Book Baskets

Ever since our school adopted the Reader's Workshop approach, I have been trying to find what will work best for my kids during their IDR (independent daily reading).  For the past two years, I have used the cardboard magazine files from IKEA.  They are cheap and easy to replace.  However, being cheap means that I am buying class sets twice a year.  As the year began, I ran to IKEA to pick up another class set and to my surprise, they were sold out of them.  I started racking my brain about what else I could do that wouldn't cost a lot of money.  I went to the Dollar Tree to pick up some more book baskets for my book collection (I mean when you have 63 baskets of books holding your classroom library, you are constantly buying them!).  I came across these cute blue baskets with handles.

I LOVE them!  I figured $23 was a good investment and they will hopefully hold up for a few years!  I wasn't exactly sure how to identify everyone's baskets since they look the same.  I didn't want to write on the basket so I decided to take some Rock Star name tags, mount them to card stock, laminate them, and then write on the name tag with Sharpie.  That way, I can reuse them as well.  Since there are holes all over the basket and it would be hard to stick anything to it, I punched a hole in the name tag and used a book ring to attach it.  So far, it is working wonderfully and I think they're super cute!!!

On a personal note, all of my children are finally in school with me.  Kindergarten, First Grade, and Second Grade.  I am so happy that I get to take them to school with me each day.  It brings a lot of other issues that I have to learn to manage, but having them with me is priceless.  They are also in the classes of 3 of my personal friends.  So it is a lot of fun.  Not to mention my second grader is in Heather's class!  Each night, my job is to pack lunches and backpacks.  This is what my house looks like every night!

Here is what we looked like on our first day of school!  We have a very early start school (7:15 for students).  I leave my house at 6:30 every morning and have to have all of these precious ones ready as well.  So it is EARLY in our house getting up and ready.  They are pretty wide eyed for the first day and their first wake up call of 5:45!

Here we are leaving school in the afternoon (the morning pic is in the dark).  Everyone jokes because we always walk with Momma and her ducklings.  I don't know why, but they always walk in their birth order.  (Oh, and they are all 15 months apart from each other.)

I don't know about you guys, but we have completed 2 weeks of school and I am BEAT!  Exhausted does not even come close to what I am feeling.  Heather and I met at school today (Saturday) because we sill had hours of work to do.  We currently feel like we can't catch up.  Hopefully it will get better but until then, I will continue to look bleary eyed and breaking out in hives dealing with the stress and exhaustion.  My husband made a comment today about me not having put anything out on TPT for awhile.  He is right, but there just isn't a spare minute in the day.  Hopefully soon people!

Happy Back to School!

Getting Crafty!

Hello out there!  
Wow, what a summer!  I feel so badly about the lack of blogging on my part.  Heather blogged about her reasons for not blogging earlier this week so I figured it was my turn.

My parents and my husband had an amazing opportunity this summer to spend 3 weeks in Tanzania, Africa.  They helped with water filtration systems, gardening, and soccer camps.  They ended the trip by climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro!!!  It was an amazing experience for them and I am so thankful they had the opportunity to participate in such a worthwhile cause.  Here is a picture of the hubs while in Africa:

While they were on this amazing adventure, I was at home on the other side of the mission trip.  The side not talked about as much...The ones left behind.  It was a wonderful three weeks of single parenthood.  To any of you single parents out there, I admire what you do on a day to day basis.  I truly appreciated my husband more after those three weeks apart!  I spent those weeks in Ohio with my grandparents, aunt and uncle, and cousins.  The time with family was priceless and so enjoyable.  But in all actuality, let's be serious...I needed reinforcements.   

Once my husband returned home, it was GAME ON!  We packed as much as possible into the rest of our summer.  We made a trip to the beach, went to Indiana to visit my brother and his wife and attend a wedding.  Then we went to Tennessee to visit my husband's family.  All in all, we have only been home 2 weeks this summer!  It has been magical and wonderful and I wouldn't trade any of it!  So as you can probably imagine, blogging wasn't even on my radar screen.  In fact, for the first time ever, I haven't even thought about anything school related this summer.  It was a weird feeling.  But I liked it!!

Now that we are home and I return to school on Monday, school has been on my mind!  All of my children will finally be in school this year.  I have been joking that in my whole teaching career I have been a K-2 teacher.  Now I will be a K-2 parent too.  Literally!  I will have my son in 2nd, middle daughter in 1st, and baby girl in Kindergarten!  WHOA!  This also means that these three precious ones will be with me at school.  UGH!  I love my children and I do believe it is amazing that I get to have them with me at school to love on and spy on.  But before and after school, COME ON!  It's like I trade my teacher's hat in for a referee's!  I can hardly get anything done.  

For this reason, I have been attempting to get as much of my stuff done BEFORE my first day back.  That way I can get in, get out, and no one gets hurt.  So I started getting a little crafty.  

Have you seen the pin going around Pinterest with the bookshelves at the end of each table group?  It originated from Dandelions and Dragonflies.  I fell in love with this idea and decided to bite the bullet and do it myself.  Then I found on her blog that she did this adorable fabric on her bookshelves.  I decided that I had to do this too!  So I got some adorable fabric that will be on all of my bookshelves and then also some curtains.  

   Last but not least, I decided to make some bookmarks for my notebooks at school.  I tried this last year and it was very helpful.  I originally saw the pin here.  I have a rockstar theme in my classroom so I ordered some cute rockstar ribbon and went to town.  

1.  I cut the ribbon to the length that I wanted.  Then I folded it at the end in half.  

2.  Next I use my scissors to cut on an angle.

3.  Then the bottom of each of the ribbons looks like this:

4.  Last I use a lighter to melt the ends of the ribbon.  Don't get too close or you'll light it on fire.  Get just close enough to watch the edge melt.  By doing this you ensure that your ribbon won't fray.

5.  All done!  The girls get the pink rock star ribbon in their notebooks. The boys get black and white zebra print in theirs.  

 Well, I better stop since this blog has gotten quite long.  I hope everyone is well and enjoying back to school time!  Stay tuned because I assure you that we will be blogging more frequently this school year!

Happy Crafting!