Book Buddy Bag

   Starting tomorrow I will be back in my old classroom at work as a lead teacher. After spending the last year as an aide in another room, I admit I am both nervous and excited about this. Crowd control and classroom management are the hardest parts of being the lone ranger teacher in a group of 4's and 5's, but I love this age and how eager they are to learn. Everything is exciting to them it seems, and I really enjoy getting them kindergarten-ready.

   As I prepare for my new/old room,  I will be using ideas that I tried when I first got the position a few years ago. I plan to post those ideas that worked here for you. They are simple but helped me and I hope they will be a help to you as well.

   One of the easiest ideas is the Book Buddy Bag. The goal of this tool is to get families to read together and to get preschoolers to value literacy and get comfortable with books and print. I have used this in many classrooms over the years. It can be as simple as you want it to be. How much you put in the bag and what you load it with is up to you (and what you think your parents and students would enjoy of course). The bag can be themed if you like.

   The idea is to purchase or recycle a canvas tote bag. Now dig through your stash of books and find a few that you don't care to part with. Add these to the bag, along with a stuffed "buddy" to read with your student.

 That's the bare bones version of the Book Buddy Bag. And the kids are usually eager to take turns bringing the bag home with them. I send it home with a different child every weekend with instructions to return it on the child's next day back (make sure all your items are labeled---even then you may lose a few things here and there. I like to recycle older books and buy my bookworm and tote bag at the Dollar Tree so I am not breaking the bank if an item should fail to be returned).

    While this minimal approach works great and accomplishes my goal, I like to go more in-depth with it. I like to put 4-5 books of different interests and reading levels in the bag so the children have lots of choices from which to read. I also like to make themed bags with activities that tie in with the book. A good example of this is to pack in a book such as If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and then add in a pouch of cookie mix and baggie of cookie cutters/sprinkles/pouch of icing. Or an ABC puzzle to go with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Or a book bag on insects could feature insect manipulatives to explore. Craft sheets or simple craft kits are always fun in your book bag and usually match a variety of themes (make sure to include everything needed to complete the craft, even a small pair of scissors and a glue stick). The holidays lend themselves to all sorts of great themed bags. And don't forget multicultural bags and bags that tie in with your lesson plans.

  One of the most important parts of the bag is the folder. The folder will contain your instructions for borrowing and using the bag, and when to return it. Mine also contains pre-cut construction paper circles that have room for a student's name and the name of the book(s) he or she read. I hang these filled-in circles on the wall to make a class book worm during the year. And the folder contains a template for a book report form for the family to fill in if they want to.  I got mine FREE from the Time 4 Kindergarten store on the  Teachers Notebook site (http://www.teachersnotebook.com/product/Tiffani/kindergaten-book-report). Thanks to the seller who posted this! I keep the reports to go into each child's end-of-the-year portfolio.

  Here are my instructions for using the bag (this is laminated and inserted into the front pocket of the folder).
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3y7orz1hTTGUlh0TW5wWjZ4bkU/edit?usp=sharing

 I hope this inspires you to make your own class Book Buddy bag. I would love to see what you include in yours! All comments welcome. :)

A New Year, A New Job Title, and a New Blog

My classroom

Here are some photos of my classroom at the daycare. I teach up to sixteen fours and fives. They are bundles of energy and little sponges all at once! It's a great job in a Christian atmosphere which teaches me more than my college textbooks could about what preschool is all about.

 This is what my room looks like as you enter.

To the right we have our cubbies and mats.

This photo shows are our art center.

Here is a look at our blocks center.

Our helper board allows me to draw names of each day's helpers and assign jobs. The favorites for now are "fish feeder" and V.I.P. at story time.

This is my parent board.

Our science center, which I am looking to add to, and need ideas.

Our schedule chart, not very pretty but it will work for now.

We use this area for our Morning Welcome and again for Circle Time. My chart rack will eventually go here and I'll remove some of the posters to put on the rack as we have fire regulations regarding how much of the wall can have paper on it.

Our music center. Looking for some new things to liven it up and spark the children's interest.

Our reading loft (or the "bear cave" as it has been affectionately called since our unit on the North Pole).

Another view of the reading loft. We have books, puzzles, and JC Penney Christmas catalogs in here. Those catalogs sure do inspire a lot of toy-filled dreams in my littles! I need to sort and organize this better so the kiddos can clean up better.

Back downstairs, a misc. center with a lot of various activities inside. Since this photo was made the table has been moved and I've added three donated computer/Leap Pad tablets to it. I might add a splash of paint to it one day. Our playground door is in the background.

A view of our dramatic play center/house center under the reading loft. This is one of the most chosen centers. I would love to add curtains and flower buckets on the posts. And maybe add some sort of lemonade stand that could become a grocer, etc. I think we could use a bit more lighting in and under the loft but am not sure how to go about adding it. We have one light under it already. There is a corner area under the loft where the kids like to hide. One minute they call it their elevator; the next moment it has morphed into a pantry, phone booth, or cave. What imaginations they have and I love it.

The kitchen inside our house.

This is the view from the back of my room at the playground door. It's a long narrow room with fresh paint. It's really not as dark as this photo appears. The orange is a very cheerful color.