October Homework Packet

Check it out!! My sweet friend, Erin from Eberhart's Explorers, and I are at it again. We just finished our October Homework Pack and it's filled with fun fall activities. Do you have parents asking what they can work on at home? Not sure what to have your kinders do? Well, we've got your answer! This is the second pack in a series of monthly homework packs that will reinforce your students' skills while outside the classroom. 

This pack includes:

-Weekly calendars (5 different options to choose from) that lay out which activities are to be completed each night

-An October monthly project

-Response sheets for your students to complete with each activity

This pack is filled with 61 pages of goodies created by 2 Kindergarten teachers with 2 different curriculums. All of this correlates with the Common Core standards and can be yours for $6.00! Hop on over to My TPT Store and grab your pack today!

First few weeks, Pete the Cat & Stick a fork in me-I'm done!!!!

Hi friends!

I'm so sorry that I've been a bit MIA lately!! I'm 37 weeks preggo and missed a week of school last week due to some minor complications.....baby is doing just fine!!....he's just sucking the life out of me!!! LOL!;)

So, I'm a little behind on posting!!! Sorry!!

Thought I'd share some things that we did the first few weeks of school....

Here's our "1st day of school frame";) Loved this idea!! I'm seen lots of them floating around blogland lately:)

For the 2nd week of school-we did our "All About Me" unit.

Here is our boy/girl graph:)

We also did an eye color pie graph. I got these cute ideas from Julie Lee's blog! You can visit her post here.

AND you can click HERE to get the eyes that I used for this pie graph:)

We also did these adorable "Peacemaker" and "Peacebreaker" anchor charts that I found at The First Grade Parade!!! I pretty much TOTALLY copied her design because they were just so stinkin' cute!!;) 

AND, OMG!!!! How cute did these Davids turn out!?!? I love them so much!!!!  Fall into First has these as a free download!!!! YES, all of this cuteness for FREEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!! Love it!! Be sure to visit her and snag your patterns-be sure to leave her some nice comments and show her some love:)

This anchor char might be one of the smartest things I have EVER seen!!!! It has done WONDERS for my Kinders' coloring!!!! This baby is going to stay posted!!! I'm always referring to it to remind the kids what good coloring looks like!!! I got this amazingly brilliant idea from Deedee at Mrs. Wills Kinder! She's one of the smartest people that I know!!!!!!;)

HINT~you may want to practice "bad coloring" before you make your chart!!!!! I found it to be kind of hard to do really bad coloring!!!! LOL!

The next week of school we did Pete the Cat!! I'm seriously obsessed with Pete and my Kinders are too!!!!!

Got this Pete idea from the AMAZING Deanna Jump! It's my fault that our Petes look a tad bit scary!!!:) We forgot to finish his eyes!!! OOOOOPs!;)

This anchor chart was another idea from Deanna!

Wow!!! Thank goodness for all the AMAZING teachers out there in blogland...or what would I have done during our first couple of weeks????:)

Here is a peek of our first week of centers. I tried to keep them VERY simple:) Here's what we did....

Pete the Cat in the Listening Center, of course!;)

 Matching capital and lowercase letters.

Matching rhyming words.

 The dots on the back help with self-checking. They also colored the 2 rhyming pictures to match the dots on their response sheets.

 Writing/matching color words

 Counting and writing "how many".  (There is also a color coded number line to go along with this center to help students with writing their numbers-but it somehow didn't make it into this pic.)

 Spin and trace the number

Ways to make 5

Matching shapes

 You can check out my "Cool and Groovy Colorful Cats" centers pack HERE in my TPT store.

Here's what I look like right now!! OMG! I'm about to POP!!!!! LOL! Not sure how much longer I'm going to make it... 

Jungle Classroom Pics & LOTS of FREEBIES!!

Finally posting some pics of my classroom! Sorry about the weird glow....don't know why they look like that!?:(

Here's a pic of the listening center~

I made the little storage seats last year:) Found the zebra lanterns at Hobby Lobby and the curtains at Dollar General:)

I got this zebra storage bench from TJ Max:) It's a nice size and opens up~So, I put all my listening center books, tapes and CDs inside;)

 Here is my calendar area. Sorry the pic's not very clear:( You can check out my calendar months and days of the week in green and pink zebra print here in my TPT store.

 You can grab my shape posters for FREE in my TPT store!! If you like them, please follow my store and leave some feedback....I would REALLY appreciate it!;) The ADORABLE shape clipart is from lovetwoteach! Thanks, Kristen!!!!! 

I have been using Kathleen Pedersen's daily calendar book pack at our calendar time! I love it. I have been doing it as a whole group. (I blew up the daily page and laminated it and posted it on my calendar display. We have done it every morning. My PLAN is to start them in individual binders this month:)

You can also see my Jungle Behavior Clip Chart....be sure to check it out in my TPT store.

 Wanna know how I made all of the bulletin boards in my room?? (My calendar, Welcome sign, color words, number words, Good work display and alphabet line were all made this way.)

I got those really big Strrofoam residential sheathing insulation-the stuff that you put on the side of a house before you put siding on it. I got it from Lowes. I measured it-cut it to size with a razor blade and wrapped it with bulletin board paper. Then, I hot glued my borders and displays on. I hung them with industrial strength vlecro:) I think they look soooooo much nicer than just slapping the displays on the wall. Gives a much nicer, cleaner look to my room!

I did it!!!!!! I got rid of my Teacher desk!!!! I found the little work station at a used furniture store!! It's sooooo perfect!! It has a little counter top for my plan book and I put bins at the back for M-F work. The top of it is a bunch of little mailboxes. I made a slot for each kiddo to store their testing and their portfolios. The bottom has a couple of shelves for my thematic binders and teaching manuals/curriculum.  

My Brother just happened to be remodeling his basement and gave me those 2 beautiful shelves you see!!;) Thanks, Dave!!! They are perfect!! You can also see my reading tent in this pic....got it from Target<3

I got these bins for each kiddo from Really Good Stuff. I plan on having them keep their communication (W.A.R.R.I.O.R.) binders in these mailboxes and will also be using them as mailboxes to pass their papers out into each day. Here are the tags that are on them if you're interested:) The computer center is on the other side of the shelf.

This shot shows my "good work" board. you can also see my center bins:)

 Here are some of my center themes all packed up;) I got the idea to organize and store them like this from Kathleen at Growing Kinders. I just laminated the labels and hot glued them on the front of the boxes. Want these labels??? You can grab them for FREE here in my TPT store. I would appreciate if you'd follow my store and leave feedback if you're happy with them:)

This is just a shot of the back of my classroom:)

 My number word and color word displays. You can find the number word posters in my TPT store.

 Here is my Jungle alphabet line that I made over the summer:) You can grab it in my TPT store. 

You can also see my birthday and star student displays. I used a vinyl tablecloth to cover this bulletin board that I got from Hobby Lobby:) My "Born to Be Wild" birthday display will soon show pics of the kids and in their birth month. I had them hold these cards when I took their pics so I could easily see what their actual birthday was:) I hot glued a small clothspin onto the zebra print cards and hot glued the month on top of the clothespin....so, I will just clip their picture up once I get them printed out. You can download the pieces for the birthday display here.

Here is my word wall. You can check that out in my TPT store. AND do you see those CUTE little crayon buckets above my writing table??? I LOVE how they turned out!!! I found these labels from Erin at creating and teaching! Sooooo cute! I just ModPodged them onto some black buckets that I found in the Target dollar bins. I hung them with some command hooks.

I also made a white and peach label to go along with them. You can grab them here.

They don't match exactly...but they'll work:) Does anyone know what that cute font is that she used???

Here are the hooks that I used. They worked nicely under the ledge because you can hang them flat and the hook swivels-so it hangs down.

 I refuse to spend hundreds of dollars on a big area carpet in my classroom!! They are pretty!!! But, man, I'd rather spend the money on sooooo many other things. My first year teaching I made a carpet with carpet squares that I got at a store for $1 apiece. Then, I duct taped them together....It lasted for 8 years...but, over the summer there was some construction done in our school and my carpet didn't survive;( I got these squares from a friend of a friend. She worked at an interior design company in St. Louis. They get these carpet squares as samples and then they just throw them away when they're finished with them!!!!!! I took ALL that they had!!!;) So, here's my new carpet! The only thing I had to buy to make it was 2 rolls of duct tape:)

 I put my growth chart on my door:) You can also so my "How do you get home" display.

Our buses have animal names:) So, I used a bus clipart and stuck animal heads in the window to match the name of the bus.

Here's a shot of my whole room. I hung larger nametags from some lanterns that I got at Target dollar bins for my beginning of the year decorations. You can grab the large nametags here.

And at the back of my room in the corner is one more little storage shelf with my helpers display above it.

I did the same bulletin board as last year:) Love Frog Street Press's Zebra/leopard decor!!! AND, hard to see, but I used their BLING letters for the "welcome" sign! Soooo cute! Next to that is the giving tree that I keep up for a couple of weeks. It has extra supplies that parents can donate to our class written on coconuts (brown contruction paper circles.) I just tape them on the tree and parents can grab a coconut or two off of the tree if they want.

 Hope you found some ideas and/or downloads you can use!!! If you did, I'd love for you to leave a comment!! I <3 reading them:) Enjoy!