You Ought Know About Safety Tips

As you begin the school year with your new class, it is so important to teach students ways to stay safe in school, at home and in the community. Students begin to realize the importance of classroom rules and why we have them. Children feel at ease and are more apt to focus their energy on their school work when they are in a classroom that has established routines and clearly defined rules. Students need to know that school is a safe place to be and that you truly care about each and every one of them. They need to know that if there is something that is bothering them that they can go to you and talk about it. Students also need to know other adults in the school that they can turn to in times of need. Children learn that being safe is making the right decisions and not letting peers persuade them into doing something that is not safe. 

There are so many terrific safety books and videos to support almost any grade level. Here is a list of fantastic books to get started on some great class conversations about safety in the Primary Grades. While having conversations about safety with young children, it is important to stay positive and teach students to focus on finding solutions and making safe choices rather than frightening them in any way.

"What Does It Mean To Be Safe?" by Rana DiOrio
"I Can Be Safe: A First Look at Safety" by Pat Thomas
"Arthur's Fire Drill" by Marc Brown
"Officer Buckle and Gloria" by Peggy Rathman
"The Berenstain Bears Safe and Sound!" by Jan Berenstain
"Be Careful and Stay Safe" by Cheri J. Meiners 
"Watch Out!At Home" by Claire Llewellyn

Students can share what they learned about safety by answering writing prompts on a variety of topics  found in my "Safety Tips" product. Students can share what they learned about classroom rules, playground safety, bus safety, water safety, fire safety, bike safety and more. 

If you are interested in these writing prompts on kid friendly lined paper, check out the following links.
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Safety-Tips-Home-School-Community-766676

http://www.teachersnotebook.com/product/123kteach/safety-tips-home-school-amp-community

An InLinkz Link-up

A Fresh New Start With a Terrific Group of Students!

It is exciting to be back in school and starting out fresh with a terrific group of kindergartners who are eager to learn. My students first day was Tuesday. Yes! I do have my challenging students but I will do my best to accommodate their needs and support all my students to have a memorable, successful year.  Building classroom culture, learning the rules and establishing routines is priority. Through my years of teaching kindergarten, I've learned that you have to expect the unexpected.  "Anything goes in kindergarten." You just can't assume anything. Students need to learn in very detailed, simple, step by step directions on how to do the simplest things such as how to wash hands, sit quietly in circle, use the restrooms properly, line up quietly in the hallways and a host of other routines. Before the students walked through the doors for the very first time, I spent hours and hours setting up my classroom. The following pictures show what I've done this year to make my classroom an inviting happy place to learn.

I just love Owls and have an Owl theme going on throughout my classroom. I can't wait to hang up the student's pictures on our "Look Who's In Our Room" bulletin board.

Here is a view of the front of my classroom. I have a Mimio Board and Elmo in my class and use this technology often as I present new material. Don't you just love arriving to school with all the shiny, sparkling  floors. Our custodians did an amazing job getting our school ready! 

  This picture shows the back of our classroom where we have our meetings on the carpet.  The blue felt board will display "Words We Know" as words are introduced. You can see a center chart in which students are assigned literacy choices and calendar work.

Each table has a caddy with classroom supplies that are easily accessible to all my students. These caddy containers hold everything. I  found the wire bin holder that holds my dry erase boards on the bottom, and  three long plastic bins on the top from Really Good Stuff. This year I found smaller caddys that fit perfectly within the plastic bins to hold scissors and glue sticks. I use the soap boxes that I found from Stop and Shop for only 69 cents to store my crayons.  You will notice the yellow name tags at the tables. They are wooden paint sticks that I spray painted and added owl stickers and velcro to the back. Home Depot let me have them for free. I bet if you walked into any hardware store and asked for a few paint sticks that they would be happy to give them to you also. These name plates last the entire year and I can easily switch seating arrangements since they have velcro on the back. On the right you can see our individual bins to hold leveled books, student work, and journals.  

Here is my desk. Notice the bulletin board off to the side of it. I run off all my important schedules and calendars on different colored paper so I can easily find it. I can easily find pens, scissors, markers and other supplies as they are hung in a clear plastic shoe bin beside my desk. You can see my cones I got from the dollar store to place at tables of students doing amazing work. My green bell is used for transition time and clean up time.  

This is one of my favorite bulletin boards. Each year I hang up praise notes or post them in the pockets for students showing positive behaviors and acts of kindness. We use the PeaceBuilders program at our school and the PeaceBuilder virtues are posted. 

 Here is our lunch board/ attendance board. I use the side of my filing cabinet with colored tape to segment the different choices each day. I wrote students names on wooden cloud shaped pieces and attached magnets to the back. Students check in as soon as they arrive to school.  I did make picture lunch cards with a wide variety of lunch choices. You can find these at my teacher stores. 

I am soo lucky this year! My classroom just received three brand new touch screen computers with Windows 8. I am not used to Windows 8 and I've got a lot to learn as I program these computers for my students but I just can't wait to get started. 

Do you have a blog with pictures of your classroom as you set it up for this year? I'd love to see it. I always love to be inspired by other new creative ways to organize and get ready for the school year. Please comment below and I will be sure to check it out.

Get An Extra Boost to Your Back to School Shopping

Did you know that Teachers Pay Teachers will be doing another Back to School Sale? Teachers Pay Teachers had held their annual Back to School Sale at the beginning of August but after more data about starting dates, the decision was made to host an additional sale on August 20th. It's meant to give a boost to this new upcoming school year. So, if you missed the last sale or want to pick up those items on your wish list, now is the time to shop. Take advantage of the great savings. My store will be discounted 20% and you can get an extra 8% off when you use the promo code: boost. This includes my bundle sets which are already discounted and will provide you with tremendous savings. I will extend my sale for an additional day to provide you with 20% off on August 21st, however you will not be able to use the special promo code to get the extra 8% off.

Happy Shopping and Enjoy Your School Year!

You Oughta Know About Using Soap Boxes for Classroom Supplies

I am so excited to be linking up with some amazing bloggers for this fun blog hop full of classroom ideas. Thanks to Jasmine from Buzzing with Mrs. McClair for hosting.

You oughta know about using soap boxes for classroom supplies. I found these hinged soap box containers for only 69 cents at Stop & Shop and I just love them! You will find them in the trial sized section of your store. You can also find them at Walmart for 97 cents.  They are the perfect size for storing crayons. There is even enough room in each container to store the fat crayons that I use with my kindergartners. We all know that crayon boxes just don't last. My students work at tables and do not have individual desks of their own. The larger sized pencil boxes that you see in the major department stores and office supplies stores  seem to take up too much space on the tables and leave little room for students to work. These little boxes fit inside of the one storage bin that I have set on each table filled with other supplies such as scissors, glue sticks, dry erase markers, etc. In the past, I always had the students share crayons that were at each table, however after awhile there always seemed to be issues with not finding the right color and too many students from the table reaching in from the same bin caused problems. Students will now have to take more responsibility for their own crayon supplies. If they choose to break them, then they are stuck with broken crayons. Hopefully, students will take better care of their supplies this year. I bet teachers could use these little travel sized soap boxes for so many other things in the classroom or even at home to organize your junk drawers.The best part is the price.If you are like me you are always looking for affordable creative ideas.

  

Soap boxes are the perfect storage solution

I made these adorable owl chevron labels to go on top of them. Owls are all the rage and I think they came out cute. You can find these editable storage labels at my store.    

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Owl-Theme-Editable-Storage-Labels-Classroom-Labels-841763

You can also use them on those popular rolling carts you find in Walmart and Target. Here is a picture of my rolling cart. I have another one that I am going to redecorate this year with these labels. 

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Owl-Theme-Editable-Storage-Labels-Classroom-Labels-841763

As you can see I am just crazy about owls. I just love decorating my classroom with them. I just created these adorable clipboards with owl chevron paper. Do you have those ugly brown clipboards hanging around in your class? You might want to try and jazz them up with some decorative paper and stickers or ribbons on the top. Just apply clear contact paper on top of your pretty printed paper and you are good to go. I was able to grab a small roll of clear contact paper at Dollar Tree. 

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Owl-Clipboard-Decorative-SetEditable-1381805

 

If you really like my set and you do not feel like creating your own. You can also get this at my stores and customize it with your name or whatever else you would like to put. 

While you are here, please be sure to check out my previous post on this blog for a chance to win 10.00 at my TN store. Just scroll down and enter.  It is super easy. You can enter the rafflecopter with just a few options. There are very few entries so far, so the chances of you winning are GREAT!!   

I have just a couple of more weeks of summer left, but I've been so busy getting things ready for my class. Enjoy what is left of your summer and have a wonderful school year! Have fun with the rest of this blog hop. 

There are so many great ideas in store for you. 

An InLinkz Link-up

An InLinkz Link-up

Sweepstakes 100 prizes******Extreme Back To School Sale******Aug. 9-12***Plus Bonus Giveaway

Wow!  Teacher's Notebook will be having an amazing sale. Don't miss out on EXTREME savings. I've discounted my entire store 30% off and you can get an additional 10% off. Can't wait to enter this year's sweepstakes for a $10.00 gift certificate. Since they are giving out 100 prizes, you might want to enter because the odds of winning are not that bad. To make this even sweeter, I've decided to have my own sweepstakes. You could win $10.00 worth of products at my store. My Giveaway starts  now and ends on Aug. 15th. It is super easy to enter. Just check out the Rafflecopter below to get started.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

BLAST OFF to Back to School with an Amazing Sale!

I am SO not ready to go back to school yet (we still have a month of summer in MA) HOWEVER this is the time to start stocking up for the school year because Teachers Pay Teachers is throwing their annual Back-To-School Sale. My store will be 20% off- the WHOLE thing, including my bundle packs. Be sure to use the promo code BTS14 to get an additional savings adding up to 28% off. Wowza! That is amazing savings especially if you are purchasing bundles which already have 20%-25 %off. You could end up getting products in these bundles for less than half price. This summer I've updated my store and added many new products and bundles just in time for Back to School. I can't wait to share them with you and use some of these products in my classroom with my kinders. Check out some of the amazing products below.

Cookie Monster Math Fun with Tissue Boxes                            Fall Bundle Pack

 

              Teacher Evaluation Evidence Portfolio Binder                                  Owltastic Bundle  


Enjoy the rest of your summer! Take advantage of the incredible savings as you "Blast Off" into another school year!

How To Use Free Online Animated Gifs and Create Exciting Pins

I just recently discovered the Free Online Animated Gif and I just love it. It is so easy to create a mini slide show and post. I just started using it to create animated Gifs on Pinterest to try and promote some of the products I created this summer. I am happy to see that these pins seem to be getting more attention as they are repinned more often than regular sized pins or even some of my longer style pins. Here is the link to get started. http://gifmaker.me/

Begin by created your product as you normally would on Powerpoint or Word and save as JPEGS or PNG's. I ususally just save them to my desktop to make it easy for me to find. Next, open up gifmaker and upload the slides you want. You can rearrange them in any order you want. I uploaded a few slides from my Kindergarten Back to School Bundle to show as an example.   Your screen will look like this.

 On the top where it says canvas slide, I just leave it at 100% 720 X 960.  Next, you will need to select animation speed. This tells how many seconds between slides. I just set mine to about 3400 miliseconds. As I count in my head, it is about 5 seconds between switching to the next slide. You can set music to the slides only from YOU Tube, but keep in mind that this music will not be playing on Pinterest. Once you are happy with the order of your slides, click create now at the bottom of the screen. Then hit download the Gif Image now. It should go directly into your picture folder. 

Next, if you want to use these images on Pinterest, you will need to open up your Pinterest page and hit the + sign next to your name. Click on upload a pin and choose your Gif Image from your files. Write out your pin description and do not forget to link it back to your TPT or TN store. 

Below is the example of my Gif found on Pinterest.  If you click on the image below, it will enlarge on your screen to even get a closer look. This is pretty cool! There are some boards on Pinterest that do not allow you to pin long pins and this is just another way to show off your products. Learning how to create animated pins was one of my summer goals. I am so happy that I learned how and now I can share this information with you. It is super easy and it only takes about five minutes to upload a great looking pin. Since I am out for the summer and these are brand new products, I do not have pictures of the kids using them as of yet. However, it is great to show slides of your products actually being used in your classroom. 

Another one of my summer goals was to create lots more products. I really wanted to have 100 products posted by August 1st. I am so excited to have reached this goal. I worked for several hours with my head buried  behind my laptop this summer to finally get there. I was even able to make a few bundle packs. Below are slides from one of the bundle packs I put together. I began created products for TPT during my February vacation in 2013. It has taken time to reach 100 products. Most of the products I posted were during my winter, spring or summer breaks. I just can't seem to be productive during the school year, since every ounce of my energy needs to be focused in on my kindergarten class. I am hoping these animated Gifs will bring some more attention to my store and I am hoping this tutorial helps you to be more successful. I learned so much from reading the forums and I am so very grateful for all that I have learned so far from some amazing teachers. Now it is time that I give back something I learned and pass it on to you. Keeping my fingers crossed that we can all be successful. Happy Pinning with your new animated Gifs!