Name Plates

I think the title of my blog for this week would be fitting to be "I should be packing, but....".

Instead of packing right now I just printed off the name plates I made last week. My printer was out of ink, but I have ink now and so I am able to print off some of the documents I made for my classroom. These name plates were inspired by Wong's book The First Days of School. He suggested having an alternative way for students to ask you questions during seat work time than raising their hands and distracting the entire class. He said to use index cards to make a pyramid with "Please Help Me" on one side and on the flip side "Please Keep Working". Students are to turn their cards to the side "Please Help Me" when they need assistance and the sign on the back that is then facing them reminds them to keep working until the teacher can come help.

I decided to take it to a further level and created a "brochure" document on Publisher so that it could be folder into 3 sides. I have the "Please Help Me" and the "Please Keep Working" sides but added a Name side so that they can act as name cards for seating as well! They will be easy to move when we change seats and will serve two purposes that way.

Here are some pictures. I have them in black and white. On the first day of school I think their first assignment will be to find the seat with the flat paper of this with their name on it for their seat and then to color it. I can put them together after school and they will be ready for use the next day complete with great colors.

(I just used paper clips to hold it together with today, but for the classroom use I will use either tape or glue.)

Helping Hands

Instead of packing as I should be doing since I leave in less than a week, I have instead been wanting to plan things for my classroom. This, as I think most of you would agree, is much more fun than packing! As a result, I ended up going on a side trip to Michael's and picked up some craft supplies to make "Helping Hands" for the classroom. This idea was inspired by Mrs. E at The Sweet Life of Third Grade who made some adorable pointers of her own. Check out her blog for pictures!

The individual hands were only $0.59 cents, the dowel rods (square ones, not round) were about $2.50 and the paint was about $1.75.

My little sister (well...she's not too little she is 14) was bored and wanted to do something so.....I gave her the job of painting! She did a great job!

With a few added polka dots and a little hot glue we have our "Helping Hands"! I plan on using them for group activities/games with a group for each color. I will also use them as pointers when I need to use one on the board. I hope to get a cute basket of can to stand them up in and put a sign on the can that says "Helping Hands". Hopefully my students will like them as much as I do! :)

Reading and Thinking and Working

I've been making my way through Harry Wong's book "The First Days of School". It has come highly recommended to me and I know several teachers who follow his advice with great results produced in their classroom. On top of that, my dad is the principal of a K3-12 school and has all his new teachers read it. So I thought it just had to be good! And sure enough it is great! I highly recommend it!

My college education program was wonderful but they did not have a class designated to classroom management (they are now adding that class into the education program as of next year...haha...a little late for me!). We did watch Wong's videos but the book contains some great details! From what I have read in the book I have been inspired to follow his advice and write out all my classroom procedures.

So this weekend I have been thinking about what procedures I have seen and read about that work and what I want to implement in my classroom. I have then been working on typing them up to put in a cute binder I found.

Have any of you read Wong's book? Do you use his procedures in your class? What are some procedures that work really well for your class?

What I Bought Today

While running some errands I stopped by Target and found....

An adorable leaf covered clip board! I thought a clip board would certainly come in handy for a classroom so I picked it up. Then I discovered it got even better than just a clip board as it opened up to reveal...

A note pad and a pocket! How useful will this be?!

I finished at Target and then had some time to spare before meeting a friend for lunch. So I went to Office Max. While there I found the cutest wall decorations!

I really did try to resist buying these. I walked away and bought some labels that I needed and was planning on leaving....but.....The owls were too cute. :) I am planning on setting it up to say "Look Whoo's In 3rd Grade!" for the beginning of the year and writing each student's name on an owl to put in the tree. I think it will be cute!

With this purchase which included a tree, owls, a squirrel, racoon, and bird, the leaf clip board, and the previous purchase of the monkeys I'm wondering if my classroom theme will be forest, or jungle, or animals! ;)

Classroom Books

This past weekend I went to Books-A-Million (they were having some great sales!) and 2nd and Charles - a fabulous new bookstore where you can sell your books to earn in-store credit or cash and then get to buy great used books at wonderful prices. I used money from selling my college textbooks to purchase many of these - college textbooks for classroom books, good trade in my opinion!

I'm excited about having a good start to my classroom library. I hope my students like these books!

Digi Web Studio Sale!

Thanks to Teaching Blog Addict I was made aware of a sale from Digi Web Studio that lasts until midnight tonight. Everything was only a dollar! So I bought a few "Digital Stamps" - my first digital stamp purchase - some cute little students holding school items (as seen above). :)

And of course, a new clip art purchase had to lead to a new blog header since I learned how to do that a few days ago. I think these little students are so cute! I'm loving my blog's new look.

First "Homemade" Blog Header Attempt

After seeing all the amazingly cute and creative teaching blogs around I wanted to try to make mine a little cuter as well. So, I attempted to make a header for my blog! I tried to google how to do it and came across many sites that told you how to do so. However, I do not speak computer terms very well and ended up very confused.....I knew it had to be more simple than the google sites were making it sound. I decided to just go to paint, put the paint document in the correct dimensions and saved it as a picture file which I uploaded to here!

I know it is not the prettiest or the most sophisticated blog header, but I was happy that I figured it out! I'm sure I will play around with it more and more to figure out the way to customize my blog but until then here is my "homemade" header. :)

(I just love the owl!!)