Monday, August 31, 2015

Good Enough

So I have this little, mini Superheroes theme going on in my classroom. I had the kids decorate the door with Superheroes. I bought some Superheroes signs and put them up above my shelves {sorry no pic of that}.

And I had this great idea -- I'd give all my student jobs a cool name. I even found a website that would give you Superhero names. Well, couldn't come up with enough {that I liked} for all my jobs.

Then I had these primary colored library pockets -- and I was going to type the job name on contrasting primary colored paper and glue it on. But when I went to go buy the paper --- whoa momma! I'm a teacher here people!

And days were slipping away, and I was doing all the student jobs, which made me think, "This is no fun."

So I did this:



And yes, it's all blurry and everything -- but basically, I just printed the names off on white paper and glued them on to these pretty library cards. Good enough. Done. And now I can have students do these jobs. 

And this all made me think, that if you're anything like this teacher -- well, it just seems like I want to wait until it's all perfect... but really, sometimes it's better just to do it and move on. 











Monday, August 17, 2015

Back to School

Well, I made it through my first week.  My district's nice enough to usually start on a Wednesday or Thursday {one year we started on a Monday --- yikes, that was a looooong week!} -- and better than that, they give us a half day the first day, so we have the afternoon to go out to lunch for the last time in forever, change names for those little sweeties who want to be called something else, put up supplies we got, plan the next day, visit with colleagues, and more.

This was my happy for my first day:


My hubby got to go to College Town to visit College Girl, so this was my consolation prize. Well, it is a very nice prize. And if you look closely, you'll see pencils. One of my new little friends {a girl, of course} noticed them first.

And to match my very limited Superhero theme, my new little friends made these for the door:


Yes, I made the night sky scene on the bottom. Pretty much loving it -- except when I kicked the door stop and kicked it, too.

The superheros turned out cute, and some of them added little capes that my hubby designed and some decided not to. I was going to show the Incredibles clip where the designer tells about how bad capes are ---- but my laptop that goes with my Smartboard was MIA. I love how one of my friend's superhero is flying. At least, I hope that's what he's doing!

At the end of the workday part of our first day, I had a doctor's appointment, and then I went shopping, because a teacher never has all the things she needs:


That's right -- necessities include duck tape, beads, command hooks, labels and eyeliner and eye shadow! Didn't you know that?

And finally.... you know that thing on FB about how you can go by school and see teacher cars in the parking lot and know they are working outside their contract time? I don't work at school that much {except if I need to be going through stuff} -- but this is all the stuff I worked on Saturday at my house that my hubby carted back up to school for me.


Oh, I'll admit --- I loved most of it. 

Happy Monday to you! Whether you're back at it, or just thinking about it! 







Sunday, August 16, 2015

First Days

I've started!

A half day Thursday and a full day Friday led this teacher to fall asleep by 7:30 -- and that's when we were watching one of MY shows, not hub-bub's! lol

So.... I don't know if you remember my discussion about Connecting, but I wanted my new students to know that I care about them and I'm glad they are in my class. For the first time, we had Open House on the evening before the first day of school. So I made these signs, and hung two outside my door, and one just inside:




Well, I didn't do as much with these as I had hoped and anticipated -- getting back into the routine, not writing it on my lesson plans, and just plain forgetting --- well, it made me forget! But even as I was typing this right now, I thought -- why can't I still do something with these signs? I plan to take them down Monday morning, but I thought I could still show them to the students when we do our morning meeting and talk about them, and tell them that Yes! I am excited to meet them, and why! So that, my friends, is my new plan!

Have you had your first day yet? How did it go?