My NEW BLOG and a FLASH FREEBIE to celebrate!

Excitement is not the word!

My new blog is up and running thanks to the AMAZING Alexis with Laugh Eat Learn Design. She has been completely and totally fantastic to work with, so if you are out hunting for someone to take your vision and make it into a masterpiece, please consider using her.  You won't be sorry!

So now that my new blog is up and running I wanted to bring you up to date on my first two weeks of school!

I am as tired as tired can be!  It is a good tired and I know you all know what I am talking about.

I moved to a new classroom down the hall, so I had the chance to make some changes to my classroom.

We all start of Ready to Learn each day.  My big change this year was that everyone starts on an "S".  I really thought a lot over the summer about conduct.  At the end of the day we expect the kids to earn an "S", so I decided that we start off where we expect to end.  It also put my conduct chart in line with the majority of the teachers at my grade level and that is always a good thing.

If you haven't read this book to your kids....  BEG, BORROW, or STEAL!  One of my teacher friends showed it to me and I LOVE IT!  It was great for those first few days when we are all learning that our mouth is truly a volcano and it needs to not ERUPT!   After we read the book the kids worked in groups and wrote the main idea of the story and included a picture of each of the them being a VOLCANO!  Such a great way to help them work on this important skill.

One of my favorite stations in the classroom is the Highlighting Station.  A bucket of highlighters and a desk by the spot where they turn things in is all it takes to fix the NO NAME problem. The kiddos simply stop and highlight their name before they turn it in.  They love it and the NO NAME problem is eliminated!

Even though I had all the stations set out for Meet the Teacher...  my first day was a SUPPLY disaster with all the extra stuff they brought!    It seemed like their backpacks were bottomless pits of stuff!  It is all put away now thank goodness!

I finally have my teacher tradebooks and novels all organized.  The top three shelves are class sets of books that I have from grants and Scholastic points.  The bottom two shelves are trade books that I use for read alouds.  I have them organzied by subject matter, but I am thinking that it would be better to organize them by weeks of the year.  How do you organize yours?  I would love to hear some different ways!

I am really so excited with my new organizer!  I took one of the 5 drawer rolling carts I had and made days of the week labels for it.  Since it is on wheels I can move it to where I am planning. As I plan, I gather up everything I need for the activity and put it in the drawer.  All of my trade books, construction paper, tracers, worksheets, and books I need for the day in once place.  In the morning all I have to do is get the stack of stuff out and I'm ready for the day!

To celebrate my new blog I am making A Drawer for Day organizer a FLASH FREEBIE!  Click on the picture to download it for FREE!

I hope it helps you as much as it has helped me!