More Ideas

You can tell that I'm getting ready to get back into my classroom...my brain is starting to shift from "I need a break" mode to "oooh!  I love that idea" mode!  :)  I've tried to drop off some of my newest treasures to my classroom for two days now and the halls are still blocked off because the wax is drying.  Seriously...how long does it take for wax to dry?  Just kidding...our custodians had to have kicked some serious booty to get our classrooms done this early and I really appreciate their hard work!  
I love the month of July because I can work on school things at my leisure whereas in August, I HAVE to work on things for my classroom every spare minute...when I'm not hanging out with friends and family.


While I was helping my sister pick out birthday presents at Walmart this morning, we came across this game:

Can you believe that I almost left it on the shelf?  It was $13.88...but I think it's going to be totally worth it!  I can see me using this in small group sessions with my kiddos and I'm going to put it on my wish list so that I can hopefully get additional ones for the kids to use in their literacy work stations.  Great for teaching the kids how to ask questions and also predict their answers...I'm thinking this is going to make a great activity for those higher level thinking skills.  Can't wait to use it!


Then I was wandering down another aisle and found Finger Bowling for $1.00 each!

10 pins=a great addition or subtraction to 10 math work station!  Am I excited to hear the balls bouncing across the floor...no...but will the kids love it....YES!  So needless to say, I'm not going to worry about the balls bouncing down the hall.  :)  I'll be making some kind of a recording sheet to go along with the activity for the students to record their answers...I'm not a bowler so I'll have to do a little research, but I'm thinking they can play in pairs and record their scores by writing subtraction sentences...we'll see what the end result is...I might need to go back to Walmart and purchase one for each of my kiddos! 


I have become mildly obsessed with pinterest.com.  It's a social networking site that allows you to pin and repin images to your boards.  You really need to check it out...so far it seems to be easy to use and I've found a few tutorials on You Tube that helped me out.  (You can find them on You Tube by searching for pinterest.)  Anyway...I'm totally addicted...they have everything you can imagine including school stuff from teachers from all over the world!  I'm talking about images of their classrooms, bulletin boards, organizational stuff...EVERYTHING you can imagine....it's there!  You really do need to look into it...not that I'm pushing my addiction onto you but perhaps we can start a self-help group in the future...I just may need it!  :)

Anyway....one of the images I found was "Quiet Spray".  It's just a water bottle with a splash of fancy. My sister and I thought the idea was so silly, we just had to make a few.  The princess one is for my sister and her soon to be 2 and 4 year old.  The pirate one is for my classroom because our school mascot is a pirate.  Here they are:

They turned out cuter than I thought they would!

Now...am I seriously going to spray the children in my classroom each time they get too noisy?  No.  But...I will use it at the beginning of the year when our classroom is so stinkin' hot and we're all a little chatty....just for FUN!  I think it will be a FUN and COOL way to learn the appropriate level of noise that will be acceptable in our classroom.  It's a little silly too, which is right up my alley! :)