Sweet Birthday Gift

My best friend, Ms. Baseball made me these adorable coasters for my birthday! Aren't they cute?? She is definitely more crafty than I am, but she is also great at sharing her ideas! Check out her blog for a how-to on making these! Diary of a Pitcher's "Wife" (her longtime boyfriend is a minor league pitcher!)

The best part? She made them in my favorite colors, Go Ducks! (especially nice considering she's a rival college Beaver :) ) Show her some love and follow her page! :)

Wouldn't these be a great gift for a teacher??

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In the room again...

I feel like I have spent every day this summer either working on stuff for next year or working on my classroom. Yet, it also seems like nothing gets checked off my to-do list. So frustrating! I know a lot is getting done, but many of these projects are big and I am only completing progress towards them, not getting them finished. Does anyone else feel that way? Part of it is my own fault, I keep finding awesome ideas on all of your blogs and implementing them in my room...LOTS of extra tasks I have created due to this :) But my kids will thank you for it!!

So today, shockingly, I was in my room again. I spent about 2 hours laminating and working on changing my bulletin boards. For the past 3 years I haven't taken down the paper I have only changed the borders and contents, so that has helped with time. This time around, I am changing the layout of my room so today I took down all of the old stuff and put up new ones. Just measuring paper takes a lot of time on its own! Here is some of the progress I made today....

Closets that I need to clean out (we put all of our stuff in there for the summer cleaning) 

All of the loot I have accumulated from Target and the Dollar Store that I get to decide where  to use. :)

New Math (yellow) and Reading (green) boards. Our new carpets will help facilitate easy rotations between the two subjects. Yay! Thanks to Mrs. Sneaker's friend at another school in our district for this idea!

My new table arrangement. Hoping this will work! It will depend on how many kiddos I get this year, because the tables are kind of close...

My new word wall! It used to be over on the other side of the room, but with the new streamlined math/reading area it works better here!

My new reading corner. I am so excited about this! It has our leveled reading books on the bookshelf and lots of fun pillows and such to cuddle with while reading. hopefully this will help the kids want to read instead of look at my picture books which are on the other carpet. I also plan on sitting on this carpet during out "flag/country of the week" time, where we will learn about a new country that corresponds with our letter of the week. I feel like it's kind of random having it in the reading corner, but will see if it works.

As you can see, there is still a lot to do and quite a bit of chaos and garbage :) It's a work in progress! But now I feel like I can wait to go back in until next week when my awesome teammate Mrs. Sneaker returns from Germany! We're planning on getting a lot done with planning and in between that I should be able to do some organizing to finish up the room!

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Help leveling books

I've leveled my classroom library but am stuck trying to figure out reading levels on a box set that I bought from Scholastic called the Dora The Explorer Phonics Set. Are any of you fabulous bloggers able to help me figure out what reading level they would be?? Any help is much appreciated!!

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Canada Recap

Hey lovely blog friends!

I am back and finally starting to feel settled in! It's amazing how a short vacation can actually make you feel MORE stressed! I came back to a house that needed to be cleaned badly, lots of work to do in my classroom, and a lot to work on for the church children's program I am working to start with a group of wonderful people! Here is a short recap:

2 of my best friends and myself drove up to washington last week to surprise my mom for her birthday. We went to rainforest cafe and it was so much fun!! She was really surprised :) Bonus- I got to see my adorable niece and nephew! Don't you just love her face? haha.

After lunch we stayed the night at my parents new house and enjoyed the lake just a 5 minute walk away. We had so much fun with them! My parents are pretty awesome :)

Then we got up early friday and drove the rest of the way to Vancouver, BC. I LOVE this city!! We went dancing friday night after a fun bbq. Here are some pics of the girls and I reunited

The next day we drove into the city and stayed the night with one of the girls. Her view is spectacular!!

Overall it was a super fun and relaxing weekend!! I love these girls so much! 

Now i'm back to reality, working on lists for what we need to buy for the new church children's ministry and such, plus working on my classroom trying to get ready! We officially start back on the 29th, but there's so much to do I keep trying to get as much as I can done so I'm prepared. We all know when Mrs. Sneaker gets back from Germany we'll spend as much time catching up on our missed chatting time as we do planning :) (Hurry and come home, missy!:) )

Are you feeling the stress of school starting? The summer goes too fast!!

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Canada or bust!

I'm road tripping with my girlfriends to canada! Yesterday we drove to seattle to surprise my mom for her birthday! we had so much fun and my mom was totally surprised! Now we are leaving their place and heading to the border! Tonight we'll stay at a friends outside of vancouver bc and then tomorrow we'll spend sat and sunday in downtown! Pics to come!!!

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Creative minds needed

I just got these super cute popouts for my new Bee themed job chart! My classroom jobs are not fitting with the theme, can you help?

They are:
Table Boss (person who passes out to the table)
Line Leader
Door Holder
Attendance Person
Inspector(makes sure room in clean, lights are off, end of line)
Substitute

Cute names needed!! :)

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Hi bloggie friends!! Sorry it's been so long since I've written on here, it seems like all I have been doing is working, celebrating my birthday, and more working! I had a wonderful birthday and got to meet my 10 day old niece! Isn't she cute??

Now I'm off to school to get more laminating done! I've been working on making new file folder games for our new ELD pull-out time, check out my teammates blog Sneaker Teacher for more info on what we will be doing! I'll update with pics soon!

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