Sneak a Peek with a Peach: {Third Grade Bookworm}

Hey Peaches!

I'm Abby from Third Grade Bookworm and I'm so excited to have my first post here at The Primary Peach! My Sneak and Peek is a little different, but hopefully you'll like it too! :)


The reason it's a little different is because this year I am not in the classroom. I had the opportunity to try on a new role at my school as the RtI Coordinator and Interventionist. I still spend most of my days with kids (hooray!), but it's in a one-on-one setting with our neediest Tier 3 kids (double hooray!). I also facilitate Tier 2 meetings, Hearing and Vision checks for RtI, and our Backpack Blessings program.

There are still a couple of changes I'd like to make in my office, but here's what it looked like when I left on Friday!

I managed to carve out some wall space for a few anchor charts. My student intervention baskets are all together, my "watch list" is on the wall and I even saved room for a Happy Wall when things get stressful.

My resource bookshelf keeps all of my important stuff in one place. After the first 9 weeks is up, I'm clearing out anything I haven't really used yet and taking it home to put in my office. Which, so far, is going to be the entire bottom shelf. Is it sad that I'm excited about clearing out a shelf? ;-)

When I was in the classroom, I had these baskets (square and rectangle) all over my classroom library. My husband was over-the-moon excited when I took 10 of them back to school to use for my intervention students. :-)

I just finished organizing my supplies this week. Thank goodness for the pressure of a blog post to get some stuff done!

Games to reinforce intervention skills. Most of these came from a Donors Choose grant I wrote a few years ago. I'm so glad I did - I use them all the time now!!

I ordered this file crate on wheels several years ago from Office Max. It is perfect for storing all of my Reading A-Z fluency probes. I love having these sets ready to go. It makes it really easy to pull resources for teachers to use at Tier 2 as well!

That's about it! I hope you've enjoyed our Sneak a Peek series. I love looking into other teachers' classrooms!

Until next time ---

Sneak A Peek With a Peach: Notes From the Portable

Hello!  My name is Jessica Zannini from Notes from the Portable.  I am so excited to be joining the Primary Peach.

Recently my classroom has changed. With two toddlers, I decided to stay at home for a few years and my playroom has become my new classroom.  The goal in designing my classroom was to make it easy to use for myself and my children.  Take a peek into our at-home classroom.

This is where we start our day.  We talk about where we are going (school, gymnastics, the park, grocery store, etc), and what we are learning throughout the week.  We look for the numbers, letters, and shapes for the week on our daily walks and car rides.  The calendar I use a lot with my daughter. It has magnets and we use it for finding and ordering numbers.  My next goal is to have images of our month.  I want to put those up so they can see the pattern of what days they go to preschool and gymnastics.  

The word wall introduces the letters to my kids.  I have it up higher on the wall so they can see it, but not touch it.  I used words that are high frequency for our household such as names, family, and favorite foods and animals. The number line has images of my daughter's favorite food...cupcakes.

This book has the word wall that the kids can get their hands on.  It also has family names, pets a pictures of common animals, numbers, shapes, etc. This is a book that the kids can read to me. I put these in page protectors so we can change them out or add items as needed.

All of the toys have been grouped in separate tubs.  I took pictures of the actual toys in the tubs and added the word to each card.  This way they are seeing the word along with an image of the toy.  It has made a huge difference in finding toys, and having the kids help me clean up!

We use a variety of tools for their daily work (write on maps, place mats, sticker books, and home made books).  I create a book each week for the letter and number of the week.  Between Educlips and Creative Clips, I am never at a loss for clipart to use in the letter of the week books.  We place our snacks on the number of the week chart.  This helps the kids practice counting to that number.

The dollar store has so many great tools to use.  We get seasonal window displays and sticker books that help with learning vocabulary.  I also use the wonderful clipart I have purchase on Teachers Pay Teachers to create site word books for seasons and our activities. 

I hope you enjoyed the tour of my new classroom. Check out the schedule below to find more exciting classroom ideas!

Sneak a Peek with a Peach {and they all fall down}

Hey friends! 

I'm Tara from and they all fall down. 

Thank you for joining me for my 'peek'. 

I hope your year is off to an amazing start! Mine is...... Interesting! :) 

This is my 14th year teaching, most of my time was spent in first grade, three years in ESOL, and this is my third year in second grade. I have 21 kiddos - only 9 boys - can we talk about girl overload? OY! They are a SUPER sweet group - but MAN... can they TALK! I will be searching for creative ideas to handle that soon. :) 

The chevron rug is our meeting space - I read stories - we discuss - we map  - we KWL - we chant - we dance - we work on the smart board...

This is my large bulletin board - It will be turned into anchor chart space as we move through the year. My groups are on the suitcases in case my smart board goes out - or for easy reference throughout the day. 

The rest of the LARGE bulletin board and my crepe paper crinkle border. 

(Can you tell I ran out of border?) 

:) 

Also - this area was a HUGE eyesore when I moved into the room. 

The wall was all discolored and I didn't have time to paint. 

My friend suggested we cover it.... great... with what? 

Wrapping paper and border. 

Yep. That's it. 

Seriously. 

You guessed it - more wrapping paper. 

My goal for this year is to cover the cabinets like I did in the picture below. They are all the same color - but I really wanted to make it more cohesive without painting - so wrapping paper and bulletin board paper it was! 

My coffee pot (that I brew tea in) and my Heidi Swapp marque letters from Michaels. They have black polka dot tape on the outside to match my wrapping paper. :) 

This is where I post my standards for the week. 

I also have a little wall of love like Valerie talked about yesterday. 

 And this friends, 

is what Friday at 3:15 looks like.... A MESS. 

No Judging. This is a judge free zone - got it? 

The bins behind my kidney table are labeled for each subject and I stash my papers and copies in there for the week. I HAD a close up of this... but.... yeah... :/

Here are my poms and poofs from T.J. Maxx and Hobby Lobby. 

I stacked them to make it look a little different than the other classrooms. 

This is my favorite area in my classroom. It's our small classroom library. 

The kids love the bungee chairs and the body pillows. 

Heck - so do I! :) 

The bin in the center has books for the themes we are working on in science or social studies. 

I do keep the overhead lights off most of the day but keep lots of lamps around the room for the kids and I. I get horrible headaches and it helps me when it's a little dim in the room. I do get a lot of natural light from my emergency door and window in our reading nook though! 

Thanks for taking a peek into my room today! It's not perfect - I have a LONG way to go, but the kids enjoy it and so do I. I hope you did as well! :) 

Sneak Peek with a Peach Georgia Grown Kiddos

Hi y'all!  This is Valerie from Georgia Grown Kiddos.  Today I am sharing all about my favorite place in my classroom.  My SNEAK A PEAK WITH A PEACH is a bucket filling, spirit lifting, lesson planning time buster.  And what's best of all, you can easily implement it in your classroom!

There are years that are filled with so many memories and fun times that it is hard to recall all the details.  But for one group of kids, now high school graduates, the 2 years I was privileged to teach them were my absolute favorite.   I was in the "academic cottage" with them one year, so finding a favorite part of the room was hard.  We barely had enough room to get around.  There were 26 fourth graders and myself in this so-called classroom, and every day, every single day, my favorite part of the room was in the middle of the children.  It could have been the old wet floor, sharing work on the brown burlap looking walls, or the squeaky door we all tried to cram into when the rain feel like buckets dumping on our heads.  Wherever they were, there was my favorite place to be. I still get teary-eyed when I think of all of them.  I truly miss them, all of them, but that is for another day and another post on my blog.

Today and all this month the Primary Peach will share little peeks into our rooms, a show and tell of our favorite spaces.  My favorite physical space in my classroom was my "Wall of Love".  I had one in every classroom, right next to my desk.  It was filled with love notes and photos, stickers and "treasures" only a primary school child could find and make.  Having a place to display the children's notes and treasures made me smile on hard days, and the children were always proud when I hung up their notes and photos.  Here is what my last wall of love looked like.

Now I am sure you can think of a million other things to display and use in your room like my word wall below.  It was easy to change and add to since it was on my whiteboard.

And a place for sight words is always a plus.  I chose a unique way of displaying them, but I don't think the Fire marshall was happy with my decor choice. 

Info that is required, interactive spaces, and anchor charts are needed, but when you display a note from a child, one that is filled with love, it will boost your spirit and their's too. What type of wall of love do you have?  Do you keep them after you have run out of space? What is your most memorable love note or gift from a child?  Inspire and encourage others by leaving a comment below.  Until next time, you can find me on the porch with a sweet tea!

Come back tomorrow for And They All Fall Down's post about her favorite space in her room.  You're going to just love her!!