The creative juices are flowing in my classroom.  Turbo charged.  It’s something to behold. This morning, we started by working in three small groups.  With an adult to guide each group (and my wonderful Ed Tech Ms. C. to guide me), each group worked to make physical body sculptures of things from the Goldilocks and [...]

Oh how I love a good email from a reader.  This one really hit home for me as I’m writing and editing the story of my first year in kindergarten and remember these feelings well.  Let me start with the email and then my reply will follow. I’m writing to get your opinion and experience [...]

This summer (well, starting next week) I’ll be participating in another wonderful book study blog party.  This year’s book looks very interesting and thought provoking.  We’ll be reading and discussing Teaching in the Digital Age by Brian Puerling.  As someone who tries to integrate technology into my classroom whenever possible, my interest is ...

One of the things I love about teaching is that anything can be a teachable moment… opportunities arise all the time and sometimes the unplanned ones are the more powerful. Today, after Will read the Morning Message – he asked for a challenge.  This has become a ritual for many kids.  They ask us to [...]

Two days of rain.  Two days of inside recess.  One of those days with no special.  I’m convinced Mother Nature is a cruel, evil, spiteful lady… Of course, with no recess and no place to take the class, by the end of the day Friday, things were looking grim.  To be clear, in our class [...]

Time to get real people. Kindergarten is hard.  If I didn’t think I would get laughed off the island, I would like propose that kindergarten teachers should get an extra stipend for hazard pay.  I know, I know, we choose to teach kindergarten.  And while I do love it more than anything (really, I do, [...]

Day three and things are getting better… slowly.  I seriously forget how challenging the first few days (weeks, months?) can be.  So many of my new friends have no pre-school or daycare experience and they truly have landed on a new planet.  Everyday brings improvements and weekends bring an opportunity to catch up on sleep! [...]

Well, all of the major networks are rolling out their Fall lineups, trying to get folks excited about the new and returning shows (for my personal taste, a little less reality and little more comedy), so I figure, why not me as well.  I’ve got a few surprises up my sleeve and I love giving [...]

Ah the internet (or World Wide Web as the local newsman calls it...). I'm never surprised at the amazing networking opportunities it provides. I get tweets and emails weekly from teachers, students, and parents. Usually they are kind comments and questions. Occasionally, I'm asked to read and review a book (who doesn't love a free book?) - a ...

Today, we our amazing third grade reading buddies had a special treat for us… they brought some of the personal narrative stories to share with us. As luck would have it, we’ve been working on trying to add more detail to our own stories to make them more interesting (not an easy task in kindergarten) and having our older buddies share their own ...