Bubbles and Butterflies

Tomorrow is the first day of school and my stomach is bubbling with excitement and nervous  with butterflies! I can’t wait to see the new faces of my kiddos. I don’t know why I always feel so nervous on the first day of school!

I’ve worked all weekend trying to get everything accomplished, but I still don’t feel like I’ve done all that I needed to do. I know that it’ll all be great in the end. I’ve found some really great ideas on TpT that I can’t wait to try. Love that I can use such great ideas from other teachers!

I’ll let ya’ll know how everything went. Good luck to all you teachers who are starting tomorrow!

Chunk Wall

This year I’ve started a Chunk Wall in my room as part of our Balanced Literacy program. Teaching children to read and spell using chunks is wonderful! I usually give my firsties two chunks for the week that they work on in class and at home. This means no more spelling lists and no more memorizing words just for a test! It’s so much easier to see if your kiddos are really able to read and spell words when you teach using chunks. After all, if they know the chunk, they should be able to use it with multiple letters and sounds.

I don’t know about you, but we have a LOT of chunks that we teach throughout the year, and my wall space is a little limited. One of the wonderful teachers on my campus came up with the idea to put all of the chunks for each letter on a ring. This makes the Chunk Wall more interactive, and your firsties can take it to their seat as a resource.

Here’s a picture of what my Chunk Wall looks like in my classroom!

Creating your Chunk Wall is SO easy ya’'ll! Just type out all of your chunk words for the year (or you can do it as you go if that’s easier), add a picture for the chunk and put them on a ring. It doesn’t take up a lot of space, and you can have them all right there!

One very talented teacher on my team suggested having the kids write letters on post its to place stapled or taped at the beginning of the chunk. I love that idea, and I’ll let you know how it goes!

Calendar Time!

Okay ya’ll, so I’ve finally gotten around to working on my walls! I was able to get several things accomplished in my classroom today! I was so proud of me! It’s so easy to waste time catching up with everyone and lose track of time! I L.O.V.E to visit, so I have to really watch myself!

Anyway, I got my interactive word wall, my chunk wall, and name chart all completed. I also put together my packets for Meet the Teacher. Lots of stuff marked off of my To Do list.  Next up is my Calendar! I haven’t really had a weather chart, and I’ve been needing one BADLY! I found a cute one on Pinterest, and I adjusted it a bit for what I needed.

Here’s the adorable one on Pinterest.

And here is my version! If you think you could use this in your classroom, just click on the link below to download. Enjoy!

ABC Order Freebie!

Here’s a little ABC order center that I made for my Fantastic Farm Unit. Since I’ve been so busy, and I haven’t gotten that posted yet, I thought I’d go ahead and share one of the activities. I hope you all enjoy and I hope you are having a great time getting your classrooms all ready!

Work days officially start for me tomorrow! Can’t believe it’s already here!

Click on the pic below to dowload!

It’s that time!

OMGoodness! I’ve had the craziest week! Packing, moving, unpacking, trying to set up my classroom, sending my baby boy to daycare… wow. School is definitely in the air, and life has become busy, busy, busy!

This year, our school theme is Hollywood! I’m so excited because there are so many cute things that you can do with that theme. Today I tackled my bulletin boards. I have two bulletin boards outside my classroom. This is my first one, that I’ll put all of my kiddos names on.

Our next bulletin board needed to be used to put our kiddos published writing, so I did a movie theme for that one.

I’m so relieved that I at least got that accomplished. My classroom was an absolute wreck. It always is after summer break. Here’s my room looking not so great! It’s starting to look better though, so I’ll post some updated pics soon!

Pretty bad huh? Can’t wait to get it looking all great!