Another BTS Freebie!

So exciting, I am the featured freebie on The Teaching Blog Addict this week! 

If you missed my freebie last week, just click on the button below! 

I have a new freebie this week, keep reading!

I am buzzing with excitement because Monday I can FINALLY work in my *brand new* 2nd grade classroom! I've done entirely too much shopping (Target and Amazon will be the death of me!) and lots of prepping at home in the meantime.

I got the idea from one of my favorite 2nd grade blogs, The Second Story Window, to create class notebooks for the writing portion of Daily 5. These are notebooks I will leave out all year for students to add their own stories to, read others' stories, and leave them comments.

    

 The notebooks were 5 for $3 at Target (they have plastic covers and bindings to make them more durable) and I made the labels using these 2x4" shipping labels. You can get the class journal labels HERE for FREE! 

(I had to save them as a PDF, but they should still print out okay onto these labels. I made them with Avery label template 8163 on Microsoft Word)

I also used these labels to organize my school supplies using these adorable boxes from Michael's that were 40% off!

Sorry for the bad lighting - I'd already packed everything into the car. Here's the rest of the mess:

And that's only half of my stuff! I sure have my work cut out for me next week!

Back-to-School Must Haves!

I am SO excited to be a contributing member to this year's Back-to-School Must Haves e-magazine! 30 awesome teacher-bloggers from around the country each contributed their 3 "must haves" for the school year. I know that I got several great ideas from the e-mag and already ordered some of the items from Amazon!

Simply click on the window above to view the e-magazine and if you're anything like me and see something that you too must have, just click on the image and it will go straight to the site to purchase it from.

What must haves did I purchase from the e-mag?

 These ladies really knew what they were talking about! Several of the items in the e-mag I had already bought over the summer, it's like they read my mind! Don't forget that you can also check out their fun blogs by clicking on their blog logos in the e-mag! Happy reading (and shopping!)

My Favorite School Supply

I discovered the greatest tip this week from the kinder teacher across the hall! Our district still has half-day K (hopefully not for long!) and I know that an annoyance for half-day K teachers is managing all of the name tags needed for the AM session, then PM session. I walked into Mrs. F's room one day and saw that she had used SHARPIE markers to write the names directly on the tables! It looked really neat (blue names for AM kids, pink names for PM kids) on the dark laminate tables; it reminded me of the black dry-erase boards cafes use with brightly-colored markers. (Sorry I didn't take a picture, but I would have felt strange snapping pictures in her room!)

Anyways, after getting over my shock at *gasp* marker on the tables, Mrs. F explained that they were called Sharpie oil-based paint pens and that the ink comes off easily with rubbing alcohol. Not to mention they come in a ton of cool colors and the ink is water-proof, fade-proof, and basically small-child proof.

In my class, I give each student a number (1-6 at each table), which is useful for a variety of things ("number sixes, get the colored pencils for your table! Number threes, get books for your team!"). I think this is originally a GLAD thing.  Anyways, I had stuck those garage-sale dots with their numbers on their name tags. 

As you can imagine, those dots didn't last long. The kids kept pick, pick, picking at them. Or spilled their water on them. Or somehow made them magically disappear. I was tired of replacing them, then having to change them when I moved kiddos to new seats. Suddenly, a light bulb went off in my head and I ran to Mrs. F's room to borrow one of her paint pens. Voila, problem solved! And the kids were excited to find these numbers the next day. 

Now I'm hooked on my new favorite school supply. :)

Word Family & Anchor Chart Fun

Just had to share a little project I've been working on to help my firsties understand how "bossy e" works at the end of certain words. I found the inspiration for this cute, cute anchor chart from this post by my friend Nicole at Teaching With Style.

This was the perfect companion for the new word family workbook I'd already created to use in my class. It includes 36 word family rimes, all with long vowels. I also threw in several pages at the end for review/assessment with a fun cut & paste activity. Just click here to see this in my TpT store.

 

 I also re-created this adorable chart, inspired from the same post. In fact, I asked the school secretary to special order me my favorite markers in the entire world for this project: Sharpie flip chart markers. If you have not tried them, you must! I just discovered them last school year and am in LOVE.

I also created a word family workbook featuring 37 rimes with the short vowel sounds:

Back to School!

On my last official day of winter break, what do I do? Why, I went into my classroom to work of course! ha

Brand-new name tags, new seating arrangement, deep cleaning the (very) dirty tables, putting away the last of the holiday decorations, sharpening 1 million pencils... the list goes on. But I was VERY excited when I walked into my room and found this brand-new projector screen hung up in my room! Hooray, I've been requesting it for months!

I'm also all prepped for my very first craftivity of the year: torn-paper snowmen glyphs! I love doing these every winter, it's fun to see how all of the kids' snowmen turn out so unique. I'd used this chart previously with kinders, so I had to make a few tweaks with Post-Its.

And a teacher tip: I found these adorable owl things at the Dollar Tree this week. Funny, I found owl cut-outs similar to these at Learning Palace, but for four times the money!

Aaand here's my classroom, all ready to go!

Great Finds!

Today I was a little nuts and ventured into Target. It was pretty crazy, but I'm glad I did because they had some very cute stuff in the dollar section!

Now I'm ready for Valentine's AND the 100th day of school in February. Love how Target has V-Day stuff before Christmas has even happened! I'm especially excited about this adorable little metal pail. LOVE the design! Reminds me of something Melanie from Schoolgirl Style would use!

I'm also very excited about these Leap Frog addition and subtraction mats that were only $1 each. They can be used with a dry-erase pen and re-used again and again. I bought 3 of each - they will be perfect for the new individual math boxes I am starting for each child in January!

 You may also notice by now that I LOVE owls. This adorable gift bag was also in the dollar section. Not sure what I'll use it for, but I'll think of something. :)

I've also recently discovered the great teacher section they started at JoAnn craft stores. These name tags were 36 for only $4! I used a coupon and got them half off. Love a good deal!