Hey, hey! I hope everyone is having an amazing week! I am definitely enjoying the summertime. It's funny-once I've been out for a few days, my brain wants to start thinking about school again in a fun and creative way. Is anyone else like that?! I love my laidback summer days, but I also enjoy creating things for the upcoming school year and my TPT store. Over the past few weeks, I've been having a lot of fun making classroom theme sets. I change my theme out every 2-3 years, but I have a blast creating new ones every year. Over the next few weeks I'm going to spotlight some of my favorite theme sets in my store! I'm super excited though about the latest one I just uploaded to my store. It's CACTUS THEMED! Have you seen cacti (cactuses?) popping up everywhere? I have...at Hobby Lobby, Marshall's/T.J. Maxx, Target...they are definitely a trend right now! Here is a preview of my set that I made. I am so pleased with how it turned out...I am contemplating changing my own theme this year to match. (And then I remember the hours I spent prepping the black and neon posters last year, and I try to tell myself that I don't NEED a new theme. We'll see which side wins out by the time I go back to work in July!)
Starting with the basics...ABCs and number posters. I started including cursive letters in my sets recently. I don't have to teach cursive, but I can definitely see this theme appealing to teachers who work with slightly older students than I do, so they'll have them if they need them!
Don't you love the cactus border at the bottom of the posters? I created it using some beautiful clip art from an
Etsy shop that I purchased. Here's a close-up:
Here are some more posters: shapes, colors, and a welcome pennant. I'm not even exaggerating when I say that this welcome pennant alone made me start thinking about changing my theme. I could so see it hanging on one of my bulletin boards!
Here's some more organization-ey stuff. Hall passes, name plates, table numbers, and labels. LOTS OF LABELS. I am obsessed with labeling things in my closet. I don't know if I've ever shared a picture of the inside of my closet at school. It is full of clear Sterilite tubs and every single one is labeled. When it's pristine at the beginning of the school year, it makes my heart so happy! (And then the first week of school happens. And then I am stuffing it full with all of the extra supplies my students bring in. Teacher truths!)
Here are a whole bunch of printables for organizing a calendar display and center organization. Now, to be totally honest I haven't done much with calendar math in the past year. It's one of the things I had to put to the side when our math block moved to the afternoon and we dedicated a 45 minute window in the morning to intervention time. It makes me so sad, though, because I LOVE calendar time! I truly believe that the students learn so much from just a few minutes of regular calendar routines every day.
Here are even more printables for the classroom! Schedule cards for the board or a pocket chart...a How Do We Get Home Display...a Classroom Jobs display...clip chart posters...and Where Are We? signs to post outside the classroom door. Speaking of class jobs...that's going to be a whole post next month. We are going to be a Leader in Me school next year and that's one of the things we were challenged to incorporate next year. (Anybody else do Leader in Me? I would love to hear your experiences!)
Okay, now on to the teacher binder stuff. I LOVE my own personal teacher binder. I made it a few years ago and when I say it changed my teaching life I really mean it! Although, to be honest, I don't just have ONE teacher binder. I have the main one that stores all of my planning documents, notes, and a lot of other important papers, but I also have separate binders for data, lesson plans, and parent communication. Each of those topics is so massive I really do need the information organized in a separate binder. Anyway, here is a snapshot of the dividers and binder covers in my cactus set! I started off with the templates I've used for other sets but I was so conflicted because I loved the cactus garden art, too. I started playing around with it and ended up creating two versions. I couldn't decide which one I liked best, so I put them both into my set. There are divider labels/binder covers for every topic under the sun that I could possibly think of. It's a lot!
I also created a bunch of forms for my own binder. Some of them are forms that I send home in my beginning of the year packet. Others are forms just to help me keep organized...and others are informational sheets for substitutes or student teachers (such as info about allergies and safety procedures).
And lastly...I made a whole collection of quote posters. Some of these are based on things that I say ALL THE TIME in my own classroom, such as "You get what you get and you don't pitch a fit!" I understand that in some parts of the country, those words don't rhyme...but here in Georgia, "get" and "fit" rhyme more often than not. I have a friend who teaches in Chicago now who says "You get what you get and you're grateful for it" instead so I included that version also. Take a peek...I am really thrilled with how these came out!
Since I know every teacher's classroom situation is unique, I also included editable templates of all of the teacher binder stuff and decorative files. There's always something I wish were included in decorative files I've purchased...editable templates fix that problem!
Do you want this set for your own classroom? Then hop on over to my TPT store to check it out! You can click on any of the pictures to take you there or just click
here.
Thank you for checking out my little blog...Make something wonderful happen today!
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