For the Love of Books

For the Love of Books

For the past few years, Princess Kay has been amassing books.  Lots and lots of books.  She says it was all for her classroom, but I think it really is to feed her habit.  Since she was little, she has loved to read.  Now she has an excuse to buy books.  She first tried buying lots on Ebay.  Pirces were reasonable, but shipping tended to add up.  She initially began her collection by doing what all teachers do...buying from Scholastic Books Clubs.  Then she discovered Goodwill book bins on half off day.  Books galore for a quarter apiece (or 50 cents if they are hardback.) Oh my...she thought she had died and gone to heaven. 

Over the past two years, she has collected close to 350 books.  She said she was organizing them, but I think she spread them out so she could gaze upon all their loveliness.  She has promised to stop for awhile.  However during our thrifting day last week I found her head deep in a bin shrieking "Junie B. Jones, Horrible Harry and Flat Stanley!!"

If you have young readers, you might want to check out Goodwill.  Just watch out for a redhead with a crazy gleam in her eye.  She just might pepper spray you to get that Fancy Nancy book you are holding.

Room Reveal-Traveling through Third Grade

Sorry for being absent the last two weeks.  School has started and between meetings and trying to get our rooms ready, we have come home exhausted every night.  Princess Kay has finished her first ever classroom and it deserves its very own Pinterest board.  It is stinkin' cute.  So bear with this post it is going to be veritable visual feast for the eyes.

Princess Kay spent a summer in Ireland and fell in love with traveling so naturally her theme is Traveling through Third Grade.

 The Library:  Because of room and the age of the students, she opted to not have a reading corner.  Instead she will let them create their reading spaces throughout the room.

 Isn't that an awesome reading bulletin board.  She plans to challenge her students to find other books to use to change out the board throughout the year.

 She was left with cracking and broken book baskets by the teacher who retired.  So it was off to the dollar store for the cheapest bins a new teacher could afford.  Some day she will get the ones she wants.  Alas, the books left by the retiring teacher were not only very very old, but the were in sad shape.  Most of these books are hers and come from digging and searching thrift stores.  Stay tuned for a post telling how to fill out your class library for pennies on the dollar.

 The book shelves and desk clumps came from the wonderful blog Dandelions and Dragonflies.  They cut down on movement and really promote the community our district stresses (they frown on desks in rows)

 The book shelves were $15 a piece at Walmart.  She just added maps before she put the back on.  They are perfect for their data notebooks, book boxes and math manipulatives.  With a little wastebasket, the groups are set.

 As we were moving out tons and tons of furniture, to make the room more spacious, I kept trying to convince her not to get rid of bookcases (you know there are some pieces of furniture you never get rid of because you will never find them when you need them!)  She agreed to keep it, but opted to turn it on its side and make a writing counter.  Genius!  In case, you can't read it, each section has a trait (and Ideas is on top).  The baskets hold mentor texts for each trait.

 Again, the bulletin board will evolve over the years as they learn about each trait.  She will add anchor charts and other visual displays of what they discover.

 As we were cleaning out cupboards, we came across these flat flimsy boards.  We had no idea what they were.  I thought they looked the perfect size for mileage signs.  I sprayed them green and used my Silhouette to cut out letters and numbers.  That is the correct mileage from our school.  She outlined the computers with electrical tape so she can designate their use for centers and other projects.

 When she got in the room, she only had a Smart Board.  There was no other place to write.  She was going to put in a ticket to get a white board.  However, she was in so much over the summer working on her room that she made great friends with the custodians (the first lesson every new teacher should learn.)  She saw them taking down a white board and mentioned that she would love one in her room.  They took the board straight to her room and installed it right then and there! 

 Check back later for posts about her classroom procedures.  They are really fun and her kiddos love them.  She said the whole class came walking in the room from their very first recess with four fingers up! (in order to get a drink)

Common Core has arrived so here is her nonfiction cart and the table will eventually be a nonfiction center.  One of her desires was to have books all over the room to help her kids see how reading takes place everywhere.  So she has a book library, a writing center with books, a non fiction center and even a picture book spot

This spot is just inside her door.  The tent flip book tells the kids what specials day it is. (and she stuck in another book!)

She found the bingo game at an antique store and loved its vintage feel.  She also read a study that said if students knew prefixes, suffixes and root words, they magnify their vocabulary tremendously.  As they line up and have a few minutes, they will take a ball and use a dauber to mark the Bingo cards.  They will discuss the prefix, suffix or root.  The class will celebrate when they get a bingo.

 Here is her in and out board for when her students leave the room.  She painted those clothespins and then we saw on pinterest how to dye them.  She could have saved herself about two hours!

 She found this magazine rack at a garage sale for $3.  We just gave it a coat of black spray paint.

 Check more on the map chair here.

 New teachers don't need desks or file cabinets.  They are products of the technological age!

 We had seven teachers retire this year.  There were lots of things to snatch up in their give away piles.  However, there were very few cute things.  She jazzed this up with maps, contact paper and Mod Podge.

 No matter what theme she had, she knew Fancy Nancy would put in an appearance.  I found clipart and added a suitcase.  We printed it using the tiled poster option on the printer.  We just had to piece it together and laminate.  She is gorgeous, don't you think?

 Binder clips....what a great idea!

Name Plates

Pretty awesome, don't you think?  Makes you want to be in third grade again!

Silly Sally Fun Pack

Another week of summer preschool has come and gone.  This week our theme was Silly Sally.  Silly Sally is a wonderful picture book that has a definite sequence and lends itself to teaching rhyming.

 

 I must admit I hate to teach rhyming.  Kids seem to get it right away or they don't.  I THOUGHT my students on the autism spectrum were going to town on the whole rhyming thing when I realized the had just memorized the word pairs we practiced!  I had to create several more tasks for them to practice.  I will post those soon.  In the meantime here are some of the pages in the Silly Sally Fun pack.

 

We practiced writing color words. (I have some five and six year old students who have mastered most if not all pre-K skills,  We just kept building!)

 I cut these apart and use clothes pins to select the correct answer.  You could laminate and use dry erase markers as well.  I laminate everything and use them over and over with dry erase markers.

You can get the whole pack here.   I hope you enjoy it.  You will have to let me know if our students are as puzzled as mine were by the character Neddy Buttercup....they just couldn't figure him out.

Queen Pea