Lovin Summer and Creative Teaching Press!

I am loving summer! This week is the first week that I've really felt like I was on Summer break. At least the day to day summer break where I'm home. We have been out of school for about 3 weeks and starting this past Saturday was the first time, I've really been home. Monday was such a great day. I had my quiet time in the morning, went for a bike ride, ran a few errands, cleaned my kitchen really good, had lunch with some friends, met a friend for coffee, and then even fixed dinner. It was wonderful. Who knew that things like cleaning something really well and fixing dinner would make me so happy. Part of it is that I'm actually feeling pretty good. The first trimester was pretty rough for me. I think I only cooked once or twice the whole time. So needless to say, Chris is pretty happy I'm feeling better. The rest of the week has been pretty great too. It is just nice to have time to do things.  I saw this pin on pinterest today and thought it was perfect for how I was feeling.

Someone happened to mention yesterday how many weeks were left of summer. I won't speak of it here because it was unwelcome conversation. I still have a lot I want to accomplish. Mainly I need to get everything out of our guest room so we can turn it into a nursery. It is no small job. But I want at least that much done before school starts because once school starts it is going to be hard to do it.
So my brain hasn't really been on school this summer but I got this amazing package from Creative Teaching Products on Tuesday. (It was my birthday and that was a great surprise.)

Here is a snapshot of what I was sent. It has got me thinking about what I want to do with it all.

I am pretty excited bout these library pockets in chevron. There are large and small ones. I am not sure what I'm going to do with the large ones. They are 6" by 9". But the small ones, I think I'm going to use them for the kids to pick their daily 5/literacy centers for the day. What I'm envision is putting the choices on the pocket and then they can use popsicle sticks to make their choice. I haven't quite figured out what choices I want the kids to have yet. I loop with my kids and last year we did literacy centers but usually in first grade, I do a little more Daily 5. I do know I want to give the kids some choice.

I'm also loving these welcome postcards. I plan on writing notes to my students and either mailing them or leaving them on their desks when we have registration day. The nameplates are pretty self explanatory. We can't get in our classrooms until the first Monday in August and school starts on the 15th so I'm a little nervous about that. This is the first year I won't be able to start working in my room in July. So I'm glad to have this great chevron computer paper to work on welcome letters and other aspects of our notebooks so I can get some things done at home.

These 2 inch and 1 inch chevron stickers are amazing. I will definitely do some crafting with these this summer. I can combine these with the cool chevron posters they sent me. So be looking for a Monday Made it using all these materials. Another task I can do at home while watching Netflix or whatever Chris has picked, is to get all these letters punched out. I'm so excited. They sent my 4 packs of these chevron letters so I can redo all my headers for bulletin boards and update them with chevron. (Four Inch Chevron Letters)

This is the item I think I'm the most excited about. Book Buddy Bags. I am so excited to try these out with my kids. They seem to be made of really heavy plastic and I think they'll be perfect for the kids to keep their Read to Self books in. I think I'll probably make a label with the kids' names on them so I can use them for kids as they come and go. (As we know they will)
They sent me some other great stuff that I'll be using the decoration of my room.

Birthday Crowns

Jack O' Lantern Jumbo Stencil border

Birthday Mini Bulletin Board Set

Poppin Patterns Pennant Border
Mini Hexagon Border

I'm really excited to update my birthday board. I've had the same one up for the past 3 years and it's fine but not as cute as I would like. Updating the borders on my bulletin boards will be fun too. I love all the bright colors.
I might be a little biased because I've really enjoyed being an exclusive blogger for Creative Teaching Press and they are great to work with. But check out their stuff for back to school! I would love to hear what you would do with some of the products that I received. Like the letter stickers, large library pockets and borders. I'm starting to think a little bit about school. Although, I don't know what I'm going to do with all this stuff until I can bring it to school. My usual dumping ground is the guest room I need to clean out. I better get off this computer and get my bike ride in. Today my friend Cassie and I start our library/reading program. I'm so excited about it. What do you love most about summer?

Randomness and a Freebie

I have been racking my brain since Sunday to try to come up with a real topic for blogging on and I've come up with nothing. Nada. So here I am with a random hodge podge of stuff.
I have about a month before school starts back and really sooner than that I need to head to my classroom. I don't even know if I can get in my room yet. Usually I head back into the classroom in the month of July. I'm a weirdo. I like working in my room before school starts because there is no pressure. I can work on projects and if I feel like leaving I can. It is time for me to start thinking about what I want to do in my classroom and the next school year.
I'm planning on using bright colors in my classroom. I created a decor set all in rainbow colors to use this year. You can check it out on TPT. It is my first editable item. It was a lot of fun to make and I can't wait to get all ready for my room.

Here's the link on TPT

I realized while laying in bed the other night that I still needed name tags and tags for cubbies. I usually use a placemat for the name tags that has letters, numbers, colors, and such on it. But I won't use those until the second six weeks. (You can find a freebie of that on my facebook page under fan freebies tab.) So I made a freebie to share with you. 

Click here to go to the freebie. 

Mondays I keep my almost 3 year old niece. We have a blast together and I get to "teach" her. Yesterday we played Hi Ho Cherrio.

I don't think I had played this game since I was a kid. I was so impressed that my niece was able to play the game. I had to interpret the spinner some for her but she was able to count the fruit off her tree or out of her basket. Of course she also had fun just taking all the fruit and putting in her shell from the beach. But it got me thinking. This game would be perfect for beginning of the year math workstations. It practices counting, one to one correspondence and just playing a game. I'm definitely going to be finding this game for my classroom. 

We also had a lot of fun with pipe cleaners and beads. We made bracelets but again there was a lot of learning to be had. There was counting, sorting and then fine motor skills. It reminded me of this pin that I found on pinterest. 

I'm definitely going to be setting this one up for the first rotations. Looks pretty simple to get going and good for the kids to practice counting and some fine motor skills.

So those are my random thoughts for today. I spent part of my day with a family from school whose son has brain cancer. I asked for prayers back in January but I thought I'd share again. Please pray for this 12 year old boy and his family. I am so amazed by the strength his parents have had through this all. 

Classroom update

So this week, I finally ventured into my classroom. It's probably a little earlier than I usually go in but I want to reorganize and inventory my classroom library. It's a pretty big project so I wanted to give myself time to work on it. So Tuesday, I went into my room and started sorting all my books. I put them in as many categories as I could with authors, characters, and subjects. I discovered that I do not have as many non fiction books as I would like. But I'm thinking of creating my first donor's choose project to try to get more nonfiction books. Anyway, after I made my piles, I made a list of all the categories I had made. I also started scanning in some of my books into the app Classroom Organizer. It's a web based service to inventory all your books. Check it out here. I can add books with an app on my phone by scanning the ISBN number. Not all books will scan in, especially the scholastic ones that I got through book orders. A lot of those don't have bar codes. But you can type in the book. What I like is that I can see the lexile, ar level and points and guided reading level for the books. I've only gotten a small portion scanned or entered in. It is a little tedious and I can only work on it for a little while. I went home and made labels for all my categories. Some of them I combined into favorite authors or favorite characters if I only had 2 or 3 of one. I also made some labels for my monthly tubs that I keep all the books and activities to go with it. If you would be interested in these labels you can get them by clicking here. I don't know that I suggest doing them the way I did. I printed them out and then cut them out and mounted them on scrapbook paper and laminated them. Here's a picture of them all laminated and in need of cutting out.

This is a picture of all my baskets. I still need a few more baskets for books. But I'm kind of a spending halt. But you'll have to read about that tomorrow on my Friday finds.The next step next week will be to attach the labels to the baskets and get the baskets on shelves. I'm hoping I have enough shelves. I'm trying to give up some of my space and make the room more the kids' space. I plan to punch holes in the cards and use zipties to attach the labels to the basket. I'll take pictures when I'm finished. I still haven't decided exactly how I want to the label the books so they know what basket they put the books back into. I've used color stickers before but that didn't work. I'm really going to have work on modeling and modeling on keeping the library in order. I didn't feel like I had accomplished much with all the library stuff because I just kept making a bigger and bigger mess. So I worked on my bulletin boards some. I wanted to try out the tissue paper borders I saw on Classroom DIY.  I'm really trying to focus on the colors red, black and blue. I don't want to redo everything I already have like my clipchart but I did recover my bulletin boards using black fabric. My large word wall one already has red fabric. But I took down the Dr. Seuss border and am using black ribbon with white polka dots. Here a couple of blurry pictures of my bulletin boards. I ran out of tissue paper so they aren't complete.

I think they look pretty good. I'm planning on doing our work one with black tissue paper borders similar to these. I'll post pictures when I'm done. I didn't finish the word wall one and I didn't get a picture I might have to get an opinion when I finish the ribbon part. It might need an extra border. I also plan to take down my Dr. Seuss alphabet and numbers down and replace them with Annie at The Moffat Girls' alphabet. Here's a picture of it all laminated:

I haven't decided what to do about the numbers. I might make my own or keep searching for some that match my color scheme. I'm still working on super hero things and I have added a few things to my file. So be sure to download it if you are interested in the freebie. I've added some signs for different boards and places around the room. I also made some monthly signs for my calendar. I'm not sure how well they will work because it's my first time making these.
Click here to get the freebies.
I'm trying out dropbox so let me know if it doesn't work. 
If you download one of my freebies, please leave me a little comment love.