Best of Back-to-School

Well, it's that time of the year again...

hahah!

 If you haven't already gone back to school you are heading back soon, so it only makes sense to pump you up by sharing a few of my favourite back-to-school ideas! 

Let's get started!

I have always wanted to do something like this for my kiddos. It's such a great way to squash any anxieties they may have and get them excited about their first day back.

I love this minty fresh idea for Meet-the-Teacher Night! And to make it even better, you can snag Nicole's printable for FREE!

Why not have a "snowball fight" as a fun ice breaker activity?! Kids write three things about themselves on a sheet of scrap paper but DON'T write their names. Scrunch it up and, on your command, start a "snowball" fight! At the end of one minute or so, each student grabs the nearest "snowball," reads it aloud, and tries to guess who wrote it. 

Leave it to the amazing Debbie Clement to come up with such an adorable idea for a first day classroom-community-building activity! How cute would this look on your door?

I did Friday Journals one year and loved it! Every Friday starting from the first week, kids write a little note (and add a picture or two depending on your grade) to their parents telling them a few of the things they learned/did that week at school. The parents write a short response over the weekend and send the book back on Monday. Each parent response earns a sticker for the cover. It's such a great way to practice letter writing, reinforce what was taught each week, and get parents involved...plus it makes for a fun little keepsake by the end of the school year.

There are a bunch of adorable all-about-me pennant banners out there. This one is too cute...and FREE from The Bomb-Diggity Classroom!

I apologize for the self-promotion but I honestly couldn't start the year without my monthly newsletters! The editable template makes it so easy for me to produce an informative and CUTE newsletter with little effort. It definitely makes parent communication much easier!

And finally, it's always fun to end a fabulous first week sweet little treat for your new bunch. There are SO many cute first-day gift ideas out there but using fishy crackers and this snack tag saying is one of my favs!

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What are some of your favourite back-to-school ideas?!

TpT Seller Challenge: MAKEOVER MADNESS!

Hi everyone! So I'm sure you've already heard about a few fabulous ladies (Sparkling in Second, Third in Hollywood, Peppy Zesty Teacherista, and Teach Create Motivate) and their super motivating TpT Seller Challenge! I'm all for a kick-in-the-pants so I will be participating in their challenge and posting my work each week:

Week 1 is "Makeover Madness" where we were motivated to update one product cover and/or product content of our choice. Well I have recently been working on building consistency throughout my newer product covers and have been meaning to go back and re-do a few of my covers for a loooooong time now. So I updated FOUR product covers/products! 

Here they are! (psst...click any of the pics to get a good close-up of each image!)

This is the cover of one of my best-selling products, "Chalkboards & Banners", a classroom labels and decor pack. I don't actually hate the original but, like I mentioned, it wasn't consistent with the rest of my store. So it got a facelift!!

Oh boy. This one is embarrassing. That horrid image on the left was the PRODUCT COVER for my "All About Me" autobiography template pack. How I sold as many as I did is beyond me, bless all of you who were brave enough to click to learn more!! But again....FACELIFT! aahh. Much better.

P.S. if you own this pack, go download the update! I improved all of the writing lines and added another option on the "My Favourite Things" page.

Next is one of my kiddies' favourite products; my "Dry Erase Binder." It got a little facelift as well and went from drab to fab! Well...maybe not FAB, but it provides a whole lot more information-at-a-glance :)

Last but not least, I gave this *entire* product a little facelift. As another one of my best sellers, my "Telling Time" pack got a much-needed update in the form of new fonts, better layout, and a conversion of one of the activities to a more hands-on cut-and-paste activity...

...and I obviously updated this cover as well :)

If you own my "Telling Time" pack, go download the update!

Now for the best part: 

All of the products above are ON SALE in my store 

until Friday! 

See you next week!!

Math, Writing, & P/T Interview FREEBIES!

Phew! This pregnant person is popped! We had another busy week that seemed to just fly by.

All the schools in our area headed to the arena for school vs. school skating races. 

The kids raced by age group and then there was a hockey game in the afternoon. It was so fun watching some of my firsties participate in the races! 

I won't lie, the wipeouts were my favourite part...what a terrible teacher!

And those who didn't race, happily cheered our school on:

It was fun, but definitely *way* too much chaos for this Type A teacher. I was so happy to get back to our classroom!!

So anyways, amid the rush of the week, I didn't get around to documenting our activities much. The good news is, that means this post will just feature some random FREEBIES for y'all! 

Let's start with writing! We have been working on opinion writing and I created this graphic organizer to help my firsties organize their ideas:

We originally started out just writing our opinion pieces on standard lined paper (following the same structure: a statement of their opinion and three reasons for their opinion) but I have found this organizer to be SO helpful to my firsties. Their writing is so much clearer and has actually improved quite drastically as a result. 

If you read last week's post, you already know that we have been working on balancing equations. We finished up this unit with some more simple skip counting & balancing equations math centres:

*Click HERE to download the above activity as well as the activity featured in THIS POST*

The kids loved making their own little cut & paste skip counting books. Once they were done, I stapled them on the indicated staple lines (as seen on the left side of the booklet) and then they coloured their book if they had extra time. 

One of the other math centres was a balancing equations partner activity, where my firsties worked in pairs to complete a booklet:

Title Page:

Interior Pages:

*Click HERE or either pic above to download!*

Each partner got their own booklet with one title page and 4 interior pages. They completed one side of each pan balance on their own by either writing a number, addition sentence or subtraction sentence, or by drawing any number of objects. Once half of each page was filled out, they switched booklets with their partner and their partner had to complete each page by balancing the pan balance in a different way (e.g. If one partner wrote the number "4" on the left side, then the other partner might draw 4 stars on the right side).

Last but not least, Term 1 report cards went home last week which meant Parent/Teacher interviews this week! I tried something new and created this printout to help guide each interview:

*Click HERE to download this FREEBIE!*

I found it much more helpful (and efficient) to write my thoughts on this page as opposed to a little sticky note. Plus it was nice to be able to provide a copy for each parent to take home at the end of the conference.

Let's be friends!

Get teaching tips, ideas, and FREEBIES every now and then.

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I hope you find some (or all!) of those freebies useful! Have a wonderful weekend :)