August Already?

Wow! I knew July would go by fast, but not that fast! I'm linking up with Farley over at Oh' Boy 4th Grade for the August Currently.

Plus I have a sneak peak at my new classroom. It's 90% done! It's been a lot of work but I love my room, y'all! It makes me even more excited to get this school year started!

First up, here's the Currently

Listening: I love the sound of storms rolling in. I only get nervous if there is a lot of wind.
Loving: My husband is the best! I sent him out for clothespins, magnets and cardstock, and he came back with two out of the three plus a chocolate shake I didn't even have to ask for. After 12 years, he knows me so well! Maybe I wasn't so clear when I said clothes pins, because this is what he brought back

Haha! Oh well, the milkshake made up for the itty bitty clothespins. Maybe pinterest will have an idea for what I can do with them! (Speaking of pinterest, you can see my latest pinterest project in the background-I just need some magnets to finish it)

Thinking: I officially report back to school on Monday so tomorrow is my last day of summer. If the weather cooperates, I will be laid out by my moms pool while the kids splash and play. Hopefully my mind won't be full of thoughts of what I need to do before Open House Monday night or the first half day of school on Wednesday. I just want to relax in the sun with the kids! Plan B-Take my last nap of summer if the weather doesn't cooperate :)

Wanting: Seriously, Wal-Mart! No magnets?  And where is my heating pad!!!

Needing: Housekeeper that is willing to clean my house after it has been neglected for over a week. Must be able to sort, wash and fold laundry for five people without laundry backing up for little no pay. Anyone interested, please email me! Thanks!

B2S: I love my dress that I bought for back to school so I must have the perfect pair of shoes to go with it!
And what girl doesn't love a mani/pedi? Especially after painting, tiling the counter top, organizing, and decorating a classroom. And I need my eyebrows waxed. I seriously feel like I have two fuzzy caterpillars planted where my eyebrows use to be.

I've been busy working in my classroom for the last week and a half. My kids love playing in my classroom while I'm working in there. I bring snacks, drinks, and even a movie one day last week. Watching The Lion King on the projector screen was a huge hit! My favorite spot in the room has become my Reading Center. I used my Ikea leaves to create a cozy little corner for the kids. It's not completely finished yet, but here's a sneak peak

 

And here's my almost finished pinterest inspired project. How did ever survive without blogs and pinterest?

Stay tuned for more classroom pictures. I warned my principal before she saw it that I made some major changes but that I only did what I thought was in the best interest of the room. I was nervous, but she loved it! I can't wait to show it to all of you!

Sophia

DIYs with a freebie!

How can it be July already? What happened to June? I've been too busy to keep up with my own self lately but I wanted to share with you what projects I have completed. (This post has lots of pictures and a freebie!)

First up, is my book boxes. Remember these from my Ikea trip? Well they got a make-over!

I needed them to be more colorful without being too busy, so I spray painted them to match the colors in my room. The colors I used are Berry Frost, Exotic Sea, Everglade Glen and I finished with a sealer. I picked up all of these from Lowes. To paint the boxes, I laid them flat on a sheet like in the pic below and sprayed one side at a time, then flipped it over when it was dry and sprayed the other side.

You can see from this picture that I wasn't all the way finished when I took this. I was chased away from this project by a bunch of bees! I guess they thought my boxes were big, bright flowers. Once I finished with the spray painting all that was left to do was fold the boxes together which was very easy. My six year old helped me with all the folding :)

Fold... 

Fold...

Tuck.

 then repeat 24 more times and you end up with...

All that I have left to do now is add some labels. Aside from the bees and 95+ degree weather, it was a fun project!

Between the boxes and my the next project my family took a week long trip to see my BFF Rebecca in Virginia. We taught together for a few years and our kids are the same age so we bonded instantly when we met and I love her like a sister! Here we are at the beach!

We even had a fun girls night with shopping, dinner, and Magic Mike!

When I came home, I tackled my latest pinterest project. I was inspired by this pin from Mrs. Rojas over at Create Teach Share. She has great tutorial and a you can download her labels (wish I would have found her labels before I spent so much time making my own).

Here's my box! I spray painted it with the Berry Frost that I used on the book boxes. Then I printed the labels, cut them out, and stuck them on with some double sided tape. Very quick and easy! Now I'm fighting the urge to run to the store and buy supplies to fill up each drawer! -->Side note-our stores already have the back to school aisles all filled up!

 

If you want to use my labels, click the picture to get them. The labels are typed on the background, so there's no need for cardstock or colored paper.

I hope you can use this! If you have any questions about either of these projects, feel free to ask!
Click here to see what everyone else is making :)

Sophia

Winner!!! (a little late, I'll explain below)

The winner of the planner from April over @ A Modern Teacher is .... Amber!
Congrats, Amber! I hope you enjoy it and get a lot of use from it. Thank you, April for giving away the planner!

***Note: I originally wrote the above post last Sunday, but realized today that I never hit "Publish". At least I emailed Amber the planner before I announced the winner :P I'm sorry everyone! I was caught up in printing and binding my own copy of the planner that night.***

I've been super busy this week trying to get some summer purging done around the house so I won't feel guilty when I spend the weekend spray painting (classroom project!) I'm crossing my fingers that it turns out okay in this humidity. Speaking of humidity, I cut about 8 inches of hair off yesterday due to the pile of frizz that had taken over my head. TN humidity is awful and the bad news is that it only gets worse. :(
Who else fights humidity all summer? It has to be worse further south...

Meanwhile, my last blog post had 447 views in less than a week. That about blew my socks off when I saw that! And I'm over 75 followers! WOW! I love my followers and all of your comments! I get so excited when my email chimes telling me I have a new email on my gmail account!

*****Sorry for the rambling- my ADD has kicked into high gear tonight! LOL! I promise to have a more organized post next time :)
 Have a great Friday!

Sophia

Binder Freebie!

 My DIBELS binder is now a freebie! You can get your 8 page sample of the Binder cover and Dividers here. (when you click the link, the preview will not show up because the file is too large, but it will still download)

 If you can use this freebie, leave a comment or consider becoming a follower so you don't miss future freebies!
You can grab other great freebies from great bloggers by clicking here

Have a great Friday, everyone!

First Giveaway! and DIBELS Binder

I'm so excited to tell you about my first give away! April over at The Modern Teacher has agreed to give away one of her Teacher Planners to one of my followers! All you have to do is follow her Teachers Pay Teachers Store and her Blog, then leave a comment telling me you follow all three (my blog, her blog, and her TpT store). The winner be chosen on Saturday afternoon. Let the fun begin!

*Note this give away is over but you can still grab this planner, some coordinating labels, and notebook/binder dividers at April's TpT store*

   

 One of the planners you could win! She'll even personalize the cover for you!

Thanks, April for making this so cute and so fun!

Have you seen all of the Binder Organization going on in blogland and on Pinterest?

I'm itching to get my Binders ready and decided to start with my DIBELs binder. Our Academic Coach gave us a binder to use for administering the DIBELs assessment and I like how she had it separated by assessment types and types of progress monitoring. I decided to spruce up the binder cover and add some page dividers. Maybe having a cute binder will help make doing the assessment little more enjoyable. Here's a sneak peak at the cover and dividers.

 

Is this something you would use?  I think it would be great for any K-2 teacher who administers  DIBELs. Let me know what you think!

Sophia

My first giveaway and IKEA fun

I jumped on real quick to share about my Ikea adventure and find that I have over 50 followers now!!!!!! Doing my happy dance! I love my followers so it's time for my first giveaway! I'll be back later today to post about it (I have a few details to work out...) So check back later!


Yesterday my mom, my sister, and I all made a one day road trip to Atlanta to hit Ikea. We left at 5:00am and made it there right after the store opened at 10:00. All I can say about the experience is "WOW!" There was so much stuff to see! It's amazing what they have there and me being the teacher I am, I could only see how much potential everything had for my classroom. What teacher doesn't do that?

My first find of the day was the super cute Leaf Canopy!

I had to have 3 of them. I'm picturing these in the corner with bean bags and pillows under them. It will be an awesome reading area! Even I want to sit under there and read a good book!

My next find was a steal! How many of us have done this to use as book boxes or to hold journals?

I thought this was a simple solution one year, but I really wanted all of the boxes to match, which would be a huge project in itself by doing all of the cutting and gluing to cover the boxes.
Ikea solved that problem for me! They sell a pack of 5 magazine holders for $1.99!

So I bought 25 magazine holders for $10!!! You can't buy 25 boxes of cereal that cheap! These will get a makeover somehow...looks like I'll be hitting Pinterest for some ideas for how to make these pop:)

My splurge of the day was this beautiful table!

Right now it's sitting in it's box in the garage while I decide if I want to put it in my house or my classroom. It has a large drawer that slides out in the front so it could be a cute desk IF I decided to use it in my classroom. It's small so it wouldn't collect a mountain of paperwork on it. But it would also be soooo pretty in my bedroom as a dressing table... Decisions, decisions :)

Sophia

Planning Binder

One of things to do on my summer bucket list was to make buy a Calendar/Planner/Organizer thingy for my Planning Binder. I used a Planning Binder after reading Leslie's and Kristen's posts about their All In One Teacher Binders.
Just as I was getting really good at putting it off, I found a post about this planner that April over at A Modern Teacher created

Sample of a few of the calendar pages

Cover of April's Binder

OMG! It's exactly what I need and it matches some of my stuff already!!! Plus she will personalize the cover for free!!
This isn't just a calendar either- It has everything you will need for weekly planning including a place to record your Common Core standards for every week and month.She was a busy girl!
I bought it from her TpT store and started printing away (Thank goodness I refilled my ink on Monday!) But I couldn't stop there! I had to have the rest of my binder match (almost) the planner she had already made so I decided to use the graphics that I've been collecting and create some of the inserts for my planning binder and this is what I came up with.

(Don't know why this is so large-Sorry!)
(How do I fix this?!-It's so annoying!)



I need to add a few more pages, but first I wanted to know what you include in your planning binder. Since I'm moving up to first, I'm trying to decide if I want to include a section for grades? I keep all of my assessments for reading in my Guided Reading Binder (which will receive a make-over to match, ) so they will not live in this binder. Any suggestions?

Head over to April's Blog or her TpT store to find out more about this awesome planner!

Sophia

Freebies and Cuteness

Whoa! Huge Give away @ The First Grade Parade. Mrs. Carroll is  giving away all the products in her TpT store to 5 lucky winners!!! How awesome is that?!? Hurry over, you only have until Sunday to enter.

As promised here is another look at my "new" room. I was able to get a lot more boxes unpacked and put some fabric on the boards. Seriously, the orange on the bulletin boards was driving me crazy.I ran out of border to put on the big green board, but I don't mind a trip to a teacher supply store :)

                 Here's a view looking in from the hall

Looking back towards the hallway door. Those brown cabinets are getting painted this summer, too. It'll be a huge project, but it's  necessary in this makeover

I found some awesome printables today! And they are FREE!!! 

Who doesn't love that!?

I've been using the adorable calendars from Anything But Perfect since January and now I need to reload the ink in my printer so I can print out some super cute To Do Lists. You should totally go check her awesome stuff! I wish she could make me a blog template...

How cute is this sign?!?! And it's a free printable! And it comes in 7 over colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and light pink)! I found it on Naptime Delights today while my kids were napping.
You know it's going in my room in this bright pink!

And OMG! Just look at this cutie y'all! Hopefully we'll be adopting her soon... Keep your fingers crossed for us.

 Thunder is shaking the house, which means I should hear little feet running down the hall soon. I'll be back this weekend to share my Summer Bucket List :)


Sophia

Changes

Hello, Bloggy friends! I hate to admit that I had to abandon my little blog for so long. Life just became way to crazy, but now that summer is here, I'm ready to jump back in! Warning-This post will be long!

Have you ever known deep down inside that you were ready for a change? I began to feel that way as our second semester was slooooooowly moving along. I was getting unmotivated and overwhelmed as the days passed by. As my school year was winding down, I decided that I was ready for a change and decided to transfer to a new school and a new grade level! After 6 years in kindergarten, I'm moving to first grade! I'm so excited for this new chapter in my life! I've already met my new team members and have been stalking first grade blogs and pinterest for ideas to get me started. I'm actually nervous, too. It's a big change for me!

The bad news that came with moving was packing up a classroom with 6 years full of teaching stuff. You know all those things you buy because you might use them some day or because you were sure you had some of them already but can't seem to find them now? Well, I found them! Seriously, how did I manage to lose, buy, and lose again so many packages of die-cut letters? It took FOREVER to get my stuff packed and many, many trips back and forth to get my entire teaching career out my closet and into my garage.

The good news about the move is that packing up your classroom is a great motivator to purge! You learn just how much you REALLY want to keep something when you're trying to figure out how to squeeze it into the last inch of space in a box that's already jammed full. As my garage became too full to fit my car or locate my broom, I became desperate to get moved into my new classroom. Thinking about all of that stuff in my garage all summer was causing me some serious anxiety! I mean seriously, I couldn't fit half of my car into a two car garage!!!

Luckily for me, my new principal said I could move my stuff into my new room after the other teacher moved out two days after the students left. I was so ready! When I first went into my room, I was blown away! There was so much stuff in there from the previous teachers, that there was no room for my stuff! Did I mention the school I'm moving into is 50 years old? Think about all of the teachers that have taught in that room. I know I have found things in there that are older than I am!

So before I could move in, I had to do ALOT more purging. It. took . two. days.
Two long, exhausting days filled with dust bunnies, garbage bags, donations, and cries of "What in the world is this?" The whole time my three munchkins were there "helping" in their own little way (ie playing with stuff as I put it all away). But it was so worth it! I went in on Sunday (day 3), emptied most of my boxes, and then began something I've wanted to do in my own classroom for years-I painted it! It was a long process, but I love the color on my walls and my room is starting to feel like...well, mine.

Here's some before shots... keep scrolling for the after painting pics

*these were taken after I purged the room-under all of that stuff was a room in pretty good shape, it just needs a little paint and some elbow grease :)

First grade-View from the hall

Looking at front boards

Cabinets to the right of the front board  (gotta have my sweet tea from Sonic!)       

 I think the cabinets are older than I am. And those stickers have got to go! I'm thinking of repainting the cabinets while I have my paint rollers out...

Back of the room (my munchkins waiting to be pushed on the cart to get more boxes)

Back wall is finished!

 Oh my gosh! Look at that mess! I had so much to put back away after I was done painting...

More walls finished, more boxes in the way, but my nieces put the desks in groups :)

The awful stickers are gone and the cabinets are starting to look better

Front of room again with tables set in groups

Already looking better

Monday morning I was exhausted, sore, and still had paint in my hair so the munchkins and I decided to reward ourselves with some fun in the sun :)

 Tomorrow is my last chance to touch the room again before the end of July. Hopefully I will be able to cover those orange boards with some fabric and get some final stuff shoved into the cabinets. I'll post more pics tomorrow.

Centers, Awards

I've been dragging this week because of some upper respiratory virus that has me sooooo tired by the time I can connect here in bloggy land. My super sweet hubby let me take a nap while he made dinner this evening so I have the smallest amount of energy to put into my blog before the cough meds kick in.

Here are some pics of what we are doing this week in our literacy centers. There are only a few photos because my phone was ready to die...

Matching picture cards of rhyming words.

Our ABC center:Writing the missing letters then coloring the vowels red and consonants blue.

 

Write the Room 

 There's more and I'll try to post them later this week. This is our first full week back from Christmas break and I'm trying to keep our centers simple this week so we can review routines and procedures. My sweeties seemed to have lost their minds right before Christmas, so we are going to move slowly back into our routine. <fingers crossed that they continue to do well>

I was reading through some of my comments from earlier this week and saw that I got the Versatile Blogger award! Thanks to  Kristy and Laurie . It just amazes me to know that there are people out there who stop by to read this little blog. Here's the rules for the Versatile Blogger:

1. Thank the person who presented the award to you and link back to them. (Check)

2. Tell seven things about yourself. (Check! see below)

3. Pass this on to 15 newly discovered blogs and let them know they've received the award

I'm passing it along to
1. LaKeta at The Polka Dotted Desk,
2. Tricia at Queen with Class
3. Caitlyn at Ms. Preppy
4. Jeannie at Kindergarten Lifestyle

I'll add more when I find more new blogs to pass this along too.  (It's Really Hard to find new blogs!)
Okay so here's 7 things about me.
1. My two favorite things are anything that's pink and shoes so I combined them into my pink walk in closet  :) This pic shows one small section of the closet.

2) I REALLY want to go to I Teach K in Vegas this summer! Anybody else wanna go? I'm taking donations ;)
3) Now that my oldest is in Kindergarten, I hate homework! I really don't want to practice popcorn words after teaching them all day. Sigh.
4) I'm secretly jealous of the blue eyes my babies inherited from Daddy and consider colored contacts every now and then. Just look at them!

5) I hate cold weather! (But love snow days!)
6) I'm a huge Twilight Fan! (Team Edward-Let Bella have him so I can have Jacob!)
7) I married my best friend right after high school and we've been married for 12 years. Our anniversary and Christmas gifts to each other is a cruise to Cozumel in 3 weeks! Woo Hoo!

So I was going to add to this post about the Organization Project that I'm doing, but my cold medicine is kicking in... I'll be back tomorrow with another post :)