Five for Friday!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to share my Five for Friday!  My little guy is still recovering from his tonsil/adenoidectomy, so I have had a lot of time to work on school stuff this week.  Here are some of the things I have been up to.

I was somehow able to go shopping yesterday, thanks to my sweet grandparents watching my kiddos.  It was a culture shock to be out of the house by myself for more than 30 minutes.  I hit up Michaels, Target, and Old Time Pottery.  I took a picture of some of the things I stocked up on for my classroom.  

1.  The chevron tubs.  I bought these from Michaels.  I have 2 owl tubs that were purchased from Meijer and are the exact same size.  Right now, I have my Accelerated Reader books leveled in them.  I plan on adding the chevron and mixing it up a little!  I will probably end up buying a few more of both types.  I live for plastic tubs. :)

2.  Scentso Markers.  These were on clearance for 50 cents at Michael's!  50 CENTS!!!  My kids loved these things last year.  How did I use them, you ask?  I put a few in the writing center to help the kids spice up their writing, but my favorite function of these heavenly-scented things were in our My Work Rocks boxes {idea from Mrs. Osterman's Kindergarten Rocks blog}.  I learned about these at the Indiana Kindergarten Conference, and boy did my kiddos love them!  They are just art boxes filled with fun things, like these markers, cool pencils, Twistable crayons, etc.  My kids totally wanted those boxes every day.  I chose two friends to get these boxes each day, with the only stipulation being they couldn't use them on tests.  THEY LOVED THEM.  Best reward ever.  And, hold the phone, but I even found smelly glue sticks for this year.  My new kids will flip their lids.

3.  Mini-accordian files.  I found these in the Dollar Spot at Target.  My plan for these is to print out alphabet, number, sight word, and math facts cards, cut them out, and store them for each child in one of these doohickies.  They can take these back and forth from home to school, and hopefully this will help us all stay organized.  They are bright, and I plan to make a cute chevron/owl name label to add to the front.

4.  Owl clip boards.  These came from Michael's.  I read on DeeDee Wills' blog about her sticker system for assessing on the spot.  I am really excited to try these!  My plan is to use one clip board for the weekly nursery rhyme assessment and another for our weekly oral reading assessment.  We use a program called ESGI for our grading period assessments, so it is a modification of the way DeeDee uses hers.  But great idea!

5.  Chevron and owl binder clips.  From Michael's.  How did they know that this was my theme?  I'm pretty sure the people at Michael's made this collection just for me. :)

6.  Pretty chevron saying sign.  I found this lovely at Old Time Pottery.  It's cute, and I plan to put it behind my computer in my teacher area.  It was a steal at $11.99!  

7.  Misc. chevron items.  I found all of these at... you guessed it... Michael's.  There are cupcake liners for open house treats, chevron pens, and chevron and owl pencils for my kiddos.  I stock up on pencils anytime I can, because my kids have a weekly spelling tic-tac-toe board for homework, and the prize for turning it in (besides knowing their spelling words), is a brand new pencil.  

For our first day, I am going to do a photo booth with my kiddos.  I always take a first day picture, but it's going to be fun this year!  I bought a tri-fold presentation board, and I plan to make a chevron bunting to put behind it.  Not sure what it is going to say yet, but I'm leaning toward I {heart} Kindergarten!  Above, you will see an idea I got from Michelle at Apples and ABC's.  It's a wooden letter (which was on clearance at Michael's) and a sheet of scrapbook paper.  I traced the letter, cut out the pattern, and Mod Podged it to the wood.  It is just the most adorable and perfect little prop!

Photo Courtesy of Accessory Auctions

I bought my first day outfit this week.  Anyone else out there are obsessed with online shopping as me?  I have discovered a new spin on it... Facebook shopping.  I stumbled upon a little shop called Accessory Auctions on Facebook.  They are based out of Texas, and they have the CUTEST stuff.  And it's cheap.  Cute and cheap.  I can do that.  Anyway, they have an auction Monday-Friday at 8 CDT.  I bought this little chevron top, and it is just too cute for words.  Even cuter in person.  And yes, I am a goober for buying my first day outfit two months before it's needed.  But the first day is pretty much like prom to me. :)

Another thing I worked on while tending to my recovering boy was filling my OWL binders for next years Kindergarten Kids.  I am at a loss for which binder cover looks best.  I am loving the chevron and chalkboard, but it's missing something.  The red cover is not doing it for me either though.  Your input matters to me! :)

Finally, I went to school yesterday for the first time since school was out.  I walked in to find this.

Let me preface this by saying I love to read to my kids and to teach my kids to read.  It's not that.  I just really don't like textbooks.  I am making the most of it though, and have already stored away a great deal of it.  I definitely won't be using all of it, but there are some good components that I will incorporate.  I have also purchased Kim's Reader's Workshop units to use with my kiddos.  I'm excited to do more of a workshop method incorporated with our reading series.  

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