Last Summer Five for Friday (Boo!)

Wow! That was a FAST week! Why don't they go this fast during the school year???

Anyway, this is my last Five for Friday post of the summer as I start school next Tuesday.  I am nervous for this year and sad to see summer go.  I hope that I am succesful at meeting the challenges that I am going to face this school year.

I have met some of the kiddos and they all seem sweet.
It is not the children that I am concerned about.
It is the stupid APPR and testing scores.
Oh well...we move on....

My F4F posts this week seem to mostly surround my (personal) kiddos.  I am spending as much time as I canwith them this week.

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My son plays on the JV volleyball team for his school.  I am struggling with the fact that he is going to high school.  Luckily, this is more stressful for me than it is for him.

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This is my Japanese anemone.  It is my favorite plant in the garden mostly because it blooms at the end of the summer.  It is taller than me and is just lovely.

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We went to Friendly's for lunch this week.  I let the girl get this huge, tall, really blue drink.  Not sure if that makes me the best mom in the world or the worst!  

Guess it depends on who you ask!

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This week my son turned 14.  I usually torture him on his birthday by making him pose with something of his from his babyhood.  I do this with him because he was a preemie that was born 6 weeks early.  He was not really, really tiny but was a sickly little thing and in the NICU for the first 22 days of his life.  

A rough time for us all.  

So seeing my son (who has grown 6 inches this past year) wearing men's size 12 shoes and so healthy and happy makes me want to capture it in pictures!

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I went out to dinner with my high school BFF last weekend.  We ate at a great Mexican restaurant and chose the outside patio.  Even though there was a bee that seemed to want to share our carafe of sangria, we had a fantastic time.  She is also an educator and we were talking about our "back to school" dreams.  Turns out that we both have the SAME dream!  It involves being in our high school, not able to unlock the locker, not knowing where our class was, etc..... (you know the one!). This completely cracked us up...funny that we had not talked about it sooner!  We went for a nice evening walk after dinner through part of the city and I still felt that I could have chatted for several more hours! Here we are then and now....

(warning...it might be hard to tell the difference! HA!)

 Oh well.....I hung up "THE" poem.....guess we are ready!

Happy New Year to everyone starting next week!

Five for Friday-ish (2nd in a ROW!)

Don't look at the post date....it is Saturday, I know, but I am trying to cram every last bit of sumer fun into my days as I can! So here is my Five for "Friday" post complete with absolutely NO school pictures.  There will be time for that later, right?

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I saw these beauties at the grocery store.  They were so pretty....every year I say that I want to grow my own and then August comes and I haven't.  Maybe next year!

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This picture is my incredible "growing-up-way-too-fast" daughter.  Her birthday was in early June and I asked her if she would be willing to hold off on her birthday party until summer.  She did and we just now got around to it.  Pedicures at Pamper Me Pink and a sleepover. Well, the "over" happened but I am not sure that the "sleep" did.

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Last weekend, my hubby and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversay and wanted to go and spend a day to celebrate.  We are lucky to live in Western NY and have the beautiful Finger Lakes practically in our back yard.  If you have never been to "upstate" NY, the Finger Lakes are well known for their wine...enough said! We stopped at a few wineries but this is my favorite!

 It is Hazlitt winery and is not your stuffy, nose-in-the-air winery.  There is a party patio and wine slushies.  Fun!

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Happy 15th to my husband!
(that is Seneca Lake behind us)

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While on our getaway, we visited Watkin's Glen and walked the Gorge Trail.  It is "gorge"-ous (insert mandatory, corny borrowed gorge pun here) to say the least.  I took about 150 pics along our mile long trail and they were all beautiful.

I don't start back to school until after Labor Day so I may be able to squeak in one more non-teaching 5-for-Friday! 

Bee Well All!

Storage Solution? I hope so!

SO, in about 2 weeks,  I will have the largest class that I have had in many years.  While setting up my room I am trying to come up with as many ways as I can to minimize movement throughout the classroom.

I needed a way to store the different folders and binders that the children have.  I am going to give this a try.....

First, I raided the hubby's zip tie collection....

I bought a bunch of crates. I tried to get the table colors but the yellow table will be dealing with black.

I had to get the crates that have holes in them so that you can zip tie the crates together.  

Hopefully this will do the trick. I wll try to get pictures of them filled with goodies!

.....and I got a new lunchbox....   

 I feel like such a scatterbrain...sorry for the lack of excitement in this post!

Five for Friday

I have never participated in a five for Friday but today is the day...

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I am missing being here.  I am feeling sad about summer ending. It has been a wonderful summer of hanging with my family and friends and I am not quite ready to let it go.  Luckily we don't start until after Labor Day but staff development and driving back and forth to JV volleyball practice is making summer feel distant.  I think that I am going to print this picture that I took at the lake and hang it in my classroom....we have already reserved the cottage for next year! Hooray!

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I love Target. It is 1 mile from my house.  Sometimes I just go get a slushie and walk around the store.....sigh...

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I worked in my room a bit this week.  I was using some contact paper to pretty up some shelves that I have in my room.  It doesn't look bad but the paper is not liking to stick completely...time will tell but it looks nice now anyway.

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When I went into school today I saw this being installed.  It is our new school security system. I felt kinda bummed when I saw it.  The logical side of me says that it is a necessity but the other side is angry that we need it.

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I think that I may need this.  I like that they don't limit it to just margaritas....it expands to include "frozen concoctions". Nice.

Thanks Doodlebugs Teaching for hosting the linky and for making this cute sign advertising the B2S sale this weekend! 

Primary Divas will be participating. 

Click on my sidebar to go to our store!

Busy Bee...

I have been CREATING like crazy over here at Bee the Change!  

I am planning to spend the day in my classroom tomorrow and wanted to get a bunch of stuff ready to send to the print shop and to hang up in my classroom.  Here is what I have been up to!

I do writer's workshop and I have the students keep some of their writing in a 3-ring binder.  These forms will be what separates the writing pieces.  You can click on the picture to go to my Tpt store, Primary Divas.

I also made some calendar cards for my months of the year.  I could not find exactly the ones that I wanted out there so I made my own.  

Ditto on the word wall cards.... (coming to the Tpt store soon)

I am hoping to get enough done in my room tomorrow to get some pictures!
Wish me luck!

Classroom Library

I was in my classroom today and thought that the only thing that I could handle was the library.

Keeping my books organized and making re-shelving books easy for 5 year-olds has always been a goal of mine.  Here are a few pictures of what I have going right now.

I have character baskets that I have carried through frim my days of kindergarten.  I do author of the month with different books but these are the characters that the children are most comfortable with and the pictures on the ends of the buckets make it easy for them to put them back in the correct basket. (The bottom red bucket is Clifford...he needs a label)

For the rest of my fiction books, I organize them by author's last name.  I mark the corner of the books with a letter that corresponds to buckets with those letters.  I do not worry too much about having multiple letters in a bucket.  This makes it easy for me to find a book that I want to use for any spur of the moment lesson. 

 For my non-fiction books, I organize them into 2 groups.  The first group is non-fiction books about animals.  I have a TON of these books!  I put a bright orange sticker in the corner of these books and there are 4 spots on the top of the book cart where they can go.  I apologize for those disgusting-looking labels! ICK!

The second half of that cart belongs to non-fiction books that are NOT about animals.  These books include books about plants, racecars, families, weather etc... I use bright pink stickers in the corners of those books so that they can easily be placed in the book cart.

After taking these pictures, I went home and immediately made NEW cart labels, laminated them and put them on the cart.  Rest easily....they are pretty again....

How does everyone out there organize their library?