OurWanderingAdventures : Busy Binder

Happy day my friends! I hope you all are doing very well! We took off last week for a mini vacation to the waterpark capital of the world, Wisconsin Dells and had an absolutely fabulous time! Now we are back and ready to begin the new school year. Can you believe how quickly time flies? This year I have a 5th grader and 3rd grader that are going to need a lot of my time in the morning as I introduce new things and concepts. As this is happening, I created a BUSY BINDER for my youngest who will be in 1st grade.

This binder is housed in Roman's School Bin (will share these in another post) and he grabs it as soon as he enters the classroom. Each paper is in a page protector so that it becomes an instant wipe board. A square of fabric can be easily used as an eraser, but we use a small eraser from the Dollar Spot at TARGET!!

Store your dry erase markers, pencil & eraser and any other supplies your child will need for the binder in a pencil pouch that easily clips right into the binder. Having everything in 1 place makes it easier for your student to just grab and go in the morning.

The first 2 pages will help him work on spelling out months and days of the week, along with writing down numbers of which day it is.

On the calendar page he writes the name of the month again and circles the day that it is today. On the printable pages for you, I left the numbers off for you to fill in, so that you can print it up multiple times, instead of having months where day 1 may not begin on Thursday.

Next, is his address. He works on writing it in. This is also great handwriting practice, since he needs to stay in the lines. For Roman, I filled in parts of the address and he has to fill in the blanks. As he gets better, I remove some of the parts I filled in until it gets completely blank like this.

Next, is a phone number page where he fills out his phone number. Roman knows many of these pages from Kindergarten work but it's good repetition, to stay in his brain!

The binder also holds 2 different types of paper for handwriting improvement. The child lined paper helps Roman work on straightening his letters and keeping his words clutter free.

Regular student paper is perfect for him to start practicing his writing. This also allows him a place to doodle if he has some free time.

A 100s chart allows him to work on counting to 100 while crossing off the numbers as he goes. Sometimes I will put blue painters tape pieces on multiple numbers to have him fill in the blanks. (I use painters tape, because it will peel off easily)

I created this document of Sight Words that every First Grader must know from a reference book that I use. I just typed them up and put it in this book. On this page Roman reads the words that he can and puts a line through them if he knows them. I also take 5 words a week from this list and they are his spelling words for that week, that way he is tested on them as well.

Using Baseball card sleeves (still can be used as a wipe board), I inserted the flashcards that came with our reading program. He fills out the missing letters in each word. These start out easily with just 1 letter missing and then get more difficult as he progresses through them. Missing 2 letters, missing 2 letters and finally missing all letters and just containing the photo.

The last section just has all his sight word flashcards for him to work on and cross off the words that he knows as he goes. He pretty much knows all of these, but it's good reinforcement for what he knows.

The final section of our Busy Binder holds addition and subtraction flashcards. Our normal sized ones did not fit in here, so I printed some on card stock FROM HERE. I wish I had colored card stock to make them prettier but alas, no such luck. I am trying to figure out a way to laminate his number line and pop it in there too, so that he can use it if needed as he gets more familiar with memorizing.

I hope that you can find use for these things that I have shared with you, please feel free to use them, just link back to me if you use them online. HERE IS WHERE you can find these sheets to print out on your own! If you have questions, please feel free to ask! If you add anything else to your binders please share in the comments below! I love this binder because it is so portable and can even go on vacation with us, plane rides, Dr. office and car trips!