YOU MIGHT BE A TEACHER IF…

….your dining room table has now become the home office,



you’re stirring your dinner, while watching the laminator to see if its ready for another sheet,



and your kids ask you where they can sit because your sofa is covered with materials you’re cutting out for the new year! OMG, you can tell exactly where I’ve been plopped down cutting ‘til my little heart’s content, LOL! Do you think I need to pick a different spot? Give the poor chair a break? Does anyone else’s house look like this?  Please tell me that its not just me, lol!

July has come and is almost gone.  It’s time to get down to the nitty gritty folks! I’m so excited to have prepped the “look” of my classroom because now my brain can move on to what we’re going to “do” in the midst of all the cuteness!

AND can I just say that my little rainbow labels turned out so pretty! :-) I know that I’m a little biased, but I just love them!  I can already picture them in place!

Our daily schedule is what drives the how, when, what, and where so I thought I’d share that with you today along with a fantastic find to help begin establishing the routines of The Daily 5.
It took me a little while to wrap my mind around creating our schedule because it changed some from last year, but I finally figured out a good flow for us and am actually looking forward to the change.  Our new schedule allowed for a dedicated time for us to work on writing, another of my loves because its so closely tied to reading success.

As I created our schedule, I was also all smiles to still have my nice lonnnnnnng block of uninterrupted time for literacy.  THAT is my FAVORITE 2 hours of the WHOLE day! One of the things that stood out to me in reading D5 was that students should spend a minimum of one and a half hours a day reading in school (in addition to instructional time). With a dedicated writing time scheduled earlier in the day, we can focus on grammar at that time and leave our reading time strictly to strategies that will help us grow as readers. *LOVE*

As I’ve been preparing for the new year, I’ve also been on the hunt for book boxes.  I never realized how expensive those bad boys are! The cheapest that I found was $45 for a set of 25 and that was for cardboard, not plastic!  Well, you know teachers are all about a bargain….



…so after talking with my teaching bestie, we’ve been on the hunt! Can you guess where she found some for a whole whopping $1.00 each! You guessed it! Target’s $1 spot to the rescue!

Now, normally, I would want these to all match.  When she called to say that she had found some for a $1, I could’ve cared less what they looked like, lol! They could’ve had purple, polka dotted zebras riding giraffes on them and I would’ve still bought them! Did I mention that she was 2 hours away when she called?  Man! Between her, my sister, and myself, we were scouring every Target within a 2 hour radius to make sure we had complete class sets! Calling, texting, emailing…..we were on a mission!

If you live locally, forget about it….until they restock, lol! They’re all in my living room!  AND (call me) if you find anymore!!! HA!  Thanks, Chicas!



Though they’ll be mismatched {Yes, I’ll get over it!}, I’ll bring their look together by using matching labels for student numbers.  These labels will also double as the numbers for my calendar from The Rainbow Room set.

Before I go, I wanted to tell you about a little change you might notice.  I had been using the comment pop up box. When I leave a comment on another blogger’s blog, its a nice feature, because, well, the comments come to you!  It keeps you from having to scroll all the way down the screen.  BUT!!!!!!!! I had a ton of returned emails this weekend, after trying to reply via email, so I decided to change my comments to embedded it so that I can jump in and reply in the comments thread.

When you reply via email using the handy dandy iphone, you can’t see whether or not a friend is a no-reply blogger or not, so I made that change to prevent getting so many returned emails.  If you’re interested in changing the settings for your comments so that bloggers can connect with you via email, click here to read a great post by Lori from Teaching With Love and Laughter.

Now! If you stuck around all the way to the end {thanks}….grab the picture below and link up to finish the sentence:  You might be a teacher IF…..  Share how you know it’s that time of year for you!