Favorite Back to School Purchases Linky Party

Even when I was a student, back to school purchases were extremely exciting!  I remember packing and unpacking my school backpack over and over and over during the weeks before school started. I still love buying things for school!  Just wish I had a larger budget. Ha!

I'd like to invite you to linky up with your favorite back to school  purchases!  

Please grab the linky images from my post and add them to your post.

Here are some of my favorite back to school purchases this year.

My Erin Condren Life Planner...

Oh, how I love my Erin Condren Life Planner!

It's my 2nd year with one of her planners.  

This year, I chose to add family pictures.

The front...

The back...

And because I am a tiny bit of a freak about wanting the pages of my planner to look nice, even when my schedule is BONKERS.  I searched the whole first half of the summer for a way to write in my planner with something colorful, but erasable.  I hate whiteout.  It's bumpy.

Thanks to Jennifer, from First Grade Blue Skies, I discovered a solution.

Frixion Erasable Markers 

The colors are beautiful.

They write just the way I wanted them to.

They really do erase - perfectly.

They also have erasable highlighters.

I seriously love these markers!  

I assigned a color to each family member 

+ red for the whole family activities 

+ blue for school/work events

I use the  purple highlighter for planning/recording my exercise.

I originally planned to use another one of the highlighters for meal planning, 

but since I barely know how to cook anything I decided to junk that plan.

I also purchased new book bins for my classroom.

This summer, I've been on a mission to reorganize my classroom library for 2nd grade. 

I bought these amazing chapter book bins from Really Good Stuff.

Each bin has dividers to make 3 sections.

I'm going to keep a different series in each section.  

The 3 different series in each bin will be the same level.

My Ticonderoga pencil jar was the best deal of the summer.

I bought this adorable straw pencil jar for 50¢ at a thrift store.

I made the label with my Silhouette.
It might earn a bow before school starts.

I hope you'll link up with your favorite back to school purchases!
I can't wait to see what you bought for your classroom this summer!

An InLinkz Link-up

Make Your Anchor Charts Awesome! (freebie)

This summer, I read a great book about anchor charts. I make tons of anchor charts with my students each year, but there are times when I feel frustrated if my students don't use a chart the way I planned for it to be used. So, when one of our professional development presenters recommended a book about anchor charts, I popped open my laptop and put it in my amazon shopping cart right away.

 The book is called Smarter Charts by Marjorie Martinelli and Kristine Mraz.

I took this book to the beach with me for 4 days in a row while we were on our camping trip. One of my favorite things about the book is that it is full of photographs of different charts.  I learned lots of new things, developed some new ideas and finished it feeling good about some of the components that I already use well when making anchor charts in my classroom. 

Here are some of the highlights from my notes from the book.  

You can click on the image to download a copy of my "notes" for yourself.

During my back to school shopping, I purchased two things to help me improve my anchor charts this year.  

1. large bright colored sticky notes (8 inches x 6 inches)

I purchased them at Staples when they were buy one get one free (but they were originally $12).

Using large post it notes will allow me to add things to charts without "messing up the whole chart".  Have you ever called a kid up to add something to a chart that took you forever to prepare and they write something like "socr" (soccer) on your carefully crafted amphibians chart?  Large brightly colored sticky notes to the rescue, "socr" gets peeled off and you say the nice teacher thing before you help the little guy/girl think of something more appropriate.  I will also use these brightly colored post its to add special vocabulary words or things that I want them to refer to later.

2. double sided tape

Using double sided tape will allow me to tape student work samples and or pictures of things related to what we are learning about to the chart.  The authors of the book stress the importance of creating charts in front of and with students. It is much faster to use a piece of double sided tape while building  an anchor chart than it is to glue all the pieces.

I have several reusable anchor charts in my classroom.  I prepare parts of the anchor charts in advance, laminate them and then let my students use sticky notes as we build a chart together during a lesson. You'll notice that I tend to use lots of scrapbook paper.

Here are a few of my reusable anchor charts.

This chart is from my Writing My Opinion pack. 

I took this picture before I laminated it...but it's laminated now. 

The pieces to make the chart are included in the pack.

This is my reusable story mapping anchor chart.

Long ago, I wrote a post about how I use this anchor chart.

You can read it and grab a story mapping freebie here.

This is my reusable Reading is Thinking chart.  

I use it for all kinds of different things.  If we are working on characters, I might have the children respond to something about a specific character on a post it note and add it to the chart.  If we are working on text to self connections, I have them write about a connection they had with a certain book.

My students share their post it note as they add it to the chart.

You can read an old post about how I use this chart and grab a main idea freebie here.

This is my reusable Writing Goals anchor chart.

I wrote a post about how I use it in my classroom here.

Obviously, not all of my anchor charts are reusable.  With the help of my sandy copy of Smarter Charts, I'm hoping to kick up the awesome factor while making and using anchor charts with my students this year.  

Now, I'm gonna kick off my slippers and get some sleep.

It's here! It's here!

I've been waiting (not so patiently) for my Erin Condren Life Planner to arrive. Yippee! Yahoo! It's here!!!

 If you are not familiar with Erin Condren products, you should really check them out. I've been admiring her products (and visiting her website to listen to the pretty noises that the menu items make when you hover over them) for a whole year.

Honestly, I hesitated to buy another paper planner (because I've been using google calendar for a couple years). Google calendar is lovely, but I decided that person in charge of organizing a family with 2 teachers, 2 kids, dance classes, performing company, piano lessons, travel soccer, baseball and church events deserves a fancy planner. I will still use google calendar a bit, but with so many different things on our schedule, I really needed something else to help me stay organized. And I'm oh so incredibly happy that I splurged on myself  our family!!

I read lots of reviews on the Life Planner and everyone seems to mention the pretty packaging.  Well, that's no joke.  I hope the folks in the Erin Condren packaging department know how ridiculously exciting it is for a person like me to open the beautiful package!  My package even contained some extra surprises.  I was in love with their customer service before I even laid eyes on my new planner.

I selfishly hid from my other family members so that no one would "mom", "mom", "mom" me while I focused on opening my present, prize, new and improved organizational tool.

And there it was...

I chose my own color scheme and font and I'm in love!

I stared at it for about 20 seconds before I picked it up wondering 

if anyone but a teacher would be this excited about a calendar.

Then I remembered all the reviews and YouTube videos 

that I watched of other really excited customers.

The cover and the back is laminated, 

but with the hard kind of laminating 

that is normally too expensive for teachers to use!

The spiral binding allows it to lay flat enough for me 

to keep staring at the pages inside.

And, it's the perfect size to carry to a meeting, 

but not so big that the edges would get bent in my teacher bag.

Monthly Layout

When you order from Erin Condren, 

you can choose to start your planner any month.  

I started mine in September because 

doesn't every teacher think the real calendar year

 should match the school calendar?

(In Michigan, we start school in September.)

Did you know that Erin Condren is the daughter of two teachers and she sells teacher planners as well.

Weekly Planning Pages

Meal planning space, 

nice big boxes for morning, day, and night time activities, 

a to do list down the side...oh my!

Did I mention that I am in LOVE with my new planner?

It's full of inspirational quotes, as if the darn thing isn't inspirational enough!  

It even has stickers for special events.  

I also ordered a sheet of custom stickers since I love stickers to help me organize my family events (soccer, dance, baseball, piano).

I must admit that I worried for a few minutes 

that it might be too pretty to write in...

but once I pulled out my favorite colorful pens 

it seemed ok to just go ahead and dig in.

Erin Condren - Here's your report card...

A+ for customer service

A+ for adorable packaging

A+ for quality products

A+ for durability

A+ for stylishness

I will definitely enjoy planning my life this year!

Love,

Another Happy Teacher

I'll be doing a back to school giveaway soon, 

and an Erin Condren gift card just might be one of the prizes!

Stay tuned!

Mission Organization (and a freebie)

I'm doing a guest blog post for 2 Crazy Texas Teachers today! Welcome, if you are visiting from their blog! I hope you'll consider following my blog on a regular basis too. If you are one of my faithful followers, please consider stopping by to visit 2 Crazy Texas Teachers today. I love that these gals refer to themselves as "crazy teachers"! Don't we all feel crazy in this job sometimes?!

I just returned from my 19 day camping trip! It was supposed to be 17 days, but we were not quite ready to come home (really). My parents joined us toward the end of our trip and my mom surprised me with a special gift. She gave me this wooden sign that says "relax". "Relax" is my OLW (one little word) for 2013. 19 days of camping was just what I need to help me relax and I love that my mom delivered such a sweet reminder. Thank you, mom!

After all that relaxing, it's time to tackle the laundry mountain and get busy getting organized (at home and at school) for the new year. When I get the laundry mountain under control, I'm planning to head to school to reorganize my room while no one is around. I have big plans to go there with my messy summer bun, sing really loud and label everything in sight. Ok, maybe just a few things.

I made these new labels for the bins that I keep behind my desk. I will post pictures of the bins as soon as I go there to put the new labels in place. I printed them on white cardstock and sometimes I mount them on another piece of bright cardstock. I don't usually print labels for my bins on sticker style labels, because I don't like to pick off the stickers when I want to change my labels. You can click on the picture to download if you'd like your own copy.

I also need to finish adding labels to some of the book bins in my nonfiction book area.  You can read a previous post about my nonfiction book bins and grab a copy of my nonfiction book bin labels by clicking on the image below.

And as soon as I find composition notebooks at the right price, I'll be able to start preparing my math journals.  You can click on the image below to read about how I prepare those each year.

That should be enough to keep me busy while I dance around singing really loud with my messy summer bun labeling like an organizin' fool!

Now, this tired girl needs to go to bed.  

Sleeping in my own bed after 19 days is going to be dreamy!