I'm Throwing A Sale!

I don't know about ya'll but I have been getting sooo into the Halloween spirit lately. I have got Halloween on the brain 24/7! We are going a little Halloween crazy in my room right now with decorations EVERYWHERE! I can't believe I haven't taken pictures yet to show all of you. In order to help spread my Halloween cheer, everything in my TPT store is 20% off from now until Friday at midnight!!

Maybe you can all spend the extra few bucks on a pumpkin spice latte or something ;)

Tpt Sale and My Erin Condren Planner FINALLY Came!!

My Erin Condren planner FINALLY came and I am so. freaking. excited!!!! Do any of you have these? And are you as obsessed with yours as I am with mine? Here is the front cover (ignore the purple splotches, those aren't really there!):

Here is the first page on the inside:

Love this page. It is so sweet :)

 

The month at a glance calendar...

 Weekly lesson pages

 I love these little reminder stickers for IEP meetings, staff meetings, assemblies, etc. You can stick them right onto your lesson plan pages or your monthly calendar.

 

A 2012-2013 Calendar at the back. I love the laminated front and back covers to keep it from getting damaged. This is good quality laminating too, not like the super cheap stuff at my school!!

 

There is a folder inside to keep all important papers... Do you see why I am obsessed?? This thing literally has everything!! 

 

It comes with these labels that have my name and school on them. This is a prettier way of marking my belongings than writing my name on them in black permanent marker!!

And finally, because it took so long for them to make my order and ship it they added free colored pens!!

 

I will take some free colored pens any day of the week, so they can screw up my orders in the future if they would like :)

If you are still with me after all those pictures, I wanted to let you know that I am having a sale at my TPT store this weekend!! Everything is 15% off! It ends Sunday at midnight ya'll so head over there quick! 

Have a great weekend!!

Teacher Week- A Little Bit (Ok a LOT Bit!) Late!!

Ok so I don't know about ya'll, but this week just completely got away from me. I literally feel like it should still be Monday- but don't get me wrong, I am NOT complaining about it being the weekend! Between all of our long back to school meetings, Meet the Teacher Night, having my class list changed every single day (how are you supposed to write their names on their supplies?!? My Mr. Clean Magic Eraser came in handy this week a LOT!) and starting school on Wednesday. This week was wonderful but CRAZYYYY! 

Let me start by saying that I have just died and gone to kindergarten heaven this year with my class. Last year I had a wonderful but very challenging class and this year I have a wonderful not-so-challenging class!! My assistant and I decided God must be rewarding us this year for all of the extra extra hard work we had to put in last year and let me tell you, I am perfectly fine with that!!!!

The only complaint I have is that I was too busy this week to participate in Teacher Week through Blog Hoppin'. As I was complaining to my boyfriend about how wonderful Teacher Week is and how I wish I had been able to join in on all the fun he said "Lauren, really?? Who is going to stop you from joining in a little late? If you want to do it that badly- just do it!!!" So here I am! I could write one super long post about everything from the whole week but that would probably take up my whole morning so I will just do the last two days- Therapeutic Thursday and Freebie Friday. 

Therapeutic Thursday!

Between grad school, teaching, and now tutoring after school I am one very busy girl. But as the saying goes, work hard play hard, right?? I definitely make sure that I take some "me" time- even if it is as simple as taking my dog for a walk at a pretty park. This is Freedom Park in Charlotte, which is just a 5 minute drive from my apartment. It is one of my favorite places in Charlotte because it is so pretty! I love taking Tucker for a walk here on weeknights after a stressful day. 

Believe it or not, Freedom Park is walking distance to downtown Charlotte via the Sugar Creek Greenway. We also love to walk on the Sugar Creek Greenway which starts at the park and takes us here in about a 15 minute walk:

For those of you who already know me, I am slightly obsessed with yoga. It is another one of my favorite things to do after a stressful day at school because I have to keep my focus away from school or else I will fall on my butt in front of the whole class while trying to do one of those crazy poses!! I feel so much better after yoga.

I also love getting manicures and pedicures with my friends at our favorite salon on Wednesdays (when they give out free sangria while you get your nails done!), massages at least 2-3 times a year, cooking- especially making my own sushi, and blogging!! 

Freebie Friday!

Because this week is back to school week for many of you and you may want an extra little paper to hand out to your parents to help improve parent communication- I am making my Back to School ABC Pamphlet FREE until midnight tonight!! I am also putting my Year Full of Glyphs packet on sale 20% off! Head over to my TPT store to check them out!

Meet the Teacher Night and Birthday Straws

Is it me or has this week been flying by??? I can't believe it is already Thursday tomorrow! On Monday we had Meet the Teacher Night and I was a little disappointed that I only had 9 of my parents show up. I guess I was a little spoiled last year that I had all of them there. At Meet the Teacher Night I always give the parents a little folder of information that is ONLY kindergarten information (they get a lot of information from the office and I like to keep mine separate in their kindergarten-only folder). In their folder I give them: 
1. Another copy of the list of supplies they need to bring in
2. A copy of our specials schedule
3. A copy of our gradual entry schedule (we do half of the class one day, and the other half the next day. Both of these days are half days and are HEAVENLY!! I could totally get used to teaching a half day kindergarten!)
4. A form for them to fill out on allergies
5. A "Getting to Know Your Child" form where they can tell me things about their child I may need to know- their likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, things they are afraid of, etc.
6. And most importantly- my Back to School ABC's Handout. This is their "cheat sheet" to kindergarten and some of my parents last year kept it all year so they could refer back to it in January if they had forgotten a policy (like what to do for birthdays, field trips, etc).

Here is a picture of the outside cover of one of their folders and a snapshot of the inside:

Also, this has nothing to do with Meet the Teacher Night, but these are the finished products of my birthday straws I will give to my kids:

They turned out a lot better than I expected! I bought the silly straws at Party City, used a Cricut to make the accordion folded circles, a scalloped punch from Michael's for the colored paper on the front and labels from SchoolGirl Style for the middle circles. I spray painted the clay pot and attached a ribbon I already had to the top. I put a few stickers on the pot to spell out "Happy Birthday" and voila! I can't wait for someone to have a birthday so I can start giving them away!! All in all I think the whole project cost me about $15- I was lucky that I already had most of the supplies in my craft basket (which is really two baskets that are overflowing and in desperate need of a third!). They were not hard to do and I was able to knock them all out while sitting on the couch watching a movie. Not too shabby, eh? ;)

Hope you're all having a great week!!

TPT Sale!!!

It's time for the back to school sale!!! Everything in my store is 20% off!! Click HERE to enter my store!!  

Head on over to Blog Hoppin to add your link!

ABC Back-to-School Pamphlet

Hey ya'll, as I get ready to leave for the airport I wanted to send out a little post about one of my best selling products on TPT as it may be VERY helpful to all of you getting ready for back to school. My ABC's of Kindergarten pamphlet is a parent's guide to everything back to school. It has a cute graphic for every letter of the alphabet and a school rule or helpful hint next to each letter. 

For example: A- Arrival:  Students may arrive between 7:15 and 7:55. Late arrivals go to the front office to sign in before being walked to the classroom.

B- Birthdays: Feel free to send in treats for your child’s birthday. Please check food items with me first in case of allergies.

Box tops: Our school is collecting “Box Tops for Education.” Each label is worth 10 cents… it adds up quickly!

It is saved as a Word document and can be easily changed to fit your schools rules. Any elementary grade can use this, especially any of the primary ones. So if you are looking for an easy way to keep your parents informed without overwhelming them, check it out!

Next time I post it will be from Vancouver, British Columbia!! Woohoo!! Expect to be overloaded with pictures!

TPT Gift Certificate Giveaway!

I seriously can't thank ya'll whose blogs I stalk look at and who comment on mine enough for your support and suggestions with lessons over the past six months. My life as a teacher would be COMPLETELY different without my blog friends. As a way to thank you and to celebrate getting to 30 followers, I have purchased $30 in TPT gift certificates to use as a GIVEAWAY!! Woohoo!!! I will have three $10 gift certificates that I will be giving away and the raffle ends at midnight NEXT Friday night (July 20th)! You have one week! It is my thank you gift to you as well as an early Back-to-School gift!! 

"So how do I enter?" you may be asking yourselves. Well, let me tell you! In order to qualify for the giveaway you MUST be a follower. There is no point in me thanking my followers if someone who isn't a follower wins!! So if you aren't already a follower, click to follow (and what took you so long to follow?!?! Just kidding!!) Then, leave a comment below telling me your favorite unit that you study with your students. 


I will enter all of the followers who comment into a raffle generator and pick the three winners. Good luck ya'll and thanks again so much!!

My Summer So Far...

Hello blog friends! I don't know about all of you but my summer so far has been FANTASTIC!! My birthday was right at the end of the school year and one of my birthday presents has been doing a fabulous job of keeping me company since we got out of school... my sweet new dog Tucker!

Look at that sweet little face!

Sitting in the back of the car with my boyfriend on our mountain trip :)

Playing with his toys (more like destroying them...)

Other than spending my time with Tucker, I have been working on a gigantic packet for TPT. I finally finished and am happy to be done with all 41 pages of it- whew! I am a big fan of doing glyphs in my classroom. The cutting and gluing are wonderful for fine motor skills, it shows how well they are able to listen and focus for a (somewhat) extended amount of time, and they kids are always excited to make a craft! Well this packet is one seasonal glyph for each month of the school year. Here are a few of the pictures of the completed glyphs:

The beginning of the year school bus 

The Christmas Tree with presents and ornaments

This one is probably my favorite although the picture doesn't do it justice. This goes along with the book "The Grouchy Ladybug". One of the steps of the glyph is to have the child either make a grouchy face or a happy face for a camera to answer one of the questions. Then you print the picture of their face and cut it out in a circle to glue onto the head. They love to see their silly pictures on their "grouchy" ladybugs :)

For the life of me I cannot get this one to rotate, oops! But as I'm sure you guessed, this is for Thanksgiving! Our Thanksgiving turkeys is another suer fun glyph, probably my second favorite :)

If you get a chance, stop by my TPT store and check it out. I hope you are all having a wonderful summer! I love checking in on your blogs and reading about all these book studies going on!!