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?

Busy!!!

Hello to all my blog buddies out there and a special hello to any of you that are already back to school.  Confession time....I am always a little (lot) jealous when you are all posting that you are done with school in May and early June. Enough about that.....

I have had quite a week!  I feel a bit like a princess I will admit.  I have added a few new members to my creative team. The first member is Hot Mama...

Now I know that you may be a friend of mine and reading this and you are saying "But Lori! I TOLD you how great this thing was!" and you would be correct BUT why didn't you put me in your car and drive me to the closest store?   This little lady in combination with the new printer that we needed to buy because our old one died, has made me so darn productive!

I still have not used her to her full potential yet because we are still getting to know each other but September is coming.....

The other member of the team that joined me just last night is Big Daddy.  Now I have had my old mac laptop for 5 years or so.
That apparently makes it geriatric.
I like to use things until they wear out.
I wore it out.
It will remain in our family as the kids computer but Big Daddy will be my (and hubby's, of course) computer.

I am not sponsored by Mac in any way but have to say how much I LOVE this company.  I was in and out of the store in 20 minutes with my new computer and directions on how to transfer the information from my old computer to my new one. Here they are talking to each other....too cool.

Ok...enough gushing.  Onto a cute project that I did this afternoon.

While I was cruising the blogs I came across a cute project by one blogger for a dry erase board that was embellished with vinyl.  I have gone back to see who it was so that I could give her credit but could not find it! I did find that you can "like" a post on Bloglovin so I will be using this feature from now on!

So....you can get this really cute dry erase board at Walmart for less than $4.  It comes in pink, purple, blue and white.  Very basic and the magnets were kinda ugly.

I got the cricut humming and cut a little black vinyl to cutify it.  This will hang inside my classroom door to let me know when adults take students out of the room for therapies.  I have 4 children with IEP   plans this year and 2 children with 504 plans so I anticipate that there will be a lot of traffic in and out of my room.

I took care of the ugly magnets with a couple of cute owl stickers.

And...of course while I was there I had to take advantage of the 50 cent composition books.

The girl at the register asked "Are you a teacher?"

Do non-teachers buy composition books 24 at a time????

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my birthday.

I have always loved having a summer birthday.  Today I got to spend the day at one of my city's art festivals with one of my dear friends.  I had a fantastic dinner prepared by my wonderful husband and a yummy cake that my Mom and Dad brought over.

I am a lucky girl!

My husband and I bought our fantastic camera to count as our Mother's Day/Father's Day/birthday/anniversary present.  I do love my new camera (named Fancy Pants by the above mentioned dear friend)

I have spent July vacationing with my family and using Fancy Pants a TON! 

My parents asked me what I wanted for my birthday...so of course I said that I wanted a ...

laminator! 

So excited!

Unfortunately, that means that I am going to start doing school work.  I just printed some stuff so that I can practice with my new toy!  

Back in the Saddle

Well...it is August.

I have not done much for the upcoming school year as of today but since I just got back from my second vacation, I feel that I need to get back into the back-to-school swing of things.  

I have 2 things in the works for the TpT store. One is a science unit full of water experiments and the other is a set of flashcards that will help my firsties improve their number sense and make them quicker at identifying numbers.

But for now, I am going to share some pics from my vacation to Washington DC and Baltimore!  It was such a great trip for my family.  We stayed with friends that lived in between DC and Baltimore so we did not have to pay for a place to stay.  We took the metro often and saw so much.  Here are some highlights!

We visited Abe.
He still has green paint all over him.
 It does not take away from the majesty of that monument.

The Capitol is beautiful.
The day was picture perfect.

The Library of Congress was a photographer's dream!

The colors and details are lovely.  

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

Indeed.

We stopped by to say hello to the Obama family.  

I was hoping that we would get invited to dinner 

since President Obama and I have the same birthday 

but...that did not happen...this time!

We visited the National Zoo...

...and saw this chubby cutie!

We went to the National Air and Space Museum to see the Space Shuttle Discovery.
Way.
Cool.

We went to the Baltimore Orioles Game and sat behind home base.
About 30 stories up, but behind home base!

My daughter got up on the jumbo tron during the "dance cam" segment!

So fun!

By far the most amazing thing we saw was the changing of the guard at Arlington National Cemetery.

A VERY busy vacation but terrific for my kids.  They appreciated the things that they saw and could handle the amount of walking that we did. I hope that the things that we saw will stay in their memories  for years to come.