halloween decor

Every once and awhile I will be sharing a little bit of my personal side because, well, teachers have other interest too! Am I right?! Ha! Can I just tell y'all how much I love decorating my house and crafting? I seriously love.it. I decorate for EVERY holiday and I'm constantly changing out my decor every month. Crazy right? But I love it! 

Today I wanted to post a few pictures of how I decorate my home for Halloween. 

I made the garland out of black and orange tulle from Hobby Lobby. I just tied the tulle to a black ribbon. The glass bottles and black netting are from The Dollar Tree.

The wooden pumpkins and black crow are from a little boutique in my town.

The owl is from Target, the spell books are from Hobby Lobby, and the wooden crows are from Michaels.  

I made this wreath out of orange mesh from Hobby Lobby. The ribbon and the "Boo" letters are also from Hobby Lobby.

This is my buffet in my dining room. I covered it with burlap and placed all kinds of random pumpkins/Jack-O-Lanterns on it. The big pumpkin is from Hobby Lobby, the chicken wire pumpkins are from Target, and the Jack-O-Lantern candle holders are from Target. The light up Jack-O-Lantern is actually made from a real gourd. The company that makes them is called Meadowbrooke Gourds. They have all sorts of gourd type decor. I also have a witch. They are too cute! The branch Jack-O-Lanterns are from Nordstrom. 

This is what I have on my front porch. The Jack-O-Lantern buckets are from Target and the scarecrow and big Jack-O-Lantern are from Hobby Lobby.

If you can't already tell, I love me some Target and Hobby Lobby! I also don't do scary Halloween! That's just not my style. I get too freaked out for that. Ha!

I just had to throw in a picture of the crafts my little man did at his "school". I mean... look at all that cuteness! His teachers are amazing!

I hope everyone has a safe and happy Halloween!

Halloween Fun {with Freebies}

Lately I've been trying to incorporate as many Halloween themed activities as I can into our daily lessons. I feel that kids are better able to make connections to the material when units of study are thematic. One way I incorporate themes into my classroom is through holidays. Since we've been learning about addition strategies, I used Frankenstein to make a "Frankenline" for our number line strategy and googly eyes to count with for our make a model strategy. Being able to incorporate a theme into my content is a win/win in my book!

You can find the "Frankenline" here and the Monster Addition handout here.

Last month I shared this picture on Instagram...

If you would like to snag this tag you can find it here.

This month, I wanted to give little man's teachers another small gift to show just how much we appreciate all that they do. 

A student gave me this cute Frankenstein treat one day and I knew I just had to make my own for little man's teachers.

I mean...how stinkin' cute are these?! I used green grapes for the body and marshmallows and chocolate chips for the eyes. So simple!

I also filled a small, plastic bucket from Target with a cute notepad, Halloween pencils, and chocolate {What teacher couldn't use chocolate right?!}. The pencils, notepad, and bucket were all from the Target Dollar Spot. To make the bucket even more festive, I added black tissue paper, shredded Halloween paper from Michaels, and this tag. 

Make sure you follow me on Instagram, at Teach Dream Inspire, so you don't ever miss an idea! Happy Halloween!!!

Back to School Series: Read Alouds

 One of my favorite things to do each month is to read aloud some of my favorite seasonal themed books to my kiddos! I try to read some of these books throughout our day whenever there may be a couple of minutes of "down time" before we move to a new activity. I keep a basket full of monthly themed books next to my chair for easy grab-and-go access.

Here are some of my favorite books to read to my kids throughout August and September. If you click on the title of the book, the link will take you to Amazon.

How I Spent my Summer Vacation

My Mouth is a Volcano

The Worst Day of My Life Ever!

Have you Filled a Bucket Today?

The Juice Box Bully

If Everybody Did

Do Unto Otters

Personal Space Camp

A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue

One

Chrysanthemum 

Wemberly Worried

First Day Jitters

Pirates Go to School

Cam Jansen and the First Day of School Mystery

Some of these books are about manners, rules, procedures, etc... I break out these books whenever my friends need little reminders throughout the year.

What are your favorite Back to School Books?

Thank you for joining me for my Back to School blogging series! Check back soon for more ideas and to see what we're up to during the month of October!

Back to School Series: Sneak a Peek

It was completely my intention to have this blog post up and running... oh about... three weeks ago. Then life happened! So, this might just be a pinable {Is that even a word?!} post for you to tuck away in your back to school arsenal for next year.

Sneak a Peek {or Meet the Teacher} can either be really stressful or run perfectly smooth. I prefer the later. How about you? I've found that the key to a perfectly smooth Sneak a Peek is organization, organization, organization! 

Completed forms have a place, sign-up sheets have a place, supplies have a place... everything has a place!

Is it just me or does the thought of bags upon bags of supplies coming in all at once cause you to have a slight panic attack?! My OCD starts to run wild! I knew this year I had to try something different, so I had students sort supplies while parents completed paperwork. It worked out perfectly! The big supplies went in big boxes in the front of the room until I had a chance to store them and small supplies went in clear plastic shoe boxes purchased from Dollar Tree. If you'd like the supply labels for the big boxes, you can download those here.

Each student has a plastic box that they use to keep their extra supplies in for the year. {By "extra" I mean the supplies that aren't currently in their pencil box for daily use.}

Here is what those boxes look like full of supplies. The boxes are labeled with student numbers.

At every seat I placed a folder with a checklist, forms to be completed, and a class information flip book. Every student also got a little treat! You can find the "Welcome Aboard!" tags here.

I'm still working on uploading different themed flip books to my Teachers Pay Teachers shop, but if you're looking for a kid theme or a Hollywood theme flip book, you can find those here and here.

Here is a close up look at some of the forms that I created for my parents to complete...

If you'd like these forms, you can get them here. They are editable in Power Point.

Thanks for reading friends! I'll be back tomorrow for my last Back to School series post!

Back to School Series: Back to School Dinner

Each month we get together with some close friends of ours for a monthly dinner party. It just so happens that there are three teachers in our dinner party group. When it's our turn to host, I love to center my dinner party around a theme. Last year we celebrated back to school with an Italian night. This year I thought why not celebrate back to school with a back to school theme dinner! 

I tried to find as many things as I could around the house to use as my decorations {old books, school supplies, mason jars, etc...}.

I made the flashcard garland using ribbon from Michaels and flashcards from The Dollar Tree.

The sunflowers came from Hobby Lobby.

I found this subway art here.

I bought these letters from Hobby Lobby and glued scrapbook paper to them using Mod Podge.

  

The placemats are sheets of scrapbook paper that I laminated and taped together.

Our food was even centered around a back to school theme, with apples being the main focus. We served applewood rub pork tenderloin, apple pie, and this delicious spinach salad with bits of apples and poppyseed dressing.

You can find the recipe for the poppyseed dressing here.

Follow me on Pinterest for more Back to School party ideas!

Back to School Series: Classroom Tour

Hey, hey! Today I'm sharing a little peek into a space I like to call my "home away from home". 

Here is my 2015-2016 nautical classroom...

classroom door

This is where we keep our math and literacy centers. 

I decided not to do community supplies this year. Instead, I had my kiddos place their extra supplies in their numbered box.

I keep our most used math manipulatives out for easy access.

This is where my teacher technology is set up. The red bins on the floor are for student lunch boxes.

Students keep their journals and book baggies in these white ice bins. The red bin on the top of the bookcase is for their in progress/incomplete work folders.

This is my early finisher station. It isn't completely set up yet, but I will be adding more early finisher choices as I introduce them.

I have clothes pins on the wall to display "Wow Work".

my "desk"/small group table

These file folders will be used for students to turn in their exit slips at the end of a lesson. They will determine which folder to place it in depending on how comfortable they feel with the concept. We use Marzano levels for self-assessment.

This is my behavior system setup. Each rule correlates to a colored popsicle stick. If a kiddo is struggling with one of our rules, they move a popsicle stick into their pocket. At the end of the day I mark behavior sheets with the rule he/she struggled with.

I just love how cozy and organized my little space is! It makes me one happy teacher! 

On a sidenote... I thought I was moving out of second grade this school year {sadsville}, but was told two days before meeting my new class I would actually be staying in second grade {YAY!}. As you can imagine, I kind of panicked thinking about setting up a classroom in two days. I just had to tell myself if it's not perfect, it's not a big deal. I made sure everything was ready for the first couple days of learning and I continued to add new things throughout the first week. As you can probably see in one of my pictures, one of my bulletin boards is still blank. I do have a plan for that space, but just haven't had the time to do it yet. I've made it a fun I Spy game for my kids whenever I add something new. Once they find the new thing, we talk about how we are going to use it in our classroom. I felt like introducing them to different things in the classroom in smaller chunks really helped them to not get overwhelmed. It also helped me too!

Thanks for joining me on my classroom tour!!