American Symbols and President's Day

Last week, I started introducing American symbols to my kinders.  Some of my students knew a lot about the symbols while others did not know any.  Each day (Wednesday-Friday), we covered something new, which included the American flag, Statue of Liberty, and Bald Eagle.

Below, you can see the anchor charts we made together to show what we learned about each symbol.  I started each day's lesson with the chart and asked students to tell the class what they already knew about the symbol.  Then, after reading the picture book and having a discussion, we went back to the chart and added things we had learned.  I hung the charts near my carpet so that we can reference them this week.

I bought Deanna Jump's America Math and Literacy Fun! unit on Teacher's Pay Teachers and it has been a great help in planning my lessons.  It's such an awesome unit!  I am looking forward to using it this upcoming week to teach about President George Washington and President Abraham Lincoln.  Woohoo!

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My Teacher Bag

One of the main reasons I finally decided to create a teaching blog was so that I could post to the Clutter-Free Classroom blog!  It's very gratifying to take pictures of the before and after cleaning process, wouldn't you agree?  It makes you want to organize more!

This week, the challenge was to clean our classroom teacher bags.  Yikes!  I am guilty of letting my bag and rolling tote jam with materials that need to find a home.  Lately, I couldn't even see the bottom of my teaching bag and I had no idea what was down there!

Let's take a peek, shall we?  This is what I found in my bag today after school:

* Three Ziploc baggies of picture cards for a sound sort game, a giant Tootsie Roll (a Valentine's Day gift from one of my kinders) that never made it home, a school and staff directory, my journal of ideas, sentence strips, my black gloves, two Jolly Phonics sound rings, and my zip/id case.

* When I left school today, the only items in my bag were my idea journal, the Tootsie Roll, directories, and zip/id case.  Awesome!

I also use a rolling tote to transport my curriculum manuals and lesson binder.  However, the tote is luckily organized. :)

Thanks for looking!

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Welcome!

Hello!

Welcome to my kindergarten blog!  I am very excited to share my classroom ideas and learn from others, as well!

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