Back to School I Go! A Look at my Room!

School's back and I am done with day 2. Only 178 more to go!! Just kidding, I am so excited about this upcoming year. I've already gotten some chances to share my faith through some great books and our All About Me time. The Lord has blessed me with a great job and a chance to mold young minds. I hope that I can share God's love to them daily and to the parents. 

I had a fantastic time in the Philippines this summer and was not ready to get back, but after meeting my new 15 kiddos I am reminded how much I love my job! I have some precious new friends, and was excited to show them my classroom over the past few days. This summer all the classes on my hallway got new cabinets. We had to take EVERYTHING out of our room, so when I came back in July I got to change up my classroom a little bit. See what you think! 

 I added my three metal shelves to my classroom library in order to make a more secluded reading area.

 New reading area, meant new book box labels. I made these with some fun, free fonts and graphics. I have my books divided by genres, characters, and guided reading levels. 

 Meet the teacher was on the Tuesday before school started and I was just "BUBBLING" to meet all my new friends! 

I found this great box rack at the local thrift store for $7!! I added it to my math section to hold all of the manipulatives! I am going to use the clear cart for Math games/centers and the three drawer cart for extra math storage.  

Making their debut are my new cabinets on top and cubbies on the bottom! I am also starting using book baskets this year. I'll store them all on this back counter! The cubbies hold all of my ELA and Math games as well as craft supplies.  

Calendar is not part of first grade Common Core, but I still enjoy doing it daily so I kept this board up and added my big bookshelf in front to display unit books. My favorites are ready to share this month: You are Special and Because I Love You by Max Lucado, First Day Jitters, The Giving Tree,  and Berenstain Bears Go To School! 

 This fun pinterest idea was made possible by my find at Tuesday Morning! Although I did find out that you can find them at Really Good Stuff!! They are dry erase marker ready and we will use them for making words as well as math problems. 

I moved my job chart closer to my table this year, so I would always know which helper I needed to call. I made the name tags out of paint chips. I cut them using the paper cutter and just wrote their names on top. They are hanging on 3M hooks. 

 Another Pinterest idea was this fun Birthday hanger. The one I saw was made of wood but I just used cardboard and foam! I think it will also be a fun way to talk about graphs too! 

Last, but certainly not least, I got RID of my FILING CABINET! I was really nervous at first, because of the amount that can be stored in these cabinets, but I love how the shelf turned out. I put everything in binders. For the items that wouldn't fit in a binder I put them in hanging files inside the plastic crates on the left wall. 

I hope everyone else has had a great start to school, I can't wait to share all the fun activities we are working on!! 

~Miss A 

Learning to Be Still and How to do School... PI pt One

So I was thinking...

preschoolers are exhausting. I've been in PI for nine full days and haven't had a chance to sit down and write because I couldn't keep my eyes open. KIM (Kids International Ministries) runs a Christian school that serves Kindergarten - Grade 9. They also run a pregnancy clinic that serves the local women with time in the word, vitamins and food to strengthen them during their 9 months. Last year, a group of us were talking with Jeff(the founder) about how was KIM serving the children in between ages 2-5. He challenged us to think of how to do this and we decided a preschool was needed to help the children and their parents in raising children in the Word and "breaking the cycle of poverty" through education. Jeff got started on his end and the building of the Early Learning Center began about a year ago. We arrived on June 12th and with the help of the director, a woman named Jenn, we started classes on the 15th. These classes bring together the community children and the children in the nursery of the Children's Home. The first two days were crazy, teaching the children routines and practically how to do school(sit in seats, line up, wait, share, etc.) It got better throughout the week and I'm excited to see how it grows over these next two weeks. Please pray for Eugene and Mary Cris, the PI teachers, that are on this adventure with us. 

Here is a video of the first few days

Our group also had the privilege of taking a group of PI teenagers from Journey of Hope to see HillSong United. It was such a fun experience to sing praise to Christ with 12,000 others. 

I've also been able to go to some local churches in downtown Manila the past few days and a community girls Bible Study. I've been very convicted to memorize more scripture and truly know God's Word in my heart. I'm working on being still and resting in the presence of the Lord in worship, in prayer, in preschool, in playing with the children at the Orphanage. I'll keep you posted:)

If you would like to join me in prayer, here is my current list:

- For God to open hearts to reveal His Powerful Love

- For the local people to rely truly on the sovereign Lord and not on idols

- For Baby Lexie, the newest child at the children's home(6 days old) to recover from pneumonia

- For the PI government to release the shipping container that holds tons of supplies

- For myself to be fully in the Word and memorizing scripture

- For safety for our team going down to Tacloban to build houses on Monday, that through their love for God people will God's Love

~R

A Quick End of the Year Recap

So I was thinking, I'm so happy it's summer! I love my kiddos, but I was in need of a break! Here is a quick review of what we have done since early APRIL! Can you believe I've been away from the blogworld for that long! 

My class fell in love with poetry this year, we made acrostics, lists, and diamante poems for days! These were my favorites. They wrote about a specific topic and then put on a shape that matched. 

 I am so happy to announce that our plants GREW! We sang "Let it Grow" to them from our favorite movie of the moment. We also studied seeds and freshwater plants with our snails and guppies. We made the large flowers using nouns and adjectives on the petals and then writing a sentence on the stem. 

At the end of the year we reviewed all writing types (narrative, informational, and opinion). The last week of school we wrote an opinion piece on our favorite candy. I told the kiddos that if their writing was out of this world I would get them their favorite candy. With the incentive of sugar, my kids got straight to work and did outstanding work! 

 Word Shout became one of our favorite small group games. We would take 3 of the dice and practice CVC words before testing and then write sentences with those words. 

I'm headed to the Philippines on Wednesday!! TCBY made this delicious mango ice cream that I enjoyed, but can't wait to go get some fresh mango from the mango trees! 

Check back soon with a blog about the Philippines, I promise to do better keeping people updated! 

~R