to the right of it (not pictured) is my "Chica Chica Boom Boom" wall.

Our table crates. I have one located at each table.

Last year, I ended up with sooooo many points from Scholastic Book Clubs, that I was able to order this little number. Did I mention for FREE?!? I heart free :) I use it to house all of my math manipulatives.

Nursery Rhymes (week 1 of Kinder)

The first week of Kindergarten is a whole lot of routines, routines, routines....and I throw in some rhyming to spice it up. My district has us using the severely outdated Houghton Mifflin series for language arts, but because it is so old we can't really rely on it too much. As a result, we've been given free reign to supplement! Free reign?! Why that's one of my favorite phrases! Like when my husband tells I have free reign to go shopping...SUH-weeeet! Don't mind if I do :) Anyhooo, boy did I fly off the handle with that one. Way too excited...
I decided that this year, being my 4th fantabulous year in K, would be the year I just take the friggin' reigns and teach the standard they way I want! And you know it wouldn't be so easy if it weren't for all you fabulous teacher bloggers out there! Seriously, where have you been all my life?! I think I have serious teaching blog addiction, for reals.

I decided early on that for the first week I would be teaching a Nursery Rhymes theme. I chose Hey Diddle Diddle (a silly one the kids always love), Jack and Jill, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and Hickory Dickory Dock. I had Itsy Bitsy Spider in there too but on the first day of school, we really never made it to nursery rhyme time, so it was omitted. Share time! Here is my week one schedule :)

Standards focused on: Sequencing and rhyming and positional words (a mini lesson)

I got a lot of the worksheets and ideas from Carls Corner.

Day 1: Hey Diddle Diddle. Whoops, didn't get to that! Save it for tomorrow. First day of Kinder...you know :)

Day 2:Hey Diddle Diddle.

• We read that poem over a few times, then sang it with music. We found all of the rhymes.
• I put the characters on craft sticks after I laminated them so that we could sequence the rhyme.
  
• I took sentence strips and gave them a sheet that list all the characters, and a little tracing of that characters name. We colored, discussed and traced...then cut and sequenced them onto the sentence strip which I fashioned into a hat. They loved it. Plus they could look at their hat and be able to use it as a tool to recite the beloved nursery rhyme. It looked like this....imagine it as a hat, or course.
  
  
  
  

Day 3: Jack and Jill.

• On this day, once we got the hang of the rhyme, acted it out a few times, sang it a few more times then we talked about position words; up, down. I set them down to color (with detail) the characters in the rhyme. I got a large piece of white paper, drew a light line for a hill, taped the paper on the white board and had them paint green under the line. Then had them cut and glue the characters in the right positions using their positional words. It came out like this:
  

Day 4: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
I don't have pictures of this but basically we learned the rhyme in the same way we learned the others. I had a star printout that was given to me by my grade level, but I didn't know what it was exactly for. I thought, hey! Perfect of Twinkle Star :) Come to find out later that it was a cutting assessment for me to include in their portfolios. Oops! Oh well, I had them color and cut out the star and glue to craft sticks to be waved around while we sang it. I thought about using glitter to make them twinkle, but it was only day 4 of Kinder and I was kinda afraid it would be a big ol' mess. Maybe next year.

Day 5: Hickory Dickory Dock
I also don't have pictures of this but maybe I can explain it to you. I got a regular sized sheet of construction paper, (I used blue) and had a parent cut slits in them in the middle, and slightly to the right, and about 3 inches long. I had the students color a mouse and a grandfather clock and cut them out. They glued the clock to the left of the slit, making sure not to cover it. We glued the mice on a craft stick and stuck the craft stick into the slit so the mouse 'ran' up the clock.

I think this was simple 'not too much' way to start Kinder and I loved it. It gave me the opportunity to explain routines, teach how to use scissors, crayons, pencils and my method for gluing. I make anchor charts like Jessica Meacham does (LOVE her!), it really helps. This way they can't say they didn't know or hear you. You just point at the chart and say, 'there it is!'.

At the end of this unit, I went through and named each of my 5 table groups after the rhymes we did. Table 1 is called the "Jack and Jills", table 2 is called the "Twinkle Stars", group 3 is called "The Mice", group 4 is called the "Dishes and Spoons" and group 5 is called the "Itsy Bitsy Spiders". They are so proud of their group names. My plan is to change the names of the groups once a month according to the theme of the month. Next month (sept), we will be focusing on colors and apples. So colored apple labels? Duh! of course! I make these labels, laminate them and attach them to their crayon crates that sit at their tables.

Meet the teacher...

So I finally decided it was time for me to start up a teaching blog, since I am such a fan of all the blogs out there!

My name is Amanda, or Mrs. Schafer, as I am commonly referred to on campus. I teach Kindergarten in sunny Southern California. I've wanted to become a teacher since I was in the 4th grade and never let go of the dream. I have now been teaching for 6 years; 2 years in the 6th grade and 4 years in Kindergarten. I absolutely LOVE my sweet Kinder friends! I think I have found my 'home' in K. I work with an amazing group of teachers, my friends :)

I always tell my students' parents that my ENTIRE LIFE is children under 6, and I mean it too! I have 2 children, a boy and a girl, who are 3 and 4 respectively. I am married to a teacher (we teachers like to stick together, don't we?), we own a home in a nice neighborhood and have a little puppy (a lab/beagle mix) named Rose.

In California, teacher jobs are hard to hold down, and even harder to come by. Year after year we go through a "Pink Slip Scare"... while we have yet to receive one, we are just trying to keep living the American Dream-while we still have one! We are very thankful to have the jobs we do-the jobs we love!