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Last week, I posted about my big move from teaching K3-K5 Special Ed in urban Milwaukee to being an Elementary Special Ed teacher in a small, rural community.  As I reflect on my move and look ahead to the future, I've come up with 5 things I will really miss about teaching urban.

1)  Target 

When I start my new position the closest Target store is over an hour away!!!  What am I going to do without the Dollar Spot?  I have spent a lot of time searching Target for the perfect supplies and materials to create perfect supports, crafts, and parent gifts for my students in the last 3 years.  My wallet will probably be most thankful for the move.  

2)  Anonymity

I lived near to my school in city sense, but in reality, it wasn't really that close.  Because of this, I knew I could go to Target or the grocery store and not have to worry about running into students of parents when I looked like the crypt keeper or was in a hurry.  In a small town, I will not be so lucky.

3) Diversity

The area we are moving to is where I grew up.  It lacked diversity when I was growing up.  While better now, it is still not at the level of a large city.  I loved the diversity in my classroom.   I had students who were of all different races, origins, and backgrounds. I loved researching, studying, and teaching different cultural holidays or celebrations. I loved the feeling of not always being comfortable and challenging myself to better understand students and families who were not like me.

4) Vast Resources

I am moving to a district that is very supportive and collaborative, but it still will not be the same as being in a large district with over 100 elementary schools.  I worked with a great team in my immediate school, but also had access to disability specific support teachers, people employed to just help with IEP issues, and other experts.  On top of that, I had monthly meetings just with other Early Childhood Special Education teachers in my geographical area to discuss changes, collaborate, and support each other.

5)  My Students

While this shows up in the last spot, it's more because it's hard to write about.  I will miss my students so much.  I love teaching these kiddos for the last 3 years and never turned a new one away.  I loved watching how much they grew and learned.  I loved watching their confidence begin to grow and develop as they realized they could learn.  I will also greatly miss teaching K3 students.  My new district does not have a K3 program and I will miss these little learners. alot

Even with all of this reflecting on things I will miss, I have also found 3 things that I am excited about teaching rural now.

1)  Community Involvement

A small community is invested in its schools because these are their kids, their neighbor's kids, their cousins and so on.  There is not another school for 20-30 miles, so you know kids in this community are going to this school.  The community support has already amazed me.  I'm excited to be apart of this new school community.  As we've been moving and visiting to plan our move, I have gotten so many warm wishes and congratulations from community members.

2)  Family Support

This one is personal.  While living in the city, my husband and I didn't have much family support.  Once we had our daughter, we truly realized that we were missing out on this.  We are excited to be back by both of our extended families so our daughter can have that family support and interaction.

3)  My New Students

I can't wait to meet my new students.  I love challenges and the idea of having new grades and new students makes me nervous, anxious, and giddy.  I can't wait to take the time to build relationships with new kiddos and learn how to help them learn best.

Don't forget to follow my new adventure on FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM!

Kelsey

Back in Action

I've been a little MIA lately.  The end of the school year came fast and furious for me.  I had several new 3 year old students and TONS of IEP meetings.  It was a challenging year to say the least.  At the end of the year, I also made a tough, but necessary choice to leave my school in Milwaukee.  I love my students and the staff, but this was best for my family.  My husband is a small town guy who never adjusted well to the city, so after 5 years, we decided to move back to the area where we both grew up.  Having our daughter in November really made it clear that we needed to be closer to our family.

So, we put the house on the market and began making plans to move from one side of Wisconsin to the other.  I took a job with small, rural school district.  I'm very nervous because it's going to be a big change from Milwaukee.  My caseload will be much smaller, but I'm going from teaching K3-K5 Special Ed to K4-5th Special Ed.  I've spent a lot of the summer nervously researching upper grades and trying to make some plans.  I am going to post later this month a before and after of my new classroom.  I've been chronicling some of the prepping on INSTAGRAM and FACEBOOK!  Click on the links to check it out!

Since I can't get into my classroom regularly yet, I've been focusing on some new products. I also gave my exisisting sight word writing cards a facelift, Check them out below!

I'm very excited for the coming year and look forward to sharing awesome activities, tips, and pictures with you!!  See you soon!

Kelsey

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Eggs, Jelly Beans, & a Trip to the Movies

This week was our last week before Spring Break.  As much as I love teaching, I am looking forward to a nice long break.  The weather here in Wisconsin hasn't been very spring like but hopefully it can still be a relaxing few days away.

This week started by talking about Easter egg hunts.  We talked what eggs looked like in the carton and how eggs for hunting look.  After that, we completed a writing activity where each student worked on coloring, writing their names, and color identification.  Most of our writing activities are centered around my littler learners names and then have a little added flair to them.  I was really happy with how it turned out.

Tuesday was a special day.  As part of a school-wide positive behavior incentive program, my students earned a trip to the movie with 170 other kids from our school.  My little learners were so excited, but I underestimated what a movie with 3 and 4 year olds would be like.  Thank goodness our school had the theatre all to themselves.  All in all, it was a very fun experience.

The next day, we were back to business as usual. We did not do a new letter of the week this week as it was a short week, so instead we reviewed by playing different games on the SmartBoard.  We also worked on a jelly bean interactive reader.  My students had to count the beans, write or trace the number in the sentence, and then color the beans by the word in the sentence.  You can find the reader in my Jelly Bean Early Learning Pack or by itself in my store by clicking the pictures below.

We continued the jelly bean learning on Thursday by sorting 6 different colored jellybeans.  This was of course my little learners favorite activity because once they were done, they could eat the jelly beans!  The mats are also in my Jelly Bean Early Learning Pack.

No short, before holiday week would be complete without a lot of playing.  This little lady decided that she was going to be a loner during iPad time and play with the blocks.  How could I say no?

If you think your little learners would have as much fun as mine did with these activities you can find them here:

   

I will be taking the next week to work on some products, do some planning, and enjoy some time with family both near and far.  I hope everyone else is enjoying their spring breaks or long holidays.

We're Going To The Zoo

In Milwaukee, we are very lucky to have access to a high quality zoo.  The Milwaukee County Zoo has lots of really neat programming that will come out to your school for a learning opportunity.  It also provides a great field trip for students of all ages.  This week, we learned about zoo animals in preparation for our trip on Thursday. 

The zoo trip is an all day trip and we don't have school on Friday, so it was a quick three days of packing in as much zoo animal and zoo behavior expectations as we could. On Monday, we introduced zoo animals by reading "1, 2, 3 at the Zoo" by Eric Carle.  We also did Farm Animal or Zoo Animal sort that can be found in the We're Going to the Zoo Early Learning Pack in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  This sort is tricky for my students because being in Wisconsin, the Milwaukee County Zoo actually has a working Dairy Farm on the grounds.  Many of my students have never been to an actual farm so they think that cows, horses, goats, and donkeys are zoo animals too.  We talked a lot about how real farms are very large and have a variety of other animals as well.

On Tuesday, we reread our story and then completed a counting book that is also in the Early Learning Pack.  My students really got into this counting book.  I loved seeing them also say these are zoo animals and apply the knowledge from the day before.

On Wednesday, we read our pocket chart story "I see animals." My little learners love to do pocket chart readings.  I go through each line with them first and then each student comes up and gets to read a line.  I love hearing "Ms. Kelsey, I'm a reader."  After we completed a book with the same words where they needed to match the animal pictures to what they read.  My 4 and 5 year olds had a great time taking these books back to their regular education teachers and showing them how they could read!

Finally, the day of our big trip had arrived.  My K3 students could barely eat their breakfast because they were so excited and talking about the animals they were going to see.  The zoo trip is an all day trip which is very long for my 3 year old who are used to just a half day of school.  We spent the day walking around with our friends in the Autism classrooms.  It's so much fun to watch how excited my kiddos get when they see the animals.  It's a great day of communication opportunities and fun.

We had a professional development day on Friday, but I was beat for sure.  I look forward to the zoo trip every year, but am always glad when it's done.  Stop by my Teachers Pay Teachers store to check out my Zoo Early Learning Pack and Interactive Emergent Readers.  I'm sure your little learners will love them just as much as mine did!

Things That Go!

This week was all about Things That Go!  I normally would spend two weeks on this, but March is a weird month with several non-instructional days and then Spring Break.  I shortened up our activities so that we can also get to Zoo animals and Jelly Beans this month.

The first day, we introduced Things That Go! by doing a transportation sort from Play to Learn Preschool.  I really love her Circle Time and Centers theme packs.  We use different parts of them in a variety of ways and there are so many activities that I can give even my students who are with me for 3 years a lot of variety year after year.  We hung the sort once completed on our focus wall to look at all during the week.

 

On Tuesday, we color sorted red, yellow, and green to make stop lights.  I love craftivities and feel like some of my students really learn best from them because they don't even realize they are learning.  Sorting, color identification, following directions, and task completion all worked on in one simple activity.

My favorite activity was on Wednesday.  We made name trains.  Each student worked at their level to make train out of their name.  Some matched, some just needed boxes to define space, some just put the letters down.  Then, we traced each letter to work on proper letter formation.  Everything turned out so cute.  I was so impressed how even my most resistant writers were into this project.  You can fine this project in my Teachers Pay Teachers Shop.

On Thursday, we completed an interactive emergent reader called "I see a parking lot."  My little learners used car stickers to complete the pictures to match the words in the book.  There are two levels to the reader.  One where students work on one to one correspondance by putting a sticker on a dot already in the parking lot and the other students put the correct number of cars by counting.  You can find the reader in my Teacher Pay Teacher store by clicking below.

Friday is kind of a weird day in our classroom.  Our occupational therapist does a group for all of my students and the timing throws our normal schedule off, so I take that day to cook snack with my students.  There are so many skills for even young children to learn by cooking together.  I love the conversation and different skills my kiddos are doing each week.  This week, we made grilled cheese roll-ups.  You can find the original recipe at Cook, Crave, Inspire by Spend with Pennies.  My kiddos assembled after a demonstration and then I cooked the rolls on a griddle while they were in OT group.  I love watching my students attempt to do the assembling just as they were shown.  I try to pick a recipe that has a few steps and enough "work" for everyone to do.

These roll-ups were a unanimous hit, which is very rare in our room.  One of my little guys ate 3!!  

Next week is a 4 day week with a field trip to the Milwaukee County Zoo, so check back to see how we prepare and get ready to learn about Zoo animals.