First Day Hooray!

I love the first day of school. I love that I get nervous the night before the first day after MANY years of school. I even love the piles of papers, late busses and 10 minute lunch break!

We had a great day....you know.....lots of talking and not having a solid schedule, getting to know you activities and sorting school supplies.

I gave them outside recess in between raindrops today because I thought that they would like to get outside to play but a few friends were disappointed that we did not have inside recess. I suspect that they were interested in finding out what I had in the blue recess buckets on the shelf! I felt guilty about denying them....right....and we played a little at the end of the day.

I love watching children play. They had the buckets of toys out, dropped and picked up the Lego box that got dropped on the floor, ooo-ed and aahhhh-ed over the transformers, matchbox toys and McDonald's toys that were in the buckets and one friend even read a book that he found in the classroom library.

I really loved watching the girls explore a bucket of shells......

..........a wonderful day indeed.

What was your favorite part about the first day?

Bee the Change~

Aha!

I think that I may have figured out why I am having difficulty getting back into the swing of things! I have not started one of my favorite back-to-school rituals. Every year at about this time, I read 2 books that have influenced my teaching and are just plain enjoyable.

The first book is Reading with Meaning by Debbie Miller. I own 2 copies of this book. My original copy has all of my notes and thoughts written in the margins. It was damaged by water (a leaky water bottle in my work bag) and mildewed. Sadly I had to buy a new one but still have not had the strength to throw the old one away. Alas....... Debbie's book is full of pictures from her classroom (a place that I would LOVE to learn in) and her style of writing is so nurturing and calming. My favorite part of the book is the prologue when she describes her room before and at the end of the first day of school. The prologue is titled It Doesn't Get Better Than This. I agree Debbie!

My next favorite is Growing Readers by Kathy Collins. Her book focuses on units of study for Reading Workshop. Kathie does a great job of providing mini-lessons for young readers. I really like the early chapters on setting the tone and building good habits.

I am going to go now and start writing some new notes in the margins of my books!

What are your go-to teacher resources?

Bee the Change~

Need to Make the Shift!

Well....it is Saturday. 2 m ore days until I am back at school and 3 more until 21 little faces are peering at me wondering what to do. I need to settle in and figure out what to do myself! I am distracted by some of the projects that I have started so I am going to finish the projects and hope that I am able to shift gears into what I am supposed to do!

One of the projects that I was working on was making a sign for above my classroom door. My friend Becky (check out her new classroom blog HERE) started this project and slowly we are getting some up above the doors! I made mine and one for each of my first grade team members.

My Owl

Marilyn LOVES Kermit.

Beth is a kitty-lover!

These have been fun and I am sure will perk up the hallway!

Bee the Change~

20 followers?

Yeehaw!

Thanks everyone!

Bee the Change~

Moonlight Madness

Getting ready for back-to-school is crazy! At my school we start the with the kids the Wednesday after Labor Day and we have to report that Tuesday. So you can imagine how NUTS we were when the district told us that they were shutting down the power in the building for the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of the week before Labor Day to install a generator! Really?

Well, we took lemons and made some crazy lemonade. Piggybacking off of an idea that I had heard from a teacher friend of mine that works in another district, we decided to run a "Moonlight Madness" night on the Tuesday before the "blackout". (We originally called it Midnight Madness but we had to be out by 10pm).

The night ran from 6-10 and myself (MC Lori "Did I ever tell you the story about how Jon BonJovi touched my hand once" Faas and another teacher, MC Heather "I AM Jessie's Girl" Shaw were the MCs for the night.

We started off the night with a contest. It was to see who could produce a gift that a student had made for them. As we awaited contestants, we played "Hot For Teacher" over the speaker throughout the school. After running down the hall and taking out the competition, Elissa won with her personalized covered composition book. She won a mystery bag containing a candy bar, bandaids, hand sanitizer and an apple. We changed the rules for the next giveaway so as not to have anyone injured while sprinting! :)

Our next giveaway was "Come to the office wearing your tackiest holiday apparel". Our principal was the judge and the birthday cake hat worn by Becky was the winner!

At 8:00 we all met in the faculty room for some snacks and chatting (can you tell that we got a LOT of WORK done???) We never are at a loss for yummy snacks when we are together!

After our snacks we did a "walk about" tour of the school to see what everyone was doing in their classrooms. This was a great time! It is not often that the 3-5 grade teachers and the K-2 teachers get to see what is going on in each others' classrooms! There was a lot of ooooo-ing and aaahhhh-ing.

The last giveaway of the night was given to Kathie and Ellen who were able to produce items that are in their classrooms that were theirs as a child.

It was a fun night of laughs and bonding and a good way to get "back into the swing of things".

What do you do to bond as a faculty?

Bee the Change~

Getting Ready

I have never been a classroom teacher that has not had kids of my own. I started teaching when my oldest was 2 so I have always battled the home/school tug-o-war. I have always wanted to find a way to make that 5pm transition from school to home a smoother one. Now that my kids are in 7th and 4th grade and homework is our main afternoon activity, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and do the project that I have always wanted to do.

I don't know about any of you but my house is a black hole for writing utensils. We can never find a pencil.....rrrgggg! While the school supplies are cheap I tend to buy them and stash them so that when we run out, I can re-supply. These little supply boxes made for each of my children are (hopefully) going to solve that problem. The boxes were found at Target for $3.99 each and they are about 4 inches high. Not too big at all! They also stack very nicely on top of one another. It makes homework supplies portable and right at their fingertips. Now I have a place to store the "extra" supplies!

(cricut machine and vinyl, in case you were wondering)

I think that I am going to post these pictures on my classroom blog for parents and also on my personal blog for all of my friends with children. If you follow more than this blog, sorry for the duplicate! If you make one of these boxes, let me know and send me a pic!!!!

~~ Lori~~

This is a test....

I have been exploring Scribd. today and am putting out this test post to see if I like it better than google docs. Any thoughts from those out there following me that use either/both?

Top Ten

~~Lori