Pinterest and Something New

 So I finally was able to sit down and PIN things today. I felt like I had at the beginning of summer when I was finding out all about blogs. I've missed so much by not blogging as much as I should this year. I need to be able to find a balance of writing and checking in. I was on Pinterest because I was looking for some crafty ways to give each student in my class an award. Of course found tons of pages and about 3 that I really liked. Then I ended up getting sidetracked and went to other boards and have too many tabs up on my webpage right now. I found organizational stuff (things that made me wish I had a husband who could build me stuff), sight words and  station ideas, and definitely lots of math stuff. I like the math stuff because I was the math person on my team this year. The one who wrote the lesson plans for the team and gathered the ideas and materials for everyone. I loved it because I had done my homework over the summer and I had TONS of things I wanted to try.
 My visit to Pinterest led me to a new blogger, you might have already visited her blog: Kindergarten Doodles.

 Well I am so excited that I found her as she has some neat ideas for stations. I noticed that in her station listings she listed an activity for math literacy and I thought to myself "can I include math into my stations?" I have to ask that as our school works on a different reading curriculum that requires us to read from a book, plan from that book and make sure we are following that book to the letter, especially when the big wigs come in to check on us. We have been told that there is some wiggle room but only in our added station. I currently have 5 stations in my room and I love it. It has taken me a year and a half to figure out that I need 5 stations for my sanity and for the student's sanity. My first 2 stations are governed by whatever my curriculum books says to put out. Station 3 varies on whatever skill we are focusing on for the week; Station 4 is usually my sight word and sentence practice station. I love having Station 4 as the sentence practice station because I know that on MWF my students will be doing some kind of sentence building activity and on TTh they work with sight word or word building. And Station 5 is for computers/listening/library. But after pinning today and finding Kindergarten Doodles I have a different take on what I want my stations to be like. Like I want to be able to incorporate writing in as a station, I want to have more writing in the classroom period. However, I can't really change my stations based on what others are doing as some classrooms have assistants and usually it is just me and I have to be at a teaching station during stations. But there has got to be an easier way to make this work as my first 2 stations change daily and I make the rest of the stations change too. I now know what my other 3 stations do not have to change daily but if I don't change them I will have too many "early" finishers because they already know how to play the game or complete the activity.
 I wanted to cut down on how much pulling and planning I have to do every week for reading stations not make things complicated. Oh and next year I wanted to start word study... I guess I have a lot of planning and thinking to do. Where to fit it all in? I want to be able to cover all the bases and still have my students learning. Last year I was the new kindergarten teacher who didn't know any better so I just went along with everything. This year I know just a bit more of what my students need to know before going into first grade. I think I did a good job of getting them on the path this year but for next year I want to do more, I want to do better of educating them so they will succeed and not fail. And it is really difficult when our reading program conflicts with our state testing and does not consistently test them for what they should know and need to know for reading. I am trying to create a balance between our reading curriculum and providing my students with phonics/phonemic awareness activities so they can pass both tests and without getting in trouble for not following things to the letter.
 How do you have literacy stations in your classroom? Or do you even do stations for reading? I would love to hear how everyone else works it out.
 Oh and head over to Lil' Country Kindergarten for some freebies, especially her Hundreds Chart Picture freebies. Did you know that she has created some for almost all the holidays? Here is a snapshot of what the kids could be working on when they "finish early":
 Thanks, Desiree