Thanks to Honey Bunch Blog Design!

I broke down and got a wonderful new design layout!  I thought it would help inspire me to get back to blogging!  I missed out on blogging most of this year due to the most overwhelming class ever!  Now that it's almost May I can see the light at the end of the tunnel--- except, now I kinda love those little stinkers!  Anyone ever had one of those years?

August Currently

I am sorry that I have been slacking!  I have been trying to relax a little before school begins.  I noticed that Farley had the August Currently up and going so I thought I would link up!

Here's what I am currently doing!

I will try to get myself more motivated to post what is happening in my classroom next week!
Kim

Progress at School aka My Room is Almost Ready!!

I have been up at school almost everyday for the past two weeks.  I have had some help from former and future students!  I am a little OCD (know as CDO at our house -- alphabetize everything!!)  So I always ask former kiddos that are fully trained in my library organization to help me out.  This is especially useful when you move rooms and things are in boxes. You can see one of my helpers is Watson!!  He loves to visit school and run around, checking in on all the teachers.

I managed to get the desks arranged into squares today.  You'll notice that there's a hole in the middle of the desk arrangement.  As I was strolling through Target on my daily visit I found these little babies.  I think they will fit perfectly in the middle of the desks and hold pencils and erasers!  Thank you Target Dollar Spot!

You may have also noticed all the boxes on the desks in the middle of the room.  Those would be the enVision consumables.  We are very fortunate to have a rockin' math curriculum, sadly the downside is that all the consumables come in prepackaged sets of 24.  As a grade level we have 3 sets of 24, do the math  --- yep, that's 72 consumables.  Did I mention we are expecting 80 kids for next year? We are 8 short!  I am in a large district and we are budget conscious/responsible.  Translation ---- other schools have extra student consumables that they need to send into our district office.  Are you following along?  The district will then gather extras from all of our elementary schools and send the 8 we need to us.  Now, what do you think the chances are that any one at those extra type of schools have sorted anything???  HMMMMMM.........  I am betting we won't start the year with the correct amount of consumables!!  Oh well, it's too soon to panic!

I am off to take darling child number three to get top braces!  She's so excited, God Bless her!  Here's a peek at her bottom braces she got about a month ago.  Well, they are hard to see but they are there!   Here's a shout out to Fry Orthodontics!  If you are in the KC area, I strongly encourage you to check them out.  We have been thrilled with the results -- and we are on child three now! 

Stay Cool!

Kim

Newbie Blog Hop

Grade Three is the Place for Me is having a blog hop for us newbies.  So I thought I would join up.  Here are the rules.

1. what state you are in

2. your current teaching position

3. your teaching experience

4. when you started blogging

5. share a blogging tip / blogging resource

 

Here are my answers

1. I am in Kansas.

2. I am teaching 2nd grade again! 

3. I have taught 1st (3 years), 2nd (3 years), 5th (1 year), and 6th (2 years).

4. I started blogging in late March.

5. Blogging tip - if you don't know what to do go check out Ladybug's Teacher Files  tutorials.  She has awesome resources for us newbies.

 

Good Luck !

Kim

Back to School Finds!

Ahhhh, Target how do I love thee, let me count the ways! 

Let's begin with the mini magnetic dry erase erasers.  They are 2 to a package, so I bought 12 packages!  (This is my middle daughter, a future teacher, holding up the goodies.)

On to my f-a-v-o-r-i-t-e section of the store, you know where I'm talking about.... the school supplies!  I found colored composition notebooks, so I bought 25 blue ones and middle daughter bought 25 green ones.  My Target has a limit of 25 on items, oh no!  I should have brought daughter three to help too, there's always next time.

I went crazy for dry erase markers.  Expo makers were on sale 4 for $2.50.  I don't know about you, but my kids NEVER bring dry erase markers.  I think it's because they are expensive, and parents don't realize how much we use them.  I bought 8 packages.  Four packages in traditional colors and four packages in cool, hip colors.  I stopped by Michael's on the way home, because I was so excited to try out a Pinterest inspired project.  Yep, I hot glued a pom pom onto the top for an instant eraser!  (I guess my theme for the day was erasers.)

I debated on buying crayons, but decided I would try to wait until I got my classroom budget.  In the past our principal has given us $100 to spend on our classroom. I am praying that we will still get some money.  Kansas is having some serious education finance issues, so I would be sad to see the money for our classrooms disappear.  I am curious, do other principals give out money for teachers to spend on classrooms?  How much?

Have a super day!

Kim

I Love Donors Choose!!

I was working on a donors choose project a couple of weeks ago when it dawned on me that I hadn't seen the project go live.  I tried to get onto my school e-mail, but of course the server was down!  Yesterday I logged in to email at school and low and behold, my project was funded!!!  YEEEHAAAWWW! 

I am getting my HearAll recorder!!  Yippee!!

I was so thrilled to see that Starbucks of Kansas was my sponsor.
 (I spend some serious $$ there!)

Thank you Starbucks for supporting my class!!

I already have another project under review, and hope it will be live today or tomorrow.  I am asking for 30 penguin books for an enormous, all second grade collaborative penguin research project.  I am praying that it will be funded by late November, because I want to start the research in December.  If you are feeling especially generous feel free to sponsor us.

Thanks!

Kim

Classroom Theme/Inspiration Linky

Corrina over at Surfin' Through Second is having a linky party!!  Yipee!

Today's linky is all about Classroom Theme, I am sticking with my ocean theme and adding touches of Pirates!!  I made some name tags and printed them out on wavy, water looking paper.

I am working on examples for the Writer's Cove.  I made these labels that I backed with more of the cool scrapbook paper.  I am going to display examples for each item.

I got some awesome FEE pirate kids word wall cards from teachers pay teachers, specifically www.frogsinfirst.blogspot.com!  Click on the picture to get your free download.  Don't forget to leave her some love!

Happy Sunday!

Kim