summer vacation and a freebie

Happy Summer! I am officially on break as of yesterday and let me tell ya, it feels GOOD. My summer is going to be shorter this year than normal so I plan on soaking up every sweet drop of summery goodness! This summer my goal is to have a balanced summer as possible and to be intentional about spending my time on things that rejuvenate me. (And spend lots and lots of quality time with Little Miss!) And in case that sounds too hippy dippy and New Age...today those things happened to be free doughnuts at Krispy Kreme (today is National Doughnut Day, in case you didn't know) and a shopping trip to Target. Priorities.

Although...to be honest...a good bit of my summer always revolves around prepping my classroom materials (and classroom) for back to school time. I don't know why it is, but there's something so nice about pinning cute things for the classroom on Pinterest and shopping for fun back-to-school items! Before we left for the break, my team and I started to map out our year for next year. We're almost done (we're meeting next week for coffee to add the finishing touches) and were even talking about Open House before we left on Tuesday. Are we crazy or what?! (In our defense, our school already had "Save the Date" fliers for Open House printed and posted before school let out. Our front office is amazing and ahead of the game at all times.) Last year, I posted about the Open House goodies we had out for our sweet families and kiddos. Our team did the "ready confetti" envelopes and they were a huge hit! (If you don't know what I'm talking about, pop over to Sunny Days in Second Grade and read all about it.) We used the printables from her blog last year and the kids loved getting a special surprise the night before first grade. I decided, though, that I wanted to change it up a little for next year (a little birdie may have told me that another grade decided to copy us, which is fine, but I like to be different!). I wrote my own poem just for first grade and we will attach them to the ready confetti. Here's what it looks like:

The teeny tiny bag holds the magical confetti, which is actually sequins (you could do glitter, but we just happened to have sequins last year). The confetti and the poem go inside an envelope with the cover sheet stapled on top. As a precaution, I also told the kids that they couldn't take the confetti out because it would make the magic go away. We actually had a parent volunteer last year put these together so it was low prep on my part!

If you would like your OWN copy, click on either picture above!

Our plans for the rest of the day include a little bit of lounging around and heading out to the lake. Don't you just love summer?!