Blog Hoppin Teacher Week: Make Ahead Meals

Did you learn some fun facts about other people yesterday?

What, now you're back for more??

So, I'm totally fortunate right now that I'm living at home and my mom is the one who typically does the cooking. However, when I was living on my own I did pull the crockpot out once in a while. My meals were mostly leftovers from visits back home. However, when I do pull out the crockpot, I end up bringing half of the food to school to share with my coworkers since I simply can't finish the whole thing on my own.

Here are some of my favorite crockpot recipes!

(all from Pinterest, of course!)

Crockpot Chicken Taco Chili

Slow-Cooked Minestrone Soup

Slow Cooker Chicken Fajitas

Follow my Recipes board on Pinterest to check some other recipes out! I'll admit I have not tried every single one out yet, but I hope to some day. I'm also always looking for more recipes to pin to I can't wait to see what other people share!

See you tomorrow!

Blog Hoppin Teacher Week: 5 Fun Facts

I'm reviving myself from the blogging world by joining in on Blog Hoppin's teacher week!

I really hope I can get an entry out every day this week. Wish me luck!

Here are my fun facts!

1.

 I do not like chocolate. One piece of chocolate is usually my limit. Fruit flavored candy on the other hand, is a totally different story. I can eat those for a while...

2. 

I LOVE having a flip flop tan. It makes me so happy to see it when it first appears and I try so hard to keep it for as long as I can. So even though school has started, the flip flops are still out every weekend to make sure that tan stays there for a while!

3. 

I have worked in three different schools. Each school was located in a different county. Which means I have now worked in all three of my surrounding counties. I sure get around!

4. 

I enjoy drinking tea. However, I also have very low tolerance for caffeine (it will keep me up all night!) so I have to choose my teas very carefully.

5.

The different classroom numbers I had when I taught different grade levels. Notice a pattern here?

Alrighty, those are my five fun facts. I can't wait to read yours!

Classroom Reveal Time!

Well friends, the first day of school is tomorrow, which means, it is time to reveal the classroom, whether it is ready or not!

Welcome to my front door! 

I have a lot of doors in my classroom. A front door, a back door, and another door that leads to my next door classroom.

When you walk in, this is sort of the view you get from the "mailbox" side of the room.

Turn around and you can see the mailboxes for both classes and book boxes for one class (the "owls", my homeroom).

Some close ups of the birds and owls mailbox labels. The extra mailbox slots are being used to sort and store construction paper.

   

Now let's turn around and face the door to see what it's like!

Now to the back of the room! 

We have my sink and small group table to one corner, along with the bulletin board for the "bird" class for displaying their work. 

The small group is currently hosting pencil pouches that the students will be claiming as their own tomorrow. Comes with a little welcome poem from me!

The other back corner is where the classroom library is. I still have yet to put labels on the bins but I figured that can wait since we won't be touching the library tomorrow. The book boxes in the library are for the "bird" class. Genre posters are from Ms. Elena G.

View of the classroom from the back of the room.

Moving on to the computer side of the room and focusing on the cools signs that I got from the Target dollar spot. 

(sorry for the poor lighting)

     

My teacher desk area, which is currently the messiest part of the room.

(Poor lighting again...)

And finally, the view from the front of the room!

Saw this cool desk arrangement idea on Pinterest and decided to try it out!

 Last but not least, I got myself a haircut to symbolize a fresh start with a new district, new school, and new grade level!

Alright, it's getting late! Time to sleep. 

School starts tomorrow peeps! :D

Five for Friday - Back to School Style!

Hello friends! Boy, that whole week of blogging really took something out of me because I went MIA for two weeks!!!

But I'm back today for some Five for Friday action! 

I'm hoping that I will be able to get back into the blogging mode soon!

This Five for Friday is all about Back to School since that's what I've been working on these last two weeks.

Monday and Tuesday was all about supplies shopping! On Monday I hit Office Depot, Staples, Walmart, and Target. On Tuesday I went to teacher specialty stores. Let's just say, don't ever do major shopping all in two days. You will definitely feel the money impact right away. But it's all worth it of course!

Since I have two classes rotating through my room every day, desks have to be shared between two students, which also means less desk space for each kid. I used to do pencil boxes in the past but with this new scenario, I decided to try pencil pouches instead since they can just fit nicely on top of each kid's stack on their side of the desk. Hopefully this idea works!

Some creating happened this week!

Pinterest inspired. Love these frames from Ikea!

Always need to create something on Vistaprint! Made myself a new tote bag, a notebook for student notes, magnets with my school and contact info to give out at Back to School Night, and another mousepad for the classroom.

Binder clip labels for the students' mailboxes! This was also Pinterest/blog inspired. Since I have two classes I decided to go for a bird "theme". My homeroom class will be the owls while my other class will be the birds. So things around the classroom are labeled by owls or birds to differentiate which class it belongs to. I've already created the owl labels which can be downloaded for free in my TpT store. Needed bird ones so I decided to go ahead and make them!

I printed the labels on cardstock and just taped them on the binder clips. Halfway through, I realized I should've printed the labels on those Avery® White Full-Sheet Labels (affiliate link), cut them out, and directly stick them onto the binder clips to keep them from falling off. Oh well, next year!

Just a look at the owl ones in action. 

Who else purchased tons of products during the TpT Back to School sale????

Yep, the shopping didn't end with physical stores!

Online shopping had to happen too!

Below are some of my purchases. Click on the images to check them out on TpT!

Posters

 

ELA Interactive Notebooks

     

For Homework

  

      

Quite a haul since this is my first year teaching third. 

I can't wait to use them all!

Since I am new to the district this year, I had to attend the district's new teacher orientation. 

Meet all the district people, along with our union who provided us lunch and gave us these goodie bags with supplies and awesome merchant discount cards.

Orientation was also the time for me to pick up my work laptop. 

Are you ready to see what it is?

What for it...

A giant chunky Dell! 

Now I don't know about you, but I was a PC user before I started teaching. 

Once I began teaching I slowly got converted to a Mac user because everything was Mac. Even bought myself a Macbook Air this summer.

Four years of teaching later and apparently I am back to using a PC. Have to start remembering how to navigate through Windows again!

The main reason I've been MIA for so long is that I've been working hard in my classroom and getting it ready for school!

I spent the entire last week moving into my new classroom and getting it set up. 

It is ALMOST ready for a classroom reveal (still some decorating left to do!) but it definitely has to be ready by Wednesday since that's when school starts!

I will have a classroom reveal post next week.

Here's a sneak peek for now!

Alright, it's my last weekend before school officially starts!

Have to make it worthwhile! :D