I'm Ready! AKA- Wanna see some pics? {and get a freebie?}

Well, the thing I've been planning for and working on all summer has finally arrived... tomorrow is the first day of school!

I think I'm prepared.

Yesterday I went in and made sure the evil elves hadn't messed up my organization and today I popped back in to drop off my Gerbil, run a copy, and laminate one thing.  Surprisingly enough... that is all I did!  I was home within the hour... which NEVER happens!  So, I think I can safely say that I've done all there is to do.

Here's what it looks like now...

^  Here's the view from the door.  ^

My bins are all ready for students to put their community supplies in to.

 And here's the board at the front of the room with directions and the schedule.

 

 Direction cards- I pull these down and add a note beside them to help students remember the steps to a project.  Keep reading to see how you can get a set!

 

Ok- it's really bright and hard to see... but see that curtain?  That's right.  I made it!  I made three of them!

 

 Even Gerbie is watching for kids to arrive!  She's got a long {hot} night ahead of her!

 

This is the last thing I need to do but I'm waiting until I teach about "Work on Writing" to stock this up.  I won't be able to have a true "writing center" like I did last year, so this shelf houses all of my writing stuff.  It'll be kind of a "grab it and go" type of situation.  Supplies are in the drawers, the blue thing is a little desk thing, the little blue and reddies there on the bottom are little lap desks, and I have September's word wall vocab card displayed so kiddos can find relevant words to September writing!

So there you have it!  Room 108 is ready to go!

You can pop over to my TpT store to get a free copy of the supply cards and the direction cards that I have displayed on my board.

Just click the picture below!

And, don't forget that I've put my most recent best sellers on sale at 20% off at TpT until the end of the night!  You can visit yesterday's post to find out which items that is!

PS- want to see what I've been reading?  Check out my latest review at The Best Endings!

Open House Organization!

Happy Sunday!  I think I'm going to pop in to school today to make sure everything is READY for kiddos on Tuesday!  You know, just in case some evil elves came in since Thursday and messed things up...?  I just have to check and make sure!  (And sharpen 28 pencils so they have something on their desks right away to complete their wordsearch with them they walk in!)

Last Wednesday we had our Open House.  I like having it before school starts because it turns the experience into a time for students and families to explore and spend time in the classroom and makes it less likely to be a mini-conference.

I always have tons of forms out for parents- sign in sheet, party sign up forms, volunteer sign up, e-mail list... and I have just finished turning all of those forms into something editable that I could share with all of you!

The packet is for sale at my TpT and Teacher's Notebook shops and contains 27 pages of different forms and things for Open House.  It is a Powerpoint file in which all of the "pages" are actually JPEG files so you can put your own text boxes right over top of them to customize them for your classroom!  And I put in all of the text boxes for you... so all you have to do is customize your own messages and cute fonts!

Find it on TpT          or          Teacher's Notebook

I'm really excited about this and know it might be a little late for some of you... but if you haven't had Open House yet or you want to save it for next year... it might be right up your alley!

Want to win one?  I'll give a free copy to the first two people who correctly guess the number of students I'll have in my 3rd grade class!  Don't forget to leave your e-mail address!  Liz and Danielle guessed correctly... I have 26 students!  I need the two extra pencils... just in case!  And kudos to those of you who knew I would be teaching multiple classes of reading throughout the day!  *Technically* I have about 115 students... but 26 are my core class!

Enjoy!!!

Pens, Pens, Pens... and a Sale On My Top Sellers!

First up... I just listed some of my most recent best selling items at 20% off at TpT!

End of the year awards (a little early, I know... but this is my top seller!)
Reading comprehension flippy books
Fractions are SCOOPer center set
Communities flippy book set
One WonderfFUL Night Prefix and Suffix center set
1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade Treasures reading series weekly spelling packets
Matter flippy book
CCSS Pet Shop Math center set for 1st and 2nd grade

This starts NOW and ends on Tuesday!

Next...

Look what I got in the mail!  Don't mind the dog.  He was curious!

And... open it up...

It's full of Zebra brand pens and pencils!

Who doesn't love a good pen...?  Colored, smooth rolling, click em', stick em' pens!

I love the Zebra Z-Mulsion EX Ballpoint Pens and the Zebra M-301 Mechanical Pencil I received in this set.  I, myself, am a mechanical pencil girl... boo to sharpening a pencil every five seconds due to a lack of a point!

So, here's how everything in the pack writes:

I like that, on the pens and mechanical pencil, there are little cushy grippers so I can write away with comfort!  :)

I just keep going back to the smoothness of the pens!  I just love effortless writing!

You can enter to win your own Z-Mulsion pen (trust me... you want one of these!) by clicking HERE.

So, that's the scoop!  What is your favorite teacher pen?

Friday Freebie- {Shhh! We're Taking a Test!}

Happy Friday!  It's my last one before school starts.  The Mr. took today off and we're going to run errands (that means "go to Target") and eat at our favorite favorite favorite restaurant "Chinn Chinn"!  HOORAY!

I made this sign last night to hang on my door when I'm assessing and thought you might like it too!

Just click to download from Google Docs and leave me some love if you enjoy it!

Did You Bring Your Clip-Stick and Stop Bye Four Homophone Fun!

Ya'll know how much I love my clip chart.  And if you don't know, you can learn aaaaalllll about how much I love it on this little blog of mine.

Well, a little thing happened this summer called "I Got a New Job"... you might have heard me talking about that... and, at said job, our kiddos will be changing classes during the day... and we were trying to think of a way for us to use a clip chart for our behavior management without the kiddos having to a.) remember where each teacher said they should be on the chart, b.) having to have 4 clip charts for the four groups of kids we'll each have during the day, or c.) worrying about Johnny Sweetheart being told to move his clip down by one teacher and then "forgetting" to tell his homeroom teacher and thus remaining UP on the chart.

So... the CLIP STICK was born!

My awesome colleague BK painted these for us... Hi BK!!!!!  You're the best!

And I added the words and painted over them with Modpodge.

Here's mine:

It's a yard stick!  Each of our classes have one with our own clips on it and one kid's job will be to take it to each class as they rotate through during the day!  I LOVE IT!!!!!

A few weeks ago I got this box in the mail:

And I opened it...

And at first, I saw this:

And this was hidden underneath:

And (just to continue the "And" pattern) I love it!

It's a quick and easy center set for students to practice differentiating between homophones.  It's a flip chart and each page has four clues that students have to match up a homophone for each clue.

It tells you at the top of each card which four tiles you need:

And then students would look through the tiles to find the four they need.  I really like that part- they are being exposed to SO many words as they look for the ones they need.  I love all of the visual discrimination that will be taking place, the reading and thinking and sorting... LOVE!

Here's the best part though- it's magnetic!  So, students plunk on the four word tiles and then flip the page up to see if they got the answers correct.

Let's find out how I did...

YES!  You can check out this amazing product on the Lakeshore website.


So, who doesn't love Lakeshore Learning?  Can I tell you that two summers ago the Mr. and I went to the Mall of America.  What a trooper he was to take a vacation to go shopping!  And we went to both Lakeshore stores that were nearby when we were there.  I had never been to their actual store before... it was AH-MAZING!

The best part of this is that they are having a BOGO half off sale right now!  So, when you buy one item, the next is half price!  Just click above to go to the link to start shopping and saving!

Whirl-wind Wednesday

What a day... week, actually.

I've been busy with meetings and activity at school and, I must say... I LOVE MY NEW SCHOOL!!!!!!!  LOVE.  LOVE.  LOVE.

I mean this in the least crazy way possible, but I just want to stand and shout it from the rooftops!

Tonight was Open House and I got to meet my 3rd graders.  They're not scary at all! 
I'm hoping to be back tomorrow with a real blog post.  I want to show you 1.) what we did with our clip charts in 3rd grade (it's SUPER cool!!!) and 2.) show you an amazing product from Lakeshore Learning and offer you a sale promo from them too!  Who doesn't love Lakeshore Learning?!

In the meantime, there are still a few hours left on my 20% off sale at TpT and TN!  It's over tonight and regular prices will be baaaaaack!

Monday Made-It... {Actually not}

I actually made these last week and posted about them, but doggone it, I'm proud of them and wanted to link up with Tara at 4th Grade Frolics anyway!

Both of these are Pinterest inspired projects:

1.)  an interactive "respond to reading" poster that I designed and then had printed on Vistaprint.  I'm super excited to have my kiddos place a sticky note on their number to respond to questions about a text or concept.  I shared an uploadable template for this yesterday... click HERE to get it!

2.)  a First Day frame!  This kiddo is actually going in to 2nd grade... but was kind enough to model my frame for me.  I'm super excited to have my 3rd graders pose behind this on the first day!   I got the frame at Goodwill for $1.99 and had the ribbon & bunting border (it's something I bought from Creative Teaching Press)... then I just whipped up the text part and... done!  So quick and easy!

3.)  I DID make something that I'm *SO* jazzed about for my classroom... but the picture I took stinks and so I'm going to try a new picture today and then I'll show ya tomorrow!

And... just a reminder:

TpT     and     Teacher's Notebook

I'm off to a new employee orientation and then ELA meeting... thus begins my last week without kiddos!

Winner, Sale, and *THE* Template for Responding to Reading

I'm back to my old blog design for the moment... though I loved my other one, SOOOO many other bloggers have that template... so it's this one while I wait for my check from TpT so I can buy a new, custom, just for me template!

Hooray and congrats to...!

You are the winner of 5 custom pages of stickers from My Teacher Stickers!  I'm e-mailing you right now!

If you didn't win... don't fret!  They are super affordable... and I hope you'll pick yourself up a page or two of stickers... and maybe some for your co-workers too!

Tomorrow begins a few days of meetings to get ready for kiddos next week Tuesday!  Woot woot!  So, I'll be making frantic last minute purchases this week, laminating, printing, and copying like crazy!

To celebrate (?), everything is 20% off at my TpT and Teacher's Notebook shops until Wednesday!  I'm lovin' this button I made for the sale-

My TpT store     or     my Teacher's Notebook shop

Yesterday I shared this "Respond to Reading" interactive poster I made on Vistaprint and had lots of requests to share the file- I tried to upload it to Google Docs in Publisher so ya'll could edit it yourselves... but it converted it to a Word document, which didn't work... so I tried to move it over to Word and it won't accept the table and I can't get the formatting right...

Here's mine:

So, here is a plain version of the file.  It's plain.  No Lilly Bimble graphics, as I'm sure that violates Vistaprint's terms by allowing someone to re-print graphics that they do not have the rights to.  You know what I mean?

So I tried to cutsey this up as much as I could without using any graphics so I wouldn't violate anything... It is a ZIP file and has a page for 25, 30, and 35 students.

Sorry it's not fancy... I don't want to make Vistaprint or Lilly Bimble mad at me so I'm just trying to follow licensing terms with printing and graphics!  You would just need to upload whichever page you need to VP and then order it as a large poster.

Hope that helps!

Responding to Reading- Interactive Poster

This just arrived from Vistaprint and I couldn't be happier!

Now, I can't remember which blog I saw this on, but someone else used VP to make an interactive "Respond to Reading" poster which is what inspired me.  So, sorry I can't give you a shoutout, mystery Vistaprint inspiration!

Anywho... this is the large poster (which wasn't free, but still inexpensive!).  So I made the file in Publisher, saved as a PDF, uploaded, cropped, and... there you have it!

So, now it's laminated so I can write a question at the top (that is me, learning how to write in D'Nealian... yikes!  I have some practicing to do!) and students will respond by taking a sticky note (inside the bucket hanging on the knob), writing their answer, and sticking it on the spot that corresponds with their student number.  The first question is an easy one, but I plan to do lots of higher level comprehension questioning with this one.

I do have four classes of 3rd graders I'll be seeing for reading... I'm thinking I'll mainly use this for my homeroom group more than I will the other three groups... but it would be a GREAT quick "exit slip" type of thing or way for students to be held accountable during read to self time as they could answer a question or write a way they've been using our comprehension skills in their reading.

I'm pretty geeked about this one!  I even got my first ever message from Vistaprint that my image may be too distorted when blown up to this size, but I decided to order it anyway and it looks great!

Don't forget to enter the giveaway for 5 sheets of personalized stickers!  It ends tomorrow... just check out yesterday's blog post!

Happy Saturday, peeps!

It's Friday... How Does a GIVEAWAY Sound?

It's Friday, Friday... gotta eat a bagel on the couch with my backpack on the weekend!

Anyone know what I'm talking about?  Anyone?

Anyway...

Do you know the website My Teacher Stickers (formerly known as Three Dog Graphx)???

You must check them out!!!!!

It is a Michigan based company that prints SUPER inexpensive personalized stickers for teachers!

Let's be honest here... what kid doesn't love getting stickers?  Even big kids!  And how cool is it that they will have your name on them and a little phrase too!

I have bought several over the years and, for the past two years or so, have gotten them as "happy new school year" gifts for my grade-level partners!

I just ordered some surprises for other teachers and some birthday stickers for me!  Since I'll be seeing about 110 kids a day for reading, I thought it would be nice to give each one a little sticker on their b-day.

I've bought this cat one in the past (don't worry... this is a stock photo from their site... I am not now, nor have I ever been, Mrs. Smith)!

And I love this one too:

Here's the good news for you... Tom at My Teacher Stickers has generously offered to give away FIVE different personalized sticker sheets to one lucky winner!

All you have to do is go to their website, My Teacher Stickers, look around and tell me which sticker is your favorite!  Leave me a comment with that info and your e-mail address and you're entered!

I'll let you know who wins this awesome giveaway on Sunday morning!  In the meantime, check out their products... I'm not joking about how inexpensive they are.  The shipping is CRAZY fast too, so you won't be waiting long for your sticker-y awesomeness!

After you check out their products, come back and leave me a comment to let me know which one you love the best!

That's it!  Good luck and happy stickering!