Another Giveaway!

Erica at Erica's Elementary Excitement is having a giveaway! Check out her blog for a chance to win a $50 Lakeshore Learning giftcard AND a $25 Target giftcard!

A Few of My Favorite Things

I was inspired by Mrs. Jump's latest post to blog about a few of my favorite classroom items. 

1. My Smart Board! Love, love, love it. 

 

2. Post -its of all shapes and sizes.  You can never have enough Post- It notes!

3. Dice of all shapes and sizes. I like dice with the alphabet and with numbers. Many of my math tubs and literacy centers include an activity using dice.... Not to mention all of the dice games we can play during math.

4. Paper baskets. Great mode of organization for student papers, literacy centers and math tubs!!

5. And last but not least, the topic of many of my latest posts, random containers from Target.

What are a few of your favorite things?

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 !
 

Target $1 Spot

I love the $1 spot at Target! Throughout the school year I am constantly buying containers that I might use at school.....even if I have no idea what I'm going to do with it I can't resist! Today was our last day of school and when I started packing up my supplies and organizing my desk I found a use for the vinyl baskets I purchased last week. Each basket fits perfectly into my desk drawer, so I was able to organize the glue sticks, rolls of tape, post-it notes etc.! The mini buckets are perfect for holding dry erase markers or even  sticks with the student's names. I like to hang my bucket of names up on the easel so that I have easy access to it at all times. I also love using the various containers for sight word games. 

I purchased the popcorn containers at the beginning of the year to use for a game. I wrote our classroom popcorn words and the word "Pop" on large craft sticks and put the sticks into the container. The students take turns picking out a stick and reading it, if they read "POP" the student puts all of their sticks back into the container and starts over. A friend who teaches first grade shared that idea with me-- Brilliant!