End of the Year Gifts and Customizable Binders

Wow! The end of the year is sooo close (this Friday is my last day), and I feel like I'm hardly ready! My mind is all over the place, and there is still so much to do! Last week, we worked really hard on publishing our nonfiction books and preparing our Ocean Animals Museum.  The kids did an awesome job! The only bad new is, I got a stomach bug the day before our museums so I have zero pictures to share! I'm sooo bummed that I cannot share our museums with you, but I do at least have a few other goodies to share!

As we are wrapping things up, I have been preparing my end of the year gifts for my classroom helpers and my firsties.  After scouring Pinterest for some cute ideas, I came up with these ideas: hand and foot scrubs/lotions for the helpers (Bath and Body Works had them on sale--buy two, get one free), and books, of course, for my students (I get the $1 books from Scholastic using points).  I made some cute little gift tags to attach to them, and you are welcome to snag them for free if you'd like!  Just click on the images to grab them from googledocs.

In other areas, I have been sooo excited and a little bit overwhelmed about the positive response to my Project Binder-izing post a few months ago. I've had several requests for personalized binders, so I decided to make a Customizable Binder-izing Kit! If you would like to personalize your binders with your own titles, graphics, name, fonts, and more, just click the image below to head to my TPT store.

To celebrate my last days of school and the insane amount of organizing I'm planning on doing at home and school this summer (high hopes), I will be giving away a Customizable Binder-izing Kit to the first two followers to comment! Plus, in case you are not one of the first two, and you have high hopes for organizing this summer as well, the Customizable Binder-izing Kit will be on sale for $8.00 (they are regularly $10) from now through Friday!

Hope your last days (or weeks) are going well! I've got to finish up some packing (we are required to have absolutely everything out of the classroom and teacher workroom by Friday morning, so I'm going packing crazy! I bought over 24 huge plastic bins, and I still need more! Does everyone have to pack up like this, or am I just lucky?

These are a Few of my Favorite Things: Double Book Linky Parties!

As a book lover (and hoarder, according to my husband:), I could not pass up the opportunity to share some of my faves on two different linky parties! Plus, I am excited to click around and maybe add a few new books to my Amazon wishlist!

 

All right, these are my Good Reads...Click Mrs. Stanford's picture to join the linky party fun and see what everyone else is reading!

 

 

Professional Books:

My favorite Writing Workshop book...

 

Reading Workshop and Guided Reading...

 

 

For Classroom Management...Love the class meetings and problem solving steps for kiddos:)

 

 

A Few Personal Books...

 

Love Harry. I am sooo sad that I have no more Harry Potter books or movies to look forward to.

 

I really liked The Help. Haven't seen the movie yet, though.

  These are my favorite read-alouds...and, yes, I do loud, silly character voices! I love it! And fortunately, my kiddos seem to enjoy it as well. I may not sing well, but at least I can read with enthusiasm! Click the link below to join the read-aloud linky fun!

The Perfect Nest is great for reading in different voices! Plus, it is a sweet story.

Love the surprise ending on this one...great for predictions/making inferences!

I also love all of Kevin Henkes' sweet stories, plus Mo Willems' books! I'm a bit Mo-Obsessed!

My Summer Bucket List...Only 9 More Days!

Yesterday was my last day of morning duty for the year, and I'm so thrilled to be done with that for a few months! I love my kiddos, but I do not love watching them eat cocoa puffs with blueberry flavored milk at 6:45 in the morning!  Only 9 days left, and I'm getting excited for summer! So, I'm linking up with my "Summer Bucket List!"
 First, do some serious playing! I am so looking forward to just having some fun with my girl! I cannot believe she is officially a toddler already!

Second, do some sewing and embroidering...and headband making! My sewing/embroidery machine is starting to miss me! And I think my Miss Ellie would look too cute in this:)

 

Third, learn how to use the fancy schmancy camera my husband bought me last year. The plan was to learn before Elliotte arrived...that didn't happen and I've been winging it for the last 15 months. Its time to take a photography class and practice, practice, practice!

Also, I want to read a couple of professional books including Small Group Reading Instruction,

And Conscious Discipline (the wonderful Conscious Discipline posts on Heather's First Grade Heart, have me dreaming of a better classroom community...)

In between all those things, I'm hoping to update some classroom files, relax with my husband and take a few trips home to Indiana to visit family! What are you gonna be up to? Click on over to share and link up!

Shopping Withdrawal and More Oceans...(Freebie)

Wow! The last three days have been so much fun with all of the freebies from the Jackpot, plus shopping till I couldn't shop any longer during the TPT sale...I think I'm going through a little bit of shopping withdrawal today.  Which means, I just might have added a few more things to my wishlist after seeing all the goodies everyone else bought!

This week, we've been continuing our oceans unit, and my kiddos are really enjoying their time as marine biologists! After studying different types of marine biologists on this really cool website, my students filled out job applications to become marine biologists (and to pick their animal to study). Then, we put on our pinterest-inspired scuba gear and dove into our research!

We took trips to the library and to the computer lab to do some researching on PebbleGo, and the kids have been working on their All About Books the last few days.  Hopefully we'll get them published early next week--Time seems to be rushing by and we've still got so much to do! Yikes!

Another oceans activity that went well this week was a quick sink or float experiment that seemed to really amaze my class. I got the idea for it a few years ago here, and I just updated the graphic organizer to go along with it. Click the picture to download it for FREE:).

All you need to do is prepare two bowls of water--one fresh and one very salty. Then, have the students place the items in the bowls and record if they sink or float. My kiddos were all amazed to see that the crayon sunk in the fresh water and floated in the salt. The starburst was also a tricky one. It floated for a bit in the saltwater, then it sunk!



Well, I'm off to bed early because tomorrow is my second-to-last day of 6:40am bus duty! Have a good one!

Jackpot Freebie and Teacher Appreciation Sale

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

If you are already a follower of my blog and Teachers Pay Teachers store, thank you sooo much for reading, sharing, and inspiring me this year! If you are a new visitor to my blog, thank you for coming and for all of your hard work day in and day out! To show my appreciation for all of your hard work, I am proud to announce my freebie for the Teacher Appreciation Jackpot...Click the photo to download my Classroom Jobs Chart Set for Free this Sunday, May 6th only! Also, check out my previous blog post to score over $600 worth of additional freebies from your favorite bloggers!

 

As if the Jackpot isn't exciting enough, I am also thrilled to announce that everything in my store will be 20% off May 6th-8th, plus you can use the coupon code TAD12 to take an additional 10% off your purchase at Teachers Pay Teachers. These are some of the goodies you can check out at my store:

Thanks for reading and have a great Teacher Appreciation Week!

Announcing...(Insert Drum Roll)...The Teacher Appreciation Jackpot!

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!! Thank you so much for visiting my blog as a part of the Teacher Appreciation Jackpot, where today only, you'll recieve $600 worth of spectacular teaching resources absolutely FREE!

If you are already a follower of my blog and Teachers Pay Teachers store, thank you sooo much for reading, sharing, and inspiring me this year!  If you are a new visitor to my blog, thank you for coming and for all of your hard work day in and day out! To show my appreciation for all of your hard work, I am proud to announce my freebie...

As if the Jackpot isn't exciting enough, I am also thrilled to announce that everything in my store will be 20% off May 6th-8th, plus you can use the coupon code TAD12 to take an additional 10% off your purchase at Teachers Pay Teachers.  These are some of the goodies you can check out at my store:

 

  

Thanks for reading and taking part in the Teacher Appreciation Jackpot! I hope that you'll follow my blog and TPT store and that you enjoy your free day of blog-hop-shopping!

PS- If you'd like to check out the other grade level blog-hops, check the links below:

• PK - Grade 2 - April McNair on A Modern Teacher
• Grades 3 - 6 - Laura Candler on Corkboard Connnections
• Grades 7 - 12 - Adrianne Meldrum on The Tutor House