The $100 Challenge

Each year our PTA gives (reimburses) the teachers $100 for classroom supplies.  I always tell myself that I am going to stick to this $100 budget and then find myself spending almost twice as much.  This year, though, I'm taking on the challenge of actually sticking to my $100 budget so that I don't shell out any of my own money.  

Back when I started teaching I was dropping about $100 a month on books, supplies, and resources for my classroom.  I can't imagine spending that much on school stuff now, but I guess at that point in my life that was where my money needed to go. 

I thought I'd share my school purchases as I go and share my running tally of where my $100 budget has gone.  I have a few specific essentials to pick up, but I have the majority of my budget to spend on whatever I find over the next couple months.

My first purchase was 3 of the "Who Was..." biographies.  I never go to Wal-Mart, but went there with a friend and happened upon a Scholastic book display.  I have quite a few of these bios already and really like them (my kids last year called them the "big head books"), so I was excited to find ones on Dr. Seuss, Walt Disney, and Neil Armstrong.  These are perfect for my reading units and fit my need for more non-fiction teacher real alouds.  These were $4.24 each, so I little discounted from the $4.99 cover price.

Current Total:  $13

Remaining Budget:  $87

I'll keep you updated on my budget and purchases as the summer goes on!

What would you buy with $100 for your classroom?!?

Whole Group Reading: Teacher Read Aloud

When we started Literacy First, I was kind of surprised that having a teacher-led read aloud was part of our whole group time.  In the past we'd had our reading series dictate the story we read that week and we had a few novel studies on top of that.  I always did a chapter book read aloud with my class on top of that, but I really didn't think that reading story books to third graders (or older) was all that necessary.  

I've come to enjoy our read aloud time a lot, though, and it's given me a lot more opportunities to read a variety of stories to my students.  We're supposed to incorporate a lot of non-fiction into our read alouds (about 50 or 60%). 

Here are some of the books / themes that we've done this year:

• Friendship
• Pets / Animal Heroes
• Christopher Columbus
• Elections 
• Presidents 
• Thanksgiving / Native Americans
• Christmas
• Penguins 
• Johnny Appleseed
• Martin Luther King Jr. / Civil Rights
• Inventors
• Titanic
• Butterflies
• Ramona Quimby, Age 8
• The Mouse and the Motorcycle
• Muggie Maggie
• Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing
• Charlotte's Web

There are even more I would like to try to do in the future, but I just haven't had time to fit in or plan for!  We also do some weeks where we just read stories and focus on a certain comprehension skill or text structure...  For example, we might spend a week reading books and focusing on a skill like retelling or compare and contrast.  Some themes extend more than just 1 week and the novel studies usually take about 2 weeks each. 

My kids really love the nonfiction books and learning new things through these books.  We're in the middle of our inventors unit right now and we studied old school inventors like Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell and now we're reading about Steve Jobs.  They're loving it!

I wanted to share the reading planner than I created last spring again.  It's been good for planning things out and it's definitely going to help me in doing some better planning for next year!

Reading Theme Planner.pdf 

One of my current goals for now and into the summer is better organizing all of my theme resources.  I'm considering some tubs like these:  

Image via Really Good Stuff

Target also has some similar boxes...  I think these would be perfect for putting my books and files for themes into one common spot and would be super convenient for sharing with my coworkers!

I'm hoping to get back into some school-related posts again in the coming weeks and months.  Sometimes mid-year I get sick of even thinking about school when I'm not there, so blogging about it isn't exactly at the top of my list!

Oh Target, You Got Me Again!

To say I'm a Target addict is a complete understatement...  If I had to shop at only one store for the rest of my life, I'd say Target would definitely be my store.  

I started seeing posts about school stuff in the dollar / bargain section of Target last week, so I pretty much went there immediately to do my damage.  Altogether, I've spent right around $50, so about half of the money I will get back from our PTA.  (More on my other school shopping later this week!)  My goal is to stick as close to that $100 as possible this year and not spend more than about $25 or $50 of my own money.  I also have a $35 Wal-Mart gift card I received for doing a student survey thing, so I'm contemplating using that on some new decorations for my classroom.  I hate Wal-Mart and try to avoid going there at all costs, but I will admit they do get some cute things this time of year!

Okay, onto my goodies...

I was pretty pumped to find so many fun purple items!  The plastic storage (6 total) were $2.50 each,  but oddly enough I went back this week to 2 other Targets and they were $3!  I don't know what's up with the price difference / increase, but I'm glad I got these when they were only $2.50.  (I grabbed my 25 original book bins when they were only $1 each back about 5 years ago!)  I made another trip back yesterday when I heard that they had purple pocket charts.  I knew it was a longshot since I hadn't seen them at the other 3 Targets in town, but there they were...  Just waiting for me to give them a home in my classroom!  Yay!  There are several things I seem to hoard for school and these $1 pocket charts are one of them.  I swear I have pretty much every color ever.  

I also picked up 4 new non-fiction books for $1 each.  I use these almost weekly for mini-book reports in our research work station.  I try to pick up these books whenever new ones come out.  There are almost always new books in their dollar section, not just during back to school time.  For 3rd grade, I usually go for the Level 2 and Level 3 books.  

I didn't really need notepads and notecards, but these were too cute to pass up.  I love having cute notecards to write notes to the kids on and I'm a huge fan of the Muppets, so of course I had to grab a couple packets of those.  And the little cassette tape sticky notes!?!  Love those!  

My biggest purchases were Dr. Suess items.  I went a little bit crazy with those!  We always team up our assessment kickoff with Dr. Seuss week, so I like to stock up on these goodies when I can and save them for when we start assessments.  (You can read more about my assessment goodies here.)  I ended up getting class sets of award certificates, pencils, erasers, stickers, and bookmarks.  They had some other cute Dr. Seuss items like bags and silly bands, but I decided this was plenty for right now.  The school usually provides other assessment treats, so I think my kids will be well take care of when testing season arrives next spring!

Have you found any other goodies are Target? Please share if you've found any of your own Target treasures!  

Busiest Week Ever (& Skippyjon Jones!)

Okay, maybe not ever, but this will most likely be the busiest week of my summer...

Tomorrow morning I begin a 2 week course / workshop on Common Core math at one of the local universities.  It was offered to up to 30 3rd through 5th grade teachers in two local school districts, plus the Catholic diocese.  I'll have 4 of of coworkers there, so I think it'll be nice to have some familiar faces there and people that know how things go in my building.  This thing lasts all day, Monday through Friday, for the next two weeks!  I've been such a slug on many of these summer days, so getting back into a routine of getting up early and functioning all day is going to be rough!  I'm sure some naps may be in order when I get home!

Why am I doing this?  Several reasons...  I'll admit that the fact that I am getting paid to go to this thing is a huge factor for me.  (I had planned to do a summer school program, but that was super disorganized and I decided not to be a part of that and still wanted a little extra income to boost my savings.)  I'm also getting 3 credit hours, which is great since I'm trying to get to MS+12 on the payscale in the next couple years.  (I feel like an over achiever sometimes when I consider that I never even planned to get my Master's back in the day.)  In addition to those more selfish reasons, I'm also interested in learning as much about Common Core in the next couple years as we inch toward those standards.  (K-2 is moving to CC standards this year, but the upper grades are still going by state standards since those are the assessments we'll be taking...  We'll go through the CC training that the lower grades have already gone through at the end of this coming school year.)

On top of all of this, one of my good friends and former roommate is getting married next Saturday!  I'm super excited for the wedding and for all of the good friends coming to town!  (Two of my besties will be here!  Yay!)  My evenings from Wednesday on will be consumed with wedding-related events and hanging out with my friends!  It kinda stinks that everything falls at the same week in the summer, but oh well, that's how life goes sometimes!

Okay, I'm rambling...  Bear with me. 

I'm easing my way into school shopping mode, though I haven't made any purchases yet for my own classroom.  I was hoping Target would have some of the goodies I've been seeing on the blogs in their dollar section, but as of last night there wasn't anything new yet.  Their school supply department in the back of the store was setup, but no great sales or anything yet either.

Has anyone found any super sweet deals on school stuff yet?  I know it's still early in the game, but I like getting stuff done early.

I popped into Kohl's because I got one of those $10 cards in the mail and after no luck shopping for a dress I didn't need, I spotted the most recent Kohl's Cares display at the front of the store.  (These are the $5 books and stuffed animals where the money goes to charity.)  I don't go to Kohl's a ton anymore, but most of the time when I've seen the books they've been more classic books like Dr. Seuss or Eric Carle.  Right now they have Skippyjon Jones!  My store had 4 books and a variety of animals.  I have a couple of those books, but they're a little below 3rd grade.  (Plus I know the kids and teachers in the lower grades read them, so I don't want to repeat too much.)  I called up my aunt who teaches 1st and he had me pick up one of the books and a stuffed Skippyjon Jones.  She's great at doing cute voices during read alouds and her 1st graders love when she has puppets and stuffed animals to go along with the books.  

Here are the links to the ones they have online...  Everything is only $5 each and the books are nice hardbacks!

• Skippyjon Jones
• Skippyjon Jones and the Big Bones
• Skippyjon Jones Lost in Space
• Skippyjon Jones in the Doghouse
• Skippyjon Jones Class Action

Here's an Instagram pic of my little guy I picked up:  http://instagram.com/p/Mz4z0NS2e1/?ref=nf

(For some reason my phone pics aren't loading to Blogger like they're supposed to.)  

I'll try to post some updates this week if I have time.  I'm also hoping to start hitting some back to school sales and I can post some haul pics of the goodies I find.  Let me know in the comments if you've had any successful school shopping yet!  

Happy Sunday!

Summer Reading List

I'm a teacher who doesn't really read in my free time...

Does that make me a hypocrite?

I loved reading when I was a kid.  I owned well over 100 Baby Sitters Club books, but once I outgrew those I kind of lost my love for reading.  I got into some Christian fiction when I was in middle school and high school and would read those over the summer, but I never found anything that I just really enjoyed.  During the school year I was too consumed with the required readings  for my classes that I didn't have any time to read for pleasure anyway.  

The same was true in college, but at least being an El. Ed. major I got to read a lot of neat children's literature.  I'm pretty sure the only books I read for my own enjoyment during my college years were the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books and He's Just Not That Into You.  

A couple summers ago my friend loaned me Confessions of a Shopaholic and I fell in love with that series!  For the first time since I was a kid, I actually found myself choosing a book over TV!  I zipped through all of the books from that series that were out in one summer.  I settled upon the fact that I like slightly fluffy, girly books that are just plain fun to read.  You know, the kind of books that you want to read on a summer day out by the pool...  

So, as summer is approaching I'm coming up with a list of books that I'd like to read.  We've got a few great used bookstores that I'm hoping to hit up for the ones I don't already have.  When Borders when out of business last year I was able to grab a few that I'd wanted, so that was a plus!

• The Hunger Games series - I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority that haven't read or seen the movie yet. I hear these are a quick read, so I'm hoping to make it through at least the first book by the time the movie hits DVD and my Netflix queue.
• Something Blue - I read Something Borrowed last fall when the DVD showed up from Netflix and I realized I'd never read the book.  I pushed myself through the book before I'd let myself watch the movie.  (I'm just like that sometimes.)  I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would and have decided I want to read the sequel as well.  (I think there's a chance this one is going to be turned into a movie as well.)
• The Gatecrasher / Sleeping Arrangements / Cocktails For Three - I really enjoy Sophie Kinsella's books and she also writes under the name Madeline Wickham.  (I feel like one of those is her real name, but I can't remember which one.)  I've never read any of her Madeline Wickham books, but I expect I'll like them as well.  I think all three of these were Borders clearance finds that I grabbed last year and never got around to reading last summer.  I'm hoping to get through at least one or two this year.
• The Help - Yes, once again, I haven't seen the movie or read the book yet.  I have a thing about reading books before watching movies (if I think I'll actually like the book).  This one probably tops the priority list over The Hunger Games.
• The Nanny Diaries - I honestly was never all that interested in this movie (do you see a trend with my books?), but I found this book for $1 last year and decided to pick it up.  I spent a good chunk of my teenage and college years babysitting for a living, so I thought this might be a fun read.

I highly doubt I'll make it through all of these books this summer...  I'm planning on working part-time, maybe doing summer school, moving, and possibly traveling, but I do hope that I can make it through a few. I love sitting out on the porch on a summer day reading a good book, even if it's just a chapter or two a day!

What books are you hoping to read this summer?  

Any good recommendations for me?!?  :)