a classroom tour.

Now that we have officially entered our second week of school, I thought it would be the perfect time to take you on a little tour of my humble preschool abode. I secretly love that teaching preschool grants me the ability to decorate with every pattern and color under the sun without any mention of it being "too much". Amen? So as you can see, I took that freedom and ran with it. Clearly.

Above, you can see a view of our room as you enter. You might remember from previous posts that I teach two different classes - a class of 2 year olds and a class of 3 year olds. Our two year olds have their cubbies in our classroom so that my co-teacher and I can easily access their diaper bags, lunches, etc. throughout the day.

Moving to the left of the cubbies, I have a bulletin board that displays the three year olds' work and our calendar area.

Our calendar board contains our calendar (shocking), schedule of the day, weather graph, helpers for the day, and days of the week!

All of the kids' birthdays are displayed on our birthday board...

...and the two year olds' work is displayed on a bulletin board adjacent to the birthday board!

{Grab your own copy of my alphabet cards here!}

Thank you, Jesus for bright colors and patterns!

{Grab a FREE copy of my number posters here!}

As for my space, I don't have a desk in our room, so I have to utilize the counter space as much as possible! 

All of the curriculum for the year has been divided by month and placed in binders:

{Grab a FREE copy of these binder covers here!}

My personal calendar and supplies are easily accessible as well!

{Click here to download my August 2014 - August 2015 Calendar}

I hope y'all are off to a fab start of the 2014-2015 school year!

easy as 1, 2, 3. {number poster freebie}

Oops, I did it again, y'all. I made more posters for the classroom and I'm not even sad about it. Sorry I'm not sorry. I started off with the alphabet and digraph posters...

...and the "sound board" phonics posters...

Not wanting the numbers in our little nuggets' worlds to get the raw end of the deal, I decided to throw them a bone and made them into posters as well!

The number posters show all numbers from 0-20 in numbers (duh), words, pictures, and represented on a ten-frame. Odd and even numbers are also differentiated on the ten-frames with blue dots for the odd numbers and pink dots for the even numbers!

And you want to know the best part? All of this numerical cute-ness can be yours for FREE! Yes that's right, free. As a little "Christmas in July" present for you, these little nuggets get to come to your room and mine for absolutely nothing. 

Who's ready to get printing and laminating?! This girl. Go grab your posters and come join the laminating fiesta!

hook-ed on pa-honics.

Is it just me, or is everyone and their mom...and dog...and rotten, red-headed, older brother making alphabet posters for the classroom? Well, I suppose we must add a beefy brunette blogger to that list because I, too, have drunk the kool-aid and made a packet of alphabet and phonics posters.

I decided to make a set of alphabet posters with colorful, rainbow-patterned backgrounds:

...as well as 10 consonant digraph/trigraph posters that include the digraphs/trigraphs: ch, ck, dge, kn, ph, sh, tch, th, wh, and wr!

My alphabet posters and consonant digraph/trigraph posters are combined into one pack on TPT! Click here to purchase your own set!

I also made a set of phonogram {vowel combination} posters! These posters are smaller than the alphabet posters and are meant to be hung in columns under their color-coordinated header! For example, all of the ways to spell the pink, long /a/ sounds will go under the pink, long /a/ header...

...all of the ways to spell the long /e/ sound will go under the long /e/ header...

...and so forth! The phonograms included in this pack are: a_e, ai, ar, au, aw, ay, ea, ee, e_e, er, ew, ie, i_e, igh, ir, oa, oe, o_e, oi, oo, or, ow, oy, u_e, ur, and y. In the cases where one vowel combination can "say" two things, both pronunciations are represented (i.e. I have included "ea" as in "eat" as well as "ea" as in "head").

I feel that these phonograms are an ESSENTIAL tool for early readers, writers, and spellers! My kids were constantly looking up at our "Sound Board" to find the sound they needed if they were trying to spell a word or to help them dissect a word when reading. Our Sound Board was right next to our Word Wall (you get a peek of it here)...

...so all of our phonics and word helpers were in the same place!

My phonogram {vowel combination} posters may be purchased in my TPT store as well!

If you would prefer to have BOTH the alphabet/consonant digraph AND the phonogram posters, you may purchase both sets in a bundle here for $1.00 less than buying them separately! Yes, ONE WHOLE DOLLAR!

teacher appreciation sale.

Hooty hoo for Teacher Appreciation Week, y'all! You have definitely earned it and deserve it! Hopefully you are getting showered in appreciation-ness this week, but if you need a bit more happy for the week, head on over to my TPT shop where you will enjoy 20% off my entire store May 7 and 8, plus 10% off from TPT using the Promo Code "TAD13".

{Thanks, Hope King, for making the snazzy graphic!}

Get shopping, y'all!

may, may, marvelous may {freebie}.

Why am I so terribly tickled by this funny?

Probably because I spent the greater part of my 13th year singing this line over and over with an aggressive thumb-point to myself, but I don't know.

But what better way to start off the last month of school than with a freebie?

Last year, I showed y'all how I divide my kids up for their small group work (math tubs, reader's workshop, etc.). To go along with my superhero theme, I chose to name my kids' groups after super powers rather than birds, colors, or shapes.

Since then, I have had several requests for copies of my little headers (flight, laser vision, etc.), so today is your day! I have jazzed up the super powers a bit and have placed them in a free pack for your grouping pleasure!

To grab your freebie, head on over to my TPT shop and download away!

Happy Wednesday!

love me some color-coding.

Do y'all remember my color-coded word wall?

I have absolutely loved how much easier it is for my kids to find the words they need! They think about what kind of word they need (sight word, family word, color word, etc.), then look for that type's color, rather than searching all over the wall for a single word. They dig it, I dig it. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Feeling that my Word Wall still needed a little bit of love, however, I did give it a small face lift last summer to make it a bit brighter and happier.

With a little help from my trusty Silhouette, I created a new "Word Wall" header and A-Z letters to alphabetize my words. I also differentiated the vowels from the consonants using different colors of paper.

 I also installed a little "key" to remind my kids what each color means adjacent to the wall:

I absolutely love the updates, and I think the kids do too!!

Wanting EVERYONE to experience the joy that comes with color-coding, I created a Color-Coded Word Wall Kit with ten times the cuteness of mine.

Included in the pack is a key so the kids can know what each color means:

A-Z cards to help organize your word wall in alphabetical order:

Pre-primer, primer, first, and second grade sight words, family words, feeling words, number words, ordinal number words, and color words. All color-coded for you and your kiddies!

I have also included blank cards in each color in case you want to add in some words of your own!

So head on over to my little TPT shop to get a word wall kit of your own, and start prepping your room for next year!

Click Here to Purchase Your Color-Coded Word Wall Kit

Now go get yourselves nice and color-coded, pals!