It's Jammer Time!

Ooooh my stars is an understatement of the century!!! I'm so stinking excited about this year. There are some MAJOR changes shaking things up on the kindergarten front at the Creek! We've got 3 brand spanking new faces on the kindergarten team and some new life into the system to boot! I'm beyond ecstatic to be working with this group of ladies; we're getting ready to rock this school year!! With all this excitement, we have been really crunching down to get everything ready to go because we are now in the last few days before we meet the new bunch of students headed our way!

^^^ this is my team! Pre planning doesn't officially start until Thursday, but the entire school has been a buzz with everyone getting a head start on their classrooms and planning our year out! I am so stinkin' lucky to work at such a great school with my mustang family!!

Sorry just had to brag on my creekers a bit....  So here's what I've been up to on the Jammer front- how to step up you're classroom in one and a half weeks-
 1. Get some strong dudes. I am blessed to have AMAZING friends and a crazy supportive STUPENDOUS family so this wasn't difficult. they have dealt with me moving things around exaclty four hundred times before I settled on an arrangement.

(My momma, strongest "dude" I know!!)

2. Library- I am also fortunate enough to have a retired librarian for a mother, therefore I have been collecting children's books for more than my lifespan. My class library consists of over 40 book baskets full of great books for little jammers. These books weren't just organized, they were cataloged into my electronic database on my iPhone, each individual book was labeled, and then put in a corresponding labeled basket. This was all done by one of my best friends in the whole wide world, Chelsi. (Over 600 books, can I get an amen??)My sweet Daddy, whom I love dearly has built an awesome library loft in my classroom. He and my sweet cousin Chris sanded the entire two story monster. Daddy's crew are finishing up the stain on it in the morning. 

  

3. Decorations-- we have jammerfied this classroom to the max!! My momma, brother, daddy, Chelsi, and Chris have hung up, rearranged, and hot glued ourselves into a tizzy. The ladder in this room has been well used!!

4. Plan, plan, and plan some more. And when you are finished with that, plan- Chelsi and I have spent a good amount of our summer at the GSU library, affectionately known as club Henderson planning every aspect of this process of moving in down to the first month of school. We bound notebooks, journals, and folders with the help of our bears Hollis and Taylor! Meagan Beasley who is also on the kindergarten team at the creek was selected to work on the ELA units this summer for the BOE (go girl!) She and I sat down today and finished everything up with our curriculum map for the year!

5. Treat these sweet people!! I could say thank you ten million times and it simply wouldn't cover everything the crew has done for me!!  My mom chelsi and I have spent a few nights up in room 213 until the wee hours of the morning. I am so thankful to have people in my life that are able and willing to help me out:0)

So, the room is just about ready just putting the finishing touches on it until it's time for open house prep!(post to follow) Tomorrow I will hopefully have time to pop in and tell y'all all about our daily schedule and the elements involved!

The end is near I promise!! Last thing, I work for this really cool principal who alway ends our meetings with a quote, so I'm stealing his style a bit. 

See ya later alligator,

Ms. Joyner

PS-You can find more pictures of the classroom prep in the Summer 2013 album. Just contact me for the password! :0) 

Getting Ready for a New Year!

Hey guys!

I'm steadily working, working, working on getting everything in order for the new flock of Jammers!  Here's a few peaks at what I have been up to... So here it is, 12:30 AM and I am too stinking excited to sleep. Is it not enough I've been working at the library since the early morning hours?? Nope! I'm a crazy lady waiting on the go signal to get in my new classroom! I've turned my home into my temporary classroom prep work space (pictures to follow.) We are currently in the final weeks before pre-planning and our school is having the carpets in the classrooms pulled up and replaced with tile (YAY no more mold, but boo I'm a perfectionist and want to start cleaning and organizing my NEW kindergarten room!) Since we have been instructed not to visit the school until the tile is set, I have compiled a GIANT list of things I can pull together here at home! This is a wonderful thing until you are laying in bed post-midnight thinking about the pile of calendar notebooks to be sorted, hole punched, and labeled. I have become a fixture at the GSU library, even more so than usual, because of the massive amount to printing I've been up to. So sit back and soak in all of the wonderful work I've been able to do while working from home this summer. Someone has commandeered my chair...

First things first, I went on a little road trip mid-June and was able to sit down and actually read The Daily 5!! Brilliance is an understatement. These women are exactly the kind of teacher that I strive to be! They promote the family vibe in their classrooms that create a community with their students that's unparalleled. So without much further adue this is how I am planning on running my classroom. I started with a sketch of exactly how I am going to set up my room. This drawing was done in pencil because I premeditated the underestimated 563929237483921736465657483920665 billion times that I redrew it. Everything is figurative because I cannot get into my room. Making the idea physical restructuring a mere dream (probably a God send for my sweet brother bear, who loves helping his
big sister out so much!!) To lay out my room I first decided the p An of how we would run things on a daily basis, hence the schedule was born. In this schedule I included the daily 5 AND its baby math workshop sister called BUILD. I am beyond excited to incorporate these programs in my class. If you would like to read up on these bad boys here are two AWESOME sites that cleared things up for me: Daily 5 and BUILD (Math Workshop)! These are absolutely wonderfullll resources! Please check them out and I will be back soon to explain how we are going to run our day in the jammer room!

SIDE NOTE, oh my goodness!! Cannot even go refresh my diet coke before someone gets back in my chair.  Stop the cuteness little man! Bibi was a lazy daisy this morning and didn't want to get crackin' this morning but seat swiper was ready to go!

 

Read those blogs! I'll be back!

Gingerbread Man Hunt!

Last Monday our class went on a gingerbread man hunt around the school!! That sneaky man hopped right out of our storybook on to Mill Creek's campus! That silly dude took us to the cafeteria, library, office, and nurse's station! These are some of the clues we found!

Survived the First Week Back!

We Survived Our First Week!

I’m so proud of the jammers this week! We’ve accomplished A LOT in a very small amount of time. Today we really focused on walking in our line and lunchroom behavior! We also introduced our clip chart.

 This was a really fun activity because SURPRISE, SURPRISE these kids are ruthless, allow me to explain! We read the story Give that Back, Jack!  During this story a little fellow named Jack doesn’t follow the rules and in the end it doesn’t turn out so hot for him! The jammers were instructed to give thumbs down every time they thought that Jack should move his clip down the guitar. Jack was low as he could go! We had a lot of fun laughing at the illustrations during our story.

We also did a great job at center time remembering to clean up our area.  We have some very enthusiastic center timers! Check them out! :0)

If the rest of the year was as smooth as today, we’re going to have a class of rocket scientists! I hope everyone has a restful weekend and Jammers be ready to hit the ground rolling on Monday!

Peace,
Ms. Joyner

Amped Up for the School Year!

As the summer and pre-planning are winding down, I am finally feeling like posting some pictures of this classroom! It was A LOT of work and preparation, but I'm finally feeling that sense of readiness that I've been shooting for. I feel like Mrs Bindergarten, from Mrs Bindergarten gets ready for Kindergarten, after looking at some of my before and after pictures! 

Please excuse the Bon Jovi action playing in the background, what can I say? I'm a jammer too! 

And now, this is what it looks like! 


Righteous Reading Center 

                                                 Grammy Winning Writing 

                                                  

Peace, Love, Listening 

Imagination Station 

                                                        Awesome Art 

Sweet Science 

                                                       Our Frog 

                                                    GUACAMOLE 

The Beta Fish...who still needs a name

Class Jobs AKA Rockin' Responsibilities 

Block Band Center 

Calendar Time 

Magical Mystery Tour 

Mega Music 

Joyner's Jammers Rock the Pre-K 

My Parent's are AWESOME :0) 

 Final Product! 

 Our Schedule 

 Nap Bins

  Compliments of my cousins from Atlanta (love you girls) 

 Our Class Flag!

I can't tell you how excited I am to meet all the jammers coming through my Pre-K class this year.  I've told a few of the other OBSESSED teachers, who have been up here all summer, that I feel like every time I check something off the list two more things magically hop on! But now that school is RIGHT around the corner I'm so keyed up that I really don't mind the additional stress! I guess that's what happens when you truly love your career path!

Peace,

Ms. Joyner