Jennuine Teaching

If you are anything like me, I enjoy having a straight quiet line while walking in the hallways. It makes me proud to show off my class because it shows that they have respect for other learners. And lets be real here, it is down right embarrassing when you have a noisy class walking in line. It's like a stampede is coming. For years I have used bubbles in your mouth and hands behind your back. Well this is good for the quite mouths, but I still get stompers in my class. Last year it wasn't a huge deal because our hallways were carpeted, but now they are just concrete, so noise spreads so easily. This year I decided to use marshmallow mouths and toes. I started off by bringing out the marshmallows. I had a lot of oooohhhhhsssss and aaaaahhhhhsssss... exactly what I wanted. We talked about marshmallows and used our 5 senses to describe them. This was also a perfect way to introduce adjectives. After we made a list, I let each of my students eat a marshmallow. WHAT?? We ge...

This weekend was BUSY!! I ended up finishing two products for TpT and making a card for a friend. My first project was to finish my Buckets of Kindness Unit . A lot of it was hand drawn by me which meant I had to scan everything in, color it in photoshop, and then put it all together to get it ready for TpT. I think it turned out pretty good though. :-) The second product I finally finished was my marshmallow mouths and toes . I wanted this done for the first day of school, but it's better that than never right? I will be using this with my kids this week. Check back on Wednesday for a blog post on how it went. Finally, to get some creativity in, I made a card for a friend. I call this card... Flamingo Summer. I haven't crafted in months and it felt so good to finally sit down and make a card.  

 Are you starting out the school year right now or planning on starting in the next couple of weeks? Starting off the year on the right foot is important. Ever teacher knows that teaching procedures is essential in order for a classroom to run smoothly. After a week of procedures in my own classroom, I decided to add a little kindness into the mix. My students were understanding procedures and following rules and routines pretty well, but they were still tattling and getting frustrated with each other. I guess I should mention that I teach kindergarten, so most of the issue is just teaching them how to interact with multiple children at a time. I decided to read this book to my students. As I was preparing to read this book, I started coming up with a whole list of ideas that would promote a positive classroom environment.  The first idea I had was to create a bucket filler and dipper sort. After we read the book, we would discuss what being a filler mean...

I just finished my first week of school and am I so glad that it is over. It was a good first week, but it is always so tiring. I will be blogging about my first week later this week, but first let's talk about Monday Made It. This week I created a lot of things. There are a few in particular that I am very proud of. My first is my planner stickers. I created them a few weeks ago, but I finally got around to putting them in my TpT store.  This week was the first one with my planner and I loved my header stickers. It was a nice way to clearly see each any every one of my subjects that I had to teach throughout the week. If you want to get yourself a copy, you can get them HERE . They are editable and you will be able to print as many out as you would like. I prefer using full sheet sticker paper and a paper cutter. It makes planning fun and colorful!! Speaking of planning and organization, I finally got around to updating my teacher toolbox. A few years ago I had...

Happy Monday! If you are like me today is your first day of school. That doesn't mean that the craftiness has stopped and will stop anytime soon. I feel like I am more creative during the school year since there is so much that needs to get done. My first Made It is custom borders. Yesterday I made a post all about bulletin boards in my classroom. My big tip was to ditch the butcher paper and focus on your borders. I like to use simple borders and use colors to add accents to my wall. Sometimes it's hard to find the right color or even when you do find the right color you run out!! Well I have a solution to that.   I also have a video on how I made these borders if you want to try it out for yourself.  My second Made It is my teacher toolbox. A couple years ago I made a forest themed toolbox that matched my classroom perfectly. It no longer matched my classroom so I finally got around to updating it!! I have both a premade version and an editable versio...

Last week I shared my custom jars that I made for my kindergarten team members. Today I am bringing you a tutorial that show exactly how I made them.

I am linking up with Ashley and Angie to share my bulletin boards this year. I like to keep my bulletin boards pretty simple. A few years ago I learned from a veteran teacher not to use butcher paper. It is hard to put up, it fades, and what happens if you get tired of it? She also said to stick to very simple borders. Ever since then I have been doing this. It saves me so much time! That doesn't mean you have to sacrifice cute bulletin boards. Here are a few of my boards where I just use borders.    I love the fact that I have a corner in my classroom. It makes it a natural meeting area for my classroom with a lot of space to display  important information.  My word wall is a place where we always refer back to. I have it right next to my Promethean board since this is where I do all of my writing mini lessons. It's also easily viewable from every seat in my classroom.  I love my rainbow wall. It's a great way to display student work thro...