Five for Friday

After an unplanned blogger break, I'm back to posting again. I figured I would try my hand at posting in the Five for Friday

 #1- Creating blogs on iPads!

I am trying out blogger on my iPad, any other bloggers out there compose blog posts using iPads? Give me some tips/hints/apps/suggestions if you use an iPad. My iPad is always with me so I'm thinking it may be easier for me to update on my iPad than anywhere else. If you've had any experience with this please let me know in the comments. 

#2 - Schools out for Summer!

I teach in Eastern Ontario and Friday was our last official day of work! Our students attended school on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday and Friday were professional activity days meaning only teachers in attendance. We had team meetings, staff meetings and prepared our rooms for "deep cleaning" over the summer. I am thrilled that this year I don't have to switch schools or classrooms! Hooray! Bring on the summer!

#3 Relaxing Staycation!

We have no big plans for the summer, just some day trips here and there. This is due to the fact that our vacation budget was spent/blown on the amazing March Break trip we took this past year. We visited Disney World and sailed on the Disney Dream! It was an incredible vacation and I can't even begin to tell you how thrilled we were. The cruise was amazing! Here's a few of my favourite pics.

#4 Reflecting on the past School Year - Play Based Inquiry Learning

As you may or may not know Ontario phased in a brand new play based kindergarten curriculum with its introduction to Full Day Kindergarten three years ago. Basically the entire document stresses the importance of children learning through play. It encourages us to let children guide their own learning and for educators to help them extend and challenge their learning through their play. Anyways it seems to be a stark contrast between every thing I've read about the common core curriculum so many bloggers talk about. Here's a link to the curriculum document if you are interested in reading more. Hopefully I can create a few more in depth postings about this later this summer. Here's a couple shots of the students in my classroom involved in play.

Pretending to travel on an airplane

Building a fishing boat

Creating our own bakery

#5 Wedding Season

Mr. G and I are off to attend our first wedding of the summer season this weekend. Love is in the air. The wedding is for a former work colleague of Mr. G, so it should be a lot of fun. Anyways I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and I'm very excited to be returning to the world of blogging.

Claiming my Bloglovin' Spot

Well what can I say, I've been a very bad blogger. The switch in assignments one week before school began last fall really took it's toll on me. That combined with the political situation faced by teachers in Ontario this year, needless to say left me exhausted. Today, was my last day of work, and I have been assigned to the same kindergarten class again next year. I'm very happy about this, and I hope to be able to post some thoughts/reviews about how my year progressed with all of you. Again you have my apologies for being such a bad blogger, I will try again this fall.
Anyways while living under a rock this year I guess I almost missed the bloglovin' train that everybody is jumping on. So I'm claiming my blog with this post.
Happy Summer everybody!

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Kindergarten Common Core

I have to tell you about this great resource that I learned about from Laura over at Kinder Kraziness. Its called The Kindergarten Common Core Workbook. It covers both English and Math standards. It has both worksheets and activities for you to use with your kindergarten students. The book contains over 600 pages of activities and worksheets! What an amazing resource to supplement your students' learning!

Even though I teach in Ontario (and we do not formally have the Common Core Standards) many of the Ontario Curriculum expectations link perfectly with the Common Core. I can not wait to get my hands on this amazing resource. I am constantly searching for activities for my students that have purposeful practice opportunities and I think that this resource will provide them. I am already planning to use one of the activities this week during my small group instruction. I think that my students will love these activities.

If you are a blogger, and you act fast you can grab a copy of this awesome resource here by following the instructions provided. I hope that you will enjoy this amazing resource! I know that I will!

Change is a good thing...right?

Well it's been awhile since I've posted, but a lot has happened since my last post. Remember that over the summer I was preparing for my combined Grade One/Two classroom. Well, the week before school started my principal called me to offer me a position teaching kindergarten. That meant switching classrooms if I accepted. I said I would call him back the following day, but ended up calling him back a half an hour later to say yes I would accept the kindergarten position. So remember that beautiful classroom I had all ready and set to go...dismantle it, and start over from scratch at the complete opposite end of the school (which I swear is like a kilometer away) Thankfully, I have great friends and family that helped me make the switch.

We have just finished our second week of school and I would have to say that I am extremely happy with my decision to switch. I love teaching kindergarten and my students are great. I also get to work with a full time Designated Early Childhood Educator in my classroom. My DECE seems wonderful and our personalities/styles are a great match. So we have 22 students (an even mix of JK and SK) that we will teach together. There are also two other kindergarten classrooms, so we have a great team to work and collaborate with. I think its going to be a great year! A lot of stress the week before school started but it was worth it. Hopefully now that things are settled I will be posting more regularly. I will be creating a post about an awesome kindergarten blogger opportunity that hopefully I will post tomorrow morning.

My First Freebie

I have been searching for a classroom library label set for quite some time now. I never found one that exactly fit my collection of books. It never had the right categories, or Canadian spelling. So I decided to create my own. I figured I would offer it as a freebie to anyone else who could use it. If there is interest, I can change the spelling of favourite to the American version. Just leave a comment below. All of the graphics for this freebie come from The 3am Teacher.

She has lots of easy frames to start creating. I will be posting the pdf document to Google Docs. Eventually I hope to open a shop at TPT and I will add it there as well. Just click on the picture to grab the labels.

I hope that you enjoy this freebie. Thanks for reading and following,