Linky's, Giveaways, Freebies...oh my!

So I'm a few days behind (as usual) for Latoya's Let's Get Aquainted linky party, but better late than never I say!

 

This week is all about My Classroom!

Disclaimer first: I am finishing up year 10 at the same school I've always been at and I've been in this particular classroom for 8 years now. If you didn't see my earlier posts at the beginning of this bloggy journey, then you need to know that our school has the "open" classroom concept. Well it began that way, then someone figured out that it was a little noisy, so we have "portable" walls. Many areas are still completely open, but instead of rolling cabinets as walls now, we actually have walls for the hallway. Our classrooms are completely open in the back still. 

If you go into my room, you can walk to three other K classes without ever going into the hall. I just put all this out there so that when you see pictures or other things, it'll make sense. 


First stop: My Mimio! (It's no Smartboard, but it sure is great to have!) Our school won the $50,000 US Cellular "Calling All Schools" giveaway that they do. I think it was two years ago that we won. So those that did not have Smartboards (mostly everyone) were given a Mimio, projector, and document camera.

I usually use mine everyday. It turns your existing whiteboard into an interactive board. In the first picture we were using abcya.com to play sight word bingo.

Today we used a Mimio activity that I downloaded from Mimio Connect to practice addition. Students had to spin a spinner and put that many black dots, then spin again and put that many blue dots. Then we added. 

Again this is just my white board that I have that the Mimio turns interactive.


Second stop: This is a bullentin board that I put together about two years ago to display student work neatly. The black background is actually a black plastic tablecloth for $1 at Dollar Tree. I then just hot-glued clothespins to construction paper (that matched the colors in the border) and it makes our lives sooo much easier to change out their work. 

I may change out the colors and stuff this summer but still keep the same concept.
Here it's displaying our awesome Zoo animals from our zoo theme the past couple of weeks. I have been using Deanna Jump's Zoo unit to aid in this.  

 Third stop:This is part of my classroom library. We were fortunate enough to be given over 300 books from Scholastic about 2-3 years ago. Those are all in the red bins. I have mine organized by the NC standard course of study. Each bin has a colored dot and the books inside the bins have the same dots. Of course, we are now using the Common Core Standards so this has all changed but I have no time to revamp the book bins. That will come....one day...maybe....hmmm...

Above it is my popcorn wall. I use real popcorn bags with the alphabet letters. The words are on pieces of popcorn as well. I think I'm just about tired of seeing popcorn (it's been up there for like...years...) so this is going to be revamped this summer as well. 


The green tablecloth covers books that I don't want the kiddos dragging out. I try to change up the baskets every now and then. To the right of the blue couch there is another book shelf covered as well. 

So that's it for the favorite spots in my classroom. Make sure you head over to Latoya's blog for more favorite classroom spots.


Two of my favorite bloggy friends, Irene and Kimberly Ann, are having an amazing giveaway!!! Make sure you head over to their blogs for this awesome survival kit of "stuff", gift cards and awesome packs from their stores!

Don't forget about my Fabulous Followers giveaway that ends Friday!!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


And because you read this lonnnnggg post...here's a little freebie from my Going Buggy For Math Unit.  Click on the image to take you to Google Docs.