Color Copies

I found out that I was changing grade levels at the end of last school year, so I turned to pinterest for kindergarten ideas-there are sooooo many great things available! By mid-June, I had found about a million things that I wanted to use! But everything seemed to be in color. :-(  I have a color printer at home, but replacement cartridges add up quickly. I looked around for color copy pricing at local places, and everywhere seemed to be around 30c per copy-that would also add up quickly-REALLY quickly, as I had hundreds of copies I wanted.

In searching online, I found a company that wasn't too far away that made color copies for 6c per copy!! 6 cents!! It was like a dream come true! ;-)
I was able to upload the dozens of files that I wanted and submit my order online. Then I went to their shop, which is about an hour from my house-I planned other errands in that area for the same day. (They also ship, I think it's around $3). I arrived and picked up my hundreds of copies, including some poster sized and many on card stock. I think my total was around $50, but was WELL worth it!

Here is a quick sampling:
The picture isn't very good, and definitely does not show the quantity! They came in a copy paper box lid that was stacked very compactly to the top. Quality was great!

So-I wanted to give a shout out to Copies in Color -I believe that it is a small chain and there are other locations throughout the US, but if you can't find them locally, they do ship!

And just a note, to share something I learned... they don't like it when you upload 30 different files, but you give instructions for them to print "one copy of pages 2, 4, 6, 17 copies of pg 18, page 22 one copy on cardstock..." which is what I did. For pretty much every single file. Many of the files that I had were from "Teachers Pay Teacher" or somewhere similar. I didn't want copies of the cover or the back advertisement page, and some documents have color pages and b&w pages all in the same document. So I gave very specific directions for every file I uploaded. They said that it was crazy difficult and they wouldn't do it again. I didn't think about it from their perspective when I sent in the order, and as the copies are only 6c, I should have just printed the whole document and spent the extra 12c or whatever. So...lesson learned :-)

I downloaded pretty much every file from someone I found on pinterest, either through teachers pay teachers or a blog. I will give credit when I do individual posts on each of the documents-if I tried to find every source right now, I think it would be the longest blog post of all time! Soooo many wonderful teachers out there share their creations! I am so very grateful for their creativity! I am absolutely NOT creative lol.

Crayon Storage

I hate how cluttered my art center has always been. In the past, I have had a three shelf plastic drawer thingy, with one drawer for crayons, one for colored pencils, and one for markers. And three black stackable thingys (above) for lined paper, blank paper, and leftover worksheets. Five minutes of kids, and it is usually a mess. In browsing on pinterest, I have seen such great ideas for crayon storage that I just LOVED, particularly here: crayon organization.

I didn't want the narrow trays that she used, so I went to The Dollar Store and bought these squarish bins (3/$1). And I had a bunch of colored duct tape that I had found at The 99c Store a while back, so I used that instead of gluing colored paper to the bottoms, as the author did in the link above. I am hoping duct tape holds up longer than the paper would have-my kids can be hard on stuff!! So I put duct tape on the inside and the outside of the bin and added the crayons. I couldn't find brown duct tape when I went, so I used a giraffe print :-).

Then I went to this site and got Color Labels . I printed them out on white paper, cut them, and taped them to my bins (I opted not to print on sticky labels because I didn't want them to peel off-I think they'll hold better with packing tape over the duct tape). She has various sizes, so I also printed a smaller size and made crayon cups for when the kids are working with me or that I can put in a center. I got the cups/cup holder from Scholastic a year or so ago. It only has space for six, so I used leftover containers for black and brown. I LOVE both the bins and the cups!!

And so far, after two weeks of school, they both seem to be holding up pretty well. :-)
<3 Ms. Chase

Photo Use Permission

We started school on the 12th (of August), and I have the greatest group of kinders ever!!

I haven't taught kindergarten in a few years, so I was expecting to have a group similar to the groups I had when I taught kinder in the past, but we made a major change in California since then--we changed the start age. Last time I taught, the kids had to be five years old by December 2nd of the school year to begin school (so there would be a huge percentage of the class that was still four when school started in July or August). That age has been changing gradually (a month per year) until this year, when kids had to be 5 years old by September 1st. So now, my kids are all five years old (I had a few August babies, but they've all turned five). And WOW!! What a difference it makes!! I don't know yet how many attended preschool or transitional kindergarten (a program for kids who would have previously been able to start kindergarten, with birthdays between September 2nd and December 2nd), but I'm guessing quite a few. Cuz these kids are geniuses!! I am reminded of when I went from teaching kindergarten to teaching first grade-I was amazed by my students! (as I was used to five by dec 2nd). I feel the same now-what a difference it makes to teach kids who are READY!!

Here are my kiddies cutting, sorting, and gluing shapes:



They are soooo cute!! I miss them when I go home!! I used to tell people that I was super lucky because I chose a career that I love so much that I would do without pay if I could. But I haven't really felt like that for a while. I'm happy to say that I'm back there now--I am sooo grateful that I have the best job in the world!!



Here they are reading books at the carpet:

Here is a copy of the photo release for that the parents had to sign (in English and Spanish) so I could use pictures of the students on this blog:   Permission To Photograph Download

 I am new at this, so hopefully the link works!!

<3 Ms. Chase

Clean Scissors!!

One of the things that I did in getting my classroom ready for my kinder kiddies was to wash the scissors. I had a "fun" group of second graders that push every rule they possibly could. One thing I caught them doing quite often was using scissors to shave crayons. Made quite the mess inside their desks, all over their materials, all over the floor, and on the scissors. Sooo... I looked on Pinterest for an idea on how to clean my scissors-I knew I'd seen something about putting them in the dishwasher. Hooray for Pinterest! I found this link: Send Those Scissors Thru the Dishwasher. The link only leads to a picture, but it was enough. So... I put all my scissors in the top rack of the dishwasher, as shown in the pic, and ran them through by themselves. When they were finished, I wiped each of the blades off with a towel-there was still some residual glue and crayon pieces stuck on some, but it came right off. Here they are all clean and ready for my new kiddies! :-)

I think they turned out pretty great! And so easy!
<3 Ms. Chase

new classroom

I have been teaching for a while and have been at my current school since it opened in 2006, but this summer, I had to move to a new classroom. I am now in my fifth room since 2006!!! Teachers are kinda hoarders, so I have a TON of stuff. I really have been trying to downsize, as I am planning to move out of the area when my youngest is finished with high school (3 more years!). My current plan is that I will teach in Hawaii for 2-5 years, then hopefully be hired at an American School and be able to teach abroad, maybe for two years in different locations. For maybe about ten years. Then settle down when I have grandkids :-)  We'll see how that plan goes!!

But for now...I had to move. I also changed grade levels-from 2nd grade to kindergarten. I don't mind changing grade levels-I have taught kinder before and loved it. I've also taught 1st and loved it. And I loved 2nd as well, so no worries going back to kinder. Put me in 6th though, and I don't think I would enjoy it that much!! :-/

I didn't mind the grade switch, but did really dislike the move!! I have a long-term shoulder injury and cannot lift, cannot staple, still cannot do repetitive motion for very long (maybe 5 minutes, depending on what it is). So the move was a challenge!! The above picture is my room after I had spent FOUR days on it!! Can you imagine how it looked on the first day?!? Wow!! What a mess!! I should have taken a picture then!!!

Below is my classroom on the second day of school (we started last week). I worked and worked and worked for more than two weeks!! It was a super frustrating process, as I could only do things for a short amount of time. I'd unpack a little, go try to put up a wall for a little bit, then go push some furniture around, then do a little paperwork, ... all because I'm limited in what I can do. But in the end, I'm happy with the result!

What do you think??
<3 Ms. Chase