September

Hello everyone, so I apologize for not blogging all summer and things have been crazy with school starting. I am the school's web curator, the lead teacher of my grade level team and this year I have taken on the responsibilities of Head AR (union rep) for my building and I am part of the technology team in my building. So, I apologize for not connecting... I will try to keep up this with blogging this year!

I am so excited that our school and district is moving up with technology. We have done away with our desktops in our room and each teacher has a new MacBook Air. We also got new interactive projectors and printers in all of our building. We have carts with laptops for our students to be shared between three classes. Unfortunately, we do not have computer teachers in our district anymore, they were cut/rifted about three years ago. I definitely valued their expertise and ability to teach students and now we are all trying to figure out how to help our students to become technologically literate at the same time we are also learning. My classroom also has a smart table which I have to learn to use.
It is exciting but scary..........I have been busy exploring links on pinterest and I want to share a few with you all today!

http://www.squidoo.com/math-smartboard-lessons

This site on Squidoo had tons of educational games and lessons for K- 5!

http://colaborativelearning.pbworks.com/w/page/31904645/Kindergarten%20Math

http://www.dreambox.com/teachertools

Dreambox was great for mathematics resources as well. What I liked was that it was broken down by standard, so I knew by introducing this game I was covering a direct standard! There were several grade levels that you can access!

What I want to know is what digital tools and resources do you use?

Pass it Forward - Lovely Blog Award!

I feel so honored and excited to recieve the...



Thanks again Becky at http://teachinglearningloving.blogspot.com for giving me this honor!  I have had so much support from other bloggers as I joined this online community of teachers.

Now it's my turn to pass it on!

The rules for this award are to:

1. Link back to the blogger who gave you the award.
2. Follow the person who sent it to you.
3. Pass the award on to 15 other lovely bloggers.

Drumroll please here are my other 15 lovely bloggers................

Mrs. Bailey at Klassy Kinders

Katy at Kindergarten Katy

Mrs. Bell at A Place Called Kindergarten

Sharon at Kindercuriosity!

Lindsay at Whyte Water

http://thekindergarden.blogspot.com

Susan at Kindergarten Basics

Jill at Color Me Happy Kindergarten

Crystal at Kreative in Kinder

Sally at Fairy Dust Teaching

Kelly at From Kindergarten with Love

Heather at Peace Love and Kinder

Ellen at Techno Babies

Mrs. Blakey at Kindergarten Room 102

Lisa at I Teach Kinder Kids

I searched long and hard to find all these great blogs...I hope that they love their award as much as I do!

Mrs. M is MIA

Well I know its been a long time since I blogged last. I have been on my Spring Break. We had our Easter weekend back onto our week off, so I took a little trip back to Toronto, my home town. It was so nice spending time with my mom and my brother, catching up with my cousins, playing with my nephew and meeting up with dear friends....kinda of like a whirlwind but now its starting to wind down and I need to get back to reality. Today is my last full day in Toronto and then I will be flying back to rejoin my husband in Jersey. We are going to the Tosh.O comedy show in NYC with some good friends so I am excited for that as well. So, what have I been working on the Teaching front....not much but I did finish the first and second grade core curriculum standards checklists and I am planning to complete the third and fourth soon! Just check out my TPT store. My grade partner took on a student teacher and she is getting ready to "take over" the planning and teaching for her final placement, so I gave my input and suggestions for next week but I don't even have to create the lesson plans, I feel so strange. I am being sooooo spoiled. I am very soon going to pass it forward and I am on the hunt for some lovely blogs to pass on the lovely blog award....

Thank you Becky!

Becky over at http://teachinglearningloving.blogspot.com (Teaching Learning & Loving), she totally made my day by giving me this Lovely Blog Award....I am so honored. Check it out below:

Kindergarten Core Curriculum State Standards

Hi all I am finally publishing my first item at TPT that people can purchase - exciting progress for me. My Kindergarten Core Curriculum State Standards Checklist. This tool has really been invaluable to me and I use it everyday. I am proud to share it with my online colleagues! 

As a freebie, download my preview to access the K Math Curriculum State Standards Checklist....A brief description is below:

Please click on the link below:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Kindergarten-Common-Core-State-Standards

Kindergarten Common Core State Standards Checklist! This tool has been invaluable to me to plan from month to month and as a yearly curriculum pacing guide. I am so excited to publish this excellent organizational tool! The KCCSS Checklist ensures that I am planning for, assessing and delivering all standards, translating to a comprehensive and responsive approach teaching. This KCCSS checklist contains all Math and English Language Arts standards for Kindergarten. I photocopy these standards each month and I can either highlight, date, check or tally when I have covered the standard in each subject area. This document also gives grade level specific Standards of Practice, Literature Connections and College and Career Readiness ideas. Though the font is small, the checklist for each subject area is available on ONE page so that as a teacher I can easily assess "at a glance" the standards that I need to plan for and teach. I use this everyday and I hope that you find it useful. I am planning to make similar checklists for first grade and second grade and perhaps higher grade levels according to the demand, because it is time consuming to create! I will create them for you if you email me with feedback (demand). Please feel free to rate my product and to follow my TPT store and/or blog http://kinderverse.blogspot.com. I am new to this online community of teachers on TPT and blogs, Jaya Maharajh

Teachers Taking Care of Teachers

I know you all have seen how the tornadoes have ripped apart parts of the country. People have lost their lives and homes. Schools were affected as well. So here in teacher blog world, we are helping in any way we can. If you have any duplicate books, work sheets, games, or what ever you can find that would help, we need your assistance. If you have a TPT store, please think about donating some of your items to the teachers that were affected. I plan to give away some items as well as some books and manipulatives I am not using. Its for the love of teaching and ultimately for the love of all the children we teach. Please give generously. Click here for more information about the devastation in Indianna and join the linky party at: http://kreativeinkinder.blogspot.com/

The Lorax

Today was the last day of our Dr. Seuss festivities. We read the story The Lorax and completed some activities. In honor of this book, we as a school community made a commitment to the environment and pledged ways that we can keep our earth healthy and clean. We put our ideas on truffula leaves and adorned the school. Each grade level had a different colored truffula leaf and on Friday our school bloomed! We took a moment to take our classes into the hallway and posted our contributions. The students were so proud of their truffula leaves!

 Our K class was also asked to be part of a special composting experiment. We put our organic scraps from snack and lunch in a compost pail. We weighed our pail and it had 10 lbs in one day- That's 10 lbs away from the trash and landfills! Then I took the class to the composter and we went through the steps of composting. I told them that our compost would eventually become the rich soil that we would use to plant our vegetables and herbs later in the spring.