Tell All Tuesday: Bucket List

Today I'm linking up with My Day in K and Teach Talk Inspire to join their Tell all Tuesday: Teacher Bucket List Linky Party. It's summer, I'm relaxing and dreaming away this week with this linky party and the TpT Seller Challenge. 

Here we go...

 

1. Masters...possibly Ph.D.: I mentioned this in my previous post for the Tpt Seller Challenge here. As I mentioned there, I love school and I have no problem getting back to textbooks/paper writing/lectures and more. I want to grow as an educator. I also love helping other teachers with technology. I've been researching and looking into getting an MEd in Educational Technology. I consider myself tech-savvy with most things. If I'm not familiar with a program or tool, I make it a point to get better with it. 

2. National Boards: Last year my district offered a program called Take One! from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). It was pretty much like a PD where you work with a small cohort to get feedback and support as you complete one entry from the certificate areas and receive a score determined by NBPTS. It was challenging, but the insight from the whole process gave me some motivation to add National Board Certification as a long-term goal.

3. More Technology: In my classroom I'm very lucky to have 5 touchscreen computers with wireless Internet. Along with my many many structures and routines set at the beginning of the year, it's a MUST for me to teach computer skills and responsibility in August/September. Before I know it, my kids are so familiar and independent with computers. It's a HUGE deal because some of my kiddos don't have access to this technology at home. I hope that I can continue to make technology a priority, you know up there with assessments, assessments, assessments. My goal is to bring in some tablets with the help of the wonderful Donor's Choose. 

4. TpT Opportunities: I remember in July last year, I sat behind my phone seeing all the amazing pictures and stories on blogs of those attending the TpT Conference. I told myself, one day I'll get there too! Well in January I started my TpT store. It's on my bucket list to open the door for opportunities to grow my little store, network with other bloggers/TpTers, and of course attend TpT Vegas! 

Thanks for stopping by! I'm heading back to the Linky Party to read up on some more bucket lists!

TpT Seller Challenge Dare to Dream

Happy Monday! Last week I joined in on this amazing challenge put together by the ladies over at Third in Hollywood, Teach Create Motivate, Sparkling in Second, and Peppy Zesty Teacherista.

It just so happened that the week before the challenge I had contacted the lovely ladies at Blogs Fit for a Queen to design a customized blog for me. They were awesome and helped get my vision out through this blog design. I was thrilled to have it ready and running for this challenge. I love it!

I joined blogger back in Summer 2012 in hopes to start a teaching blog. I felt overwhelmed and discouraged because I honestly didn't have the slightest clue where to begin or how to even begin. Now it's Summer 2015 and I have a blog! Baby steps, I tell myself, baby steps!

Back to the challenge, this week our challenge is to Dare to Dream.

Here are my goals and dreams.

1. Wedding: My fiancé and I got engaged in February and I'm excited to have the summer to plan for the wedding. Together we're paying on our own for our wedding. My goal is to avoid using credit cards and pay as we go to have a debt free start in the next chapter of our lives.

(That's the reception venue. We had a tour this past week and it's gorgeous!)

2. Go Back to School: I've always loved school. I love the textbooks, lectures, paper writing, and all that comes with being a student. I've been wanting to go back for my masters and eventually get a Ph.D. I loved my college experience, I would do again if I could, but I'm careful to consider now that if I want to go back, I need to pay my way without loans.

3. Own a home: Along with our wedding, my fiancé and I hope to become homeowners soon. A couple of months back, I started doing an online homeowner counseling course and I will say it's intimidating. But I know it will be sooooo worth it to have our own home.

4. Retirement/Travel: I'm in my late twenties and have a long way to go before I retire. I got started saving up for retirement a few years ago after a co-worker with a business background shared some helpful information. I thought to myself why didn't they prepare me for this stuff in high school/college! I hope that TpT lends an opportunity to save for retirement and travel with my future husband and future kids.

Those are a few of my many many dreams.

Sunday Funday More Makeover Madness

Well Sunday Funday did not kick off with this crazy Texas weather. What better way to spend a stormy day indoors than with Hallmark Movie Channel's #juneweddings movies in the background and working on another product makeover.

In fact, I was so into a rhythm, I started redoing all of my cover page thumbnails so that they are all square sized now. Check out my store here to see what square sized cover pages look like.

In my original Groundhog Day Printables product, I did not like that pages intended to be landscape were in portrait format and not easy to read. When I first made this product I just could not figure out how to do it.

Now that I've been working with Adobe Acrobat a little more, I've been able to merge PDFs and get the both landscape/portrait options in one PDF.

I cleaned up the cover page to showcase the contents of the product clearer. I also tweaked some of the fonts inside to make it brighter.

The pages I needed in landscape are no longer in portrait format. I feel this makes it easier for the buyer to see what they have.

I also went ahead and added some more pages for differentiation to accommodate all little learners. I ended up adding a total of seven new pages that include two options for writing papers to be used with the graphic organizers already included.

Phew! This week's challenge was definitely THAT push that I needed to get things rolling in my little store. Click any of the pictures above to visit my TpT store. All products in this week's makeover madness are on sale!

Week 1 Makeover Madness Product #2 #tptsellerchallenge

Week 1 from the TpT Seller Challenge has been so much fun to see on different social media networks. I'm definitely doing some major stalking with the hashtag #tptsellerchallenge. So many creative teachers out there! Before the week is over, I decided to take on another product makeover. The before: this is the cover page below from my product I Can Count to 100 Certificates and Recognition Printables.

I made this product a while back after I ran out of some store certificates I purchased on a random shopping trip. I ran out and was bummed that I couldn't find them anywhere. I decided to make my own so that I don't run into this problem. Now I just print a class set at the beginning of the school year, laminate, and have them ready for when students reach this counting milestone.

My kids get so excited to receive their gumball certificate. At my school, kinder has a designated day in the week to be recognized on our school announcements telecast. It's a big hit to showcase their gumball machine with 100 gumballs for being able to count to 100!

The after: My makeover madness for this product includes cleaning up the cover page by replacing the background and changing the fonts to make it clearer to read. I also added a preview of the product on the cover page.

Check out the updated product in my store. I'm putting my makeover madness products on sale throughout the next couple of weeks.

Click on the Makeover Madness Before and After picture above to be taken to my products and store!

Hello World! & Week 1 Makeover Madness #tptsellerchallenge

My first blog post and what better way than to start with the TpT Seller Challenge. Week 1 is Makeover Madness. My to-do list for the summer included revamping my products and my store. I'm so glad for this seller challenge because it is giving me the motivation to get to it!

For my product, My Texas Book Symbols and Facts for Pre-K and Kinder, my goal was to revamp my cover page. Once I got started I decided to do a major uplift to the entire product. 

Big changes include all new/bold/shiny clip art on every page, adding two more vocabulary cards for a total of 11, removed page numbers (assemble the pages you like/need). Overall there's a new crisp feel to the book and I hope your little learners enjoy working on this.

Head on over to my little store and add this to your Texas Unit Study while it's on sale!