I Survived the First day of Kindergarten!

 

 Okay, so I have a whole new respect for kindergarten teachers.  Wow, I mean I seriously had NO IDEA how much harder they worked on the first day of school than all the rest of us.  See the picture above?  That's not me but it is a perfect depiction of how I feel.  The day started at 7am for me as I wanted to make sure I was ready before they started filing through the door.  Now I know that you can never TRULY be ready for a room full of 19 kinders, of which 6 speak little or no English at all.  I did not go to the bathroom until I got to my daughter's preschool at 5:30 this evening.  I didn't finish eating my breakfast until 3:30 this afternoon...yes I said breakfast.  My head was hurting so bad by the time I got home that I was completely useless to my husband.  Bless him.  He was so wonderful, he had a pot of coffee waiting on me as soon as I walked through the door, he fed the kids dinner and put both of them to bed so I could just sit on the couch and do NOTHING for an entire hour.   Now, it's time to get back to it.  Time to plan for tomorrow.  LOL!

I have to share one crazy story with you, one that I am sure many of you will be able to appreciate.  I had one little girl wander down the hall and into my classroom all by herself this morning.  I vaguely recognized her face from open house but certainly couldn't tell you her name.  I asked her what her name was and she mumbled something I couldn't understand.  So I asked again and I still couldn't make it out.  So I looked at the two remaining chairs without students and read the desk plate of the one closest to me.  I asked her if her name was "_______" and she looked at me and nodded.  We played a name game at some point today and when we got to her she mumbled something again that I couldn't make out and that was AFTER she  repeated it three times.  No one could understand her.  Don't worry teachers...I heard the alarm bells going off in my head...she needs a speech evaluation.  Anyway, at the end of the day I put the sweet girl on the bus that she was supposed to go on (according to the school list).  I was back in my room doing what the lady in the picture above was doing when I was called to the office.  Long story short; the girl did not know her own name so she let me call her by the other girls name all day long.  Hence, she was sent home on the wrong bus and the mother was calling the school ready to rumble.  Well since we were completely confused over the names the assistant principal told her that her daughter never came to school today.  Mother called the cops for a missing person report and the cops escorted mom to the school.  Oh boy. The truth was shortly unveiled but wow, I sure did feel like an idiot.  Lesson to self; when a new kindergartner comes into your room all by herself and can't seem to pronounce her name, make sure you take the time to VERIFY the child's identity.  Lesson to all parents: NEVER EVER EVER send your kid to school all by herself if she doesn't know her own name.

On a FANTASTIC note:  I reached 100 followers.  YAY!!!!  What a great way to end the day!  Now I am off to SLEEP and hope for a less dramatic day tomorrow. 

       

Classroom Tour...Finally!

Welcome to Mrs. Ziegler's Kindergarten! 

Tonight's open house was a smashing success with 16 of my 20 students coming to meet the teacher.  Half of my class is hispanic so communicating with the parents was challenging on more than one occasion but overall it went rather smoothly.  I only had 1 hispanic family that could not communicate at all (and that includes the kinder of the family) and one little boy from China who has only been in the states for a few weeks and will only be here for one year.  I am pretty comfortable with the challenge of teaching to such a large group of ESL students but have to admit I am pretty apprehensive about working with the little boy from China.  Not only am I unable to speak or understand Chinese...but neither is any other child in the classroom or any adult in the entire school building.  How on earth do I deal with that on day one?  Any suggestions?    

I am however finally ready to share pics of my classroom.  Do you remember how bare it was the first time I stepped in and then how messy and disorganized it was while I moved in?  Well, all the hard work payed off because I absolutely LOVE my new room...

 

 View of the doorway entry from the hallway

 

View as you enter the room!

 Our Calendar Area.  I made all the cute calendar headings myself and am considering adding them to my new TPT store!

 

My BEAUTIFUL carpet:)

 My center-block word wall.  These letters are in my TPT store and they are PERFECT for this space.  I have to thank my best teacher friend (Mrs. Morgan from Asheville) for this inspiration!

Our Reading Center!

 Our Math Center.  The golden framed area will be for our math vocab words.

 One of my favorite parts of the whole room.  If you looked at the pics of my old first grade classroom you might recognize the blue and yellow pages.  I used to have them on our word family wall.  Now they will be used to help display student work.  Notice the super adorable banner hanging above?  That is all thanks to my amazing new assistant.  I was talking out loud about how I couldn't think of a cute or catchy heading for our student work and an hour later she had whipped out this adorable banana banner!  LOVE.

 My Corner.  Isn't it wonderful?  If you look REALLY close you can see my teachers toolkit peaking through the arms of the chair.

 This is the entry to our classroom bathroom. Also pictured are the backpack and coat hooks for the kids.

 This will be our block and games and puzzles station!   I still need to add labels and I wish I didn't have to keep my teacher resource bookshelf RIGHT there...it's so ugly but oh so necessary!

So that's it, my new classroom.  I have worked super hard and now I'm ready to focus all that energy on teaching the sweet sweet kiddos that I got to meet tonight for the first time.  Hope you enjoyed the peak into my room!

The Countdown Begins!

 

The title of this post is referring to a number of things: Less than 24 hours before Open House and the first time I get to meet my sweet kinders! Just 2 school days away from the first day of kindergarten! And finally....just 48 hours away from the BIG REVEAL.  As promised, I will share pics of my classroom very soon, I know that open house is probably the cleanest and neatest the room will be for the rest of the year so I wanted to wait until just before open house to take the pictures. I doubt I will have the chance to post the pics tomorrow night simply because I will be EXHAUSTED and the husband will be demanding my attention since he will be in charge of the kids all day tomorrow but  look for them on Friday.  The most exciting countdown of all?  I am only 3 away from having 100 followers...YAY!  I know it makes me a dork but I am so excited about almost reaching the 100 mark:)


Overall,  I am feeling pretty prepared for open house but majorly bummed about an announcement my principal made at the end of the day today.  Apparently we aren't supposed to send ANYTHING home with the parents tomorrow night.  Instead we have to save it all until the first day.  I'm bummed because I have always sent home a super organized parent packet with all kinds of great information about the class.  Most of the parents usually sit down on the spot to look through the packet and many fill out all the paperwork during open house.  It gives me the chance to address any questions about the enclosed information and it's a super easy way to make sure you get the paper work turned in.  I know, I know, waiting until the first day isn't that big of a deal but I would imagine it will make things harder to get things returned and there will be many unanswered questions from parents.  With this being said I just have to shrug the shoulders and roll with it.  All will be well.  Right?

 

On a different note I am overly stressed FOR my team members.  Of the four of us, I was the only one who had the chance to work in her room before the first workday on Monday.  Since Monday, we have all been in meeting after meeting after meeting.  My three new friends are all scrambling to get everything in it's place and presentable by 5:30 tomorrow night.   I wish I could do something to help but they are all at the stage where they have to decide how they want to arrange furniture and what they need to hang up.  I think I am being most helpful by just staying out their hair and trying not to distract them too much.  I am thinking ahead to lesson plans and LOVING my First Day of Kindergarten Linky Party.  I am so glad for that linky party.  For real.  Hopefully I will be able to get activities and everything planned out and simply share it all with the team, If I can help them by taking the stress of planning those first few days off their plates I am more than happy to do so!

Calling all Past and Present K Teachers...and a Reminder!

 

What do you do for homework? 

Okay blogging buddies!  As you all know I will be teaching Kindergarten for the first time in a decade this year.  What you may or may not know however is that I will be working with three other teachers who will also be brand new to Kindergarten this year.  One of which will be a first time teacher (EVER), one who has NEVER taught K and one who hasn't taught K in OVER a decade.  So as you can imagine...we will need some guidance from some FABULOUS and experienced K teachers.  Tonight I am coming to you to ask about your Homework policy.  I personally have very mixed feelings about homework in general.  I know about all the research out there that says homework is really quite useless, in fact it was one of the topics I researched and reported on in graduate school.  However, I am transferring from a school with a very high parent participation and I would argue that homework for those students did indeed make a difference.  My new school (from what I have been told) will be the complete opposite with little to no parent involvement.  So as our team sits down to discuss our plans for the year I would love to know what other K teachers do or don't do for homework. If you have a post on your blog already addressing that subject let me know or if you have more to say than what will fit in the comment box please feel free to email me at rdziegler@wsfcs.k12.nc.us

I also wanted to remind you all about the fabulous First Day of Kindergarten Linky Party!  I know that most of you just had your first day or will have it within the next week or two so be sure to share your awesome plans:) 

My First TPT product!

So when I sat down to work on my own word wall letters it was not with the intention of turning them into my first Teachers Pay Teachers product.  However, when all was said and done I thought "Why Not?"  So please follow my new TPT store, I have grand hopes of filling it with tons of goodies over time.  The first product is a freebie and I hope it will be helpful to someone out there.  I needed some letters for my new word wall and just couldn't seem to find what I needed even though there are already a TON of word wall letters available on TPT.  I needed small but not too small and I needed the vowels to be a different color than the consonants.  I wanted a cute font but not too cute so I went with good ol' comic sans.  The file is fully editable so if it looks like something that will be useful to you please download and feel free to change colors, fonts, and sizes!

BTW, I would love some great TPT tips as far as how to create things with all the adorable clipart, frames and fonts.  Any suggestions of a blog with great TPT tips?

 

North Carolina Teacher Bloggers: It's a Blog Hop!

 

I am having so much fun in the world of blogging and have really enjoyed getting to know so many marvelous teachers from around the country and a few from around the globe!  As I have seen a few fellow bloggers post about meeting up with teacher bloggers in their area I can't help but be a bit envious.  I think it would be LOADS OF FUN to meet up with some bloggers from N.C.  The question then is, how do you find who is close and who isn't without going to blog, after blog, after blog, and reading the profile of every single one?  Well, by creating a blog hop of course!   So if you are a teacher blogger in North Carolina join in the blog hop so we can all get to know each other.  Who knows, I might have a fellow blogger living right here in my own neighborhood!  Wouldn't that be somethin'?  Be sure to use the image above at the top of your own post sharing this blog with others and of course linking it back to this original post.  Also grab the inlinkz code at the very bottom for your own post. Oh...one more thing; If you are in the triad area be sure to leave a comment letting me know where you are:) I can't wait to meet all my fellow Carolinian teacher bloggers!

This is a blog hop and has been linked up to the Teaching Blog Addict's Ultimate Linky Party!

get the InLinkz code

Sneak Peak

Well friends I met the goal for today!  I found a home for every unplaced item in my new classroom.  For the most part my room is ready but I will wait until it is COMPLETELY ready before the big reveal.  With that being said, I am so excited about an uplanned yet amazing accomplishment that I just have to give you a sneak peak...

Some of you may remember a post I made a couple of weeks ago about wanting to use the white board in the back of my room as my word wall.  Well I have since changed my mind.  Instead I have decided to make that white board the back drop to my small group reading table.  I will eventually put my workshop stations pocket chart on the board.  Above this white board are 3 super ugly metal strips for the adjustment of the board.  Well today, I was staring at those ugly strips trying to decide what to do about them when I had a "lightbulb" moment.  Earlier this summer I had purchased 7 green hoola skirts from the dollar spot in Target.  I had no idea how I would use them but I was feeling impulsive that day and brought them home with me.  Today I found out EXACTLY how I wanted to use them.  I cut the skirts in half to make them long strips and then hung them to cover the super ugly metal strips!

So here's the board in the back of the room.  See the super ugly metal strips?  Also notice the HUGE mound of unpacked boxes and tubs.  Those are gone now!

Waa Laa!!!  Ugly strips GONE!  But something is missing?  What could it be?  OH YEAH!!!  The super cute monkey's I bought for a hallway display.  Isn't it adorable? The green and blue ottoman seats from Five Below are also just perfect for this spot! 

I am so proud of this.  Mostly because it was very unplanned and a completely orginal idea.  It's so cute I think it's pin worthy...dont' you?  LOL

Hope you enjoyed the sneak peak.  Stay tuned for the Big Reveal.  Open house is next week for us so it will definitely be ready by then!