Stamp Organization...I think I have my solution!

Here are my alphabet stamps.  This is what they looked liked on the last day of school and I haven't had the energy to organize them. . . again.  

A few weeks ago I found a storage container at Wal-Mart.  After a minor alteration (my hubby used his dremel and cut out a few slots for the ink pad) my stamps are now sporting a new look:

Loving it! 

So now I have this left over:

Which ties into another project I am working on.

 I have been cutting letters out of food boxes.   The old alphabet stamp box will be perfect for sorting the smaller letters I've cut out of the boxes.  It will also be great fine motor skills as they pick up the small letters and manipulate them to the correct slot.

Duct Tape Love

This USED to be an ugly brown clipboard.  

5 minutes + adorable duct tape= 

adorable polka dotted clipboard

I am in Duct Tape LOVE!  : )

The question that remains. . . will it survive 26 kindergartners next year without peeling? 

 I'll be honest with you. . . if it peels this will be a short love affair.

Sorry Duct, just being honest.

My Favorite Things & Easy Access to Freebies!

Mary from Sharing Kindergarten started a fun linky about favorite things. I love her button! So cute!

Here goes:  

My Favorite Things (in no particular order)

And of course. . . 

I've added some tabs to the top of my blog for easy access to my freebies and a freebie linky tab.  Mor over at A Teacher's Treasure put the linky together and it is fabulous. . .all links lead to freebies!

Enjoy!

You Know It's Summer Vacation When...

Love this linky party from Kindergarten Lifestyle!  Can't wait to see everyone's response!

Hee Hee. . .  Love you sweetie. . .but it's TRUE!  : )  

Loving this Clip Art! (Freebie alert!)

Ever bought a clipart set and the ideas just started rolling?  I am just loving this clipart collection from Scrappin Doodles.  So many fun things to make without having to spends hours searching for a picture to represent each letter of the alphabet!  I just posted another packet to TPT using the same clipart I used on the A-Z intro pages.   If you're interested in checking it out click the picture above to go to my TPT store. Only $3.00! 


The same clipart was also inspiration for this I Have Who Has game.  Click on the picture to download your copy for frrreeeee (my most fav-or-ite word in the whole wide world!)

Oh. . .and fyi . . .teachers are a lot like real people and they make mistakes ( this will be our little secret!)  Soooo. . . .if you see a mistake in the freebie feel free to hollar nicely point it out!   : )    It has not been tested in my room yet and I'm always a little nervous to share things I haven't used yet!!

: )    : )    : )    : )    : )     : )     : )    : )

My Many "Modes" & Check out my bargains!

I've noticed that my "teacher brain" works in cycles.  It goes something like this:


May: (after school get out of course):  Shut Down Mode Teacher brains shuts off (lots of time spent reading, relaxing and mentally reviving)


June:  Organization mode!  I scour blogs & pinterest for the "best" way to organize for next year and I SHOP!  Mostly I shop for containers and other organizing "stuff."


July:  Fun mode! Start putting all those fun organizing containers in my classroom and decorating!


August:  "Oh Crap" Mode b/c now I am starting to wonder...what am I going to teach them for the 1st two weeks, when will I get my finalized list so I can actually label everything and praying that I have a good class!


September: Time Warp Mode  Seriously is October, routine and normalcy ever going to get here?  Let's speed this month up!


October/November/December:  Seasonal Love Mode  These are my FAVORITE 3 months b/c routine is in place, we're rockin' right along learning lots and the seasons are so much fun!


January/February/March:  Slow Motion Mode  Oh..Em..Gee the LONGEST 3 months of the year!   


April/May:  Emotional Mode  I can do this, 6 more weeks!  :)   These kids need to go to first grade...I am exhausted!  : (   Oh, look how much they've learned, bless their hearts.  : )   Really?  We're still doing THAT?  Didn't we learn not to do THAT the first week of school?  : (  Oh...I am going to miss them soooo much next year. : )   


I am in Organization Mode now but throughout it all I ALWAYS in cheap mode!  See the bags at the top of my post?  That's my haul so far.  My hubby just roles his eyes as the bags pile up!  So...here's what I've found so far (it's been raining a lot this week...shopping is keeping my girls and I sane!!)

5 small containers from Hobby Lobby for all those items that are too small to put in big tubs like q-tips, button, etc.  Or...kids could use them for sorting.  5 container for $3.00 (60 cents a piece) not bad...so of course I bought 3.

Sorting trays from Wal-Mart.  $1.00 (bought 4...one of each color they had)

Traveling soap containers to organize my playing cards.  2 for $1.00 at the dollar store

Love this idea:  my genius coworker Jill puts a bucket and small dust pan at each table for cleaning up scraps.  LoVe!  Buckets were 2 for $1.00 at dollar store and small dust pan/broom was $1.00 at same store.

Duct tape to recover my old worn out clipboards.  $3.00 (I think) from Target.  I usually get my tape from HyVee when they have it on sale but I loved this polda dot design!  Couldn't pass it up!

Crayon buckets to sort crayons by color so kids "missing" colors can easily grab a new one.   Stealing this idea from Jill also.  I've seen it on pinterest also but they actually spray painted cans.  I am not that artistic...pretty sure I'd make a giant mess of that!  So, Target dollar isle had red, green, blue and yellow ($1.00 each) Hobby lobby had orange, purple, pink and the zebra (for black and white crayons!) for $1.99. I figured I'd spend more than that on spray paint.   Only missing color is brown...I might just put those in the orange bucket???

This was my most expensive purchase...$5.00 from Wal-Mart.  It has up to 28 compartments.  If you saw my earlier post about my alphabet stamps you will know my love/hate relationship with these stamps.  I am hoping to organize the stamps so that all 26 letters and a stamp pad will fit in this case.  Haven't attempted it yet but I will let you know once I give it a try!  Wish me luck!


I am 100%   70%    50% sure that will be my purchasing for this summer.


Thanks for making it to the end of this long post. . .you must have a really good attention span!  


Have a great weekend!

200 Followers Freebie, Blog Issues & Basement Make-Over

Yesterday, every time I tried to get on my blog, I got an error saying my blog was infected with malware....what the bleep?  I don't even know what that is!!  After hours of research and some nice friendly advice from Top Teachers I think I have it fixed.  This morning I got on and everything seemed fine....and nice surprise I reached 200 followers!  : )

To celebrate I am giving away my new TPT product,  A to Z intro pages, for today only!  Before I go to bed tonight it will go back to $2.00 so grab it now if you're interested and thank you for following my humble little blog!  Click here to go to my TPT store and get your feebie!

On another note, and totally unrelated to teaching, is my basement makeover!  Here is a picture of it before we even owned the house:

This winter my husband I and painted up a storm and now it looks like this:

It is, of course, a man cave!  You can see all  my hubbies hobbies in one room (he is in basement heaven).  

We have the Harley wall (the pink guitar is my daughter's!):

The car wall:

The Wet Bar:

And my favorite part of the room make over was the license plate wall:

We pulled the license plate theme to the other side of the basement as well:

It feels really really good to have that checked off our list.  Well, there is one more part.  There is a small entrance room to the basement with a movie theme.

We are waiting for our movie posters to arrive.  On the way, thanks to Amazon and on-line shopping, are posters from the movies ET, Star Wars, Blue Brothers, Indiana Jones, Goonies and Back to the Future.  Yes, we are a product of the 80's. . . and ok with admitting it!

Thanks for checking out my very NON- teaching related post!  Don't forget to get your freebie....it will be available for 10 more hours!

Done and finally feeling normal!

This is my whole school.  Isn't it neat?  Every year my principal thinks of a creative way to take an all school picture and one of our very talented parents sets it up and takes it for us.  Love it!!  Can you find me . . .I'm the one in black.  Haha!  




I've actually been done for a week now but it usually takes me that long to decompress.  Sigh.  Feels good.  I've been reading, lunching with friends and running my kids to their activities.  It's WONDERFUL! 


I've even had time to add a product to TPT.  It's a collection of A to Z intro pages we are going to use this coming year and also some beginning sounds picture cards and upper & lowercase letters.  We are going to use them for a pocket chart center. 

Click the picture of the cover if you'd like to check it out!  Only $2.00!

Summer Calendar Freebie

3 more days!!!  Hip Hip Hooray!  I'm just a little excited!  I have about a million things to check off my list in the next few days but right now I'm just blog hopping and relaxing- the end of the year chaos will start tomorrow.


I don't know about you but over the course of a school year there are a lot few worksheets I had copied and ready to go but did not actually get around to using.  (I hope copier lady is not reading this Shh.....)


Anyhoo. . .at the end of the year I take the majority of those pages and put them into a "summer work" folder for my students to take home.  I also include a summer activity calendar.  For a copy of the calendar click the picture. (clipart from DJ Inkers)  


I know all my kids will work in the folder over the summer and be SOOOO ready for First Grade and next year those First Grade teachers will say "WOW" and everything will be perfect.  Right? Well. . . a teacher can dream!  : )

Have you heard this song?

Kindergarten Wall

A few years ago I was desperately searching for a "fun" upbeat song to use in my end of the year DVD for my class and a friend of mine told me about this song.  It's called Kindergarten Wall by John McCutcheon and it's adorable!!  Click the arrow above to listen.

This year I'm using I Hope You Dance by Lee Ann Womack.  Do you do an EOY video for your class?  What song do you use?

CVC & CVCe sort (freebie)

My kiddos are doing pretty well with spotting magic e in a word and sounding out the word.  We've done lots of sorting, sounding out & drawing both CVC and CVCe words.  Click the picture above to receive a free copy of this sorting activity.


Here's the "bummer" part of the CVCe story....when I went to DIBEL my students this week some of them sounded out the nonsense words and put LONG vowels in the middle!  GRRRRR!!!!  Note to self:  do not introduce magic e until AFTER end of year testing!

8 more days....cha cha cha!!!

Teacher Appreciation Sale

Dear Teachers Everywhere:

When God created teachers, 

He gave us special friends 

To help us understand His world 

And truly comprehend 

The beauty and the wonder 

Of everything we see, 

And become a better person 

With each discovery. 

When God created teachers, 

He gave us special guides 

To show us ways in which to grow 

So we can all decide 

How to live and how to do 

What's right instead of wrong, 

To lead us so that we can lead 

And learn how to be strong. 

Why God created teachers, 

In His wisdom and His grace, 

Was to help us learn to make our world 

A better, wiser place.

YOU are appreciated for all you do!

Visit my TPT store May 6-8 enter the promo code above you'll receive 28% any of my products.  

God bless teachers!