Terrific Teacher Finds

I HAVE to share my recent purchase with you.  It is one of those HAVE to have teacher tools that will help me when I work on school stuff at home.  I know you know the "at night, on the weekend, during the summer" school stuff I am talking about:-).
It is a laminator!  I got it at Wal-Mart for $27.   It was located in the office supply section, near the electric pencil sharpeners.
Here is a pic of the box:

And here is a picture of it in action:

Wal-Mart has laminating sheets.  There were 50 for $14 (I think), but Sam's Club has this box:

There were 200 sheets in the box for $21.  They are not the Scotch brand, but seem to work just as well as the Scotch ones.

Here is a little hint if you purchase one:  Hold down the power button for a few seconds to turn it on!

Well, I am off to cut things out until bedtime;-).

Link up your finds with Fun in Room 4B!

Meredith

Made it Monday Linky

What a fun Linky Party 4th Grade Frolics is having this summer!  I have been wanting to join for a few weeks now but just haven't had the time!!  Click the picture to join the linky!  (After you see my ideas of course;-))

Here are a couple of school things I made last week.  (Pintrest inspired, of course!)  Next year my classroom is going to pink, green and white polka dots with monkey accents.  (I wanted a little change, but as I have mentioned before our team does a jungle theme, so I had to needed to keep my monkeys.  I am just going to "cuten" the monkeys up!)

Magnetic Board.  Made from a Dollar Store pizza pan, ribbon
and spray paint.  

Post It Note Holders.  $0.95 picture frame from Wal-Mart, scrapbook paper, and ribbon.  The one on the right does not have the post its attached yet.  (It is for the teacher next door that is doing a zebra theme next year.)

I don't have any home thing to share right now.  However, since I just bought a house I enjoy looking at all of your ideas!  Maybe in a few weeks........

Meredith

Back to School ABC Order Freebie

Here is a Back to School ABC Order freebie!  Click on the picture for the google doc.

Head over to TBA for more Friday Freebies!

Enjoy!

Meredith

End of Year

Today was our last day of post planning. It started out with our annual End of Year Breakfast. Normally everyone is in a hurry to eat and get back to finish up their rooms. Not today! Here is why.....

breakfast was at a restaurant ON the beach. We are very lucky to be a beachside school! What does your staff do for an end of year celebration?

(My team has already started planing for next year. I MAY have spent 5 hours in the rain on Saturday shopping for my classroom. And I MAY have an Ikea trip planned for Friday.  Anyone else guilty of this?)
Meredith

Luau Day

Luau Day is usually the students favorite day of Fun Week!  I am exhausted so here are the highlights:-)
We normally do 4 rotations outside.  We had to adjust today due to the forecast.  The rain ended up holding off until our activities were over.....but not before we had snack or cleaned up!  Snack was Hawaiian Punch and flower cookies.

Our table in the hallway BEFORE the rainstorm!

Coconut between the knees relay!

Hula Hoop Contest

Limbo!  They also learned a Hawaiian dance while at this rotation.

Tacky Tourist Relay!  So cute!

Tomorrow is Movie Day!  That one doesn't take a lot of preparation or decoration.  WooHoo for the teachers!

Meredith

Jungle Animal Day

Day 2 of our First Grade Fun Week was Jungle Animal Day!

(Our team does the jungle theme each school year.  Each teacher chooses a jungle animal then we decorate our rooms accordingly and do a lot of jungle activities at the beginning of the year.  We flexible group across the grade level for Reading and Math so this really helps the kids out at transition times, especially at the beginning of the school year.  We can say, "You go to the Monkey Room for Reading or you go to the Tiger Room for Math.")

Theme Day: This morning each class rotated to all four teachers for a jungle animal activity.  This afternoon we watched the Jungle Book and had animal crackers!  (While the teachers finished up DRAs and Math reassessments!)  The kids wore jungle animal print or shirts with animals on them.
Here are the 4 activities we did:

Elephant Room:  Played this fun trivia game in teams!!

Monkey Room:  Made monkey stick puppets while listening to Jack Hartman's Alphabet Zoo.

Crocodile Room:  Made jungle animal necklaces and learned about crocodiles!

Tiger Room:  Painted these super cute tigers!

Tomorrow is Luau Day!  We have lots of outdoor Hawaiian activities planned.  Let's hope the weather cooperates.  

Meredith

First Grade Fun Week

WOW!!  It has been FOREVER since my last post.  No excuses!  Okay....just one!  I bought my first house.  It is awesome, but I have been intentionally avoiding blogs because I just haven't had the time to get sucked in!  I now spend my time at Lowes instead of the teacher store.  Enough about that, on to the school stuff.........

It is our LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL. (Insert happy dance here.)  We do a "First Grade Fun Week" or theme week.   Each day has a different theme.  There are snacks, activities and decorations for each theme.   We asked for a $5 donation from parents to help with the costs of the week.   About half of our students brought money in this year and since we were very frugal shoppers, we didn't have to alter our plans much!

Today was American Day.  We wore red, white and blue.  (And amazingly almost all of the kids remembered even though it was a Monday.) My team decorates our outside hallway and inside our classrooms.  I don't have any pictures from outside, but we lined the hallway with flags and had a table for the picnic supplies all decked out with red, white and blue.  Our doors were covered with red, white and blue stars.  Here are a few of our activities:

• American Symbols Book (from a Mailbox or something similar)
• Marble Paint Fireworks
• Paper Chain Necklaces
• Make Flags
• Outdoor Play was Sidewalk Chalk, Basketball, Hula Hoops, Jump Ropes, Parachute
• Picnic (chips, lemonade, Little Debbie patriotic snack cakes, and red and blue jello stars) Mrs. Fischer's mom makes 8 boxes of jello stars for us every year. She is a retired teacher and understands!
• This year we bought bottled water and the individual Crystal Light lemonade packets.  The kids LOVED making their own lemonade and it saved us from pouring 80 cups of lemonade and many, many spills!
• We listened to a kids Patriotic Music CD the whole day.  (Yes, the whole day and that is all I am going to say about that.)

Here are a few pics!

Outside door.  He is wearing the paper chain necklace.  

Working on the American Symbols book while kids came back 2 at a time to marble paint.

Some of our indoor decorations.  We even used the red and blue markers for calendar math.  They loved making patterns while writing all of the ways to make 4.  (I promise to do a Calendar Math post this summer.)

Parachute FUN!

Marble Painted Fireworks

Only 1 marble hit the floor this year......a new record!!!!  

Flags made by gluing on red construction paper strips (already cut!)  The stars rectangle is colored, cut and glued on as well. 

I never seem to get through all of the activities, but the kids have a blast anyway!  

Tomorrow is Jungle Animal Day.  I will try to do a better job at taking pictures!

Do you do anything for the last week? 

Meredith