Photo-a-Day Challenge September 1st

I was reading some posts today from some of the blogs I follow, and I came across this beauty from Clutter-Free Classroom.

 

 



I thought it might be fun to give it a shot...so here's my picture for September 1st: September!  I know this isn't the greatest picture, but I'm not at school to take a new one and I really want to try to post every day this month! It's hard to tell, but the far left curtain has red, white, and blue stars for July, the next one is red gingham with ants for August, then school pictures (bus, school house, ABC, 123, etc.) for SEPTEMBER, and you can see just a small section of the pumpkins for October.

About 9 years ago, my mom asked me what I wanted for my birthday.  At the time I was a reading specialist and my office had one window in it.  I thought it would be pretty neat to have a "Curtain of the Month Club" so to speak, so I asked for that.  Every month my mom would give me a new curtain.  She hadn't quite made all of them when I found out that I would be moving rooms the following year.  Once I realized the curtains wouldn't work in my new room (which was a WAY nicer room I might add!)  I had her stop making them.  I packed the curtains away, hoping one day I'd be able to use them again.

A few years passed, I moved from my home state of Vermont, to Texas and my new classroom had 2 windows....so the curtains remained packed.  Then three years ago, I was working with our new school librarian brainstorming ideas for themes, decorating, etc.  She decided to do a big tree in the middle of the library, and added branches throughout the year as needed.  Each time a child read a book they put their name and the title of the book on a cutout and it went on the tree.  The cutout changed every month (September - apple, October - pumpkin, November - turkey, and so on).  We informally called it Reading Throughout the Year.  Looking around our library I realized the windows were lacking any color, and then I also realized that there were 12 windows!  A light bulb went off....12 windows....12 months....Curtain of the Month Club....so I went home and pulled out my curtain tub and curtains.  I brought them into school and what do you know?  They were the perfect size!  Now I didn't have a full set of 12 and they weren't all exactly the same size.  Since they were only up one at a time making them exactly the same hadn't been necessary.  So I went to work making the curtains I had all the same size, and then I went and found material for the ones I didn't have. I will admit it was a very costly project, and stressful (I had a very hard time decided on August's fabric!) but it was well worth it.  Every time I go into the library and see the curtains, it makes me smile and I can't imagine what the library would look like without the curtains!  One day, we'll find out though because when I leave this school, the curtains are coming with me!

Here are some pictures of the other curtains...you can even see one of the tree branches in the middle picture!

January (snowflakes) - February (green with colored hearts all over - I really need to make new red ones!) - March (green shamrocks)

April (Easter eggs) - May (Cinco de Mayo) - June (flowers)

October (pumpkins) - November (turkeys) - December (candy canes)

In March of 2013, my mother very unexpectedly passed away at the young age of 59.  So now these curtains are even more precious to me.  I have curtains in both of my children's rooms that she made, the curtains at the bottom of my stairs were made by her, and I even have a set of curtains in my classroom.  These were originally made for the new room I moved into to hide all the contents of open cabinets.  When I moved to Texas, miraculously the curtains also fit the space above my student closet that I use for storage!  I love these curtains...especially when my classroom was painted the blue and green in them!  These are the only things I don't change out each year with my new theme! We had some leftover material and my mom made my daughter (and her baby doll) a dress out of it, too!  She was an amazing seamstress!

Curtains covering storage area in my classroom.

Scrapbook page made by an amazing aide who did a scrapbook for every child in the class!

 

Heidi or Gretchen - I have no idea, they're twins and I can't tell them apart!  She has booties, too, that you can't see!

 

Ok...so I'm sure (I KNOW!) the rest of my posts will not all be this long...but here's my first one :D  HOORAY!!

#CFCSeptember

Back to School Sale!

The much awaited TeachersPayTeachers sale is now underway!  Click the picture below to go to my TPT store!  Make sure to use the coupon code BTS13 for an extra savings!

Morning Meeting Activities

YAY!  I finally finished my first set of Morning Meeting Activities to go along with my Morning Meeting Greetings!  If you are interested in seeing a preview of this product just click on the picture below.  If you like the preview you can purchase the entire set at my TeachersPayTeachers store.  It'll be 28% of on Sunday and Monday, August 18th and 19th!

 

 

Spelling with Spoons

A while back, and I do mean a while, I saw a really neat idea on Pinterest with spoons and the alphabet.  I've been wanting to make a set, but really had no reason to do so as I teach fifth grade.  WELL...my youngest is going off to kindergarten this month so I thought to myself - what a great back to school gift for his teacher!  So after a bit of searching for white and clear spoons that were both the same size (which was not as easy as I thought it would be!), this weekend I made five sets for his teacher.  I put uppercase stickers on the white spoons and lowercase stickers on the clear spoons.  I will say I'm not thrilled with the lowercase "a" or "q", but I think students do need to be exposed to both styles.  It'll be up to her to decide if she wants to use them or replace them with other stickers.  I've given her blank spoons just in case.

 

It was late when I finished, so I just put them into five different bags and left them on the table to take care of in the morning.  This morning my son came downstairs and wanted to make words with them (which gave me another idea...but we'll hold that thought for a few more minutes.)  So he gets them out and the stickers are already falling off!  YIKES!  I'm so glad he wanted to play with them.  So I pulled out my Mod Podge and coated every single last one of those 260 spoons!  Problem solved and they're all back in their bags!  YAY!

Now onto the light bulb that came on when my son asked to make words with the spoons (he already knows his letters, so matching upper and lowercase letters isn't something he's interested in doing.)  Now I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't think of this on my own - but DUH...sure, my fifth graders know their letters, but why not use them for spelling words?  I mean currently I have a pretty good great collection of activities for my students to use to work with their spelling words that I'm constantly adding to.  Why not add this one to it?!  So here are some of the spoons I made for my classroom. 

 

And here's the direction sheet students will get.  You can click on the image to download this fun Freebie!

 

 



 

Here are some of the other direction sheets for a few of the extensions we do.

 

 

 

If you're interested in purchasing the entire set, you can get all 30 Spelling Activities as well as forms, tips, and other resources in my TPT store.  Just click the image below.

 

 

 

 

If you are looking for more freebies then check out Manic Monday at Classroom Freebies by clicking on the image below.



Science Tools Foldable Graphic Organizers

I just put my latest Foldable Graphic Organizer up on Teachers Pay Teachers....except this product is actually FOUR foldable graphic organizers because there are so many science tools (including safety tools) I want students to put into their notebooks!  Here's the first FGO.  I have students mount them on colored paper so that it can easily be put into their notebooks.

 

We'll do an activity for each tool before completing it on the graphic organizer.  For example, for the gloves and safety goggles students will be given a coloring page and asked to make their child into a safe scientist, labeling everything they add.  During this time I'll be walking around noting which students include gloves and goggles.  I'll also be looking for aprons, and other safety items during this time.  In addition, , I'll be engaging students in conversation about why they picked the items they did.  If a student includes the goggles and gloves at this point, I'll check the student off of my list.  However, for those students who didn't include the goggles and gloves, after we learn about safety in the science classroom, they'll get another chance to add to their drawing.  I've even had students make note of the particular type of shoes the scientist were wearing!

 



Boys are given the one on the left, girls the one on the right.



For most of the other items, like the prisms, magnets, microscopes, graduated cylinders, etc., after giving a mini lesson on each item, I'll set up centers so students get a chance to get comfortable with how to use all of it.  Not only do they get more comfortable with using the tools, but I've found that this exploration time helps minimize the "playing" with the equipment at other, inappropriate times.  

 

Here are the other 3 organizers.  There are 21 tools in all.

 

To purchase these Foldable Graphic Organizers for TPT, click here: Science Tools Foldable Graphic Organizers.

 

And by the way, the adorable boy and girl graphics, as well as many of the
graphics in the foldable graphic organizer, come from:

 

There are a ton of wonderful graphics available on this site with no licensing

fee because Laura respects us as teachers!  How awesome is she?!

 

Morning Meeting Greetings

In anticipation of Monday's freebie linky hosted by the Organized Classroom...
I know there are so many of us out there who are doing Morning Meetings in our classrooms!  I don't know about you, but I find it so frustrating when I find myself doing the same greetings and activities day after day after day!  It's not like there aren't plenty of options out there, I just found it frustrating to take the time every week when I was planning to think of them!  So, finally I just took the time to find all the greetings I wanted to use in my classroom, I typed them up, printed them, matted them on cardstock, laminated them, and then I used a sharpie to number the backs of them.  Then I punched holes in the corners of the cards and put them on a binder ring.  I did two sets and keep one at school and one at home (because I do a lot of lesson planning there!)  Now, when I'm lesson planning I just write the number of the greeting I want to do that day, and I can go right to it on the ring.  It just works for me!  I'll try to remember to take a picture of it when I go back to school, but for now....if you would like a little taste of the greetings I use in my classroom, just click on the image below!  Please note the first time I tried my link I got an red error bar, but I just closed the red line and was able to download the file without issue. 

 

 

 

 

If you like love these greetings, I have 2 more sets, with 28 greetings each, in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  You can check them out at Morning Meeting Greetings I and Morning Meeting Greetings II.  I'm also finishing up my morning meeting activities and you should see some of those up very soon!

 

If you are looking for more freebies check out Manic Monday at Classroom Freebies by clicking on the image below :D 

Sometimes I Wonder About Myself!

Have you ever just wanted to kick yourself in the head because you did something that was an attempt to make things better organized, but really all you did is create a nightmare for yourself?  Welcome to my world today!  I just realized that by cleaning up and organizing some of my freebies differently on Dropbox that NONE of my links work anymore!  OOPS! I'm headed in now to fix all my links, so if you click on something and the file can't be found...try back tomorrow.  <smacks forehead!>