Back to School Pinterests!

How did this Christmas break go by so fast?? Every time we have a few days away from school I always find myself saying "I just need one more day!" Well this time around is NO exception. I have grown quite used to how clean my apartment is. If any of you are like me, laundry is not a priority during the school week.

So in order to get back into the spirit of school I have been pinning like crazy and found some really good stuff to share!

 

This teacher has the BEST ideas for word work! So many different ideas and they are all organized so well. This is definitely worth taking a look at. Click on the picture above if you want to check it out.

 This Tacky the Penguin craft is adorable!! This would look great with some sort of Tacky the Penguin writing prompt.

 

This melted snowman craft is so cute I know we will definitely be doing this one!! How precious would all these different snowmen look hung up in the hallway??

 

This is one that we are doing tomorrow actually! The link to print this off is attached to the picture so click on it if you want it too:) We love adding up the two sides of dominoes to see what the total is. These colored dominoes are too cute!

Class Applesauce and A Peek At The Week Ahead...

Well we finally got around to making our applesauce and oh my word was it delicious!! I wish I had taken more pictures but I was more focused on keeping my little kinders' fingers away from the sharp apple peeler and the hot crockpot... I figured ya'll would understand ;)

Before we made our class applesauce, we brought all the apples we brought in as a class to the carpet and graphed them by color to see which one we had the most of. I will let ya'll determine below which color won:

 

We had so many red ones that we ran our of room on our graph and had to make two rows of red. Then we went through all of our steps that I outlined in this previous post and I was finally able to take a picture of how yummy it looked:

 

Mmmmm... look at all that brown sugar in there!!

So this past week we were able to do a lot of work with apples, but we have not even made a teeny tiny dent into our apple unit yet! This week I found so many adorable ideas on pinterest that I have just been dying to try and this upcoming week will be perfect for them!! Here are some of the fun things we will be doing this week:

 

These two Johnny Appleseed ideas were way too cute to pass up. I love the cuteness of the Johnny Appleseed circle chart where they list facts they know about Johnny Appleseed. I have done things like this in the past but I have never made my charts as adorable as some of these ladies on pinterest!! They make me feel like I need to bring my "A" game when it comes to cuteness in the classroom. I also love the second craft where they write the sight word "I" (which is our first sight word in our reading series- making this THAT much more applicable) and their name.

 

I thought this little poem with the apple star stamping looked like fun too. I am considering purchasing an apple unit from TPT but there are sooooo many to choose from. Have any of ya'll purchased an apple TPT unit?? If so, would you recommend it and which one was it?? 

I hope you're all having a great weekend!!

Back in the Classroom!!

I headed into school today to start getting my room all organized because believe it or not, we start back to school meetings on Monday. It is amazing to me that I was there for a few hours, yet my room looks like I hardly got anything done! I will be back in again over the weekend to add some more touches to it. If possible, I would like to be COMPLETELY done with decorating before Monday so all I have to worry about is beginning of the year paperwork and planning from then on out. Once you see the pictures though, you will notice I definitely have my work cut out for me!! It may be time to bring in my mom and sister for a little help!

Here is the before picture of the back of my room. My desk was off to the left, computers on an old ugly table in the middle, and a hodgepodge of colors on the bulletin boards. 

I changed all of the bulletin board paper to blue which will go with my rainbow border theme (from this post). I also got rid of the ugly table and put one of the white ones with the green legs where the computers go. I changed the right back corner into our art center with our easel and one of our art tables. All of the art supplies are  on the shelves back there. I also changed how may desk faces and moved my kidney table to the left for guided reading. I wanted so badly to just get rid of my desk but my principal said I had to keep it because there was no more room in storage :( One of my goals this year is to have a clutter free classroom (or as clutter free as possible) and it would've helped to have that big old hunk of junk out of my room! Oh well... here are the pictures!

Notice my two file cabinets that are back to back on the right side, I can't wait to paint them and hang up cute fabric and border on them like the picture below from Pinterest. One of my many projects for the weekend!

As I was leaving I took one more picture of the whole back of the room. As you can see, I definitely still have my work cut out for me!

I also made a pit stop today at Party City and picked up some of the pre-made pom poms to hang up in my room:

I also picked up this book at Lakeshore that has thematic plans for every week of the year. It had plans and handouts for all of my major units that I teach. It was a little pricey but I think it will be totally worth it!

There will be more pictures to come once I get more of my room finished, I promise!!

What I've Been Pinning...

Since I have had more time over our summer break I have fallen back in love with my favorite time waster- PINTEREST! I can spend hours on pinterest easily and not get bored, it is dangerous! It is getting me SOOOO pumped up to go back to school!! I have seen other bloggers posting about their favorite recent pins and I thought I would share with you some of my favorite pins I have seen recently too (just in case ya'll weren't already as pumped up about going back to school as I am!)

I love this adorable idea for a new way to celebrate birthdays. Instead of giving out another pencil (our front office gives out pencils too) you can give out a crazy straw with a cute little birthday sign attached to it. They look so adorable and the kids will love just them!

This adorable center is a much better way for me to use my super cheap magnetic letters than what I had been doing. Last year I found some magnetic letters in the dollar section at Target and they were not very strong magnets. I had my students use them on the chalkboard (which is magnetic in case ya'll didn't know that, and yes.... I still have a CHALKBOARD in the back of the room!! Chalkboards still exist!) Anyway, the magnets were not very strong and kept falling off the board when my little ones were trying to spell their sight words. This way, on a cookie sheet that is laying down, we don't have to worry about them falling off!

This one I love because it will help me to make my hideous file cabinets less ugly AND functional! I am super excited about that!!

And this one may be my favorite just because of how adorable it is! What a cute way to make your pocket chart center fun! It is so simple, but adds so much! 

Now my only problem with pinterest is that there are too many cute classroom decorating ideas. Just when I think I have found the perfect theme for next year, another even cuter one comes along! My current love is the rainbow theme from below:

I love the double border around the cloud background paper and the beautiful tissue paper pom poms! I am just loving the tissue paper pom poms I am seeing all over pinterest lately. I saw tissue paper pom poms in this classroom below too and loved them:

Now with all of these super cute ideas I've found the only problem is going to be finding the time to make all of it!! I am leaving for a cruise to Alaska on Thursday and will be gone for two weeks (woohoo!) but when I come back it is right back to school! I may have to put my mom and sisters to work with helping me :)

Have a great day ya'll!