Yay, my blog is done. Thank you gals over at The Honey Bunch! To celebrate, I am giving away 2 Target cards each worth $25. The contest will run for 7 days. All you have to do is follow my blog. If you want more entries, just do the tasks on the Rafflecopter and you can earn more entries. a Rafflecopter giveaway

Great Give away on Technology Tailgate. Hop on over and enter to in a $25 Starbucks gift card.

Click here for a link to Technology Tailgatehttp://technologytailgate.blogspot.com/

New Blog Design Coming Soon!!

I just previewed my new blog design. It is so CUTE! I'm thinking that when it's done I'm going to have my first giveaway. Woo Hoo!

Kinder-Craze: Use PicMonkey to Easily Blur Faces in Photos (for PC and Mac)

Kinder-Craze: Use PicMonkey to Easily Blur Faces in Photos (for PC and Mac) If you are looking for a way to blur your students faces so you can post pictures. Here is a tutorial for you. Thank you Kinder-Craze!

Organizing my Room

Since summer began, I have been working on reorganizing my classroom. I try to do a little every couple of weeks so I don't break the bank. Today I started to work on my classroom center tubs. I found some great 3 drawer plastic containers at Target. Best part they were on sale. After finding the perfect new containers I went right to work on my labels. I used Avery Shipping labels and used Scrappin' Doodles graphics. This is what I came up with.

Click here to downloadMonthly Labels.

Great Facebook party going on right now. Wish I had some freebies to give away. Haven't figured out how to get all the legalities figured out yet. As soon as I do, I will get busy posting some fun free stuff.

Behavior Management

I have subscribed to many philosophies of behavior management in my career. I started with a 3 strikes your out, moved on to a money system (which I love for older students), and now I use a clip system to monitor personal behavior and a compliment board to monitor class behavior. Below is my clip chart (my theme for this year is  "Wild" about Kindergarten):

All students start on this board. I put boys on the right and girls on the left. This helps the little ones find their name faster. When students make a good choice, they move up to this board:

If a student continues to make good choices, they can move up their clip again. This is something that does not happen everyday. I like to make this a big deal! If they are on Mega Star at the end of the day, they earn a visit to the treasure box.

Now there are times when students may make a poor choice, if that happens the clip moves down a step on the chart.

If a student continues to make poor choices, the clip will have to be moved down another step. If we were having free play or a fun project that day, any child on Rock Star will sit out for 5 minutes.

This usually takes care of any problems in my classroom. However, there were a couple of times that a student was on Rock Star and still was struggling.When that happened, the child took their clip off the board and a parent conference was scheduled. 

I should say that when ever a child has to move their clip down, I talk to them privately. I do NOT believe in reprimanding in public. I am a firm believer in positive behavior and just needed something to make my "cubs" accountable for their choices. 

The one thing I noticed about this system for Kindergarten is that it didn't matter where they were on the chart, at the end of the day they took their parent to the chart and showed them their clip. This was a great time for me to talk about behavior with parents and for my parents who didn't understand English it  was a great visual for them to see how their child was doing in class. 

So, this is what I do, I would love to hear what you do. I am still trying to figure out how to upload freebies and make sure I do it legally. When I do, I will upload my clip chart. 

Coming soon: Monthly compliment board with instructions!

Kinder Craze Give Away

Just found this awesome give away and wanted to share it with you

Lots of great ideas on her blog and on pinterest! Good luck:)

Linky Party - Summer Vacation

Here's my contribution to my very first Linky Party!

Kindergarten Lifestyle Blog

A little bit of this and a little bit of that

Thought #1

Now that my cubs have left for 1st grade, I am going to figure out this whole blog thing. I just finished a class that I thought would teach me how to upload and manage my blog the way I want. However, that is NOT what the class was about. So, I am back to square one. I have enlisted the aid of my niece, Sweet Tart, who is a blogger and hopefully she will get me all figured out (I should say her blog is  Happily Ever After Take 2).

                  (So, as you can tell from the picture, I figured out how to post pictures. Yay for me! )

Thought #2

This is a picture of my classroom on the last day. I am very fortunate to have a large room.I have two entrances and share a Jack and Jill bathroom with my pal Mrs. Magnuson.Last year it was all about bears in my room. This coming year it will be, "Wild about Kindergarten!" My outgoing cubs agreed this was a good choice as long as "Baxter", my bear, would still be part of the mix.

Thought #3

One of the great things about teaching in Vegas is the wonderful freebies that come our way. A couple of weeks ago, one of my colleagues invited my children and me to a once in a lifetime event. We had the opportunity to go see a preview of Madagascar 3. The event was two days before it was released to the general public. The event was sponsored by Hewlett Packard and Dream Works for one of our Elementary Schools. Because they had more seats available, other district employees were also invited to attend with their children. We started with a "kid" friendly buffet at the Venetian Hotel and Casino. As we were finishing up dinner, a very special guest dropped by for a few photos.

Poor Alex, I am not sure he left with all his teeth. When everyone settled down, we were escorted into a huge conference room where we all found popcorn, soda, and candy on our seats. Soon another special guest was welcoming us to the movie, Jeffery Katzenberg, President and CEO of Dream Works. After he had some fun with the kiddos, the movie started. Let me say, I LOVED the movie. It was the best of the three. Since my husband wasn't there, we will be going to see the movie again and maybe again.

Final Thought

I love doing bulletin boards! One of my favorite this year was my April/May board. We were studying butterflies and this is the board I made.

All of my monthly boards feature "Baxter" and then something my cubs made. This board  had a boarder of mosaic butterflies and a large tree with our caterpillars' chrysalis gently stapled to a branch. Inside the "chrysalis" was a caterpillar each student made from clothes pins and pom poms. On the day our real butterflies came out of their chrysalis, we took down our paper bag chrysalis to see if anything happened. Never have I seen paper bags treated so gently. When we were all seated on the carpet, my cubs all opened their chrysalis together. Inside, were butterflies (I should tell you they were giant gummy butterflies). One of my favorite comments was, "how did that happen?" I simply stated, the magic of Kindergarten! Some ate their butterflies right away, but the majority put them in their back packs to "keep forever."
 It was an interactive board my cubs will never forget. This was also the day my little ones figured out I wasn't going to first grade with them when one of my little girls asked me if we could do this again next April.:( So sad when I had to tell her I wasn't going with them to 1st grade.

So, that's it for now!   Patti