Staying Busy During the Summer

Hi Friends!

I hope you are enjoying your summer so far & (if you're as crazy as I am) planning for next school year. I'm not going to lie - I spend all year long thinking of a million different ideas for TPT products that I would love to make if I had the time and now that I have the time I can't remember any of them! I'm seriously stumped. So if you have any suggestions, feel free to comment and share them with me.

Goal for next year: keep all ideas in one place and don't lose them! (I started a running list and I'm pretty sure it was thrown away during the big move out of my classroom).

Right now I am working on a Back to School Survival kit for you all :) It is not even close to being done, but I did finish the classroom organization section and thought I would go ahead and share some ideas with you now.

I made some Rainbow Labels for those of you who are interested in getting started on organizing your own classroom. Good luck! And please share pictures if you use them - I would love to see how you put these labels to use :)

Makeover Madness Continued

Alright, I'm obsessed. I made over one product and now I want to make them all over! 

Here is my new & improved Kindergarten Progress Report:

*I updated the cover to make it more inviting & to provide more information about the product

*I edited the page layout to make it easier for teachers to use and parents to understand

*I add some important content that students need to master in Kindergarten

Here's my before and after picture:

TPT Seller Challenge Week 1: Makeover Madness

It's finally Summer!!!!!!

I have been on vacation for almost a week now but, as I mentioned in a previous post, I had to jet set to the East Coast for my brother's wedding on our last day of school. The entire wedding weekend was a blast and I didn't have a single second to stop and accept the fact that the school year is really over!

I am feeling excited, relieved, sad, and nervous for many reasons - It's always a relief to finish another school year, however this year I packed up my Kindergarten classroom that I have been working in for the last three years, turned in my keys and said goodbye because I won't be returning to my school next year. I am excited for what lies ahead as I make the move from California to Maryland, but I always hate to leave anywhere that has become a home to me. Of course I had to get one last picture of me and my classroom door that is no longer mine and I won't be walking through every day *sniff*:

To keep myself busy and not feeling sad about leaving some people that I have really learned to love (students, coworkers, families, friends, etc..) I have decided to take part in the TPT Seller Challenge! I started today with a product makeover that you can check out in my TPT store.

I not only updated the cover, but also edited the layout and content of many of the pages. Click on the picture if you want to grab a copy for yourself :)

Memory Books

Wow. I have been meaning to post about so many different things these past few weeks and have just been way too busy to sit down and actually do it! We are down to three days of school left which in itself is crazy, hectic, and exhausting, but on top of that I am moving from beautiful California back to (also beautiful in a different way) Maryland this summer.

I have been a crazy person trying to get my classroom completely packed up and ready to be handed over on our last day of school because I am leaving that night on a red eye flight for Maryland to make it there in time for my brother's rehearsal dinner and wedding!!! Unfortunately I can't share everything that we've ben up to you with you right now, but I can share our End of the Year Memory Books because I finally (*almost) got them done!

My brilliant Room Mom suggested that we make photo albums for the students for the end of the year and I loved the idea but then started imagining all the money we would spend on albums, pictures, and didn't like the fact that their writing and thoughts would not be included. SO I decided to create a Memory Book that the kids could write in about things from this year like: their teacher, buddy, favorite memories, favorite things, and more but that ALSO included room for them to put photos from this year!

Now, this was a big project so don't think that you can just print and have the kids do the entire thing on their own. This took a lot of careful planning and one-on-one help but I will say that the results have turned out to be so worth it!

In case you don't know this yet, I have a slight case of OCD, so to prepare for this activity I printed out every page of the book for each student and placed the pages in large Ziploc bags - 1 bag for each kid with all pages inside. Then my room mom and I printed photos for each child (I only have 13 so it wasn't too expensive) and organized them into envelopes labeled with each student's name.

In class I had each them take the cover page out of their bag and decorate it as beautifully as they possibly could. We traced their names in black marker and then I cut and glued them on to neon cardstock because I am too controlling to let them do these things themselves.

Next I showed them how to complete every page of the book and then allowed them to work independently as I walked around and helped them along the way. I told them that they were only allowed to take out one page at a time to avoid having everyone mix up pages.

Once everyone finished every page, I laminated all of them (I think they would look fine without laminating but figure they will last longer this way), made sure they were in the correct order, and three hole punched all of them.

Tomorrow, if all goes as planned, I will tie them all together with ribbons and will finally be done :)

If you want to make the same Memory Books as we did, you can head on over to my TPT store and pick up a copy for yourself! I made different covers for grades K-8 so you can use this product even if you don't teach Kinder. Enjoy!