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Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Day 5 - Organization and Stamp the Snowman Freebie!

Last day for the link party...organization!  Ahhh, my first goal, lol.  So far so good, I have been trying to focus on certain areas of my classroom.  Last year, it drove me nuts when my students would place their journal boxes and caddies in the most strangest places on the book shelf.  Every day I would have to fix it or explain to them how to put them back.  So this year, I decided to use vinyl dots and on their journal box and their caddy to see if that would help.
Let me tell you, it worked like a charm.  The students knew where to place their journal boxes facing the right way and it didn't take long for them to remember where to place them back when we were done using them.
I have team leaders and they are the ones that get the materials when we need them.  I will be doing this again next year.  
Time for me to stock up on vinyl sheets and now that I have my cameo, it will be much easier to get the circles cut...woohoo!
I also focused on my learning centers (play developmental centers) and wanted my students to be more independent in finding their center without having to ask me several times where they needed to go.  I decided to use a pocket chart and label all the centers with the shape.  
Every day my students go to 2 centers for about 8 minutes, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.  They look at the pocket chart and walk to their center for the day.
So far I'm loving this and it has been working very well in my classroom.  Plus the bonus is that they know where to put the things back when they are done.
Just in case you are wondering what my learning centers consist of, here is a list: math manipulatives, home living, play dough, blocks, marble run, puzzles, writing, and painting.  
I just added another one yesterday, which is a CVC leapfrog game students play on the T.V.  I haven't put a shape yet for that one, but they seem to really enjoy playing it so far.
I plan to continue adding more and more learning centers since my kiddos really need to work with learning to work in groups and sharing.  
Here's a freebie for you!  
I have my students use letter sound rubber stamps that I purchased from Lakeshore awhile back to do this center.
Click here to download the file. Well good night everyone!

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