Only in California will you see…., Kim’s Morning Circle Time, and How Long Have You Been in Your Classroom?

So what will you only see in California? (Well Maybe in Florida, too!) The kids hang their book bags outside!!! Yep, that’s right…outside. Kim has a door that leads out onto a covered porch and paved play area that is all fenced in. The kids can actually work outside during the day! The weather was just beautiful, mid 70’s. So I asked, “How many days are like this?” Her answer, “Probably 75%!” JEALOUS!!!! So what’s in the other photos…Top left….when the teachers blow the whistle on the playground, everyone has to sit down. Then, they were able to give directions. What a great way to get their attention in case of an emergency instead of having children run and line up. It was pretty awesome to watch! Top right…a view inside Kim’s room. Bottom left….Kim’s kids earn leopard spots for good behavior!
Kim calls her helper of the day, the Lifeguard. They have this special lifeguard stand to sit in during the day. They also assign all of the jobs for the day. Then, they read the jobs out loud to the rest of the kids. Great reading practice!

The weather wizard checks the weather and then reports to the class. She took the weather notebook and colored in the graph. (She wasn’t coloring in December, she was flipping to find the right month.)

Another job was the poetry card holders. There are four of them. They each select a poetry card to hold and those are the poems that the class says that day. Remember Kim’s poetry notebook that some of the kids were reading from in my post on Reader’s Workshop? Well, these are the poems they are reading. Kim has a Poetry Pack on tpt that has all the student pages and a photo of the large cards. It doesn’t have the patterns for the cards. There were lots of other jobs too, but these are the only photos I took. So why didn’t I get more? Well, I had a job, too. Kim has been in the same classroom for 20 years. Her school is undergoing a totally gut remodeling. They are moving one grade level at a time to portables while they gut and redo their rooms. And guess who has to move to a portable now? Yep, Kim. So I spent an entire day packing boxes. I thought I had a lot of stuff….no she has a LOT of stuff!

Remember the books “Where’s Waldo?” Well here’s a new book, “Where’s Kim?”