Musical Monday: ...or not!

Sorry, no music here. But at least I committed to making a post, right? No?

Well, I just have to share some of my favorite stories that I *actually* remember:

Lil' Miss Sassy: "Teacher, are you married?"
Me: "No, I am not."
Lil' Miss Sassy: "WHAT?"
Me: "Yep. I don't want to be married!"
Lil' Miss Sassy: "Ah! That is SO sad!"

Other Lil' Sassies regularly like to draw Ms. Bueno with a baby in her belly, with high heels, and with fancy dresses (I guess I haven't worn a dress yet!)
Ha!

Pigtails: (makes noises with her mouth).
Me:" ____, we're not making noises right now."
Pigtails: "Oh! We're not making noises right now?"
Me: "No. We need to be quiet in the hall."
Pigtails: "So no noises right now?"
Me: "No noises. Please put a bubble in your mouth."
Pigtails: "Oh! I can make them at home?"
Me: "Yes, you can make noises at home. Right now we need to be quiet."
Pigtails: "Oh, ok. (Says to a friend) I can make noises at home."

While responding to The Three Little Pigs...

Me: "Who can raise their hand and tell me a main event from this story? Yes, ___?"
Ponytail: "The wolf should'a been a STAR."
(Smile, Take a deep breath, And Relax!!! Conscious Discipline working for ya, right here!)

Work It!

Am I the only one who actually likes coming in on the weekends? Hear me out! I can get so much done when no one else is around!
Today's post is dedicated to teachers who work 7 days a week and work with what they've got! I found new places for things and rediscovered things I had! Yes, even after unpacking my room just a couple months ago I forget what I have.

I finally put together a little paper organizer the teacher before me had left behind at the old campus. When I put it on a covered storage tub next to my *tiny* office area it made such a cute and organized space! I finally have everything together!

Can you spy Pete? I talk to him throughout the day... I'm not crazy, I swear.

We practiced this math game this week but I had to use little boxes for the jewels. I finally found my drawstring bags as I was cleaning today! It makes counting the jewels that much more fun!

They're a little hard to see, but I have 12 bags filled with different combinations of 5 jewels!

And then I found these and I thought you could help me... What do I do with them???

Versatile Blogger Award!

Wow! What a nice award to be passed around! Jennifer at Herding Kats in Kindergarten was kind enough to think of me when paying forward the feel-goodness of being recognized.

Have you seen her cute new blog design? I love the freebies tab up at the top for easy access! Here's a quick note to my blogging buckaroo:

Dear Jennifer,

Thank you so much for giving ME a pick-me-up in a slow blogging month. I so appreciate you taking the time to comment on my posts lately. Please know that your comments remind me that I DO have something to offer the blogging world and empower me to keep it up. I hope we can connect more in the future!

Now for the rules of this award:

1.  Thank the person/people that nominated you and provide a link back to their blog. 

2. Share 7 things about yourself.

3.  Pass this award along to 15 other blogs that you have discovered

Let's move on to the second rule then!

Seven Things About the Kinder Kid

1. I could eat spaghetti every day. With sauce, with lemon and butter, with vegetables, with chicken, with cheese... if I needed to choose a last meal it would be with my mom's meatballs.

2. I am a huge gourmet soda fan. Yes, gourmet. Not the big corporate brands- little bottlers and international sodas are more fun. I visited the coolest store called the Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles and brought back two boxes of bubbly beverages on the plane! I even met the owner, John Nese, who is the sweetest guy.

3. I have a "See Them Live Before They Stop Touring"list. I saw Beck and  the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at ACL. Cake for New Years '10 was so. much. fun. I need to catch Modest Mouse, Gorrilaz, and OkGo soon! Their tour dates have never matched my schedule. :(

4. I have made some pretty neat pieces of jewelry in the past couple of years. I'm making this Dr. Who beaded scarf for a friend, wish me luck!

(This is just the example... I hope I can get it right!)

5. I have 5 pairs of Vans... The yucky looking green and blue pair are 8 years old! I can't seem to part with them! I want so badly to get some in my school's colors but I'm pretty sure they would be frowned upon as too casual :(

6. I have a few nerdy celebrity host crushes... Alton Brown from Good Eats, Adam Savage from Mythbusters and Anthony Bourdain from No Reservations are such charming, hilarious, and my-kind-of-cerebral guys! (I think my boyfriend has similar qualities, too, heh!)

7. I hate walking barefoot on tile, I love sleeping with two blankets swaddling me, and I find it really hard to drink enough water during the day.

Next rule! 15 blogs that I want to pay this forward to:

My fellow teaching newbs!

Teaching and Life: At the Beach

Intern Teacher Tales

And my new friends!

The Kinder Life

A Teacher's Touch

Kindergarten Katy

And my Texan friends!

And excellent blogs all around!

Thanks again, Jennifer! :)

4 and 5 Jives!

Wrapping up our 0-5 unit tomorrow. We definitely need some review on 4 and 5 before we move on to patterns. YouTube to the rescue!

Laura from Kinder Kraziness has been sharing some cute Sesame Street videos and I stumbled upon this one from a few years ago! I LOVE Feist! What a cute take on the song!

Then I went with trusty old TMBG for a 5 video!

Musical Monday: Why did I make this commitment for Mondays?

Feeling a little uninspired for today's Musical Monday... and blogging in general, for that matter! I have so much catching up to do here, but I still feel like I'm always running around, no time to sit down at the computer! I did get a tip from Jennifer at Herding Cats in Kindergarten about these quick handwriting videos:

I made a channel on YouTube to keep 'em all together! Not very musical, but it'll have to do for today.

Worksheet Works

NOT a huge worksheet fan... but WorksheetWorks.com is a nicely organized website that lets you customize each activity. Check out some of the things I found!

Musical Monday: YouTube!

I finally got my YouTube channel up and running in an effort to organize the videos I've been using and beef up my classroom blog.

Click here to visit it!

Click on the ABC's thumbnail to rock out to the alphabet like we do! We'll be watching this one from Have Fun Teaching this week:

Saturday Shoppin'

I went in for ONE thing... No matter, I was SO pleased to find these ice cube trays in PERFECT 10 Frames at Dollar Tree!

I also grabbed some mini word wands and teeny forks at Target for who knows what... I couldn't pass them up!

Dollar Tree also had fun erasers for math stations.

HOW do you go in a store and NOT start planning? :)

Hands On!

My district bought the Handwriting Without Tears program this year and I had to leave my class to get a quick introduction to it yesterday (the day did NOT go well afterwards...ugh). We're still waiting on teacher manuals to get started but I remembered the Write Out of the Box training I went to over the summer. My kids need fine motor practice daily, and NOW.

So with what feels like the cold that's being passed around I ventured out to grab some items I could use for fine motor development.

I needed one more pack of water squirters from the Dollar Tree to imitate an activity called Squishy Fish. It apparently develops the arch in the palm to facilitate better grip. The kids will think puffing a pom-pom around is hilariously fun!

I grabbed modeling clay from the Dollar Tree, too. I love the small amounts of each color and the resistance it provides will surely develop little hands.

Dr. Gibbs from Write Out of the Box recommends using pillows for the resting fingers to facilitate the tripod grasp needed for writing. I think I will use the ice cube trays I found at Target below as a pickup activity with pillows.

Students can place a pillow under their resting fingers while they pick up beads to play in each section.

I'm not as clever as some my blogging friends are by giving their kiddos plenty of scissors practice early in the year. We attempted to cut rectangles out for a calendar-making activity and it was utter chaos! Now I know what kind of skills my kiddos have but a booklet like this would be excellent practice for them and documentation for me.

I envision modeling a variety of activities throughout the year and putting them in tubs for each table. I hate the idea of handwriting worksheets in the morning and these tubs could be a great alternative for morning work!

Yakety-yak...

Guess what came in the mail today! My Yacker Tracker Deluxe!

I am so tickled that it came with smiley stickers. It seems to work well, but I can't make as much noise as the kiddos can. We'll see how it goes next week.

This week we did model different voice levels and were able to remind each other of what voice to use for each activity. After I used far too loud of a voice one little boy said, "Ms. Bueno, you're using an outside voice, please use your teacher voice." Needless to say this chart made a difference! Click on the image to grab yours.

The cute clipart comes from Scrappin' Doodles!

Musical Monday: Jivin' Gestures!

I did it! After one workshop or another (I forget!!) I wanted so badly to make my favorite classroom songs into movies. So I finally did! Took the better part of my day, but I just finished it! I needed this song to have visuals to remind us of the gestures I want to use.

Here's the Powerpoint I made, too. Just click through the slides as you sing along! I'm going to make posters of the letters as I introduce them. 

*update*
Ah! No sooner than I make this post do I find HarryKindergarten's version! AND AND ANNNND he uses SFA's Fast Track Phonics like our campus, too! Not as fun for gestures, but at least it's consistent with my mini-lessons!

Anything will help...

Still working on forgiving myself. My negative self-talk from Monday resurrected, but I am aware of my strengths, too. Now I'm trying to find solutions.

My kids get real loud, real quick in any situation. I have tried so hard to use auditory signals, brain breaks, breathing, 60 bpm songs, and a calmer disposition but in the end I fall victim to my defense mechanisms. It's hard to get back in control after fighting with them all day. By the afternoon I'm an absolute grouch and no fun to be with.

So, come to my rescue over-priced classroom technology!

Ultimately I will be modeling voice levels more and moving kiddos around, but I've heard of these before and want to give it a shot. I think they will love managing themselves with it rather than me constantly after them.