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.