Skills Work

I went to school yesterday with a friend to get going on setting up the classroom. The big surprise was that where I wanted to put the meeting area rug totally FIT!!! Then I ran into a problem...what to do with all the other stuff in the room. I guess I should go back to the drawing board on that one. Excited that something actually worked though.

So today...

I decided to work on some concrete projects to make myself feel like I am doing something. I worked on and completed my "catipillar word family". I found it in "Really Good Stuff" but didn't want to buy it so I made my own. Here is the completed picture:

I figured as long as I ma on the Skills Block kick, I should just finish planning it and that way it will be done. So here is my initial plan:

Daily Oral Language

• Done as morning work, correcting it part of morning meeting
• Monday through Friday

Handwriting without Tears Grammar 

• Done within Skills block
• Monday, Wednesday, Friday

Words Their Way

• Done during Skills block
• Tuesday, Thursday, TEST Friday
• Since I will be doing Work on Words during Daily 5, I don't want to over do the words...I will be doing word families, spelling word review groups, etc 

I also reorganized my files so that everything is together and I can file things and ideas for each subject as I go.

Here are two garage sale finds that I painted for the classroom. The bat is going to be a pointer for calendar time. The Magazine rack is for my books that I use during whole group.

I also made a "who's next jar" for having helpers, choosing jobs, etc...

Then, from Teachertipster.com I this idea for my Lays Potato Chip containers... This one is for basic math facts, doubles, frequently used math facts. I plan on expanding these into other areas, but this was the only one in the house.

As I was reading blogs the other day, I ran across Keep Calm and Teach on (the link is in my blog favs) So I made myself a set of activity sticks...

Now for a little frustration...I made these cute word family books and bubbles to go with the Caterpillar...I tried to upload them to my Google docs to share and the whole format is messed up. I will upload those as soon as I can figure out what to do about it.

I think on one of my previous blogs, I had this brilliant idea to do a separate lesson plan for each subject. I got done with Math, Science, Social Studies and was working on Reading when I had a major meltdown about it.  I was looking forward to January and having a panic attack about bringing home all these separate binders because all my lesson plans were in them. I am rethinking the idea and will be working on it tonight.