Monkeys, Monkeys, Everywhere!

We just went wild finishing our study on Monkeys!  The students had a great time reading nonfiction books, learning new facts, and creating their own little monkeys to hang in the hallway.

 We also added tropical trees and vines......

and to make sure that we stayed somewhat academic, we added our completed monkey reports (see our last post).  Have a great weekend!

Cute little Monkeys!

Oh my goodness, I love these little monkeys!  I ordered them from Oriental Trading last week and they finally arrived just in time for Valentines Day!  I put little candy bananas in a bag and tied it with a little tag.  The back of the tag says "Teaching you is bunches of fun!"  My kids are really into the monkey theme this year, so monkey valentines was the only way to go!  Happy Valentines Day!

Monkey Binders are the Best!

This Monkey Binder is the best organizational tool in my classroom.  It keeps all of us super organized (especially ME!)
Every student has one and everything that needs to be communicated between home and school is in one safe place. 

This Money and Note Pouch is the place where all money and important notes are placed.  No more lost money or searching for notes!

The students have learned that this pocket is for papers that can be taken home and left there.

This is the pocket where papers that need to be returned go.
Our Binders also keep our homework agendas too.  This tool has proven effective year after year to make life so much easier! By the way, all clipart is D.J. Inkers!  

Decorating with Monkeys

It has been another year of decorating the classroom with monkeys.  I still love the hues of green and yellow throughout the classroom with the little monkey characters peeking out from here and there.

Above is a pocket chart that we use on the calendar board.  It helps us focus on the days of the week, the weather, and our daily special. Also shown is our Classroom Helper chart complete with bananas.  Our classroom could not be complete with a few palm trees scattered around also!  

Monkey Bulletin Boards

I decorated my last year's classroom in a Monkey Theme.  Here is a picture of one of the bulletin boards.  The "Wild Words" consisted of our character words or new vocabulary words throughout the year.  This bulletin board also had our Word Hunt poem to emphasize high frequency words we were currently working on. The second bulletin board was our Welcome board that we displayed in the hall at the beginning of the year.  I will continue to post some pictures of our MONKEY Binders (My Own Notebook Keeps Everything Yearlong) and some other classroom resources as the summer passes.  I am currently trying to decide which theme I want to have this coming school year.  It would be so easy to just stick with the Monkey theme but after having the theme for a year...one starts to go BANANAS!