Sprucing up the kitchen

Happy Memorial Day bloggers! I hope everyone enjoyed a fun filled day with your families. I spent my morning watching my amazing hubby run the Bolder Boulder 10K. Then we had a cookout and played around the house all day. I love days like these when we don't really have too much planned and we can run on our own time!

Since I'm officially off for summer break, I've decided to take on some much neglected areas of my home that I can improve upon. More specifically, clean up and organization projects. Today I tackled my under the counter nemesis...the tupperware cupboard!

Here is the before picture:



Seriously, now where did that top go?

Here is the after:



It is amazing what two super cheap organizers can do for a cluttered mess. I purchased some plastic baskets for the tupperware tops, one for square tops and one for round tops. Not too shabby if I do say so myself!

Next, I changed up the centerpiece on my kitchen table. Well, I added a centerpiece rather. Lately I've been wiping down the table after dinner and calling it good but since it is summer, I suppose I can muster up enough strength to place a pretty centerpiece back on the table after dinner.

Here is what I came up with:



I just added some rattan decorative balls and fake artichokes from Pier One to an old wooden bowl that I've had laying around. Pretty.

Tomorrow I am heading to an AddVantage math training (all week) and I am so excited. I'll post about it when I am officially a trained expert! Have a great week everyone.

My Summer Projects-nonteaching post

Ahhhh! School's out for summer! My first official day of summer is Monday. I packed my whole classroom up the last week of school, little by little to prepare for my move to a mobile next year. On Friday, I checked out of school after some last minute work in our school's literacy room and A LOT of moving. I can overlook all of the moving though because I got to go out to lunch with some of my favorite ladies from school. I spent this weekend working around my yard, snapping a few photos of my blooming flowers and my new veggie garden (complete with hideous bunny proof fencing and big fat frog to protect the garden.



I have so many mini projects that I need to complete over the summer and while I do have some projects and ideas that I would like to work on for school this summer, I certainly don't plan on spending the entire summer in my classroom. Nope! For this reason, I think I'll go the route of some home decor/organization blogs I adore and post about my projects. You can choose to follow along or come back and visit me periodically through the summer and definitely in the Fall-I'll have a whole new classroom tour as I've moved to a new space!

Yikes! I'd better get those boys outside to water my garden.

OK, now on to my first organization project. You don't even want to see my to do list...sometimes I tend to get ahead of myself. So far, I've tackled my butlers pantry (ya know, that little area between the kitchen and the dining room for storage, etc.) It has stood relatively bare for at least two years and the cupboards have stashed piles of miscellaneous junk. I ordered the Daily Organization system from Pottery Barn and picked up some linen storage boxes from Target that fit the cupboards perfectly. I love it and it was so easy to install. I tend to mull over the idea of buying something for way too long. I've wanted to put the Daily Organization system up for so long so I finally just bought it. My hubby has claimed the first file as incoming and outgoing mail. How cute...a mail station. I'm trying to think of some other stations I can set up in my house. I'm thinking about a lunch station to keep all of my kids lunch box thingies in one place.



Technically, I'm not totally done with the cupboards yet. The fact that the little drawers with scissors, tape, stationary and cards, charging cords, etc. isn't labeled is really driving me batty.

So there you have it. One project down, ten more to go! Happy summer everyone.

Beginning or End of Year Graphing Activity

Hi blogging buddies, sorry I have been missing in action lately. I have finally felt the stress of packing my classroom and getting ready to relocate to a mobile. That, combined with all of the other end of the year fun stuff such as report cards, field day, nighttime concerts and my own son's graduation, I pretty much flopped on the couch and zoned out after my boys were asleep. I have been catching up on my own blog reading all day!

As I was preparing for the Fall by printing out this set of graphs (grab them below) that I have my third graders complete in August, I realized that they might also make a great end of the year activity. In the Fall, I pair my students up by having them pick a dum dum lollipop out of a cute bucket. Then they find their flavor match (just make sure you have two of each flavor and make enough groups for your whole class) and start polling their classmates. It gets loud but who cares! It is a fun and interactive way for kids to get to know one another and review how to take and record data. Here it is the end of the year and we just wrapped up a unit on data landmarks. I think that I will have my kids complete these graphs once more (obviously they will be way more efficient the second time around, right?) but the focus will be on taking data landmarks on their graphs after all of the data collection. For example, I will have each group find the median (middle value), mode (most frequent response) and the big challenge...the mean (average). This will be more data than they have worked with in the past but I think it will be great to see how their small groups attack the challenge!

End of Year Freebie For My Friends!

Happy Monday everyone! Something is on my mind today...my sweet 5 1/2 year old has had a difficult year in private kindergarten. So difficult that we actually moved him with only a few weeks left. Today when I picked him up from his new school, his teacher told me what a kind hearted, smart, sweet and well mannered little guy he was and I totally broke down crying. I realized it had been way too long since a teacher who worked with him had said anything positive about him. I think I'll take this as a lesson when I talk to other parents about their children. These kids belong to someone...they are someone's entire world and they deserve to know how special their kids are on occasion. Thanks for listening...I just had to shout that from the rooftop! My baby is a good, smart boy!

Happy early summer to us! I have 9 days of school left and I wanted to make sure that I sent my darling kiddos off with a special memory book this summer. When I taught first grade a few years back, I always had my parent volunteers bind memory books filled with handwriting samples, photos of special events, and special projects for a great end of the year memento. However now that I teach the big kids, I wanted them to have a mini year book in which they keep track of important events and most importantly, their friends special notes and signatures. I am tying up some loose ends with writing projects this week but next week in between field day and end of the year assemblies I will have my kids work on completing their third grade memory books.

This memory book is geared towards intermediate kids and provides lots of space for them to recall their most memorable moments this school year. I am happy to share it with all of you. I hope you have an outstanding last few weeks of school.



I found out today that I am moving into a mobil (we call them cabins...don't they sound so homey!) next year. I've always been fortunate to be in the building at the schools where I have worked. I would love to hear about how others make the most out the space they are given in a mobil, as well as tricks that have worked for you as far as sending kids in for bathroom use, etc. I struggle with change so I need to plan and think about classroom set up over the summer. I've decided that I will be purchasing all new borders (probably these ones) and fade-proof butcher paper from my local school supply store to make this move more appealing to myself. Maybe I'll throw in a new pair of shoes for myself too! Thanks everyone!

Spelling Sorts

This year I tried something new that I loved! I premade all of my spelling lists for the year in the form of flashcards that can be sorted. I wanted to have a sort available for my students to do each week during Daily 5 time. I had this cute little stand and mini pocket chart lying around so I put it to good use. I propped it up right on top of my Daily 5 tubs which hold my materials. You can read more about my Daily 5 organization here.

At first I was storing all of the cards (36 weeks of cards!) in little baggies, but then I came across this mini file system at where else...Target. I just labeled each tab with a spelling week number and popped the cards in. My kids can change them out each week as I tend to forget. After the cards have been sorted, kids can then take them out of the pocket chart and use them to practice their words in their spelling journals, on spelling tiles, or to give practice tests to their buddies.



My goal for next year is to create another set for later in the week that follow similar spelling rules and patterns but allow kids to apply it to new words.

Welcome Next Years Class in Style!

I recently posted about a few things that I do to prepare my classroom (and keep my sanity) in the Fall. But I also have my current class do some things to help welcome my next years class as well. Every Spring, my current third graders complete a welcome brochure (grab it below) for my new kids, explaining some of the highlights of third grade. I save them to put on my new students desks in the Fall, along with my back to school informational packet and some goodies from me. This brochure is by far my new students favorite thing...it seems to put them at ease to know all of the fun things that they have to look forward to. I usually encourage my kids to write something silly that they liked about me as a teacher this year in the the "one thing you need to know about your teacher" section, although they really don't need that much encouraging after all.

If you maintain a class website or class blog, you could also take a compiled list of the "highlights of third grade" that your current students write about at the end of the year and post them for your incoming kids to read about before school starts. You can view my classroom website post of what this might look like here.

Here is the brochure I use with my kids. In fact, we will be working on these next week.


I create a welcome bag for my kids as well-filled with goodies that I mentioned above. This is nothing I invented, but I did create a team themed letter to attach to the welcome bag. The bags look much better than a plain brown bag. Last year I found some team pennants and mini foam fingers to throw in the bags as well from Oriental Trading. The poem was not written by me, one my colleagues and I came across it a few years back and have been using ever since.


I also have my students write a letter to next years class interactively so that I have a great poster to hang up on my otherwise blank easel at back to school night. I let each student write their name when they sign it so it is a bit more personalized.

Lastly, I ask the teacher of the grade level above me (for me it would be fourth) to have their students write a "what to expect next year" style letter to my kids so that I can pass them on to my current kiddos on the last day of school.

I would love to hear about some things that you do to help welcome your kiddos back in the Fall.

PB Gift Card Winner Announced

Thanks so much for playing along everyone. Drumroll please.....

And the Pottery Barn Gift Card Winner is...



Julie said:


Seriously I adore Julie and we are both third grade blogging buddies so I'm thrilled to be able to send this little gift her way. Congrats Julie. Please send my your snail mail address via my contact button and I'll get your gift card in the mail right away.