sharing garing

Its so amazing to see what interests everyone in the poll!  I posted this option for the first time ever and it won by a landslide!  Im excited to see what everyone votes for next week!  And yes, in regards to the preview photo, my recent room redecoration has left me with Cat in the Hat on the brain!


First things first, download Gimpshop so you can practice along with the following directions!  Gimpshop is the same program we used to give a picture a transparent background the other week, so you may have already downloaded it.  If not, go get it now!  Its like photoshop, but free!  And... it works on Macs and PCs!







Enjoy all of the blurring!  If you do this and post the pictures to your blog leave me a comment with the link!  Id love to see your work in action!

I think I could write a novel with all of the funny things my kids say each week!  But... since I dont know a publisher Ill do another linky party instead!

<div align="center"><a href="http://blogspot.com/" title="What Did They Say!?"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OIhmtxluCS0/ULwEfazkl1I/AAAAAAAADpM/MMMzxm23B0Y/s320/What+Did+They+Say+Wednesday.png" alt="What Did They Say!?" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

This is possibly a story that only tech geeks will appreciate, so it obviously made my day!!


In class we were reviewing words with "w" at the beginning and one student said "windows."  Another student excitedly calls out: "I have Windows 7!"

I wanted to reply with "I do too and I love it so much more than I liked Vista!"  I honestly dont think he would have understood that response though!

Rules for the Linky Party:

1. Share a story that one of your kids said on your blog!  If you dont have a blog, leave a comment with your story!
2. Use the HTML code at the top of this post to link back to the post!
3. Comment on the two blog posts before yours!

);

This trick is so simple but so handy!  If youre working on a document in Word or PowerPoint and you want to jump back to the very first page in your document, this is going to help you do it so quickly!

Reason #5,765,432,765 why I love teaching: kids say the funniest and cutest things!  I thought it would be so much fun to read all of the things that kids all over the world are saying... so I decided to start a weekly linky party "What Did They Say? Wednesday!"

<div align="center"><a href="http://blogspot.com/2012/12/what-did-they-say-wednesday-linky-party.html" title="What Did They Say!?"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OIhmtxluCS0/ULwEfazkl1I/AAAAAAAADpM/MMMzxm23B0Y/s320/What+Did+They+Say+Wednesday.png" alt="What Did They Say!?" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Here is my "What Did They Say?" story for this week:

In my class this week, one of my little Kindergarten students says in his most serious voice, "Ms. Jessica, theres a problem with one the books Im taking home today."  Im fully expecting for one of the books to have a tear in it, yet he pulls a brand new book out of his bag... a book about bats.

I couldnt find a picture of the real book online, but the cover had a picture of a bat on it, like this:

He then says to me, while pointing to the words, "The words of my book go this way,"  Then, he flips the book upside down and says, "But the bat goes this way.  The picture is upside down!"  He was pretty convinced that he found a publishing error!  I obviously explained to him that bats like to hang upside down... but it was hard to convince him that the book was printed correctly!





Rules for the Linky Party:

1. Share a story that one of your kids said on your blog!  If you dont have a blog, leave a comment with your story!
2. Use the HTML code at the top of this post to link back to the post!
3. Comment on the two blog posts before yours!

);


This linky party will be posted through 11:59pm on Tuesday.  On Wednesday, a new linky will be started.  I decided to host this as a weekly collection so that we can share numerous stories from our students!

Merry Christmas everyone!  Ill keep this one short and sweet so that anyone who celebrate can go enjoy the day with your family!

Today is the 5th and final day of my 5 days of giveaways.  Thanks to everyone for playing along the past five days!  I loved reading all of your guesses for my favorite Christmas book, movie, song, and your guesses for where Im spending today to celebrate!

I thought that for the final giveaway Id share a flash freebie with you!  I just love how these centers came out!

Click any of the pictures to head to TPT to grab this freebie for a limited time only!






Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!!!

I have to admit, I almost missed Mrs. Fultzs linky party because I really wanted to take some updated photos of my classroom, but seeing that this linky ends tonight, I want to be sure to show off some of my favorite things.. even if these pictures are from September!
Yes, Im starting with this!  I am so lucky to have a play Kitchen in my classroom!  I also have a block area, but I dont have a picture of it!  The kids absolutely love playing here, and it helps develop their socialization skills and their sorting skills (foods need to be put in the right baskets, same with the utensils and cups.  Mostly, its a great place for the kids to just PLAY!

This was probably one of my favorite things that I did (or that my mom did!)  This summer, I read the book Spaces and Places by Debbie Diller and one of the amazing tips in the book is to use curtains to hide all of your things!  I went to the Christmas Tree Shop and bought these purple Kitchen curtains and my mom helped me trim them to the right size.

In the book, Debbie Diller recommends hanging them with velcro, but since I started with actual curtains, I used a tension rod to hang them up so I wouldnt need glue or screws.  The curtain on the right spans an 89" length so that one needed some hooks to help hold it up, but it helps hide all of my things and it looks so pretty!  I also have matching cushions for the computer chairs, but again... these pictures were from September!

 Wow, my walls are empty!  But again, heres my use of curtains to cover up my bookshelves!  I hung them up with curtain rods.  These are my cubbies also... I know the colors dont go so well in my classroom, but they work just fine!  Another thing that I love in this picture is my daisy tables... perfect for Kindergarten!

This picture has my library area and meeting area...  the green bench doubles as a seat during reading time and a step to help us reach the smartboard, and the laundry basket has some nice pillows for cozy reading time!

Around the carpet, those green and yellow papers are my students blurred out names.  I have the class sit along the outer edge of the carpet for the most part, though theyll move to their "smartboard seats" when were doing something on the board. I use those names through November/December to help students remember where they sit!


My pride and joy... my shelves!  I put these up myself!!! I even used an electric screw gun, a level, and toggle bolts for the metal studs.  I am so glad I put these up!!!  And yes... that is a mini-fridge!  Im so glad I brought it in, it is the best!

To the left of this picture, the blurry art is a mixed media piece using oil pastels and watercolor paint to practice writing our name (hence the blur!)



Clearly my bookshelf shows that this was from September!  Anyway... more curtains, this time being used as they should be... to block the light.

This picture also shows my covered up windows :/ I have mixed feelings about this... unfortunately, it was the only place to put a word wall that was visible from everyones seats, and I was hoping that some light would come through the papers, but that didnt happen because of this:

I had this wonderful idea to do an outdoor bulletin board... the blurry box has the name of our school on it.
I put up the following from the inside of my windows facing out.  When I covered the windows in bulletin board paper (lots of effort and lots of tape!), the light was going through the windows and you could see the mirror image of "If you can dream it, you can do it..." shining onto our floor every time it was sunny out.  I had to cover the bulletin board paper with black poster boards, then again with pretty bulletin board paper just to keep the sun out.  It literally took a full day and a half just to do this project.  And it ended up completely blocking all of the sunlight from the windows.

Now... the pros to this:
1. It was absolutely amazing looking from the outside!
2. I had no blinds on the windows so it helped block the light.

But the cons to this:
1. It fully blocks the light on four of my wonderful windows.

Im not sure if Ill be doing this one again next year because of that one major con, but well see!

Im linking up my classroom with Mrs. Fultzs Linky Party, stop by there to check out some other amazing classrooms!

Ive decided to start a new weekly tradition... a "Technology Tip Thursday" post!  So many of you leave me such wonderful comments on my Technology Tuesday posts and I just love that!

I keep thinking that I have so many little tech tips that dont really warrant adding to the poll or writing a long tutorial on, so I thought it would be fun to post these little tips every Thursday in addition to my Technology Tuesday tutorial!

Most of the tips will be for Microsoft PowerPoint and Word... though some of them will work in other programs as well... just give it a try!

So... heres the first little trick!


Try it out and let me know how you like it!