Bulletin Boards

Hello there! I'm linking up with Angie from Lucky Little Learners and Ashley from Schroeder Shenanigans in 2nd! I love how they have started monthly linky parties with specific collaboration posts to support one another #2getherwearebetter. 

A goal of mine this year is to take quality pictures. Sometimes it's easier to snap a picture with my cell phone but I'm promising myself to put in effort to use a digital camera when possible to improve the quality of my pictures that I want to share. 

I've had the luck of being in a portable with limited walls to moving to a classroom with curtain walls, you know those icky panel walls that fold like an accordion. Yup, basically no sturdy wall space for bulletin boards. 

Tip #1: Use doors as walls. Never fear, doors are dear. That is until your doors are not able to hold tape. For some reason my closet doors had some special film over them that anything I tried putting up would slide off. I tried duct tape, masking tape, super glue, double sided tape, packing tape, even hot glue. Other classrooms in my hall didn't have this problem, lucky me.

I was able to use yarn tied and taped from inside the door to finally hold up some things. I added a pocket chart to change out vocabulary words. Some parts of my doors "accepted" hot glue. And with the help of a command hook and lots and lots of hot glue later, I was even able to add my slightly heavy behavior clip chart made of cardstock.

Tip #2: Add some width to your wall. Yay for bulletin board, booooo to it being itty bitty. With a glue gun and some fabric I was able to make that small bulletin board wider. You can't even tell that the space under the fabric is whiteboard, and it's very easy to remove when you need to. Comes right off the whiteboard.

Tip #3: Laminate and go with fadeless paper. I like to use a combo of fadeless paper and fabric in my classroom. I stock up on fadeless paper at the beginning of the year with some coupons. It's a good investment if you plan on keeping your walls the same year after year. 

I like to laminate things that I know will be up all year long like student work displays, I just add to it, never really moving anything. This keeps it sturdy and I don't have to worry about the paper tearing or fading as I update the wall.

Tip #4: Student Friendly. I know sometimes I'm guilty of wanting cutesy things up. But I try to remember that ultimately what I put up needs to really benefit my little learners. Promote THEIR work, support THEIR learning with visual aids like vocabulary words, anchor charts you create WITH THEM. I know my students love to see when a sentence/idea they created or shared is added to our big chart paper. They gain a sense of pride that their idea is valued in our classroom. And I love when they refer back to their learning when the chart paper is displayed in the classroom.

And there it is friends! I'm in the process of planning my bulletin board wall spaces for 2015. I moved to a new room so I have a blank canvas to work with! I'm off to read more posts and make notes for inspiration. Go check them out here!

Kinder Tribe (All About This Kinder Teacher)

I'm so excited to have found my tribe! So many teacher tribes are popping up everywhere with lots of teachers getting together to support, help, and inspire one another. The Kinder Tribe went a step further from the Facebook group and started a blog called Kinder Tribe.

Kinder Tribe is hosting a linky party this week called All About This Kinder Teacher. Here's a little something something about yours truly.

This year will be 5 years in K. I've been lucky to have applied for my grade level, get hired for my grade level, and stay in my grade level. I just love this early childhood age group. I hope to stay in kindergarten for a good while. Eventually I would like to experience another grade level. But for now, I'm very very happy where I'm at.

I CAN NOT live without my MacBook Pro. I went Mac back in 2007 and I never went back! I have years and years worth of pictures, music, and more in my mac.

My favorite school supply would have to be Mr. Sketch Scented Markers. They're perfect for anchor charts, grading, and the occasional "dot stamp" on a 5 year old. My kiddos go nuts to get a little dot stamp on their hand and smell like lemon or grape!

It's hard to choose just ONE favorite kinder book, I have too many to choose. But I will say that I'm a huge fan of Mo Willems books. Every year I do a big author study of just Mo Willems books. We go on a virtual field trip to his website and I share with my students how to access it at home or at a library. There are so many great things about his books. Emotions, speech bubbles, persuasion, etc.

I've been stalking following many many bloggers, hoping that one day I could blog and inspire others like they do. These three are some of my favorites. Yeehaw Teaching in Texas posts so many fun and bright pictures of happenings in her room. She's my inspiration to take more pictures of kids in action in my classroom. Mrs. Wheeler's First Grade, I know is technically not a kinder blogger, but so many of her fabulous products and posts I feel can still relate to teaching K. And Kreative in Kinder is another amazing blogger I admire. I was able to attend an SDE Conference in Texas one year where she was a presenter. She shared so many great ideas!

I love kindergarten because I love to see how much my students grow from the beginning of the year to the end. Especially when some kids have not had any prior school experience. The growth ALL children make is incredible!

If you made it to the end of this post, THANK YOU for reading all about this kinder teacher! I'm off to read up some more from fellow K teachers!

Catching Up and Week 3 TpT Seller Challenge

EEEK! I already did what I told myself I wouldn't do...forget to blog! So here I am two weeks later catching up.

Lazy Summer days include going to the gym for an hour in the mornings, binge watching new and old shows on Netflix, and checking out what others are up to through Instagram.

The data nerd in me was excited to see this pyramid today. I love these workouts. It's like I have my own personal trainer but with a group of people of all kinds of fitness levels. I definitely need someone to tell me what to do when it comes to working out.

And this is my new favorite show. I loved it so much after the first two episodes that I sat and watched the ENTIRE season one the rest of the night. I felt like I was BFFs with Jane and Lily!

I've also been busy working on my masterpiece for the TpT Seller Challenge.

I had started my "masterpiece" last summer when I needed a refresher for my monster classroom theme. I never went back to it as the year came and went. Thanks to this challenge, I really felt the push to finish.

The final product ended up being over 200 pages! I was tempted to keep going and make blackline masters but that might have to wait a little longer.

Some favorite printables of mine in this product are the binder cover pages and the school supply labels. They really pop with the super cute clip art and graphics I bought recently.

I also love my updated math wall kit.

That's what my wall looked like at the beginning of the year. ICK! Now I can't wait to add some color and cute monsters to match the rest of my classroom decor.

You can find my 'MONSTAR' Monster Decor Kit in my TpT Store, it's on sale right now too!

I can't wait to print out all of the pieces and laminate them. I've had this monster theme for 3 years now, let's hope I don't decide to pull a 180 and change the theme in August, ha!

Do you have any favorite classroom decor themes?

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!