Back to school goodies...

How is it September 1st already? I just cannot believe how quickly the summer went this year. It was so busy that I think I remembered to enjoy it! We had my sister, brother in law and my beautiful niece Charlie visit from Scotland for most of the month in July. It was filled with all kinds of fun times like camping, food, family photos, food, get togethers... did I mention food? Then I went to Vancouver for almost a week to attend the International Reading Recovery Conference with some amazing colleagues! I am in love with that city... it was still beautiful Canada with the same heat as Nova Scotia... but without the humidity, which was a dream. Next I started focusing on school here and there but still managed to get together with friends, have some relaxing times before heading back into the swing of things this week. Four days of conferences about Assistive Technology and Trauma based learning along with one full day spent setting up my Reading Recovery Office (stay tuned for a preview on that one next week).

I have been into school probably a dozen times since the beginning of August and I have to say this is the most exciting year for setting up yet! I have been teaching for 6 years and finally got permanent this year (Wahoo)! I was pretty excited to hang my new name plate from Tallahassee Sunday on my door the other day. She does such a gorgeous job and it is so colourful! I love that I get to look at it for the rest of my career (along with the other grade one teachers at my school as I gave them all one for a gift last year).

So here we are talking about back to school and I wanted to share some of my great products to keep those little minds busy for just a little while anyway :)

First, it seems important to talk about my best seller. Over the years I have created quite the little collection of Bingo's in my store. I have numbers, ten frames, holidays. No matter what you are looking for, I probably have it and if I don't, send me a request and I will see what I can do for you! I loooooooove getting requests! I will be coming out with some new ones this year too that I am pretty excited about. My Number Bingo from 1-20 is my most popular set but below you will see an assortment of all my back to school related Bingo's.

Next up on the docket, is my practice activities. I have taught primary and grade one and I always found these were super helpful for students who needed a little bit more practice. Giving students tactile activities like the Number Playdoh Mats and Letter Playdoh Mats below are so much fun and educational. My students loved it when they were playing with the Playdoh, so much so, that they didn't mind doing a little bit of learning at the same time. We used Playdoh a lot in our Math and Literacy centres. I also have some Number Practice sheets that I often will send home with students to help them become more acquainted with numbers to 20. Those teen numbers are tricky and a lot needed the extra help last year.

I also love the Modifiable Blank Calendars because they are so versatile. Last year we used them to track our weather for the month and would have some great conversations about our first rainy day/snowy day/sunny day. The students were even able to count up the days and we did a lot of graphing activities with these. It was so useful for such a simple task. At the end of the year, they had a duotang filled with the year at a glance. This year, I think we will also track how many days we are in school on these little calendars.

The products that I am most excited about have got to be my new classroom line! I have been meaning to organize my books for the longest time! This summer I decided to stop wasting time and created some Library Labels (White Background) and Library Labels (Chalkboard Edition). Then I decided to go a little further and create some Word Wall Letters and words that matched these two sets (White Background and Chalkboard Edition). Needless to say, I could not wait to put some of them to use in my classroom. As most of you know, I don't have my own classroom exactly so I had to modify them to best suit what I did have. I hope that you get to use them in your classroom though because I bet they will be gorgeous! I cannot wait to see your pictures! Classroom pictures have got to be my favourite!

That is just to name a few of the finds over at Teaching with MaGee. Head over to see if there is anything else you may want to take a peak at! :)

So, now tell me, what have you been doing this summer? Share with me your great memories as we get ready to fly back into the classroom this coming week! Chat soon :)

Teacher Planner Organization

Anyone else obsessed with the new teacher planners that come out every year? I drool every time I look at them! A few months ago I learned about the different types of planners that were available to teachers when planning out their weeks. Up until this point I was focused on creating my own every year and modifying it to suit my needs. I always enjoyed doing this but it was a lot of work and I never thought to look elsewhere. Then, it was as if the light was shining down and a friend introduced me to the variety of teacher planners out there!

Ta Da!

Soon after I luckily won a C. Jayne Teach Teacher Anchor from a Facebook share and was happily surprised by how fantastic this planner is! Inside this one little planner is everything I need for the year. It is all in one place! There is a place for my lesson plans, transportation lists, contact information, allergy information, birthday lists, monthly calendars, student grades and the best part, there are even black line masters to a variety of student data forms.

Anyway, so here you are, thinking that I am here to promote the Teacher Anchor, because, well, it really kicks some butt!

But, I am really here to ask you some questions. So let me get to it...

I have never had one of these planners before and I was terrified to write in its beautiful pages. I have been sitting staring at it and thinking about what to do first.

Today, after having it for a month, I wrote in it for the first time. I got out my beautiful Papermate flair pens, my washi tape, and my school calendar and got to work... But I only got as far as August until I realized I think I wanted some inspiration.

This is where you come in! I tried looking on Instagram but there wasn't much there about these planners. I tried numerous hashtags and looked at Pinterest... but again, was overwhelmed and didn't see too much.

How do you use your planner? How do you begin to plan for your year? What do you like to do to get you in the mood to plan? Do you dress it up with flair pens and washi tape? Or just leave it clean and simple?

The countdown is on! Only 3 weeks until I go back to school for my first of numerous summer PD sessions and 4 weeks until the kiddos come back! My mind is full and I have no idea where to start!