ZEBRA WORD WALL :)

Great Combo…

ZEBRA AND FREE!!! J

Grab your FREE word wall letters by clicking below…

Matching DOLCH words are available in my tpt store!

Ready, Set...CREATE!

So... as most of you know, we are moving to a new school. That would be brand new, still not finished and school starts in 3 weeks. I may or may not be a little stressed... OF COURSE I AM FREAKING OUT! I am the teacher that goes to school the second my room is clean and starts arranging and decorating. I have never (IN 17 YEARS) set up my room in less than 2 weeks. I am certain that a cot will be used for cat naps this year to get it all done. The hardest part is not knowing what the room looks like. I cannot plan for the space I haven’t seen. Like... how can I make my new word wall if I don’t know how much space I have?! I have officially started planning anyway and I am just praying it all works out! At the beginning of June, Kelly and I went shopping to choose our color scheme/fabric for our rooms. (Yes, they will coordinate... i.e. match!) We will be making the cute little storage seat crates as seen on Pinterest. Construction will begin soon... I will take pics as we work! J Here is our starting point... wish us luck, we have lots to do!

Saying Good-bye to Park Lane Elemntary

It would appear that I have been on vacation for a month but no… actually I have been SWAMPED with school and life stuff! Kelly and I have been packing and moving things to storage since Spring Break. Our entire building is relocating to a new school

(How exciting is that!?!) … Between field trips and kindergarten programs, the end of school and regular life… it has been crazy! I am sure you feel the same way!  Today, we will both sign on the dotted line and check out of the school forever that we have taught in for 7/8 years. It was amazing to stand in my classroom last night… so empty… and reflect on the children who brought so much laughter and brightness to room 100 at Park Lane Elementary. Kelly and I have never taught next door to each other. In fact, we have been at opposite ends of the building for most of our time at Park Lane.



In August, we will move into our new classrooms at Highland Park Elementary… side by side.  There are so many things we will be able to do with Our Smart Community and we are so excited!!  This summer, we will be working on some organizational projects and lots of fun decorating ideas… we look forward to sharing our completed classrooms with you.

(I fear we will have about 14 hours to move in before the children come… Please Lord, let me be wrong!!)

We had the opportunity to tour our new school at the beginning of May… and OF COURSE we snapped some pictures of our new classrooms! Um…yes, they are quite a bit smaller. L

The Front of the Building

Interior Design

 

Main Entrance

End of the hallway outside of our rooms

The door in the center leads to the playground. 

All kindergarten classrooms will be together in a pod for the first time ever!

This is my new classroom! Kelly’s is the opposite of mine.

     

We are SUPER excited to be next door to each other…

it only took 17 years!

       We would love to hear what you are up to this summer! J Stop by often and embrace the journey of summer fun!

SURF'S UP!!!!

WOW! I am just tooooo picky! It has taken me over a month to create my ocean unit but I had a bunch of ideas so... it is 140 pages! J) I hope my teacher friends love it as much as my students do! WOOT! Here it is:

Rainforest Fun and... A FREEBIE! :0)

I am so behind on blogging…PLEASE FORGIVE ME! Settle in for lots of pics and some new ideas!

We have been hard at work in the rainforest!  We have been journaling in our Jungle Journals…

Working on learning lots of rainforest vocabulary…

Making projects and doing lots of writing too…

We write in our Jungle Journals daily but we LOVE it when our students write in their daily journals about the theme we are learning about! Justice did an AWESOME JOB! J

This is our Rainforest “Fact Chain” Project. Students choose 10 rainforest words from our thematic word wall, use the word in a fact-based sentence and do a mini illustration. We do these for thematic projects and will regular word wall words!

Patterns for all of these plus my jaguar and sloth are included in my rainforest unit! Visit my Tpt store to purchase!

On Friday, we got together with Our Smart Community and worked in small groups ((SYNERGIZED)) to make rainforest posters including all the layers and many animals we have learned about during our unit! It was a fun and exciting project! 

 

Click below for your FREEBIE of our project! J We will be working on Rainforest Insects over the next two weeks and then moving into our HUGE Ocean Unit until the end of the school year on May 23^rd!

Thanks for stopping by to visit us! Send your friends… when we reach 100 followers we will celebrate with goodies! Follow us on Facebook too... just click the Facebook button on this page! J

Coming Soon... Surf's UP!!!

I am super excited to work on my newest unit… Surf’s Up ~ Ocean and Beach literacy-based Thematic Unit.  I have no doubt it will be my biggest unit ever.  As soon as I have a “vision” for the cover, I get inspired and that happened to tonight so… I will get busy this weekend! J For years, I have dreamed about sharing my ideas and projects with others and I am finally doing what I have always wanted to do. It is exciting stuff!! I gotta give a shout out to Kelly for believing in me and PUSHING me to get started! She is a GREAT idea giver and huge celebrator of my success!

Spring Break is over... 43 days of school to go until summer!

As you have probably gathered, Kelly and I not only teach together, we do everything in life together as well. J I wouldn't want it any other way. Kelly is the best friend I have ever had. We support each other through life challenges, celebrate victories big and small, worship together at church, spend family time together with our families and of course, we plan, collaborate and inspire each other in school stuff all the time. This Spring Break was super rainy in Oklahoma. We had 1 sunny weekday... which we spent shopping! WOOT! The other days, we spent at school. Yes, we are CRAZY! Our entire school is moving to a brand new, super fabulous building in August. Kelly and I have more stuff than you can imagine... and we have A LOT to move. We spent the 4 days packing and moving into our new storage unit! It was super productive and we made it fun. All of the teachers are super excited to move to the new building... including Kelly and I. New rooms with new furniture but more than any of that... we will FINALLY, for the first time in 16 years, be next to each other and can expand our dreams for Our Smart Community! To say we are excited... doesn't even touch it!