Clever Decorative Trick & Writing Dude DEAL

If you have an area in your classroom where you need to put "stuff" but don't want anyone to see it I have a decorative trick for you!

All you need is a curtain rod and a piece of fabric.

The End Result: a stool and an entire basket of gym shoes is hidden in there!

 Fold the fabric down 1-2" to create a pocket for the curtain rod.

Use fabric glue or a sewing machine to adhere the raw edge to the fabric.
Use pinking shears (sewing scissors with triangle edges) if you don't want to or can't sew the raw edges under so fraying isn't visible.  The criss cross cut of the pinking shears eliminates fraying!

Put the curtain rod through the pocket and then attach it between hard spots and twist until it stays in place. 

The curtain rod used here is very thick and long. 

 There are different lengths and thicknesses of rods to accommodate many different areas where they may be used.

If the area you want to hide is lacking a spot to put the curtain rods, then you can improvise and use mounting hooks like this and rest the curtain rod on the hooks.

I love, figuratively, killing two birds with one stone: you hide "stuff" and decorate at the same time!

Now here's the DEAL:

This is my beloved Writing Dude.  I've developed 15 SmartBoard lessons that teach (and review) K-2 students the key skills and concepts they need to become successful writers.  The theme music and interactivity of each lesson are my student's favorites!

The deal is that you can purchase my MEGA pack (all 15 lessons) for only $8. 

This MEGA pack is up on TPT right now for $12.50 but I've gotten involved with a new company and website for teacher created materials called EdBazaar where I'm offering it for $8 so I can help introduce teachers to this new site.

Click on "Language".

Scroll down to find the Writing Dude MEGA Pack.

I'm very appreciative of EdBazaar's President, Vasumathi Senthil, because I feel like I'm part of the team that is launching this website.  He gave me a one-on-one tutorial via phone on how to become a vendor and use the site to upload teaching materials...how many company Presidents do that I wonder?

So I encourage you to go check out the site www.edbazaar.com!

Long Range Planning

It's August....that means I report back in about a week and a half.  I promised myself that I wouldn't work on any school stuff until the beginning of this month and I made good on my promise.  I had such a blast doing yard work and landscaping (we've been in our new house for a year already) and a month-long trip back home to Minnesota (with plenty of fun and $hopping) kept me happy and busy!

Collage by PicMonkey

So now it's time to "Make hay while the sun shines!" as my college cross country coach would always say.  I'm sitting down today and, for the first time in my teaching career, doing some long range planning to set myself up for success and hopefully reduce the amount of work I have to do later and the stress that comes with being back at work and not having enough time to do this because of school and district in-services.

I created the quarterly calendars with Microsoft Word and you can download them here.  They are in .doc format (not pdf) so you can tweak and change them to fit your needs.  Enjoy!

School Supply Lists

Today my 1st grade colleagues came over for lunch and to talk shop.  We did make your own salads and had a great time talking and planning.  The one thing we really wanted to accomplish was to come up a with a 'first grade' school supply letter to have available at registration next week. 

Krista Walden clipart....she's awesome!

I teach in the Anchorage School District, which has 60+ elementary schools!  A few years back, the district adopted a generic list for all K-6 schools.  The problem is two-fold: 1) Not everyone wants students to bring in those exact things and 2) Each teacher has things they do want but aren't on the list and we end up asking for those extra supplies later.

The extra items that we all would like but are NOT on the generic list range from cleaning wipes to Ziploc bags.  I have an "extra school supplies" letter that I give out at Open House and hope that kids bring in those things.  But that means I would get about 20 boxes of Ziploc bags and 20 cans of cleaning wipes.  One of my colleagues had a brilliant idea to avoid that: specify on that letter 1 item for a family to bring in and which item that is depends on the first letter of their last name.

An excerpt from the letter I give to parents.


I would love to know about YOUR school supply letter!  Take a moment to leave a comment below :-)

Back-to-School FREEBIE!

I love the Fourth of July...well I guess I really love the time leading up to the Fourth of July more because it's summer and I am not thinking about Back-to-School in any way, shape or form.

But once it's over, summer is half over and stores start advertising Back-to-School stuff.  Part of me is sad because I know my time off is coming to an end and part of me is excited for the start of another year.  It's a double-edged sword I guess you can say.

So here is something I got an idea for the other day because one of my goals this year is to create way more class books with my students.

Wordles are a super fun, easy, visual expression of writing.  Not sure if that made sense, but here's an example (the words under my picture):

Wordles can be used throughout the year for thematic studies, science, social studies and even math.

Here are some more Back-to-School goodies to check out as well:

FREEBIE

Smartboard File: $

$

$

Now go check out all the other fun FREEBIES over at 

Clearance...music to my ears!

I was curious where the word clearance (as in something being extremely on sale) originated but haven't uncovered its origin.  But this magical word is something teachers love to find because it saves them money out of their own pockets.  For me, it's like hitting the jackpot when I find something on clearance that I really do need or can quickly think of a use for in my classroom.

Clearance was on my side today... I'm currently on vacation in Minnesota and take every opportunity to visit stores we don't have up in Alaska.  One such wonderful store is Hobby Lobby!  I play this game where I go find the clearance items and pick the most interesting one and then try to think of a use for it in my classroom and then convince myself that I really need it.  I pretty much always win this game.  Today my find was a game that I will probably turn into a CVC game.

I think Scrabble and Bananagrams got married and this is their love child.

Found with other clearance graduation items.

The last store I visited was Kohl's, which we have in Anchorage, but I needed a new tank top to go with a new skirt I recently bought.  Never did I think I'd find something for my classroom in this store.  But then I found this little guy...and bought 2 of them.

It's really an empty, lidless, rectangular box.

I love to call my students "Smarty Pants" when they contribute something really smart and it kind of catches me off guard.  Now I can give my Smart Pantses these little wooden plaques to put on their desks for a warm fuzzy.  I plan to have them frequently desk hop during a day!

Do you love to see the word 'clearance' as much as me?  

Do you play my game too?

Phew!

My first day has come and gone and it was FaNtAsTiC!

I think it was probably my best first day in all my years of teaching.  I was sooooo nervous though, complete with butterflies and a tummy ache!  The only time I ever get nervous like that is the morning of a (running) race, so I don't know why I got so nervous this time. I didn't overplan, we got through everything, I poured on the praise and the kids were so well-behaved!

I started with my favorite first day book, First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg.

I also ate lunch with my kiddos, which was very interesting, but it was good that I was there to help those kids who are new to our school and the whole lunch routine.

***

One of the things I love about teaching 1st grade and kids so young is that you can turn anything into a game and they eat it up.  One of our former, awesome, gym teachers played this when it was time to line up and leave her class and I've adopted it for whenever we leave our classroom -AND- during group bathroom breaks: the Secret Person Game.

Before dismissing kids to line up I choose 1 boy and 1 girl to especially keep an eye on BUT I don't tell them who it is and thus, they all line up hoping it's them.  As they line up I think aloud to encourage them all to line up and stay lined up nicely (Is my Secret Boy lining up quietly and staying quiet?  Is My Secret Girl making sure there is space in front and in back of her?).  If the Secret Boy lines up nicely and stays quiet I announce who it is and he adds a gem to our 'Gem Jar' and the same thing goes for the Secret Girl.  If one or both of them does not line up correctly then I tell kids we can't add a gem, but I don't announce who it was.  This game works SO well it seems silly :-)

***

Tomorrow we're going to write about our summer vacations after listening to 

So I can get an idea of my student's writing abilities.

Both of the books I've mentioned above are part of a Back-to-School Literature Activities PACK that you can find at my TPT store and it's on sale!

The Day the Crayons Quit

Last Thursday night I was grocery shopping late at night.  Typically when I do this kind of a grocery shopping trip it's a Friday night, I'm in my jammies and I'm listening to French radio & music...very fun and comfy for me!  But this time it was a spur of the moment thing and I started off by returning something at Customer Service.  As I was waiting in line, my eyes started to wander and I spied a random end cap of children's books.  Without thinking, I got out of line and went over and grabbed this book

I started reading it and was cracking up, out loud!  The premise of this book, by Drew Daywalt, is that Duncan's crayons go on strike and each one of them write him a letter to complain about something.  What a genius idea for a book!

So I immediately started thinking of ways to use this book the first week of school and created a little literature response pack for it, and it's FREE!

I found this treasure 2 days after completing this

  

and wasn't able to add it, so it's a FREEBIE!

One of my favorite things is stumbling upon really good books for my classroom!  You need to go find this book and read it and LOL like I did :-)

Now go on over and check out more FREEBIES at

Back-to-School & Pub Run

I got 'em!

It's interesting to read blog posts and see when other teachers across the country #1) Get back into their classrooms to set-up and #2) Start a new school year.  Our old principal used to not let us work in our rooms until our report date :(  but our new principal lets us in as soon as she's back [close to a month prior to teachers] :)  So this Friday I'll drop my kiddos off at daycare and head into my room to start the FRENZY!  I LOVE to set up my room, and now after so many years I like my set-up and decorating, so it doesn't take as long....but it still takes a long time with all the little things.

And speaking of Back-to-School, last night I finished work on a new Back-to-School Literature Activities PACK that has lesson plans and activities to go along with 7 great picture books for the first week of school.

And finally, I live up in Anchorage, Alaska and one thing I love about it is the very active running community here!  Every Tuesday night (all year long, rain/snow or shine) the local running store hosts a 3-mile Pub Run.  It starts at Skinny Raven (the running store) and ends at an Irish pub....how cool!  They give away prizes, let you test out running shoes and lots of other neat things.  Families with kids are out running, people and their dogs are out running and hard core racers are out running.  As we took off last night I just had to laugh because all of us running around on the downtown city streets was kind of like the unleashing of salmon in the Kenai River!

Even though it's a "run", the assemblance of lots of runner and the familiar "On your marks, get set, GO!" just turns on the "race" switch in my brain and I can't help but take off like a bat out of a cave :)  Needless to say, miles 1 & 2 were great but then I ran into a big hill on mile 3 and slowed waaaaaaaay down.  But it was so fun!! 

I snap pictures of blooming flowers wherever I go!

This video is great, take a peek!

I'd love to know how many of you out there are proud, energetic teachers AND runners?