New School Year 2012-13!

First, I must say how very sorry I am that I have not posted over the summer.  Heck, I haven't had a chance to post since APRIL!  OH, I'M SO SORRY!  It seems that I underestimated the amount of time it would take to do some renovations in our house.  But, it is done and I am (almost) ready to head back to school.  We start with our  "Teacher Work Day" on Monday and I am very excited.  Let me show you a couple of fun new ideas that I have for my class this year.  The first is our new "Color Word Puzzle".

 It cost me absolutely NOTHING to make!  I used an old "Grime Boss" container (I think it is the generic version of a "Swifter" refill container)

and some paint chips from my local Lowe's.  I used by NEW Cricut Imagine (a Christmas gift from my sweet son) and added some letters.  INSTANT GAME!

Each one of the paint chips is a different shade of the color, and you can see in the GREEN picture that all the puzzle pieces fit nicely into the container.  (NOTE:  Before someone gets all upset about me "stealing" paint chips, I did ask if I could take them and was told "of course" by the sales associate.)

My next new item is a little attention grabber I made from an old box of sea salt.

Since all the salt would not come out of the bottle,

I figured I might as well do something fun with it.  First, I covered the box with some of scraps of scrapbooking paper.  I found this cute little guy on the internet and he looked like he was "trying to listen"

so I added him to the bottom.  I wrote "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?????" and glued it on the top.  The idea is simple, when we start to get a little loud in our circle time, I will shake the bottle.  As the noise settles down, I will shake it softer and softer.  You must be quiet to hear the salt shaking in the bottle!

I wanted a new chart for our "Number of the Week" activity so I made this -

Each week we will be able to see the number, the word and count it all on a new chart!  After it is laminated,  I am hoping to let the children write the number and it's name with a dry erase marker.

Okay, I know everyone has seen those adorable "First Day of School" frames floating around on PINTEREST and of course, I had to have one too!  Here is my version -

I can hardly wait to try it out!

I have a few more ideas that I will be busy working on this afternoon and I promise I will take some pictures of my classroom when I get it finished.  THANKS for visiting and I hope you stop back by soon!!