Textron is Awesome!!!!

           For the past three years Textron has held a school supply drive. My school is the beneficiaries of that school drive. They come to our campus with a trailer stuffed full of boxes of every kind of school supply a teacher could want. All the teachers and several Textron employees cart box after box of school supplies into the school. This year we put them on our stage until we can get them to a more suitable storage location. We had box after box of composition books, spirals, folders (several boxes of the really nice plastic folders with brads), pencils, colored pencils, crayons, markers, erasers, scissors, rulers, glue sticks, bottles of glue, and Kleenex boxes. It was just amazing how much there was. We ended up completely filling the stage. Every teacher got to go through and get what they wanted, and we barely made a dent. We have enough school supplies to last the entire year.
      We are so completely blessed that Textron has choosen us to receive this amazing gift each year. I hope they understand how grateful and thankful our entire school is for their generosity.

I marked out all my colleague's faces because I didn't ask any of them if I could take their picture or post it o here. You can see how full our stage is. 

Here is a shot that shows how it goes from side to side. Lots of boxes are stacked two or three high.

I will not be in my room again until the kids show up. I think everything is ready. If it is not, its not going to be.

The Most Amazing Awesome Bed Ever!!!

When my youngest was very young, my brother got a new bed. He gave me his old mattress and box springs. We saved them until Victoria outgrew her crib. When she did move out of her crib, we chose to put the mattress and box springs on the floor in case she ever rolled out. She is over 3 and a half now and has never rolled out of bed. We decided it was time for her to have a bed frame. We went to Ikea a few weeks ago and saw a loft bed frame there that was really cool, but it wouldn't work with her current mattress. My amazingly inventive husband started thinking. Just over a week ago he had it all worked out and we headed off to Home Depot for supplies.

Buying supplies at Home Depot. The girls are watching the 4x4 posts being cut in half.

My husband decided he wanted the finished product to be a surprise for the girls. So, they were locked out of the room for a week. The anticipation built as we got closer and closer to finishing.

Here is where the bed frame is going to go. It is such an empty slate.

Here is the beginning of construction. My husband researched plans on the internet, but then he designed it himself.

It is beginning to take shape. The playhouse created below is going to be so much fun.

Oh, wow. With the mattress up there, we realized how close they are going to be to the ceiling.

Every good playhouse needs to have a window, right?

The complete product. I still have to pinch myself to believe that my children get to sleep in this amazing bed. I tell them all the time how lucky they are to have a daddy that loves them so much.

Two extremely happy children.

The first thing they did after looking over it all was to run to their playroom and grab stuff for their "living room" as they have dubbed it. They now take pleasure in saying I'm going to go to our living room.

The whole process took just at a week start to finish. We hit a few snags along the way, but we were able to work them out. I am just so amazed at what my husband and I can do when we work together. 

Oh, and we have already started making plans for one of these in Cristina's room, and we are trying to incorporate a slide. Awesome!!!

Sale! Sale! Sale! My first TpT Sale!

The title of my post has two meanings. First, (the intended meaning) is that it is time for the Teacher's Pay Teachers Back to School Sale! Everyone one of my products is 20% off. If you add the code BTS13 at checkout you get an extra 10% off of everything. There are many things I love about back to school (as well as things I don't love) but the very best thing is the back to school sales. Go check out my sale at the link below.

My TpT store.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Jennifer-Hollingsworth-5705

The second meaning of the title of my post is that I made my first sale on TpT! I have only had an active store for a few weeks and I started with only two or three products. I now have about 20 products and I am so excited to actually sell something. I am excited to continue to create products this year and I hope to sell more.

This past week my husband and I have been working on a really awesome project for my youngest daughter. We finally finished tonight. Tomorrow I will have a full post complete with pictures of the amazing things my husband can think up.

Day 4

Well I missed posting for day 3. I somehow thought that I had posted about it. Oh well, I will just skip to Day 4. I have all the decoration ready, except for a few labels that I still need to create.

Last night after I got home I made Superhero Months of the Year to hang up above the calendar.

I have them on my TpT store.

Soon I will have my Superhero Parts of Speech printed and hung up. I am frustrated that I haven't been able to get that done yet.

My reading wall.

I redid my objective board to add superhero labels. These will be up on TpT soon.

The beginning of my math wall. Plus, I have the book boxes started.

This is my brand new bulletin board outside my door. It was put up two days ago.

I figured out how to take panorama pictures on my phone. Here is my room taken from the door.

Dentist

Just a quick word about my daughters' dentist appointments yesterday. 2 kids 0 cavities is always the best way to have a dentist appointment!

Cristina had no cavities. She does have some places to brush more carefully, but overall a successful visit. However, she has over crowding in her bottom jaw. At her next visit we get to start the conversation about orthodontists. That should be some good times.

Victoria is doing an amazing job of overcoming her fear of ALL people who are not Mommy or Gigi. She went back without me, had her teeth cleaned, fluoride applied, and x-rays taken. I am so proud of her. I am also so happy she didn't have any cavities and doesn't have to go back for six months. Yea!

Day 2

Day 2 (This was actually last Tuesday)

Today I got a lot of decorating done. I have a long way to go still, but at least there is some color. Plus, I always like to leave it a little bare at the beginning because I end up adding so much during the year. Here is what I have done so far.

 Bulletin Board behind my desk. The border is superheroes to go with my theme. I actually figured out after I took the picture that the border has horizontal and vertical pieces, so I have changed out the vertical ones.

 This is my Whole Brain Teaching area. I don't know if I will leave it here or not. I had it here last year, but I had a much smaller computer table. I will need to see if I can reach a scoreboard here or not.

I got this hundred chart two years ago from Donors Choose. It is supposed to be a floor chart, but it is just not quite big enough to use the way I wanted to. I had stuff stacked on the counter here last year, but I moved it elsewhere this year. I thought this would be the perfect way to help keep the counter cleaned off. Plus you can see the hundred chart from any desk in the room.

My TEs and hanging files. Plus superheroes hanging above the windows.

This is my writing wall area. The blank area is for the superheroes parts of speech that can be found on my TpT store.http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Jennifer-Hollingsworth-5705 I just need the color printer in the computer lab to be set up so I can print, laminate and hang it up. The baskets are for turning in different types of work.

Objective board and my favorite no whining sign. Its amazing how the kids will reference it by the end of the year to tell others to stop whining. 

That's it for now. I still have pictures for Day 3 that I will try to get up tomorrow. Day 4 will not come until Thursday. After that Monday will be my first day of professional development. 

Day 1

Day 1 in my classroom was actually on Monday, but I've been busy trying to fit in as much last minute summer fun as well as last minute summer chores (dentist appointments for both girls) as I can. I always love getting back into my room at the beginning of year, but I also am always filled with a little fear until I walk through the door. Some years I have come back to a wonderfully cleaned room. Some years (last year especially) I have come back to a room of chaos and missing items. One year I even came back to a room that had not been cleaned yet. I was so lucky and so happy to see that this was one of the best years yet. I walked into a sparkling clean room. Not only that but the wonderful custodians who cleaned my room had but the big furniture back in almost the right spots. I only had to move the big things a few inches to have them exactly right. Everything on my shelves was just as I had left it, so I was able to get my room back in shape pretty quickly. Everything is starting out so well. This can only mean that I am going to have a wonderful year, right? I hope so!

Before Shots

Such a blank slate.

Tables and filing cabinet just about where I left them. Thank you custodians for saving my and my floors from having to move them.

Nice and shiny :)

Decided to turn my desk this to give more walking room.

Trying a new desk arrangement. Usually I do groups, but I want to foster more whole group class discussions. What looks like an empty space in the back is where I need two more student desks. I only have 20 and I will have 22 students this year. 

Library area all organized.

Day 2 and Day 3 coming soon!!!

Teacher's Pay Teacher

I moved to second grade last year. It was my first time to change to a different grade level. I partner taught the English side of a Dual Language Program, so, not only was I teaching a new grade level, but I was teaching in a whole new way. The most important thing for me was to make everything fun. Workbooks are NOT fun, so I needed to find fun activities for every week. Then my very good friends reminded of Teacher's Pay Teachers. They had told me about it before, but in first grade I had tons of stuff and I never really looked into it. TPT became part of my lesson planning in second grade. I bought so many things last year, and I was really inspired by all the things I found on there. I started making activities that met my students specific needs. I have now opened my very own TPT store! I am so excited to be able to share the ideas that I have with fellow teachers. Check out my store below.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Jennifer-Hollingsworth-5705



I have some literacy and math activities and posters on there now, but many more activities and posters are coming soon.

Stay tuned for a series on getting my room ready for this school year. I always love decorating!!!

Circus time!!!

Every August Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus comes to town. We have made a tradition of going every year as an end of summer activity. Cristina is totally into the circus and is old enough to not get bored during it. Victoria is totally into the circus but not old enough to sit through it. This year the theme was Dragons. That was pretty cool because their school mascot is the dragons.
We decided to make parking easier by riding the train. That way it double as two fun activities. Victoria thought riding the train was the coolest thing ever. I thought it was cool to park in the shade and ride a train that pulls up ride outside the arena. Our tickets were for the very top section of the arena. We were so high up we were above the trapeze artists.We were so high up we could also see backstage. I thought that was going to be really cool to get to see what was coming next, but they did such a good job of focusing your attention on the act I often forgot to look. When I did look it was so dark I couldn't tell what I was seeing. We decided in the future we would splurge on better seats.

The train was really crowded. We finally found two seats together. We started out trying to all sit together, but that didn't work out so well. 

The girls ended up standing in the small area between our seats and the wall.

Must have at a circus: Cotton Candy!

Each girl was allowed to pick one thing. Cristina (always the one to try to get the best deal she can) went with the elephant that came with a baby. Two toys for the price of one.

Victoria went the princess route. The cotton candy came with a crown, and she got the light up princess wand to go with it. 

When the circus was over we made our way to the train as fast as we could. We were able to get four seats together that faced each other. It was a much more comfortable ride home, except the girls wanted to lay down and take a nap. 

So far this blog as been all about family. It is summer and there hasn't been any school things to write about. That is about to change. Tomorrow I get to start working in my room. This is my favorite time of year. I love taking a room where all the furniture has been pushed into the corner and the wall are blank and making it feel like home. Three weeks until the students arrive!