Welcome Back Bulletin Board

It's hard to believe, but that elusive first day of a school is right around the corner- who else can feel it staring us down?  Like so many other teachers, I have been running around my classroom trying to get my room ready for the invasion erm, first day.  

I have adopted a farm theme for my new Kinder classroom.  Along with my cow and pig cubby tags, farm name plates, and book barn bins (library) I have pieced together this farm scene welcome board.  Usually, I opt to make everything myself but this BBA (bulletin board accessory) was too cute to try to re-create with homemade items.  It came with two 'multicultural' farmers who were pretty much the least multicultural, ever so they got stuffed in the closet.  I tried to represent my homemade craftiness by making my own glitter text.  The board reads, "Welcome to the herd" and the animals and hay bales feature student names.  I may add something with my room number and 'Kindergarten,' but I'm not totally sold on the idea just yet.  

Have a great first day!

Feel free to support my classroom via Adopt-A-Classroom!

Free cleaning!

My hunt for donations continues!  I came across this offer from Clorox tonight.  All you have to do it register (free and quick) and upload your class supply list or create a list on their site (also, free and quick).  The only thing that I was unsure about was that the site requested the principal's name.  The two free canisters of wipes come via coupon in 4-6 weeks, mailed to your school.  It says supplies are limited and that the offer will end on 7/31 or when they run out.  After submitting I received an email with a copy of my supply list telling me that if my list qualified I would be sent the coupons.  


Clorox Canisters for Classrooms link




Happy cleaning!

Adopt A Classroom Donation Site

Hey everyone! It's been a while since my last post- but as all teachers know, the end of the year can be a bit chaotic.  This year I will be teaching Kindergarten in an add-on classroom.  I am discovering certain benefits to being an add-on class.  One, is that you have a smaller class size than teachers did the year before (across the grade level we are going from 25 to less than 20 per class).  Another, is that you don't have to go crazy going through piles of stuff the last teacher left in the room.  Really, it's a great opportunity to design your space.  The downside to being the add-on class is that you don't have the supplies left by the teacher from the year before (and all the other teachers before him/her).  With a small budget I have turned to Freecycle for my manipulative toys (Legos, K'nex and such), art supplies and picture books.  While I am collecting donations on a fairly regular basis, it's just not working to get the books that I need.  Mainly because I need leveled readers to be able to facilitate a Daily 5 approach.

So, what do you do when you know your shelves are empty and your budget is tiny?  First I checked out Donors Choose but the logistics of the site are complicated and I did not like the way your project is funded/ possibly not funded.  Someone I know who writes grants for 'small budget' schools recommended Adopt A Classroom.  Setting up an Adopt A Classroom profile was quick and simple.  The site has options to create projects with set goals or to just be available for donations.  I set up a project to build my library (currently non-exsistant).  I posted my project link to Facebook (and option available on my Adopt A Classroom profile) and quickly received two emails notifying me of two donations made to my classroom.  All donated funds must be spent through a list of vendors on the site.  Let me tell you- the vendor list is great!  It is loaded with sites that I order from for my classroom on my own.  I have not purchased anything yet but the site gave me the option to spend my two donations immediately after they came in, no waiting forever like at another site.

There is an HTML script on the Adopt A Classroom profile to add a donation box to my blog- I tried various ways to get the box to work but was unsuccessful, so far at least.  I would love some tips if anyone has any!

Check out the link to my profile to get an idea of what guests will see.  Hey, while you're there feel free to make a donation- every dollar helps!  Ms C's Adopt A Classroom page

Just in case the link doesn't work for you, copy and paste this: http://www.adoptaclassroom.org/classroomdonation/results_teacher.aspx?ClassroomID=163680&schoolID=59090

Good luck to anyone else searching for supplies!

Free Online Animated Books

Another free and useful online resource!  I found out about this via Mo Willem's Twitter oddly enough.  I will say that without the link it was hard to search for on it's own.  Barnes and Noble has this great free resource on the kid's section of it's website.  B&N has a collection of stories read by celebrities, frequently the book's author.  Each month features a new book but you can access past stories by using the scroll bar on the bottom.


Here's the link so you don't have to hunt it down!
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/storytime/index.asp




Enjoy!

Parent- Teacher Conferences Schedule Manager!

Hey teachers out there! How many of you have wished you had a personal assistant to do some of those little jobs like scheduling conferences? I'm thinking, "hello! personal assistant- sign me up!" Sorry to say, personal assistants are still not in your school's budget. However, the latest trend with P-T-C's is online scheduling. I searched a bunch of sites and found one that does not require membership and does not require the parents to sign up for anything either. It is designed to manage volunteer events and also includes a link for teacher use.

The site you want to use is called Volunteer Spot. It took no more than 10 minutes to set up two days of conferences with time slots and sign up limitations. After completing one day I was able to copy that format to the next day. Once I established my event (P-T-C's Spring 2012) I had the option of generating a link, which I did. I emailed the link to my classroom distribution list and was done. This site lets me track who has signed up and provides an option for a schedule print out. The one option it doesn't do (at least not that I have found yet) is stalk, erm, 'remind' parents to sign up for a conference.

Volunteer Spot is a great tool and I highly recommend it. Short of getting that personal assistant we are all longing for, this is the most stress free conference scheduling I have done.

Link: Volunteerspot.com

Here's to a well planned Spring conference season!

Another free find on the web!

Just a quick post tonight. I was searching for a resource for some math activities today and stumbled on a new website.

Check out Education.com for a load of free resources. Items are categorized by grade level and then subject matter and again broken down within each subject. This site has activities and worksheets- and lots of both.

All in all, I consider this find a great use of a prep block!

Happy searching!

Happy Birthday Dr Seuss! (Read Across America day)

At the end of the day today I walked into the classroom next to where I am long term subbing. Sitting on the table was a Seuss activity, ready for the morning. There I was, teaching in the home state of Dr Rhyme totally forgetting his birthday- opps! I came home from school with a mission- find Seuss ideas for tomorrow.

All I have to say is that after Google and Pinterest searching I remembered that Dr Seuss has an amazing website. If you don't know what i'm talking about you need to immediately follow the link at the bottom of this post. Seussville is a website for students and teachers complete with everything from games to lesson plans (there is a parent's section as well). The educators section has a month by month event guide featuring teaching guides for various books correlating to the 'holiday' of the month.

Check out Seussville! (http://www.seussville.com/)

Just remember that at the end of the day (after you've heard your name a million times over, you are convinced you're going to be saying the same name in your sleep that you said every 2 minutes and you just can't wait to get to 100 gems/jewels/compliments/marbles/whatever so you can have pj day), “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

Have a Seuss-tastic Friday!