What I'm Loving Wednesday

Yay for Wednesday! It came fast this week for me.

I'm loving that I have been able to spend time in my classroom this week! I just wish I could have gone in earlier... but I definitely am making progress so I am feeling good about that!

I'm loving these baskets from the Container Store! There is an option to ship them to my nearest store, so I can avoid shipping costs, and I found a coupon code online that reduced my total by $10! Although I wish they were bright (as my room is extremely brown) I will just make my book basket labels colorful to make up for it!

I'm loving that the teacher before me left many good books in the classroom! I found many Kevin Henkes books and a few Skippyjon Jones books, as well as a TON of Junie B.'s!! This brightens my heart.

I'm loving that my next-door teacher friend came to school today. It was a big relief to go into her room and take a break every once in a while! Also we have big plans for our rooms - the kids won't know what hit them! I'm excited for her reading nook and couch!!

I'm loving that I found a rocking chair in the library at school that no one was using, and I asked my principal if I could have it, and he said yes! I was sort of looking for one this summer but I got too busy and forgot. But now I'm good! I just need to find some cute fabric to make cushions.

I'm loving my cute pupster. He got his hair cut today and he is cuter than ever!!

I'm loving that my library had Chrysanthemum so I can use it for the first day of school! I'm also loving that Mrs. M at The Techy Teacher posted a free name activity for the beginning of school! I am totally using it and she just made my day today. :)

And finally, I'm loving mi familia! My dad made my crate seats (I just have to buy fabric), my mom is just the bomb dot com, and my bro sat through me reading Chrysanthemum to him in the car on the way home from the library and didn't even complain! What a pal.

I had a question that I wanted to ask my teacher blog buddies but I totally forget now what it was... maybe tomorrow. :)

How I'm Spending My Summer Vacation

It's day one of Clutter-Free Classroom's week-long Prompt of the Day linky party!

Every day is a different prompt (just like in our classrooms!) and today is.... How I'm Spending My Summer Vacation!

My summer vacation has been going too fast AND too slow at the same time. Too fast because it's almost the end of July and I am so not ready for my very first classroom. But too slow because I really want to get into my very first classroom! My brain is confused.

I've been spending a lot of time this summer looking through this lovely book. I'm 75% done with my Foundations of Teaching English as a Second Language class! I have learned a LOT! And it has definitely been a lot of work. Since it's a summer class, we are going at double-speed... so I am double-stressed. But I have an A so far, so I feel good about that! I just have three more chapters and one or two more giant projects, and then I am done-zo. Just in time to start school... ay caramba.

I spent a week of my summer vacation with no power or running water! Crazy storms tore through Illinois, leaving us with branches blocking all the roads and tons of power lines down. Since we have a well at my house, that meant that we had no water, literally, for almost a week. It was pretty terrible. It made me thankful that I do not live in a third-world country. It also made me thankful that the heat wave is going to be this week, because if it was 100 degrees last week AND we had no power..... I don't even want to think about it!

I've also spent my summer vacation shopping!! Today I spent a gift card that I had for a teacher store (and visited Dollar Tree), and I picked up a ton of stuff!

I got three posters - a Lost Tooth Graph that we can fill out throughout the year, a Daily News poster that I'll use for Morning Meeting, and a Welcome poster in sign language! I had been looking for a Welcome banner type of thing, and my dear friend Stephanie found this for me, which will go perfectly with my sign language alphabet!! This poster makes me so happy.

I also got the Scholastic pocket chart calendar I've been wanting AND two months of Poppin' Patterns calendar days! They make a pattern. Here I have displayed the AB pattern of August for your enjoyment! So cute! I also got name plates for my desks. I love that they are red.

Yesterday I went to Target and picked up some things from the Dollar Spot as well! I got some stamps...

And pipe cleaners for Word Work during Daily Five (Wikki Stix are cool but they are $20... and these pipe cleaners were $1) and a counting puzzle!

I have also seen friends, like my bff Stephanie who went shopping with me today!! Without her, I would probably not have bought all the stuff I did.... haha! She is a good shopping buddy, especially because she is sensitive to my snobby bee theme needs. Some of those bee products out there are just not right for me.... :)

How are you spending your summer vacation?

DIY Mini-Erasers

Today I started my first DIY project for my classroom! I've seen so many other sweet projects so I am happy that I finally did one myself.

When I went in to see my classroom a few months ago, I was poking around in the cabinets and found that I have a stash of mini-chalkboards. Not whiteboards, like probably everyone else has... but tiny chalkboards. To go with tiny chalkboards, I thought I needed some tiny erasers! So I looked around online and I found this sweet pattern. I just pinned it today to my new Pinterest board!

I started with a yard of cotton batting, which I found in a roll at Walmart for $3.49 a yard. A yard will make 27 erasers, which is WAY more than I need. But extra can't hurt. :)

 I pretty much followed the directions from the link above. I didn't sew in quite as many parallel lines because.... I am lazy. Also I did not cut the edge with pinking shears (even though that is SUPER cute) because I didn't really have enough fabric outside of my sewing lines to cut. But I think they still look nice!

I am super proud of my tiny erasers!! I just started using Pinterest today, but if you'd like to follow me, that would be lovely. :)

Classroom Shopping!

Kristen at Ladybug's Teacher Files (one of my very favorite blogs!!) is hosting a linky party about classroom shopping. I am typically a very light shopper - I hate to spend money. However...... this summer is becoming a bit different! Where shall we start...

After reading about the Making Words folders on What the Teacher Wants, I knew I wanted to make them! I got these heavy-duty file folders from Staples - they were $2 for 12! Since I only have 14 students next year, this was a great deal for me!

 Here is a little pile of the things I have just purchased in the last couple of days! I got the bee notepad for my BEE binders that I will have for my students. I finally found the ASL alphabet that I was dying to have at my teacher store along with the bee notepad. From Target, I got the jumbo bulletin board border of the apples. Some of the apples have paisley print in them, Vera Bradley style! I also got the pencil baskets to make mini chalkboard holders (inspired by Ladybug's Teacher Files whiteboard holders). Inside the basket is a bag of lacing beads for pattern making. And lastly, the inflatable bee!!! I wasn't really planning on having a theme this year (I wanted to focus more on actually teaching...) but I feel called to have bees everywhere!!

 I picked up most of this stuff from a school closing sale. I got about 30 geoboards (hopefully there aren't any in my room already...). I also have a bunch of Uno games and a couple of decks of cards. Then there is a little container of small dice and big dice! I got an amazing deal on this stuff because they needed to sell everything from their school.

 Here are some of my games! I'm going to use Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders to make sight word games and math games for math work stations. The Leap Frog box has a couple of math card games in it, and Cootie is for indoor recess! Not pictured is a counting money bingo game and a bilingual matching game (you'd match casa with house, for example, and there is a picture on each piece). Some of this stuff came from the Salvation Army, some from garage sales.

And of course, my book collection! I decided to put all of my books in a spreadsheet so I could stop duplicating books. I only got through the cardboard box shown here and the red plastic basket, and I'm already up to 76! I still have three boxes to go, plus everything the retired teacher left for me. Holy guacamole!!

So those are some of my recent purchases. Hopefully I can get into school soon and unload all of this stuff into my room!

Link up at Ladybug's Teacher Files!!