New Product: Homework Bingo

This product is a classroom management tool for students and teachers. Each student receives one Homework Bingo sheet (printed 2 per page) to keep. Each day the students turns in completed homework, a square can be initialed by the teacher. Once the students achieves a Homework Bingo, they can receive a prize from the teacher's choosing.

Homework Bingo encourages responsibility for the student. They are able to earn rewards for turning in their homework. Also, they must be responsible for the Homework Bingo card. If it is lost, the student will begin again with a blank card.

The Classroom is getting there!

I have been working about one day a week all summer long to get my classroom ready. Each section of the room is starting to come together!

First up, the front of my room! My desk area and my students' mailbox area. There is still some tidying up that needs to be done of course. I am excited about my blue walls! All the bright colors of my fabric and boarders just pop right off the walls and I love it!!

I have some cute fish on each of my cabinets for labels. I love these fish!

Here is the back wall of my classroom. I will have six bulletin boards: writing, Common Core, Social Studies, Jeopardy (starting with Geography in August/September), Science, & Math. They will look much better after I have finished them.

Pretty Tape for Common Core

While at Walmart, I found some Expressions Scotch tape. It is SO PRETTY!! I used the most colorful one on my whiteboard with the intent with write my students' I Can... statements for each content area and one for reminders/upcoming dates for my students.

Classroom Library - Get Hooked On Books!

Here's my first Monday Made It! I'm linky up with 4th Grade Frolics for Monday Made it. I know, I know, it's July and I'm just now making something. I am trying to enjoy my summer. Today, I tackled my classroom library decoration! After working on my library organization, now I wanted to make it pretty :)

I found the great idea below for my library inspiration on Pinterest.

I bought two blue plastic table clothes from Hobby Lobby to create the waves along the wall. This is my "before" picture. Or as close as it could be, I forgot to take one before I got started.

After the waves were along the wall, I added fish with book titles on them. It goes well with the large clip art on the opposite wall that says "Get Hooked on Books" with a boy fishing. I hope my students get hooked on the books in my library! I have a couple beach chairs that the students can sit in to read their favorites.

 

A Couple Fishie Touches

After spending time with the laminating machine, I was able to add some fishie touches to my fish/ocean themed classroom. I added labels to my classroom clock as well as my cabinets. I LOVE how they turned out!

Organizing My Classroom Library

I am moving back into a full size classroom after teaching in a modular classroom for two years. Yay for room to move around! So I am working on organizing each part of my room so that I maximum space for my students.

Today I began to organize my classroom library! I headed to the store to get ice buckets for my books. I'm sure you have all seen that idea on Pinterest and I wanted to try it out. I started with just 14 buckets and know I will have to go back and get more now.

I had downloaded some cute fishie box labels from TpT and used them to create library labels for my library buckets. I labeled all the boxes I have and need more boxes and more labels now. I can't wait to see what the end product is going to be. My students will have a much easier time finding books in our classroom library and I hope it will stay organized all year long (fingers crossed!).

I have lots of books to go through, might have to have the store restock the ice buckets!

Back to School Sales, Already?!

I went to WalMart today and saw this:

What is this?! It isn't time for school to start again! What happened to summer?

Meet My Best Friend

I spent time with my BEST FRIEND today! You want to meet them? Here's a picture:

This is what I got done today, ready to be cut. I have fishie clock labels, fishie decorations, spelling words for the first three weeks of StoryTown, and fun ways for students to line-up.

I even got my husband to help ;)

Cursive Freebie on TpT

At the beginning of each school year, I give my students a one-minute math assessment. It is double sided sheet with the same equations on both sides. They take the assessment in August and then again on the last day of school. They LOVE to see how much faster they are at math in just one school year.

So this got me thinking, why don't I do this for cursive handwriting? So many of my third graders are PUMPED about {finally} learning how to write in cursive. I searched for a cursive "pretest" on TpT and didn't find anything simple and easy, so I created one myself. And it's a freebie for you!

Use this Cursive Pretest at the beginning of your school year to see how much cursive your students know. It's great to get a snapshot of your students' undersanding of cursive handwriting.

Something fun to do with this pretest is to keep it to look at in May. The students will LOVE seeing how much their handwriting improves over the school year!