Dollar Store Inspiration

Last night I stopped at the Dollar General before going into school and I found some good deals.  Of course I had to make something to go along with them...

First up, this squiggle book for 50 cents...it gets better, it was 30% off at the register!

 I have used squiggle as a center for all of my teaching years and it is still one of my kiddos favorites!  For those who don't know what squiggle is, you start with a squiggle or a doodle and the students have to finish the doodle and make it into something.  Then when they are finished with their drawing, they write a story about it.

After many years of using the same boring sheet I thought it is time to spruce it up. Then I decided to share it with everyone and make it a freebie in Spanish or English!

Click here to get it in English!

Click here to get it in Spanish!

What I think I am going to do is cut the squiggles from the book and glue them on these pages.  I might just handwrite the squiggles, too. I am super excited about this -- it is about time I updated my squiggle page!

Then I found these sequencing puzzles for $1.  There are 8 different puzzles in the pack -- they are kind of flimsy, but not bad for a $1.

The puzzles would be nice as a center, but I wanted to have a writing accountability piece to them too, so I created these sheets.  I originally just made the one sheet for my students (using the words I know they need), but when I decided to offer it as a freebie, I thought about the different levels (kindergarten to third grade) that might want it, so I tried to level the worksheets.

Click here to get these pages in Spanish!

Click here to get these pages in English.

So that's all I've got for now.  I am working really hard on some cool math stuff to share with you all, I am very excited!  School is getting closer...18 days until teachers go back!

Classroom Organization Linky Party

Hey everyone!  I have worked and worked this post and finally on Friday, I have gotten it done...two days late.  My mama just went through some major surgery and I thought I would have some time to work on it at the hospital, but I got a lot more family time instead (which is a good thing).  So my mama is out of the hospital today (and doing amazingly well!) and I am about to press "publish" on this bad boy!  Hope you enjoy!

Today I am doing a double-link up party with Miss Kindergarten and Kristen from Ladybug's Teaching Files...we are talking about classroom organization (one of my favorite subjects!).

Miss Kindergarten's Classroom Organization Tips

Ladybug's Teacher Files Optimum Organization

In my district we use Pearson's Calle de la lectura in our bilingual classrooms (Reading Street, in the monolingual classrooms).  We no longer do spelling tests (we do dictados because research says that dications are the best way bilingual students learn grammar and spelling skills), but we do have a phonics focus each week...that's where my phonics centers come in.

I felt that my students were forgetting the phonics skill the week after we learned it and by the time it was test taking time, they had forgotten all about it.  Or even worse, we would learn all about la h muda and I would continue to see "ay" in their writing...ugh!  So I decided to create these phonics centers.  Some teachers might have the students work on the current phonics skill being taught, but I feel I have gotten the most success by having the center out the following week: kind of like a review, but more of an extension of learning.

Second grade Reading Street has 6 units, 5 phonics skills each unit.  That got overwhelming:  I tried envelopes, I tried plastic bags, nothing was working:  In comes Target with their wonderful dollar spot accordion folders.

This is how I can take all of this:

And organize it to this:

 

So, I'll break it down a little.  Each center has these items (this is where the majority of my die-cut obsession goes...):

Each accordion file holds five of centers:

Then I have them stored in one of my cabinets (and yes, I am missing a couple of files in this picture...must have been before I finished unpacking them all).

There you have it!  The way I organize all of my phonics centers (the smaller envelopes hold my literacy centers). I pretty much do the same for my math, writing, and ELA centers.  I spent much of last year making and organizing all these centers (I had a lot, but a lot of holes I needed to fill), so it is going to be nice having them all organized for use this year.

What organization project do you need to tackle or maybe already tackled this summer?