Classroom Tips!

Happy Thursday & Happy Birthday to my marvelous husband!! This is one of the Molten Lava Cupcakes I baked at 11pm last night, so that I could wish him a happy birthday with one right at Midnight! It was a wonderful time together & I wish him many more years of love and happiness. He is an awesome dad and the best husband a girl could ask for.

Worried about class behavior? Do you have some outspoken students? Try rewarding GOOD behavior instead of giving attention to the bad choices being made. This is a pail in which I put names of students that I catch being good. Whether it's helping out someone else, sitting and working quietly, achieving something awesome...anything at all of the sort. At the end of the 2 weeks I pull a name and that person gets to pick from the treasure box. Our treasure box holds a variety of items (Special eraser & Pencil packs, Art Supplies, new books, craft supplies, games etc.) but the most popular items in the box??? TIME WITH YOU cards! They are simple postcards with fun outings on them, that take place outside of the home with a parent and just the winning child. The kids go MAD for these! It's completely obvious how much they love that one on one time. 

One negative about schooling year-round? The non-stop ringing of our doorbell with different neighborhood children asking my kids to go out and play. After the first week of this, I had the kids make a door hanging sign that will go on the backdoor. Now the kids know when to ring the doorbell and when it's not a good idea. I am slipping this through the laminating machine and then we will be in business for the rest of the Summer!

Looking for ways to display art work or to use as a drying rack? This cafe rod is sold inexpensively in a multipack and just hooked onto the wall using cup hooks. I used curtain clips to hold the art work and it's done! Simple, inexpensive and awesome! It allows for multiple small gallery displays throughout a classroom!

Brave the storm and a rainbow will follow. Enjoy every minute my friends!

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Wonderful Word Wednesday...

Rain, Rain, Go Away! We have been under tremendous rain storms with a lot of flash flooding lately! I hope you are all staying warm and dry and safe out there! We've have some water in the basement but as always, it could be worse. I hope your week is going well so far!

We love words in this family and are always chattering on non-stop. One thing I am noticing though, is that my children tend to use lazy words and their writing needs a bit of a PUNCH! In order for them to begin using more colorful and vibrant words, I have a Thesaurus in a basket on the table with highlighters. They look up the word they are using, and find a good replacement word. They highlight the word in the book and also on their paper. This is helping them expand their vocabulary and spell different words! 

Sticking with our love of words, I purchased this SAT vocabulary flashcard book and we have a word of the day. In the beginning of the day we read the word and I write it on the board. We discuss the definition and attempt to use it at least once in a sentence that day. There is no test, it is just a chance to increase vocabulary. I then clip the flashcard to a board in the classroom where it stays all day long and we just continue to add to them daily. Every now and then I will catch them browsing through the words and I always catch them trying to use them! 

Space in a classroom is like gold, as I am sure many of you know! In order to conserve space and also to allow my children access to everything we have in the classroom, I have to get pretty creative on where to put things. My youngest uses sentence strips for his spelling words and creating short sentences, I have these hanging from cup hooks on the side of a bookshelf, so that they are off the floor and using up space that would otherwise be wasted! 

I tell my children this every single day. It is nice to be important but it is more important to be nice is another thing I always tell them.

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