Confession

So the first official challenge for kinderblog13 is now posted.

 I'd have to say it certainly intimidated me at first. However, after reading a few posts from other bloggers, I feel like I can tackle the challenge and confide in my readers.

My confession - I'm addicted to my iDevices! (I have a iPhone and an iPad, plus all full day kindergarten educators in my board have been given an iPad to use for documentation, so I actually have 2 iPads) My addiction is starting to become a bit unhealthy. It is the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do before going to sleep. It feels like I'm constantly connected to that little box. All day long I'm tapping in that passcode to look for updates, or I'm listening for that familiar ping. I will sometimes send my husband a text when we are in the same house but on different floors. It's out of control. Now that I'm home for the summer I feel my addiction is increasing. Normally when I was working I was too busy to check in on things during the school day. (Although I do use an iPad in my kindergarten class for documenting student learning and progress, I keep my work iPad relatively free of my home based distractions) But now that I'm home for the summer I'm connecting with that little box all day long.

When thinking through this post I asked myself what am I actually doing on this miniature box all day? Some of it was productive, some not so much. So I figured I'd share in detail all the silly and or productive things I check/do on that little device as a sort of full disclosure for my confession.

1.

I'm guilty of logging into facebook just to troll and creep on all those statuses all day long. MINI CONFESSION #1 I rarely post updates of my own.

2.

 This one is somewhat productive depending on how much junk mail was delivered that day to my email.

3.  

I have two twitter accounts, so this one can go either way. I created one account to connect with other educators and increase my PLN. This goal is going quite well and I'm learning lots. This is where I actually found the kinderblog challenge. My other account though is totally unproductive. I use it to follow celebrity gossip and reality tv updates. MINI CONFESSION #2 - I'm also addicted to Big Brother. I use twitter to follow people who post updates from the live feeds. Yikes there sure is some crazy stuff happening in that house this season!

4.

 All of my appointments and celebrations are programmed into my calendar with reminders so this one is totally productive. Plus, I use the clock function to set my alarm every morning, although that function is currently being unused thanks to my wonderful summer vacation.

5.  

This is another one that falls into both the productive and unproductive categories. About half of my pinterest time is spent looking and pinning educational pins. The other half totally unproductive. Although I do pin some recipes,  household and holiday things, the majority of my time is spent perusing the humor board. My goodness, some on the things on there are hilarious. The ecards, autocorrects, and other stuff often have me amused for hours. MINI CONFESSION #3 - when I'm repinning things I rarely change the text.

6.

This one is mostly productive. The majority of the blogs I follow are education based. So, I'm learning lots about teaching and blogging. I will admit though, a couple of the blogs I follow are not education based.

7. 

MINI CONFESSION #4 - I'm also addicted to all things Disney/Disney World/Disney Cruise. So I'm constantly checking the DIS boards forums, even though our next trip won't be for a long time. I'm also checking Easywdw my absolute favourite Disney blog. Josh writes awesome posts about the parks and has an amazing crowd calendar to help plan your trips. The thing I like the most though is his writing style. 

8. 

 Productive for the most part- actually using my phone for the purpose it was designed.

9. 

Surfing the world wide web - productive for the most part.

10. 

Games - totally unproductive, mostly silly games in which you build your own city/farm/hotel/airline/salon/etc. My current game addiction is Hay Day.

11.

I'd like to think that having a camera is productive. I always have a camera with me now to document and capture all those important moments in life. A camera however does lead to Instagram which is probably not that productive. 

Overall, I think my iDevices are used for a balance of both productive and unproductive things. But I'm still trying to cut back on my constant connection. The main reason of course is my little boy. My goal is to play together, create together and explore together this summer. This is my chance to be a mom.

Another reason is to distance my son from technology because MINI CONFESSION#5 he's quickly becoming his own technology monster. As I was writing this post, he was busy exploring the new DJ app I downloaded for free thanks to my twitter connections. I didn't have a clue how to work it but he had it figured out in mere minutes. He loves Minecraft and also penned his first runaway note on our iPad. He inherited my old iPhone 3GS when I upgraded this fall. So he goes around telling everybody at school that he has an iPhone. I keep telling him that there is no chip in the phone so you just have an iPod but he doesn't care.

Technology is great and although we both really enjoy it we're going to have lots of fun experiences this summer without it. Thanks for reading and I can't wait to read all those other confessions.

#Kinderblog13

One of the main things that attracted me to blogging was the incredible sharing of knowledge and ideas. This summer I have been trying to expand my knowledge and networking even further by using twitter for educational purposes (before I was simply following silly stuff like Big Brother updates - which I still do on a separate twitter account - my what a season this one will be) Anyways, while surfing around on twitter I stumbled across #kinderchat and their #kinderblog13 challenge. The challenge is just beginning, but you can join in at anytime. You can find the details here. You can also follow me on twitter by clicking here. I added some beautiful social media buttons to the top of my blog yesterday but I don't believe you can see them on mobile devices.

The first task of the challenge is to sum up myself in 250 words or less. Yikes, well here goes nothing.

I teach full day kindergarten in Eastern Ontario where I teach a mixture of Junior and Senior students. Ontario rolled out a brand new kinder program three years ago where a Designated Early Childhood Educator and a teacher form a partnership and together we deliver a play-based program with an incredible emphasis on child led inquiry. As educators we have been encouraged to really look in depth at our practices and rethink/replace things that aren't working or aren't developmentally appropriate. This past year we discontinued calendar time, ditched my big bulky classroom teacher desk and increased the amount of time given to student directed play. We are encouraged to get rid of our theme based units, ditch our worksheets/prescribed crafts and let kids lead their own learning. Overall, I feel that its an exciting time to be a Kindergarten teacher here in Ontario. I love the new program and as each year passes (this will be my third year teaching the new program) I become better at "letting go" of the control. There are still areas that I need to improve upon - like how to better document student learning and progress. I also hope to gather some more ways to further integrate technology into our program. I believe that I'm working with my students in a way that is the best way for them and I'm having a blast learning and discovering with them. 

Goin' on a Blog Hunt

Good afternoon bloggers! I think that it's time to head out on a blog hunt! 

I'm linking up with Laura at Corkboard Connections for her blog hunt. What a cute idea to discover some new blogs to love and read. So go and ahead and click on that super cute bear to discover some new blogs. I keep singing Goin' on a Bear Hunt as I compose this post. My kindergarten students absolutely adore the following rendition of the classic song on You Tube by The Learning Station. So much fun!

Of course now that Google Reader is gone, how will you keep up with all of these fantastic new blogs? Well I think that you should give Blog Lovin' a try. Its super user friendly and even has an app. I love that I can scroll through new posts on my iPhone or iPad so easily. I think that I'm even more addicted to blogging with this smart new app. If you would like to follow me on Blog Lovin' click the pic below.

A special thank you to Melissa at Common Core and So Much More for the awesome button! Now go ahead and make some new blog discoveries on the Blog Hunt - go and click that bear at the top of this post!

Happy Canada Day!

I hope all of my Canadian followers have had a great day proudly celebrating our nation. We were hoping to hit up the local fireworks but I don't think Cameron can stay awake that late for the second night in a row (he had a sleepover at his Aunt and Uncle's house while Mr. G and I attended a wedding out of town last night.) We might just sit out on our back deck later and catch some of the higher fireworks from there.
In honour of Canada Day I'm linking up to a Canadian Teacher linky party over at Teaching is a Gift. Lots of Canadian bloggers have already linked up organized by province so I'm going to join them.

My next job will be to add each of the blogs to my ever growing list on Blog Lovin'. Anyways enjoy the day bloggers! I'm off to watch a special Canadian themed episode of Phineas and Ferb with my boy.

Currently

I'm linking up a day early to Currently with Oh' Boy 4th Grade

I know that I'm a bit late to join the summer vacation party compared to the majority of bloggers out there, but I am so happy to have finally arrived. By the way we do not have air conditioning in our schools and the past week of teaching was not pretty. The temperature with the humidex was around 38 degrees. We were practically melting. Anyways, I have big plans for the summer including some home improvement projects - installing new baseboards and a kitchen backsplash. I needed a new battery for my watch and the nice lady who was helping me commented on how scratched up my current watch is, so I guess I need a new one along with a pedicure for my sorry looking feet. The world of blogging can be overwhelming, there is just so much information out there. You could spend a lifetime just reading blogs, without even taking the time to post your own stuff. Don't forget to relax and enjoy the well deserved time off from work. Recharge your batteries and reconnect with those you love.  Well I'm off to make some cake pops with my son and enjoy a relaxing summer day out by the pool afterwards.

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!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

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,



First Day Jitters Link up

Well I survived our family camping trip. The weather was certainly not great. It rained the first night but the tent had no leaks. Then a big storm rolled in on Saturday afternoon and broke all the poles in the back room of our tent. Everything got pretty wet inside. Yuck, wet sleeping bags = miserable Mommy. We managed to fix up the tent the best we could with rope, duct tape and a tarp. Luckily it stopped storming after dinner. Cameron absolutely adored our camping weekend. He had a great time with the other kids in our camping party. A great trip despite the yucky weather.

A special thanks to Laura over at "Kinder Kraziness" for featuring me on her "Someone New" Sunday post and a friendly welcome to any new followers who found me through her link. Here's a link to her post that featured my little Canadian blog.

 Once school starts back I hope to be sharing lots of classroom ideas that work well for my combined Grade One/Two class.

Though my constant blog stalking I have heard many people mention this lovely book First Day Jitters. I am on the hunt for my own copy. Hopefully I can pick one up on our trip to the city this week. Anyways, Jessica at "A Turn to Learn" featured this great jitters inspired linky. I just adore her blog. Her tutorials are so simple and easy to follow. I have learned so many awesome things! So to show my bloggy appreciation for all the great things she shares on her blog I am linking up to the party.

What are you feeling 'jittery' about?  I hope that you can join in on the fun too!

Thanks for reading and following,

TPT SALE

Happy Friday! It looks like its going to be a rainy weekend:( We have reservations to go camping and Cameron was so excited. Now the forecast is calling for rain all week. Not just rain though but thundershowers. Double yuck.We have a tent. I'm not a big camping person but I was excited for camping with my little boy. Camping in a tent in during a thunder storm just doesn't seem safe to me. We will cross our fingers that the forecast is wrong or will change. Send some good weather vibes our way!

It looks like I will have some shopping to complete before our hopeful camping expedition. TPT is having a Back to School Sale! Awesome!

My wish list is getting quite large, so I think that I will definitely grab some those fantastic deals! Some sellers are offering additional sales at their stores too, so you could save up to 28%!

While checking google reader this morning I came across an awesome blog hop where some sellers are featuring one of their Back to School products. I think I've added ten more products to my TPT shopping cart already! I love to gather a little bit more information about products before I purchase them. So if you feel the same way go check out the blog hop.



Also don't forget to enter the Cameo giveaway.

I can't believe how amazing everyone's creations are turning out! Every trip I take to Michael's usually involves me eying up the Cricut machines. I could never justify the price once considering the cost of buying additional cartridges. But the Cameo seems like a dream. My understanding is that you don't have to buy any cartridges! The cameo works with your existing clip art and fonts. Sounds fantastic to me! It's definitely been added to my future wish list. Maybe Santa can deliver one to me for Christmas, although I'm not sure I can wait that long!

I hope that everyone has a great weekend. Hopefully the storms stay away, I'm OK with rain but please no thunder and lightning. Thanks for reading and following,



Monday Made it

I'm linking up again with 4th Grade Frolics for Made it Monday.

I didn't have much time to craft this week because we were celebrated my son's sixth birthday yesterday with my side of the family. (His actual birthday falls on Wednesday) I did make a cake, does that count? I'm kind of embarrassed to even post a picture. Normally, I would buy a cake but Cameron recently fell in love with a cake that my sister in law made using Dream Whip for icing. He raved about that simple cake for weeks, so I had to bake one for his birthday. I figured I would pick up some green coloured icing to write Happy Birthday and was swayed into purchasing this lovely product.

I thought that I could write on the cake and then switch tips and make some decorative 'thingys'. As you can tell by my cake decorating vocabulary, this is not my hidden talent. Anyways, the star tip made some lovely star 'bursty' like lumps. However, that can of icing was not user friendly when it came to writing. Certain times tons would come out. Then nothing came out for the next letter. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong. But hey it tasted good, so I guess that's all that matters in the end.

The masterpiece - notice skinny P versus fat P in the word HAPPY

I did make one thing for school this week. I printed out and put together my teaching planner binder. I used the free printable from The Resource(ful) Room.

Amy has lots of amazing things on her site. Be sure to go and check out her website. I ended up organizing my things into two separate binders. One binder contains my lesson plans, calendar, standards, student info/IEPS, meetings. The other binder will contain my reading information - groupings, conferences, tracking/assessment information, etc. I think that they will really help me stay organized next year.

I can't wait to see what everyone else was creating. Thanks for reading and following,

August Currently

I am linking up for the first time to the 'Currently' linky party over at Oh' Boy 4th Grade. I've been wanting to link up since I first started blogging last month, so here it goes.

I am currently loving the Olympics, and to my surprise my five year old son is loving watching them too. I kind of expected him to put up a fuss to watch his Disney Channel shows but he hasn't at all!

Today I finished Cameron's yearly shutterfly photo book. I make one every year just before his birthday. This year's book includes photos from when Cameron was five years old. If you haven't created a photo book you need to right now! I am horrible at printing off photographs, but each year I create and order a photo book for Cameron. They are my most treasured possessions. You can check mine out at the link below.

Shutterfly photo books offer a wide range of artful designs and embellishments to choose from.

Click here to view this photo book larger

The next three items all involve B2S of course. Squeezing every last bit of fun out of summer, getting some pampering for myself, and dreading the organizational task of sorting books.

My B2S must have items are pretty self explanatory. #1 - Love my laminator, couldn't live without it. #2 Love my sharpie markers, need to get the 80's set before its gone. #3 Need my checklists to survive. Love technology and now I use my iphone for this task all the time! Thanks for reading and following,

The challenges of a combined class

Happy Friday bloggers and blog stalkers! In Ontario, we teach until almost the end of June, but we don't go back to school until after Labour Day in September. This means that I have exactly one month of summer vacation remaining. Wow, that first month of July just flew by! We had a quick visit to school earlier this week and I took a couple pictures of my classroom but I only had my cellphone. Please excuse the quality of the pictures.

My word wall will go here

Checking to see that my Cafe Strategies fit so I can add a space for the post it goals

My teachers desk along with a small work table.

 

As many of you are aware, I am scheduled to teach a combined Grade One / Two class in September at my new school. Among my efforts to work smarter and not harder I was searching for a document that would easily let me compare the expectations in each subject area across the two grades. Well I searched and searched and came up empty. There doesn't appear to be any document available that shows this information in an easy to read format.

I decided that I should attempt to put something together myself. I figure it will allow me to easily compare the expectations and plan accordingly to accommodate both sets of expectations within my lessons. I don't have the time or the energy to present two totally separate lessons so this comparison document will allow me to easily visualise the differences between the two grades. I'm hoping that I can deliver my whole group lessons to cover common expectations, and use my small group and guided instruction to cover the unique expectations. Hope that all makes sense.

So far, I have completed the language and math comparisons for the Ontario Curriculum in Grades One and Two. I have uploaded the documents to Google Docs, hoping that some of my fellow Ontario colleagues can also benefit from the information. Here are the links.

Ontario Combined Grade One/Two Language Expectations

Ontario Combined Grade One/Two Math Expectations

I am hoping to complete the other subject areas over the next few weeks and I will continue to post the links. I am hoping there are some Ontario teachers who can benefit from their use. Thanks for reading and following,