on a budget

With Scout's impending arrival, we have been hard at work at creating a space just for him or her. However, we're not creating a space like most might think when it comes to having a nursery. We have a budget. Not so much a monetary one, though it is nice to be frugal and work in a cost effective manner. Our budget is a spatial budget. We long ago decided that even with a growing family we will stay in our little two bedroom apartment until we leave the Gallup area. This meant that we had to figure out how to combine our gear room (yes, we had nearly a full room of gear) with a baby friendly space.

Out project began with a lot of rearranging. We moved some items from the gear room into the living room. We sold off some items that we no longer used frequently enough to merit the space (so long wine fridge). And we created. While I have been hard at work growing Scout, the mister has been hard at work manipulating materials, organizing objects, and ultimately making Scout's room what it is.

When I say we were on a spatial budget, this means we got the most out of what we already had. We have accumulated some pretty unique items over the years and we did not see the need to spend money on items that would serve the same purpose (cost effective!).  I think that ultimately, the only objects that we spent money on were ... wait, nothing really. Sure, there are a few objects that helped to spruce up the space and some money was spent on paint, but mostly, we just worked with what we had and with items that we received as gifts.

For storage we are using the hope chest that I received for my high school graduation. As a bonus, the chest is really well built so it can double as a small seating area. We purchased a small patio chair cushion (nothing like a soft water resistant surface in a baby room) for added comfort and the transformation was complete. The horseshoe moose was a purchase that we made from a local artist, but with hooks, the nice piece of art also doubles as a place to hang fun things like Scout's sun hat and bathrobe! The bamboo lamp we found at Goodwill in Maine and it has been hanging out for the last several years inside of the hope chest. With it's soft light, it will be perfect for meeting night time needs. Throw in a couple of fun books and a stuffed animal and we're good to go!

The striped "wall" next to the hope chest is dividing our baby space from our gear space.  When pulled aside one enters a world of bikes, skis, camping gear, and hiking essentials. When our bike racks are not on the car, they can be screwed onto the top shelf of our storage racks so that our bikes take up as little room as possible. Our gear is sorted into bins that can easily be thrown into the car for adventuring and with added hooks, the shelves also store regularly used clothing. When we lower the curtain, the space looks as baby friendly as can be. All that it took was a king size sheet (found on clearance) and a metal rod (and the creativity of the mister).

Across from the hope chest is Scout's sleeping space. We received a pack and play that will grow with Scout over the next several years. It has a removable bassinet that also flips over into an inclined seat for daytime use. It has rockers on the bottom and a vibrating seat to help calm our little one down when needed as well as a mobile and a sound machine. I'd say we're pretty well set. There is also a changing table for our convenience with handy storage next to it. It is a space saver and a money saver as we shouldn't need anything else for quite some time (though I'm sure that time will come sooner than either of us expect or want). 

The art work for this space is still up in the air. Currently we have well loved maps from Baxter State Park and Acadia National Park hanging up. Which one stays will be determined once we meet our little Scout - either way, he or she will be born to a name that means peace, beauty, adventure, and love to us. Then we will have a map and a delightful piece of work made by our sister-in-law, a constant reminder that adventure awaits!

The last little space in Scout's room is mostly storage. We have a bookshelf that the mister built about a year ago that now holds a mixture of books and baby needs (like diapers and clothes). We found some great baskets at Dollar Tree (where everything is actually a dollar, not like other dollar stores) that will help us to stay organized. We covered up some of our books with fabric left over from a previous home improvement project. Our blue bookshelf was once an olive green and gold rusty planter that we salvaged from a yard sale immediately upon our return from Peace Corps (who knew we'd need it three years later?). Our artwork once again takes us to Maine, which if it has not been obvious to this point, holds a very special place in our hearts. 

And there you have it - a baby space that was created for a minimal cost that utilizes the space that we have efficiently. Some may say that it looks like a room for a boy. We think it looks like a room for an adventurer. (Plus, I don't really care for pink and purple.)

for the love of seuss

In preparation for Dr. Seuss's birthday, I led my first ever author study. We began on Monday by looking at the a timeline of Dr. Seuss's life on seussville.com. This fantastic website has everything Seuss that you could possibly want to share with a classroom full of kinders. They loved the animations and we followed it up by reading Dr. Seuss's first children's book, Dr. Seuss's ABC.

Throughout the remainder of the week we continued to learn about the many components of Dr. Seuss's creations. We learned about the characters, about settings, and most importantly, about rhymes and word families. This author study doubled as my introduction to word families. Perhaps this is a little later than some kinder teachers' introduction of word families, but I think the foundations that have been laid led to a quick mastery and a topic that will now be a part of our weekly word work. 

Yesterday we wrapped up the week by reading Bartholomew and the Oobleck. If you haven't read this Seuss classic, you really should. It is a lot of fun and you can extend the reading by making oobleck! Yesterday we had an entertaining reading, full of silly voices and then we did "science" and made our own oobleck. It was amazing how many of my kiddos kept saying, "my mom will get so mad at my mess." I assured them that science was supposed to be messy, and that their moms would not get mad because I was the one cleaning up the mess, not them.

When I look back at the week, I think there was a tie between Bartholomew and the Oobleck  and Wacky Wednesday for the book of choice. The kiddos loved looking through Wacky Wednesday for all of the silly pictures that didn't make sense. Unfortunately, I only had one copy of the book so the kiddos were crawling over one another to see the pages. Next year I'll get a couple of copies from the library and have them work in small groups.

All in all, I think our Dr. Seuss study was a success. Happy Birthday to you (tomorrow) Dr. Seuss! And, thank you for sharing your imagination with so many generations and inspiring young readers. My class was asking all week if they could look at Dr. Seuss books whenever they had free time. Reading success!

Our March bulletin board, a small selection of Dr. Seuss stories, word family hats, and oobleck!

plans

Sometimes plans don't go as you would like. Some things take longer than you would expect. Sometimes there are delayed starts due to weather. Sometimes students just aren't getting the point. The whole day, as a teacher, is about adjusting your plans to meet the students' needs. And still, we make plans, over and over again, hoping that one day everything will click and we'll be able to teach everything that we actually need to.

Next week I am administering tests to determine the levels of English Language Learners in the kindergarten grade level. Thanks to the awesome budgeting of my district, a sub is not funded for the time that I am out testing, which leaves my assistant on her own for a couple of days. Granted, she has her teaching degree, but our regular schedule involves us both teaching at different points during the day through centers and small group activities. With this in mind, I have had to completely revamp several of my days next week to account for her being on her own.

In this planning, I get a little more freedom than usual. I have been able to create worksheets and have fun with my plans. The unfortunate thing about sub planning is that you don't actually get to do all of the fun things that you are leaving behind for someone else. So, as frustrating as creating sub plans can be, I relish the opportunity to be a little more creative, even if I am not the one to benefit from all of the work that goes into it.

On top of my being out for testing next week, I have other fun things to accommodate for in my planning. On Thursday the Albuquerque Zoo is coming in to do a presentation of "Zoo to You." Through this our students will be able to meet some of the cool animals at the zoo. We also have that beloved day, Valentine's Day, on Friday. Yay for hyped up kiddos. At least it falls on a Friday this year so I don't need to deal with the sugar coma following their sweet indulgences on the holiday.

Here's a peek at one of my fun creations for next week - sight word graphing!

get crafty

This weekend I squeezed in a lot of crafting time around the usual activities of running and cleaning. I am trying to stay on top of my crafting ideas so that I am not rushing around and stressing out when birthdays or other gift giving holidays roll around. I got started as soon as we returned from Nebraska for Christmas and have been plucking away at new projects, old projects, and for a change, me projects.

Here is a glance at what I have been working on this weekend!

One of the blogs that I follow, mooglyblog.com, is hosting an afghan-along. This is the first square of the afghan. Every two weeks a new square is revealed and at the end of the year I'll have all of the pieces needed to make a 4'x6' afghan! This is my me project, one that I'm doing just because I can.

Another project that I worked on this weekend was a baby doll for one of my nieces. Her birthday isn't for quite some time, but as I mentioned, I want to stay on top of my gift-crafting game so that I'm prepared in the event that life gets in the way when birthdays are actually here.

Here is another birthday gift for another niece. It is hard to come up with ideas for the girls as they get older, but I think that this sparkly infinity scarf is one that will please the oldest of the girls.

Last but not least, here is a project that I have been working on (verrrrry slowly) since I returned from Costa Rica. This baby blanket is for a niece that isn't a baby anymore, but she is still my baby girl. If all goes well, it will serve well for a 4th birthday present.

cause and effect

The kinders are going crazy. They can taste the looming Thanksgiving vacation. One more day. We can do this.

Today I salvaged our day today by introducing Rube Goldberg machines. We're studying cause and effect this week, so it fit with the curriculum and it enchanted my kinders. They were in heaven. Anyone walking past my classroom at several points during the day would have heard my students oohing and aahing. To make things better, at the end of the day, they could tell me what cause and effect means!

We were without specials this afternoon, so I moved our math interventions to specials time, and then we experimented. My kinders used materials from the classroom to create their own "Rube Goldberg Machines." Now, being kindergarteners, these machines were really more like a mess of materials, but a lot of cause and effect was going on. 

Here's a little snippet of the end of my day. I hope yours was as exciting!

Now that you've seen what my kinders made of Rube Goldberg, if you have never seen one, or didn't realize what you were watching, here is the video that entranced my class.

real or fantasy

Sometimes I think that kindergarteners float on a fine line between reality and fantasy. They have such vivid imaginations that sometimes it is hard to tell if something that they are sharing is real or not. Last year I had a student that worried the whole school by telling us that he could not get off of the bus at home because no one was there - that his whole family had been arrested. After sitting with him for about fifteen minutes, he got around to sharing that this had been a bad dream that he had and that his family was not in jail. I did eventually get in touch with his dad who had been worried sick when my little kinder did not get off of the bus and he hurried himself over to the school and all was good. Reality versus fantasy, it can be a valuable piece of knowledge, even at five years of age.

This week, we have been focusing on realism and fantasy in stories. My kinders seem to have picked up on this skill pretty quickly, and so today we decided to have some fun with it. Each student was paired with a classmate and they had to come up with something that was real and a way to make it fantasy or make believe. Then the pairs drew their ideas on a piece of chart paper. We may not be fantastic artists, but we had some great ideas. School buses with wings, dolphins wearing shoes, books with faces, and the list goes on. We had a great time expressing ourselves and now our classroom has a new piece of art to adorn its walls for a while.

In other news, this morning one of the fifth grade teachers approached me to say that one of her friends sent her boxes of books for the students at our school. As a result, my minders were able to go on a "field trip" this morning to her classroom and select a book to take home with them forever and ever. My kinders were in heaven and were so excited when I told them that they would be allowed to use their books during independent reading time today, even if they were too hard. They practiced reading the pictures if they chose more difficult books and were so engaged that it was a sight to be seen.

Yay for art and books!

writing

Today we wrote and I just could not resist sharing some of my students' creation. This week we are reading a story called Bear Snores On and my kinders are loving it. We decided to take our bear conversations one step further and write about what we would do if we were bears. Some of them got it, some did not. Whatever the case, we wrote happily for 30 minutes.

"I would sleep."

"I would eat fish." (I'm pretty sure no caption was needed here.)

"I'm going to take care of my cub."

"I find berries."

"I went fishing. I got lost because my mom wasn't with me."

Don't you just love it! I know I do!

life

Sometimes, it happens. Life takes over no matter what your plans are. When I started this blog at the beginning of August, my plan had been to write a little something every day as a means of reflecting upon my teaching experiences and life in general. The highs, the lows, and whatever happens in between. Friday evening I decided that while this was a fantastic idea, sometimes I also just need me time. Or we time.

On Friday, after work, I ran around town trying to complete some errands - some I completed successfully, some not so much. I got home and was able to stock the fridge with hazelnut milk (my newest food addiction) and put quarters away for laundry. I had failed at getting the mister and I registered for a race at the end of September, due to the chamber closing early and then only having registration forms for the bike portion of the weekend of events, no signs of the ones for the half marathon. Life, it happens, and not always as planned.

That evening the mister and I did something unusual for the school year. We sat back, ate some delicious homemade lentil lasagna, and watched a movie. Yes, we relaxed. Knowing that we had a long weekend in front of us we didn't feel pressure to knock out just a little bit of work before hitting the sack. We looked through our Netflix queue and finally watched The King's Speech. It was well worth the time out from our busy lives. During the movie I also finally finished making a blanket for a friend of ours from Costa Rica who is due to have a little girl any day now!

Yesterday morning I went about my normal Saturday morning routine and checked off a beautiful 10 mile run through the high desert. During the last couple of weeks we have had a lot of rain for the desert and I was surprised by the abundance of green. I was also fortunate in that it was an overcast morning so I did not need to battle the heat of the sun, though I did have to deal with some stomach problems. Oh well, life happens, and you keep on keeping on. I finished up my 10 miles in just over 2 hours, which I was quite pleased with (the last mile was accompanied by the howls of coyotes in the distance). This is my longest run on record in well over a year, after battling injury after injury. 

After I left the trails the mister called and we decided to go to Albuquerque for the day. This is once again something unusual for us. I think that I went to Albuquerque "just because" once last Thanksgiving with friends, but the two of us have never done it. Sure, we've been to the city since moving here a little over a year ago, but for things like going to the airport, to run races, or for medical appointments. Yesterday, we shopped. I the past year I have lost a little over ten pounds, and therefore was in desperate need of clothes that fit me well. We also took care of some things on our list that we've been putting off, such as buying new towels and other basic household goods. We topped off the day with a delicious Japanese/Sushi dinner. It was a true treat for us.

And now, life goes back to normal. This morning I worked out and cut tags off of new items and prepared things for laundry. The mister threw together some home fries and a crustless veggie quiche. We are moving past our 36 hours of "freedom" (granted by this long weekend) and settling into work: grading papers, updating student data folders, creating newsletters for the month of September, reading for grad school, doing household chores. 

We may take a break from life on occasion, but it always finds us in the end. Enjoy your long weekend (if you are fortunate enough to have Monday off)!

writing

I love to write. Almost as much as I love to read. I like to put my words onto paper (or the screen) and reflect on what has come out of me. Whether writing is being used as a form of entertainment and creative expression or to compose professional documents, I simply love it. I also learn best when I am able to write down how I am processing information or picking out key details in texts. Words are, therefore, pretty important in my life - whether I am writing them or reading them.

Today I finally had time to do my first unstructured writing activity with my students. A prompt was put out there ("What did you do this week?"), but I did not hold my kinders to it. What I really wanted was them to experience putting words (letters) on paper and expressing themselves through writing. Last year, this activity would have resulted in a flash flood of tears from more than half of my students. Today, I was blown away.

As I walked around the room and asked students what they were writing about I was pleasantly surprised by what I found on their papers. Every single student had written letters. Better yet, nearly a fourth of them had written actual words! They used the high frequency words from our last two weeks of school (I am), they read the room (without prompting, I might add) and wrote the words that they found on the walls, they wrote words that they have seen frequently in books (the), and one even sounded out words to the point that I could actually tell what he was trying to write. These little guys are on fire! 

I wish that I had remembered to take a picture of a couple of the samples before I left school, but I have filed them away in data folders so that I can track their growth throughout the year. I am planning on doing a monthly free write assignment where they can write about whatever they want. I will hopefully have the time to do unstructured writing more often, but I want at least one sample that I can keep each month to tuck away. 

It has been a great week and an excellent Friday. I cannot wait to see what next week brings!

goals

The entry into our classroom, newly decorated with student work

Last week my kinders were hard at work learning some basic skills to help acclimate them to the classroom and our school in general. As a part of this process, they also created drawings of their biggest goal for the year. With the exception of one or two students, they all said that they wanted to learn how to read this year. Their drawings of their goals are now hanging up right inside of our door so that they can be reminded of their goals every time they enter and/or leave the classroom.

Our class work wall also includes a name list so that we can practice reading our friends' names and a poster documenting how well everyone was able to write their own names at the end of the first week of school. I love having the bright colors on the wall and displaying the work of my students. My kinders are slowly transforming the classroom and I love it!

crafty

Making some tactile letters for my kinders

Sunday fun day! Or something like that. I finished all of my "need-to-dos" around the house this morning, which meant that I had an afternoon to do one of my "want-to-dos." I love to craft in my free time and have been perusing alphabet patterns on pinterest for quite a while now. Today I had a chance to try one of them out.

This afternoon I made it through a capital and lowercase a and a capital b. I've mostly followed the patterns that I chose, but make a few modifications here and there. I've been using my stashed bits and pieces of yarn from other projects and should end up with some bright colored letters for my students to use as they learn their alphabet. I'll continue working on my letters until I have a complete set of capital letters and a complete set of lowercase letters. I'm pretty excited about bringing these new tools into the classroom!

lesson plans

One of a million lesson plan templates that looks incredible, but that I don't think is quite me...

In preparation for each week of school, teachers set about the task of lesson planning. Each teacher plans in their own way. I plan very differently from my mister. And he plans differently from the next teacher. The thing with lesson planning is that there are certain components that must be included depending on the school and/or district that you work for. 

This year, our school district has given us between 15 and 20 elements that need to be included in our plans. The issue is that this list of requirements makes creating a lesson plan template that appeals to me quite difficult. I used one last week, I'm trying to create a new one this week. We'll see what I can come up with. 

On a positive note, I am oh, so close to being done with my actual planning for the week. I just need to figure out how it needs to be presented for me to follow it easily.

* And in the end I just kept my template the same. There were too many elements to change around, and in the interest of saving paper, I stuck with what I used last week. I'm sure that I'll get used to it soon enough.