Sick.. :(

My husband and I headed to my parent's house last night, and we were supposed to go to his parent's house today to help them put a new floor in their kitchen today. I woke up this morning with a temperature of 100.8, a headache, chills, and body aches. This was on top of the cough I developed yesterday. Needless to say, I didn't go help with the floor today. I stayed at my parents house and slept. I'm feeling slightly better right now. My temp is down and the chills are gone. Hopefully this is just a short term illness. I'm not prepared for a sub....

Also, they're calling for another snow storm from Sunday night into Tuesday here. Maybe another snow day? I'd be okay with that - I've got some games and learning materials I'd like to create.

But...Cups Can't Really Throw Up Right?

I had two of my students play a game called Feed the Cup today. It's really simple - put the correct number of pom poms in the cup. Of course, you throw in some cups that are absolutely famished and that will vomit any pom poms that are touched by children and the game becomes that much more exciting! The kids laughed and laughed as they used their tweezers to put pom poms in their cups. They even followed the rules so closely that when another kid accidentally rolled her dice into the tub of pom poms, she wouldn't reach in to get it because then the cups would throw the pom poms up. Hilarious!

This One's a Dolphin! No, It's a Whale!

The change in schedule went really well today. I'm loving the morning message. I chose our youngest to be the leader today, and she loved writing her story. She wrote about a trip to a bookstore with her mom. After we wrote the story, we read it about four times. By the end, all of the kids basically knew what it said. I'm hoping this is a good connection to show that writing has meaning. After we read the message, we looked for our mystery letter. Today it was the letter E, since her name starts with E. It went so smoothly - I honestly don't know why I haven't been doing this in the past. It's wonderful!

I also think my new Reader's and Math Workshops are going well. The kids really liked the math games I planned for today. I'm noticing some improvement in the youngest's counting skills too. Her biggest struggle seems to be to start over once she stops. For example, if she rolls a five on her dice and only counts to four I'll ask her to start over again, when she starts counting she'll start at 7 every time. It's the weirdest thing. Hopefully the one-on-one attention I'll be giving her during math time will help correct this. Bizarre.

Also - a little funny for ya' - we had Lucky Charms for snack today. It took the kids 20 minutes to eat them because of the intense debate over what shapes the marshmallows are. I don't know how many times I said, "Let's make sure we're eating while we're talking. Otherwise we'll be at the snack table until it's time to go home." It was cute though.

Preschool was great today! First grade...on the other hand...was frustrating. I'm curious to know when it became okay again to make a child read a book that is about seven levels too hard for him. I hurt for this little guy, because I know how much better he could be doing if he was in the right situation.

Introducing Reader's Workshop

I found this incredible idea on Pre-K Pages of having a reader's workshop in preschool. I really want to try this in my classroom, so I've written some plans for next that are much different that the past. While my version isn't necessarily like a true reader's workshop, the instruction I have planned will be much more focused than in the past. I'm also going to start a morning message, which I'm getting excited about. I'm hoping this will be a better way to get my students to pick up on letters and sight words. Plus, it helps them understand how writing works and why we do it.

Here's an skeleton of what my day is (hopefully) going to look like:

Morning Message (This will be combined with calendar work - I'll (hopefully) pack a punch full of math and reading skills)
Reader's Workshop (While students play in centers, I'll be working with small groups on emergent reading skills - letter recognition and sounds, sequencing, comprehension, etc.)
Snack
Math Workshop (Again, students will be playing in centers, and I'll be working with small groups on emergent math skills - counting, number recognition, patterning, etc.)
Closing Meeting (I'll read stories. We'll play games or do an activity based around various math and reading skills)

I'm excited about this new plan. I've kind of started already, and I'm really excited to see that it opens up the possibilities to individualize and differentiate my instruction.

In other good news: one of my four year-olds can now recognize about eight sight words and knows most of the letter sounds. She can totally read a couple of books on her own. She's really taking off, and it's exciting! I'm looking forward to seeing how far I can take her before the end of the year.

Before I sign off for the night, I'll leave you with this bizarre event that happened when I was working with my first grader at the elementary school. One of the girls in his class came up to me during some quiet time and said, "I think my heart stopped beating. It was beating, and now I can't feel it anymore." Uh.....I think it's beating sweetie. Otherwise you wouldn't be standing there telling me about it. I taught her how to feel her pulse, and that seemed to soothe her. When I got the chance, I checked with her teacher to make sure she didn't have some kind of heart problem in the past - just to be safe. She didn't, and her teacher didn't think we needed to be worried about it. They say the strangest things.

Write the Room = AMAZING!

We're having yet another snow storm. So far, I think we've gotten around 4 inches and it's supposed to continue through tomorrow night. Then the wind's going to kick up, so we'll have drifts too. Fabulous...I'm ready for spring.

Every time I introduce a letter to the kids, I like to have the write the room. They carry around clipboards and write all the words they can find with that letter in them. I've seen this in practice in higher grade levels and was originally concerned that it wouldn't work with my younger kiddos. Boy, was I wrong! At first, it took some patience and modeling to help most of the understand the concept of a word, but most of them have it down now. I can let them go and they'll bring me back lists of four or five words! It's so exciting to see them confidently using writing.

My next step is to introduce inventive spelling. I know for sure that one of my students is ready for that. It'll be interesting to see how ready the rest of them are.

I had the students play Race to the Finish today. They had a blast with it, and it opened my eyes to a couple of things. For example, for the second day in a row, I've realized that I haven't given one sweet little girl enough credit. She started off on the low side in terms of academic skills, but she is taking off. She picks up on almost everything, and it's really starting to show. I need to challenge her more. I think I'll start by pairing her up with my highest learned instead of my lowest. Maybe this will give her a push in the right direction. Also, my list of concerns about the youngest in the class is growing. Today, for the second day in a row, instead of starting to count at 1 she started at 7 or 9 or wherever she felt like starting. It was the weirdest thing. She didn't do that at the beginning of the year... She also has started whining and moaning every time we read a story. I might talk with her mom about whether she has been noticing things like this at home too. She has a history of ADD, so I'm wondering if these are signs of it.

When I was over at the elementary school working with the first grader, his teacher exclaimed her disgust at the fact that he's not being placed in special ed. This bothers me. I don't think he's special ed. I think he missed a lot of kindergarten, and for that reason, he is behind. He's been showing major improvements (he went from three sight words to 31 sight words in a little over a month) and his focus is greatly improved with his medicine. I have a strong feeling that she just doesn't want to deal with him, so she wants someone else to do it for her. It makes me sad for him.

Long and Good Week

It's Friday!!!!!! It was a struggle to make it through this week. Christmas break spoiled me, so getting up early and working all day was a challenge. The white-out conditions I drove the 36 miles home in this afternoon didn't help either. I officially gave up Facebook this week, so I've been venturing into the blog-o-sphere to find something else to occupy my internet time. It has been beneficial in so many ways. I've found so many excellent blogs with great ideas for the classroom. I'm currently working on building a board game called Race to the Finish that I'm basing off an idea from The First Grade Parade's Race to the Snowman. It ties in nicely with our transportation study and encourages one-to-one correspondence and number recognition.

The study has been going well so far. I've been introducing map skills during this study too, and it's fun to see the kids using the vocabulary and making their own maps. On Wednesday, I had them work as a group to make a map of our town. They did a superb job building their houses, the preschool, the pool, a couple of restaurants in town, the grocery store, and the library out of blocks. I even had them create labels for their buildings. When they were done building and labeling, they had fun driving small cars (and even airplanes :P) to the different places in town.

Today, they drew maps of their bedrooms. It was funny to see how detailed they got. One make sure to draw the exact number of Barbies she had and exactly where they were in her room. Very detail-oriented.

The week's funny: One of my three year-olds has been calling me by just my last name. He leaves the Mrs. off. It cracks me up every time. Also, one of my four year-olds was building a tower today. When he accidentally knocked it over, he exclaimed, "Oh nuts!" Hilarious!

A Teacher's Inner Struggles

Ugh....I never feel fully satisfied with myself. I got to school early this morning and got my lesson plans all ready to go. I took all of my Christmas decorations down and put them away. (This is huge for me. I feel as though my biggest weakness is my inability to stay organized for more than two days in a row.) I even remembered to hit up the grocery store to stock up on juice for the next couple of weeks. It was going really well.

Then the kids showed up. I forgot to unlock the back door, so one of my families had to walk all the way around the building to come in a different door. Oops. Then I just felt off all morning - like suddenly I had no clue how to teach. There were lost minutes and awkward silences during group time. I spent a good amount of one of the center times, which is supposed to be for group work, cleaning up the library center...Just in general, I was a horrible teacher.

Maybe my expectations of myself are just too high. I really want to have that knock-your-socks-off, waiting-list-a-mile-long, top-of-the-line, amazing preschool; I'm failing at that. I need more time with the kids. I feel like we barely scratch the surface with the two and a half hours we have together, especially considering about 20-25 minutes of that is devoted to snack. While I try to include quality discussions and activities involving snack, I want those minutes for more in-depth learning experiences. But, at this point, I'm questioning whether or not I would even be able to do that.

I'm so stinkin' lazy. Even right now, I desperately need to be doing laundry and unloading the dishwasher. Yet, here I sit. Blogging and watching The Bachelor.

The bright spot of my day, though, was my introduction of our new whiteboards. I really think they'll be useful. Today, I had them writing the number three. My intention isn't necessarily that they do it perfectly. I simply want them to recognize it, and I think becoming familiar with it through song and practice will help with this. Hopefully. I also had the kids make name trains, because we're studying transportation right now. I was really surprised to see that the youngest in the class was able to recognize all of the letters in her name (this used to be a challenge for her)!

Another worry for me: I have to write a report for the church board about the events of the preschool. I have an example from past years, but I'm still struggling. In the past, they've included a full calendar year in the report; however, I've only been at this preschool for a semester. I'm worried I don't have anything worth saying...

Ugh....Please let tomorrow be a better day.

Goodbye Christmas Break :(

So, Christmas break has come and gone and it's back to the trenches tomorrow. I enjoyed the time off and I feel relaxed and ready to go back. Does that mean I'm clicking my heels about going back? Not necessarily. I'm excited to return to preschool. I have missed my students and I'm looking forward to hearing all about their Christmases. I'm just struggling with going back to the elementary school. The little guy I work with (who deeply struggles with ADHD and the effects of poverty) has probably lost a great deal of what we gained before break, and it's going to be tough to teach it all again. I know he can do it; it's just going to be a struggle. I'm also not excited about returning to that classroom...so much negative energy and yelling...it shouldn't be that way.
On the bright side, I have nothing planned for tomorrow - at least nothing on this computer. I left all of my plans at school. Oops! It'll be alright though. My biggest plan for tomorrow and Tuesday is just to review the rules of the classroom and some of the things we learned before break. We're going to start a study on transportation. I'm excited to bring a little science into this study with ramps and cars. My students have shown a pretty big interest in going places, so I think I'll pull in some basic map skills - really put the block center to use.
Also, I had a genius idea over break (meaning I read about a really awesome idea in the manual for my brand new laminator)! I laminated plain sheets of white paper to be used as whiteboards! I have attached them to clipboards, so I have enough for each student. Ahhh! The possibilities! Number and letter practice! Pattern practice! Write around the room! They'll be a great addition to the classroom.
I also received my first issue of The Mailbox. So stinkin' awesome! February and March are going to be pretty sweet thanks to this magazine.
Yet another also - I think I'll be able to get a hold of the credit card to order some supplies for the classroom this week. We're out of paint, and I've gotten the okay to get new dress-up costumes and books for our listening library.