AWESOME Giveaway!

I am teaming up with some fantastic teacher-authors for a huge giveaway!  Diane at One Teacher's Adventures has reached 200 TpT followers, and as a celebration, she is hosting a giveaway of 3 fabulous prize packs. 

Each prize pack includes amazing products for the selected grade range plus winner's choice shopping sprees at participating stores! 

Check out the amazing prize packs below, then enter the giveaways!

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good Luck!

Back-to-School Goals

Better late than never!  I’m hooking up with iHeart Recess to bring you my 2014 – 2015 School Goals.  Enjoy!

Five for Friday!

Hey there!  I'm hooking up with Doodle Bugs to bring your Five For Friday!  I just L.O.V.E. her idea of posting about the week. It has been one heck of a busy one as you'll see!

Well, I had some blog drama this week.  As you may have noticed my page and logo are completely different.  I found someone on Etsy to do my blog......but she didn't finish it then went AWOL on me!  I contacted her several times and she didn't answer.  So, I found Dream Like Magic Designs who did an OUTSTANDING job on my blog. She was fast, and very easy to work with!  I highly recommend using them if you are looking for a new blog design!

I finally uploaded my first paid product onto TpT.  I'm very excited about this new endeavor but I'm also feeling frustrated.  I have another blog / store that are doing very well.  I wanted to start this new blog because I switched grade levels.  My first blog is based on Kindergarten resources.  I'm now in 5th Grade so I couldn't really combine the two.  While I'm excited....I feel like I'm starting over, well, because I am :)  Anywho, here is a peek at my first product.

In my old position, I used checklists to assure I was meeting all of the Common Core Standards.  It was a life-saver for me, and a GREAT reference tool.  If anything ever gets questioned, all you have to do is flip open to that standard and start rattling off the dates you incorporated that standard into your lesson.  Voila!  You can click the picture above, or click HERE to view the product.  

This is my lil man!  Let me tell you, before I had dogs (I have two), I used to think dog-people were kinda crazy.  Well now, I'm as looney as they come!  This lil man is Mocha.  He was not fully cooperating in this picture because it's past his bedtime!  Sophie, my girl dog (they are brother/sister), currently has her face smushed into the sofa cushion so a picture of her was not an option!  I just adore these two fur-balls!

These are my new class rules.  I decided not to go with a particular "theme" in my classroom (or half-of-a-classroom) but I am going with neon colors.  Here is a closer peek at them:

I can't for the life of me get this picture to flip so you're gonna have to turn your head.  The picture doesn't really bring out how bright and colorful they are. I can't wait to hang them up next week!

These are the copybooks I found on sale this week. I bought 16 of them since that's how many students I have on my caseload this year.  I'm working on making an Interactive Math Journal for them, which will most likely turn into a TpT product so stay tuned!

Don't forget to head on back to Doodle Bugs and check out other blogs and ideas!  Thanks for stopping by!

Poster-Size Printing

Happy Wednesday!

I just found the B.E.S.T. post about printing out in poster-size!  I knew it could be done, but I had no idea how to do it.  Traci from Dragonflies in First did a great, easy to understand post about it on Blog Hoppin'.  I can't wait to try it out.  Head on over and see just how easy it is!

Monday Made-it!

I'm hooking up with Fourth Grade Frolics to bring you my Monday Made-it!

I love, love, love having extra time in the summer to make things for home and my classroom!  I'm a little addicted to painting wooden things right now (you'll see.)  I also have a good tip for you in one of my "Made-its":

I am a great lover of Post-it notes, as anyone with OCD would be!  I love everything about them. I love the different sizes and shapes they come in. I love the different colors. Some with lines some without.  I am very slightly obsessed with them!  I wanted to make something cute to store them in so I picked up this little wooden paper sorter and got painting.  You may not know this about me yet, but I L.O.V.E. purple. And Polka-dots. So it just had to be purple. I found these cute little rub-on circles at the craft store and voila!  I can't decide if it looks really cute, or if it should go in a 4 year-old girls room. We'll see!

                           

Okay, I understand I may be dating myself here......but when did Mod Podge come out with molds???? So I found these when I was picking up 5,000 wooden things to paint.  They are made by Mod Podge (which I also love) and come in a variety of designs.  I bought the one with the cute little flowers.  They sell the mod-podge-melts that you just pop in your glue gun and go to town.  Here is a look at the mold and the finished product. I will be painting them (YES, they are paintable!) and I have some clothespins that I will be attaching them to.  How cute are they?!?!?!  Just click HERE to go to the Mod Podge page to see their other design molds.

This last one is a tip plus a Made-It. I have my own classroom but I pull students from their classroom to work with them.  I K.N.O.W. my pencils will be walking this year so I am trying to be pro-active and avoiding that as much as possible. 

                                 

I purchased some cute, decorative tapes and wrapped all of my pencils (remember, I did tell you I have a lil OCD!)  For the girls, I used some Zebra print and polka-dots (not pictured) and for the boys it's Angry Birds!  They are in 5th grade but come on.....who doesn't love Angry Birds?  So if your pencils have feet like mine, this will be an easy way to solve that problem.  The other teachers and students know immediately if the pencil belongs to you.

Thanks for stopping by!  Hope you feel inspired, or at least had a laugh :)

Pinterest Linky

Hi ~ I just got back from a VERY relaxing overnight trip with the hubs.  We celebrated our first wedding anniversary in this old mansion / bed & breakfast in the Pocono Mts of PA.  It was just beautiful!  Back to reality now though!

I wanted to link up with What I Have Learned to share some great ideas found on Pinterest.  I know I spend H.O.U.R.S. of my life on there, especially now that I am changing grade levels.  Seriously, what did teachers do before Pinterest?!?!?!

 

I find SOOOOO many things

on Pinterest that it should be directly linked to my bank account!  I know once I find an idea on there.......cha-ching!  I can almost hear the money flying out of my account.  There are just so many cute ideas for school and for the house that I can't resist.  It's not my fault actually ~ as I tell the hubs ~ I'm just at my best when I'm creating.  It's what I love to do, so I can't possibly help that :P

Here is a link to all the resources I've accumulated since I finished school a few weeks ago.  These are all ideas / resources for 5th grade classrooms .......  5th Grade Resources.  The goal for this linky is to share a board with hardly any product postings.....only ideas.  Well this page has NO product postings so I think that qualifies :)  Here are some of my fav's:

elementaryendeavors.weebly.com

 

buzzfeed.com

 

 

buzzfeed.com

 

I hope you find something useful on my page.  Definitely follow my if you see things you like because there will be LOTS more where that came from!  Thanks for stopping by :)

Product Development Log

I don't know about you, but every single time I make a product and get to the "Credits" page, I am scrambling to back and trace down all the things I used!  Fonts, clipart, background papers.......UGH!  It literally takes me longer to retrace my steps than it does to make the product!

Well, I created a FREEBIE for you (and me) that will eliminate all of that.  This Product Development Log will help keep us all organized hopefully!

Just click on the picture to download your freebie!

I've also included this in black-and-white to save on color printing.  In addition, I made a Pinning Log to help you track your Pinterest activity (in color and B&W.)

Let me know how this product works for you, or if you have something you use to keep you organized.  I obviously can use all the help I can get!

Welcome Aboard!

Well I finally have my NEW blog up and running!  I'm SO excited to be starting this new chapter in my life.  To those of you joining me from my old blog, "The Kindergarten Pod" welcome and thanks for stopping by.  For those of you who are brand new......Thank you so much for visiting!

As you can gather, I am making the big jump from Kindergarten to 5th Grade this year.  I am super excited about it.  I'll miss my little ones but I needed a break.  My Master's is actually in Special Education so I've really wanted to make this move for a while.  The timing was right so here I am :)

Not much to post about quite yet.  I'm working on a couple of things that I hope to have up soon.  Most importantly, I'm jumping feet first into an Interactive Math Journal which should be available in my new TpT store over the next few weeks.

I'll also be hooking up with some of my favorite bloggers for some linky's and sales so stay tuned!