Classroom Photos 2012…

Hi everyone!  Now that I finally feel like I have rested up from the weekend, I would like to share some pictures that I took of my second grade classroom.  I apologize in advance for the picture quality–I took all of the pictures with my iPhone before school started a couple of weeks ago.  I have been so busy in the last couple of weeks that this literally feels like the first time that I actually have time to write a blog post.  I have missed you guys,  so I included some FREE things for you guys  in this post so make sure that you read the whole post  :)!

I have to tell ya–I’m loving my second graders!  They are so sweet!  We are starting to get into a routine and I am so looking forward to the rest of the year with them!

This pic was taken from the front door where students enter.

This picture is from the back of the room.  The boards are pretty much bare to save space for anchor charts that I will make with my kiddos.

This is the photo from the back door. My word wall is located on the cabinet doors.

Here is a close-up of the word wall cards.

Here is my classroom library.

I added some tissue paper pom-poms to my library area for a 3-D effect.

ABC cards that I made to coordinate with the colors in the classroom. I loved how they turned out!

Standards posters for the back cabinets. I added ribbon for some extra “cuteness”.

As many of you know, I spent most of the summer reading about the Daily 5 and I am planning on implementing many of these strategies in my classroom this year.  I have to tell you that I really contemplated how I wanted to set-up my classroom library.  I ended up purchasing bins from Dollar Tree and purchased Reagan Tunstall’s Classroom Library bin pack from Teachers pay Teachers.  This was a total time saver for me!  I still have to go through and label all of the AR levels, but my kiddos have done a great job keeping everything clean and organized.  If you are interested in checking out this product, then check out my pin on Pinterest.

Source: teacherspayteachers.com via Barbara on Pinterest

The following items are from my TpT store:

Now on to some FREE items!

There is one more FREEBIE because I think you guys are awesome :).

I hope that you guys have a great week!

Fall Freebies and I’ve Missed You!

Hello my bloggy friends!  I’m so sorry that I’ve been MIA for the last couple of months on my blog.  I’ve been super busy at school and at home!  So many projects and so little time!  I’m just now starting to feel like I’m getting back to a normal routine.  I wanted to re-post some fall ideas and printables AND I wanted to post some new things for you too!  🙂

Happy fall everyone!

~Barb

Where it All Goes Down….Classroom Tour 2011!

Ok, so I realize that it is Monday….AND I was suppose to post this last Wednesday, but it’s been a pretty busy week.  School started last week and can I just say…I love my little class of wonderful kiddos!  I’m super excited about this school year!

So…now it’s time to share my classroom photos :).

Can I just say I ❤ Pinterest!  Here are some of the projects that I created for my classroom that were inspired by “pins” on Pinterest.

Well that is all for now, but check back later in the week for other posts (HINT:  they are going to include FREEBIES)!  Have a great week everyone!  🙂

~Barb

Spring Garden Ideas…

Yay!  I’m on Spring Break and just a tad excited about that!  It has been a really busy time at school, there are only 33 days of school left!  We have been having lots of fun the last month learning about Plants and Gardens, Bunnies and Eggs.  Here are some pictures of a few  fun plant activities we completed in the last couple of weeks:

We completed this fun activity when we were learning about the parts of a plant.

You can download the words for a part of a plant here:  Parts of a Flower Words.

We also painted paper, cut them out and made a flower, this was project will be part of our Science journals that we have been making.  Here is a picture:

You can download the Spring Flower page here: Flower Science Journal Page

We also had a blast learning and singing this Dr. Jean song posted on You Tube:

We also sang this song from Harry’s Kindergarten:

If you are looking for a TON of great ideas for your Spring Garden theme, then you must check out Mrs. Lee’s Spring Garden Post here.

I have gotten a lot of ideas from Mrs. Lee’s kindergarten, which is definitely one of my all time favorite blogs!  If you would like to purchase the clip art that Mrs. Lee used to make her worksheets, they are from DJ Inker’s May Doodler Download.  It is available to purchase and download for $4.99 from their website :).

Kindergarten Crayons also has a lot of Garden Themed printables available.  You will have to view her posts from the last month or so to find them, but they are well worth the search :).  Click here be taken to this great teaching blog.

Have fun with your little ones while you learn about plants and flowers!

~Barb

Happy St. Patty’s Day!

May the Luck o’ the Irish be with all of you today!  Seriously,  I love this holiday and I’m looking forward to a jam packed day full of fun activities with my little ones (I’m also really looking forward to our staff Potato Bar Potluck this afternoon too;)).  Here are a few fun things that we completed today:

We made leprechaun paper plate masks! So fun!

We sorted and counted Skittles! Yum!

If you would like to have the Skittle sorting worksheets, they are available from Toddler House.  You can get them if you scroll down their St. Patrick’s Day unit page here.

We completed a TON of wonderful worksheets from Shannon Martin, which she posted on her blog Kindergarten Hoppenings.  You can see her post here and download all of her wonderful resources for free :).

Tomorrow we are planning on completing the Leprechaun’s Gold project that April Larremore posted on her blog Chalk Talk.  You can download a copy of the directions here.

We are also going to work on this Leprechaun writing prompt and make color some simple leprechaun patterns that I have.  Here is the writing prompt:  Leprechauns Like To writing prompt

And here are some great ideas of things that other people are doing:

This is a photo in a colleagues classroom of a project that they completed with pattern blocks. Too cute and I love how it incorporates math, art and language!

One of the special education teachers that I work with had her kids make these paper plate leprechauns, which I must say are adorable!

You can find directions for making this paper plate leprechaun here.

I hope that all of you had a great St. Patrick’s Day!  Last year’s St. Patrick’s day post also has lots of great ideas if you would like to check it out!

Mrs. Kilburn’s St. Patrick’s Day Fun

~Barbara

We’re on Our Way, We’re on Our Way…On our Way to Mrs. Kilburn’s Farm!

Can you tell that we’ve been learning about the farm?  My class just finished this unit last week and we had an ABSOLUTE blast learning about farm animals!

Here is a picture of our farm mural complete with a tractor ride–too cute!  The idea originally came from Kimberly Jordano’s website Kinder by Kim.  There are a TON of wonderful ideas here :).  So–here’s my recreation of the farm mural:

We also had a lot of fun completing some non-standard measurement activities.

Julie Lee from Mrs. Lee’s Kindergarten completely inspired me to make this farm animal station activity (she always has the best station activity ideas :)):

I copied the clip-art of the different animals on various colors of construction paper and then had students complete and color their worksheets to match.  The clip-art is from DJ Inkers.  If you would like copies of the worksheets then you can download them here:

• cows for barn measurement activity
• How far is it to the barn math
• Farm animal measurement
• farm animals for measurement

We also read a couple of different versions of the Little Red Hen and painted Little Red Hens :):

We discussed how we can be like the Little Red Hen (text to self connections) and brainstormed our answers.  Students later completed the writing prompt.  You can get the prompt here and the bulletin board sign:

Little Red Hen writing prompt

We also had a lot of fun learning about the various animals that live on a farm.  We sang the song “The Animals in the Barn” and completed this pocket chart activity:

This song is part of my TpT Farm Mini-Unit available for purchase

We also graphed the farm animals that we liked.  This is also a part of my Farm Mini-Unit available for purchase from TpT.  Here is a picture:

Here are some other sample images from my On the Farm Mini-Unit available to purchase from TpT:

If you are interested in getting more information about my Farm theme available for purchase on Teachers Pay Teachers, then click here.  I’ll keep posting some more photos in the next couple of days of projects that we completed during our farm theme, and who knows…I may have another giveaway in the near future :).

 

~Barbara

 

What We are Doing Wednesday…

This week is a short week for us with the Veteran’s Day holiday and Friday is a furlough day for our district.  So, we’ve been busy doing all kinds of fun stuff!

This week we have been learning about the color purple, the letter N, and continuing our fall theme.  We have also started to talk about Thanksgiving and completed a few projects related to this theme.

Here are some pictures of stuff we’ve been doing:

This week we finished our November math journal page, which is a turkey.

Here is the pattern that I used for the turkey:  Turkey Project Directions and Pattern. The printable at the bottom of the page is from Martha Shehan’s kindergarten site.  You can print this page at the bottom of her November theme page here.

We continued our discussions about fall and made these lovely fall leaves:

We first fingerpainted and then the next day sponge painted the leaves to add texture with bright fall colors.

We also completed lots of counting activities:

Here is a picture of a station activity that I made with some die-cuts and fabric leaves I found at Dollar Tree.

Here is another example of an activity where I used the Dollar Tree leaves. We used these manipulatives to act out the poem Five Little Leaves.

In case you are interested here is a picture of the poem, “Five Little Leaves” that I got from the Mailbox Companion a few years ago:

We also started making our Kinder Lit Thanksgiving book.  Here are some pictures of what we have completed so far:

Here is the cover, which is a handprint turkey.

Here is the first page which features a pilgrim.

If you are interested in ordering this book, then visit the Kinder Lit site here.

We also finished the purple page for our TLC color book:

In case you are wondering about ordering information for the TLC book, then you can visit their site here.

Now, for some of my favorite stuff–FREE stuff!  I’m traced the die-cuts that I used for the leaves and tree so you can make your own fall themed projects:

Fall Leaf Patterns

Bare Tree Pattern

 

I’d love to hear or see what fall or Thanksgiving themed projects that you’ve been working on.  Leave a comment or post a link to your site or blog to share your ideas!

 

~Barbara

What We are Doing Wednesday…

Hello everyone!  I’m soooo very sorry that I had to miss last week’s post.  It was an insane week with activities, but the important thing is that I’m back!

This week we’ve been learning about the letter F and the color Brown.  We are also continuing to learn about patterning in math.  Oh, I almost forgot–we’ve also been learning about fall and how the leaves change colors!  Here in Central California it is just now starting to feel like fall and the leaves are starting to change colors, so it seemed a little silly to talk about this earlier at the beginning of fall :).

Here are some of the things that we’ve been working on lately:

We made some cute fall owls out of construction paper. We used circle and triangle shape sponges to make the eyes and beak.

Last week we learned about the life cycle of a pumpkin and completed this sequencing activity.

We also completed this fall tree project with torn paper. We talked about how the leaves on the trees are changing colors.

We also finished two more pages for our TLC Color book.  Here are some pictures:

Here is the orange page. The cat's turned out so adorable! I love how each cat looked so different!

Here is the brown page. These little 'doggies' turned out so cute!

Here is the fall writing page in case you were interested:  Fall Leaf Page.

Also, if you are looking for more great Fall themed ideas, then check out the Fall theme page for more ideas and links to wonderful printables and other great Fall theme pages on the web.

Come back next week to see what we’ve been up to!  Thanks for looking everyone!

~Barbara

What We are Doing Wednesday

Hello everyone!  Welcome to my weekly “What We are Doing” post.  This past week we finished learning about the colors black and white and made life size skeletons with hand prints and foot prints.  I have to say, these did turn out pretty cute !

We also made another page in our TLC Color book for the color black (I’ll post the other pages later so you can see).

We have also been learning about patterning this month.  So, we made a cute art project with some bat and ghosts sponges.  This page will be their October page for their math journals.

I also used sponge paper to make the moon shape, which students sponged onto their papers.

I’m a little behind, but we also made our math journal covers.  This will hold our monthly Math Journal projects.  I’m planning on binding all of the pages and passing them out when we have Open House this year.

Last, but not least, we’ve been learning about spiders this week too.  We marble painted paper and then used a spider sponge to add our spiders.  Students later added some facts about their spiders on their papers.  Here is a picture:

In case you are interested, I thought that I would include the spider writing printable:  spider writing.

There are also more great spider activities listed on the Spider Theme page which you can access here:  Mrs. Kilburn’s Spider Unit.

That’s pretty much what we’ve been up to, what about you?  I’d love to hear about what’s going on in your classrooms.  Tune in next week for pictures of our pumpkin activities–I can’t wait!

 

~Barbara

What We Are Doing Wednesday

Welcome!  I had to skip last week’s post due to some unforeseen computer issues, but thank goodness, everything is better now :).

Well, it’s been a busy couple of weeks!  I’m so happy that October is here, and we’ve been having fun reading and learning all about our October themes.

Last week we learned about the letter M and read all kinds of fun books about monsters, and graphed M & M’s.  We made this cute book about a monster party:

Here are some pictures of some wonderful monster books that we read:

This week we are learning about the letter X, the color white and we are reading lots of silly stories about skeletons.    We made these fun TLC ghosts:

I almost forgot to add that we also did a couple of fun Columbus Day activities too!

I hope that you enjoyed this post and tune in next week to see what we’ve been doing.

~Barbara