School's Out for Summer

Tomorrow marks one week since our last day of school. I have been brainstorming since 3pm last Wednesday in preparation for next year. Today I made another (unnecessary but successful) trip to Target. Every time I walk into Target (of course after I check out the clothes and shoes) I am looking at every item in the $1 Spot wondering if I could use it at school. During today's trip I found small bucket tins that will serve as replacement crayons containers for next year.This year the students were constantly breaking their crayons throughout the year and I realized they cannot do their best coloring with broken crayons. I plan to fill each bucket with extra crayons of the same color and when a student breaks a red crayon they can walk over and get a new red crayon from the red crayon bucket on their own. I will label each bucket with the color name in order to introduce and improve color word recognition. Not only will they have beautiful (I HOPE!) coloring and recognize color words, but it will help the students become independent. Yes, I will probably have a broken crayon epidemic for a couple of days after the buckets are introduced, but I'm confident the idea is an effective time saver. Got to love the $1 Spot! Check out what others are buying Linky Party at Ladybug Teacher Files !