You Say It's Your Birthday!

Today we celebrated our daughters birthdays.  They are not twins but were born two years apart to the day!  We actually celebrate for about a week but today was our family dinner celebration where we let them choose any place to go out to eat.

Since everyone has gone to bed and I've got birthdays on my brain, I decided to whip up some cute bee themed birthday cards to use this year with some adorable clip art from Scrappin' Doodles.  (I saw these little birthday bees with the big glasses a couple weeks ago and couldn't resist!)

I have always ordered cards from Vistaprint or Really Good Stuff or some other place to use but when I saw these cuties, I knew I was going to make my own.

There are six different designs and sayings with two per page.  I like to have all the kids in the class sign the back with their personal birthday wishes.  They get quite fun and creative with different colored pencils or doodles.  The birthday boy or girl also gets a birthday pencil and sticker and can bring treats to school to share.  We sing a couple different birthday songs and give a birthday blessing.

You can get them at my TN shop by clicking on the image below.

I hope you can use them.

If you'd like to win a set, just leave me a comment telling me how you celebrate birthdays in your class.

Free Manners Posters

Not yet a week out of school and the wheels are turning, creative juices are flowing, and late night Pinterest hopping is occurring.

Love, love, love summer!

With school and blog designing and life in general so little of that has been happening for me lately.  And I'm not complaining at all because I love everything I do but it's nice to have a little extra "free" time to do those things that don't come easily during the year.

I am so looking forward to actually reading a whole book for PLEASURE and then posting about it on The Best Endings too.  Most everything I've read during the year has been recommended by someone else's posts so I'm searching for something new and exciting.  ;)

As I've been slowly working on cleaning, organizing, and packing my room away for the summer, I've noticed a few things that need updating or tweaking.

Before school started I found a set of free manner posters from somewhere . . . can't find or recall where.  Anywho, I hung them up and the kids and I loved them and referred to them often.  But, they didn't really fit in with my theme.  So naturally I had to redo them.

You can grab them for free from my Teacher's Notebook shop.  Since I couldn't get them to upload to my shop you can grab them here for free by clicking on the picture.

Enjoy!

Writer's Eyes

A while back I found this super cute idea about writer's eyes on Cara Carroll's website. She had a great freebie that I grabbed and mounted on poster board (since I'm out of bulletin board space). I used it at the beginning of the year to begin teaching writing and editing. After a while I needed more. Then Debbie Candau recently blogged about her version of the writer's eyes which incorporated her class mascot. Debbie's freebie included some extras that I wanted to add to mine, but it didn't fit my needs perfectly either. Duh, why don't I create my own to go with my bee theme?! (I've been a little slow lately, but please!) Scrappin Doodles has those adorable buggy-eyed characters that fit the writer's eyes theme perfectly and I had already purchased the bee set of course, so I went to work. According to Debbie's post, Mrs. Phippen is the one who started the writer's eyes craze. She has the cutest board with embroidery hoops made to look like glasses! Debbie is taking the idea up a notch by having her kiddos wear 3D glasses with the lenses punched out...bet the kids LOVE that. (Just what I need...any excuse to see a fun movie. Oh honey, guess what we must do this weekend...and can we write it off as a "business" expense?) If you haven't already, check out these three ladies' fabulous blogs for their incredible versions of writer's eyes (as well as other amazing ideas). I know you'll find one you can't live without or you can whip up your own themed version.

This item now available at my Teacher's Notebook store.

Bee of the Week

Every member of my class gets a special week to be the "Bee of the Week"! I made this poster and enlarge it on our school copier to fit on 11 X 17" paper. In addition to sharing their poster, the Bee gets to bring in five to ten photos to share, two items for show-and-tell (only one of which can be a toy), and a favorite book to read aloud to the class. I also encourage parents (or another special adult) to come for lunch one day during the week. This item is available at my Teacher's Notebook store for $1.

Here's hoping you all have a special week, bee or not!

Home Away From Home

Finally I've got some pictures of my classroom. (New camera...love it!) Take a look and let me know what you think of my already "lived in" small home away from home!

I didn't realize how small and crowded my room was until I began taking pictures and looking at them. Wow!

The Buzz Word

One of the gazillion blogs I was on today had a Password idea.  (If you know the blog, please let me know so I can give them credit.)  The password was hung by the door and the kids had to read it going out, etc. for practice.  Love that idea for those tough to remember words.  So I adapted it to my bee theme and here it is...the Buzz Word.  I will either write the word on or attach with Velcro dot.

I know how to put google docs on my website but not on my blog yet, so if you'd like a copy let me know.

Creations for the New School Year

After seeing the awesome owl art created by Mrs. Olson, I was inspired to create my own bee artwork for my classroom.  She very kindly offered to make some for me, but after having ordered twice from Vistaprint, once from Zazzle and Oriental Trading I figured I had better try out my own first.  I am just tickled and can't wait to hang them in my newly arranged room.