Clean Freak

I definitely do not consider myself to be a clean freak. Or a neat freak. But as I have settled into being a stay at home mom of two for the summer, I am finding myself cleaning and organizing more and more. Maybe it's because toddlers make a mess everywhere they go or maybe it's because I am in my home more than I am when I work. But I am starting to get the clean freak itch. If there's clutter, I need to pick it up and I want everything to have a particular place. I've done some organizational projects this summer and have tried to stay on track of household cleaning by creating a weekly schedule where I do certain tasks on certain days of the week (wash the sheets on Mondays, wash the kids' clothes on Tuesdays etc.) I doubt I will stick with the same schedule when I return to work, but it's working for the summer. I don't always do the assigned task for the day, but in a week, I definitely make sure that the laundry gets done, the bathrooms get cleaned, and everything gets dusted in addition to many other weekly jobs. 

Now that the back to school buzz has officially started (I cannot believe how many teachers are returning to work already!), I started wondering if my cleaning mojo will continue into my classroom. 

There are some teachers that clean surfaces in their classrooms daily, disinfect all the time, and constantly prevent the spread of germs.

I have never been one of those teachers.

I tend to subscribe to the belief that kids need to be exposed to things in order to be immune from them...so my past teacher self has not been super concerned about cleaning on top of what our custodians do. But I am realizing this summer that I actually really enjoy clean. It's not so much the idea that cleaning will prevent germs or sickness, but the feeling of calmness that happens for me when my house and my living space is clean and organized.

So...I am wondering how much time you spend tidying/cleaning/disinfecting your classroom on a daily basis.

What cleaning tasks do you do yourself?

If your school had an award for cleanest classroom, would you win? 

Fun Activity for Working with Basic Shapes

This morning I took Little Sneaker and Baby Sneaker to the toddler story time at our local library. Little Sneaker is finally rocking out story time and participates with all the songs and activities. She loves bubbles the most and actually sat near the teacher for the stories today

 (although she did turn around to blow me kisses)

The theme of the stories today was shapes and for one of the activities, the teacher/librarian brought out square scarves. She sang a little song about things that have four corners. It inspired me with an idea for using scarves in Kindergarten. I am always trying to incorporate fun ways to practice our math concepts that still really focus on what we are learning about and give the kiddos hands on experiences with math. As we played around with the scarves I noticed that the square-shape scarves could easily be folded to show a rectangle and a triangle, so I think I might buy some and try it out. I asked the librarian where she found the scarves and she said Lakeshore. 

Hers are neon colors, but I much prefer these rainbow colored ones I found on the Lakeshore site. They are $16.99 for a dozen, so I would buy two sets and hope that it would be enough! I supposed kiddos could always share if my class exceeds 23-24 students this year. I just got a text that Lakeshore is having a buy one get one 50% off sale so that works perfectly for this purchase! I should head over there today when the littles way up from their naps. 

I love these bright colors and love how they go with the color scheme I already have going in my classroom. I am thinking of trying out some rainbow chevron accents this year as well. 

I think these would be fun to incorporate in the classroom in general, but they will also be great to use during our shape unit (and folding the material is good for hand/eye coordination and fine motor development as well). We can experiment with folding them to make a rectangle, a smaller square, big and small triangles etc. I can also have the kiddos use their iPads to photograph their scarves and then have them use Educreations or Book Creator to import their pictures and record the names of the shapes they made. 

Here are a few other fun shape ideas...

http://learningdevelopmentactivities.blogspot.com/2010/01/snowman-shape-pictures.html

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/I-Have-Who-HasShapes-125313

http://kinderteacher-kindergartenlife.blogspot.com/2011/09/momma-always-said-never-play-with-your.html

http://www.flapjackeducation.com/2012/09/geometry-technology-snack-time.html?m=1

I also got this free download on TPT for mini shape posters that I display on my math wall when we are doing our shape unit. 

Do you have any ideas for hands on activities to use while learning shapes? 

This and That

Yesterday Miss Kindergarten posted about some sweet number practice pages she has on her TPT site. I really like them and her entire TPT store in 20% off today! Hope on over there and check it out!

Last year my team purchased some teen number pages similar to these and I really liked working through the pages as we learned the teen numbers. What I particularly like about Miss Kindergarten's pages are how they "make it" and "build it" parts. I usually have my kiddos use stampy markers to make the number and I plan to have them use unifix cubes to build and then color the number too. Then I'll probably have them photograph their unifix stick with their iPads and record something about the number we're working on. I love how these sheets provide opportunities for hands on practice in addition to paper/pencil because kids love to have busy  hands. Her pack includes 58 pages that I plan to incorporate into math practice and morning work for number practice/review. 

Thanks Miss Kindergarten! 

Yesterday I was out shopping at JCrew with the Sneaker family and I met a fellow blogger that I've been following for years. I was at the register providing my info because Mr. Sneaker wanted to order a shirt that is available online only. If you place the order in the store the shipping is free. {sidenote: I scored a super cute outfit that was on sale with an additional 50% off, AND they honored the 15% off teacher discount. The pants were $15 and the shirt was $21. Super good deals for spendy JCrew!} 

Anyway, at the register, after I said my name, Roxanne from Books that Heal Kids, who was browsing through some jewelry near the register turned to me and said, "Do you have a blog? Are you Sneaker Teacher?" Ahhhhh! Never in a million years did I think I would have that moment! Roxanne is a school counselor has a great blog with terrific book reviews and recommendations for teachers. How fun to meet her in person! If you haven't seen her blog check it out!

Oh, and this...

Have you ever met a fellow blogger in person? 

What blogger would you love to meet? 

Decluttering

I went back to my classroom this morning with the girls to tackle the mess on the tables. 

 I had huge piles of stuff to sort through and put away in the cabinets.

Little Sneaker once again had tons of fun exploring the classroom and playing with everything. I think we were there 3 hours this morning and got home just in time for her nap. She is currently zonked out in her bed and I am hoping she has a good long nap. 

I spent time trying to sort and organize things and put them in places that makes sense. I still have quite a few piles that need attention, but I feel good about what I accomplished. 

I organized the shelves that are close to my desk. I have my reading materials on the left side and then math, science, and assessment materials on the right side. You can see my nice, colorful binders all lined up on the shelf. :-)

I am not going to send literacy bags home this year because I had many parents sign up last year and then request to not receive them anymore. I think for families that have younger siblings, there are way too many small pieces included in the games and it was difficult to keep track of everything. I also often had kids tell me they never even opened the bag once they got it home and once again many things went missing. The biggest difficulty was doing inventory on the bags every single week to check for missing items and then trying to track down said missing items until they were returned. That was really time consuming. I am hoping to deconstruct the bags and use the books and activities in a different way instead of sending them home. For now, this is their home until I figure out what exactly I am going to do with them. 

I put all of my games on the bottom shelf. Those activities will most likely be used during play time, choice time, or small group time if I have parent helpers. 

This cabinet houses my science materials on the bottom two shelves and my math materials on the rest of the shelves. I decided to keep unifix cubes, my tile games, and my pattern blocks on shelves that the kiddos can access because when too much stuff is hidden away in the cabinets I forget that I have it. Since I am planning to do a daily play time this year, even if it's a short one, those materials will probably be used a lot more frequently than they have been in the past. 

I forgot to take a photo of those shelves, but they are the shelves that separate my carpet area from my desk area. I really hope it's not a problem to have those materials on the shelves that the kids sit near while they are on the carpet. I guess I can always cover the shelves with curtains if the materials are distracting.

It's crazy that I've already put in about 7 hours of time working in my room and I don't feel anywhere near done. I still need to create my bulletin boards, hang my alphabet wall, finish cleaning up and organizing etc. There is so much to do! I am really glad that it's working out to take the girls with me because it gives me a LOT of extra time to work. If I waited until school started to do all of this, I would never get finished! 

Making a Mess

This morning I brought both Little Sneaker (2 years) and Baby Sneaker (2 months) with me to my classroom because I really wanted to start organizing in there. I wasn't sure how much I would be able to get done with a very curious toddler in tow, but I made some good progress. I didn't take any photos because the room looks a whole lot messier now than it did when we arrived. I spent the entire time taking everything out of the cabinets. All of my stuff is disorganized and mixed up from the move and there were things in the cabinets that belong to other people. I feel kind of bad booting out stuff that people left, but I am pretty sure it should have been moved by now. It's not like I am throwing it out, just moving it out into the hallway.

It was quite an undertaking, but I finally got everything out. I sorted all my stuff by subject so all my math stuff is on one table, all the science/social studies stuff on another table, and all my reading games on a third table. I put all the random stuff in a pile and hung all my literacy bags in a cabinet that I don't plan to use for student stuff.

Now, I am really anxious to get back in there and put stuff away. The school is open for a daycare program all summer and the rooms aren't locked. I no longer have my key because it was turned into the office by my maternity sub so I can't lock the door or else I won't be able to get back in. I don't think anything will get stolen, but you never know. I'd much prefer to have my stuff hidden away in cabinets. Before I start putting stuff back though, I need to figure out a plan of attack to make sure it will all be really organized. I have so much stuff and lots of things that I haven't used in a long time. I am hoping that if I get my stuff more organized, I will be better able to access everything.

I literally could have spent all day in there working, but it was time for my littles to eat and we needed to get home for nap time. I think we will head over again on Wednesday morning. Little Sneaker enjoyed playing with all my stuff so she kept herself busy without making any disastrous messes. She was exhausted when we got home and went right out when I put her down for her nap. Baby Sneaker slept the whole time we were there and still went down for another snooze at 12:30.

While they sleep, I am going to work on my orders for the print shop since they get really slammed at the beginning of the year and orders come back much more quickly over the summer. I have all my orders saved in a folder from last summer, so it should be pretty simple to get that taken care of today.

Do you go into your classroom during the summer? How often do you go?

Organizing

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that I'm not the only one that loves color coding. I am currently working on organizing the materials that go with our new phonics program and I just about spent a fortune at Staples buying binders that match the ones containing my Journeys materials. 

Last summer I purchased Journeys Through The Year Kindergarten Edition from Teachers Pay Teachers. It includes binder covers with different colored backgrounds and I was really excited to find binders in those same colors at Staples. They weren't cheap, but I just like the way they look and I think that color coding by different units is helpful.

This year we are using a new phonics program called ECRI which stands for Enhanced Core Reading Instruction. ECRI is not a curriculum itself, it's a set of instructional routines, so our district paid a lot of money to have those instructional routines aligned specifically with Journeys so that we can more explicitly teach letters, sounds, phonics, and word blending using the scope and sequence from Journeys. The ECRI materials are broken down into units just like Journeys, so yesterday I went back to Staples to buy more coordinating binders. I used the same binder covers from the Journeys bundle and just wrote ERCI at the top of each. 

Now, for each Journeys unit, I have 1 binder with all the lesson cards, retelling cards, sight word cards etc., and 1 binder with all of my ECRI materials for that unit. 

I have the organizing itch, so I think I am going to bring both Little Sneaker and Baby Sneaker to my classroom tomorrow so I can start organizing my shelves and my cabinets. I don't know how long we'll last, but I figure it's worth a shot. I have stuffed animals and a little market stand among my classroom stuff, so I am hoping those will keep Little Sneaker occupied for at least an hour. 

How do you use color coding in your classroom?