Classroom Favorites on Amazon

Getting ready to go back to school and shopping on Amazon are two of my FAVORITE things! I love shopping for school supplies and cool gadgets for my classroom but I HATE fighting long lines! Amazon is the perfect solution! I can sit right on my couch and order all my favorite supplies for my classroom and get FREE Two-Day Shipping on millions of items as a Prime member!

Just in time for the school year, I created a "Classroom Favorites" Idea List of my favorite classroom items, which can be found in the Amazon Back-To-School Store. My Idea List is just one way to search for items on Amazon; you can also search by grade level, essentials, or by deals.

Some of my favorite items from the list are below. Thanks to Amazon for sponsoring this post!

These answer buzzers are a GAME CHANGER for student engagement in the classroom! This pack comes with four colored answer buzzers that each make a unique sound so you can easily tell which buzzer went off first. I love that these run on batteries so you can position students around the room without worrying about cords running across the floor.

If you haven't used grouping sticks in your classroom, you are missing out! I absolutely love using these student grouping pencils to QUICKLY put my students into groups for various activities. You can group students by pencil color, shapes, or numbers and students never know which one you are going to pick. This prevents students and their friends from trying to pick similar sticks to get in the same group. Such an easy yet BRILLIANT solution!

I go through Mr. Sketch markers in my classroom like there's no tomorrow! I remember my elementary school teachers using them (I LOVED the way they smelled!) and I want to create those same memories for my students. The bright colors and delicious smells are PERFECT for creating anchor charts to hang in your classroom!

These are the ONLY magnetic letters I will use with my students! Most magnetic letters are all different colors and the letter shapes have odd tails and feet on them. These letters are color coded (blue for consonants and red for vowels) and they are all shaped the same way I want my students forming their letters. Pair these with some inexpensive cookie trays and you are ready to go for word work or guided reading!

This Expo extra-large eraser is the BEST you can use on your white board! First, it is HUGE so you can erase your entire board in a matter of seconds. Second, the eraser pad comes with eight removable layers so you can tear one off once it becomes too dirty to use and you have a fresh one underneath. You can also order replacement pads once you run out of all the layers!

What was I doing for so long without this staple remover in my life?! I always struggled to remove staples from bulletin boards with a traditional staple remover and would get so frustrated! This magnetic staple remover from Bostitch is PERFECT for removing staples from the wall or bulletin boards. The magnetic tip slides under the staples and you can easily pop them out! SO EASY!

If you use PowerPoint in your classroom, this wireless presenter from Amazon is a MUST! You can easily click through the slides with the touch of a button from anywhere in your classroom. The presenter comes with a USB plug for your computer and runs on batteries. You can use it with any computer that has a USB drive and is ready to go within seconds!

This is by far the BEST electric pencil sharpener you can buy for your classroom! Not only is it affordable, it comes with a 10 year warranty. You can't beat that! It is pretty quiet for an electric pencil sharpener and the receptacle that holds pencil shavings is extra large so you don't have to empty it as often! Win-win!

I know what you're thinking... an Amazon Echo Dot... for the classroom?! YES! The possibilities are ENDLESS. Your students can ask Alexa how to spell words, check their math answers, and even do research. This is an easy way to incorporate technology in your classroom and allow your students invaluable opportunities for learning!

I use book rings for EVERYTHING in my classroom! They are great for holding flash cards, attaching labels to bins and containers, and even creating books for students. I go through a box of 100 book rings in a single school year. There are just so many ways you can use them!

Once you use foam dice in your classroom, you will never use regular dice again! If your students are anything like mine, they can NEVER keep dice on their desk or table. Foam dice are SUPER quiet and I can't even tell my students are using them! I use them for all my math centers so my students can work quietly while I help students around the room. Plus, I love that they are all the same color so I don't have to worry about any arguments!

Having high quality magnets that actually stick to the board is EXTREMELY important for teachers! The last thing we have time for is magnets sliding down the board because they aren't strong enough. These magnetic grip clips are the best magnets I have found. They are super strong and the built-in clips are fantastic for holding anchor chart paper.

This scrapbooking container cart by IRIS is AMAZING! I love using these scrapbooking containers to hold read aloud books or monthly center activities. This cart conveniently holds six containers so you only have to change out the books or center activities once halfway through the year. 

These are only a few of my FAVORITE items for my classroom, so be sure to check out my full list on the Amazon Back-ToSchool Store. I have made a list of more than 40 items for you to check out. Each item has a short description of why I love it or how I use it in my classroom!
NOTE: This post contains Amazon affiliate links.

Welcome Back to School - Open House!

It's crazy to believe that summer is already over and back to school is here again! As sad as I am to see summer go, I am super excited to get this school year going! One of the first things that signaled the end of my summer was getting back in my classroom and putting things together again. This year teachers only had one full day in our classrooms before open house so the pressure was on!

Here is what my set up looked like for open house! I laid out my classroom flip book (template is by Learning in Wonderland), Class Dojo parent letter with student codes, and "Meet Your New Teacher" letters (template is by Learning in Wonderland again!) I also gave each student a bottle of bubbles as their welcome gift!

This year I decided to attach my name tags with adhesive pockets from Target! They were $3 for a 20 pack and I love how easily I can change out the name tags when I move seats! These skinny name tags can be found here and you can choose clipart to match each of your students!

I had a desk set up in the front of my room for parents to sign in and share transportation information! These open house forms are FREE in my store and can be found here!

I always like to include some light refreshments for my parents, especially when it starts to get warm in the classroom! Lemonade, cookies, and some mints are usually my go-to because they are super easy to prepare. I also love including this cute sign that can be found here along with some other open house signs!

Open house is the perfect opportunity to ask for donations for your classroom! I typed up some items from my wish list on these hands and printed them on colored paper. This sign is included in my open house signs pack found above!

I had a HUGE turn out this year with 14 of my 23 families attending! Meeting my kiddos made me extremely excited for this upcoming school year and I can't wait to learn and grow with them this year!

What are your favorite open house traditions? Let me know by commenting below!

The Best Pencil Sharpener EVER

This might just be one of the most important blog posts I ever write. Yes, you read that correctly! 

Let me start by saying it takes a lot for me to get REALLY excited about a product. I have very high expectations and it can be difficult to find things that live up to them. That being said, I have truly found the single best pencil sharpener on the market!

I don't even know where to begin! This pencil sharpener from Classroom Friendly Supplies has it all going on!

First of all, I love the fact that it's 100% user operated - there are no batteries and no electricity. This makes the pencil sharpener completely portable and you're ready to start using it as soon as you take it out of the box! Plus, my students are always insisting on using the dinosaur manual pencil sharpener that's bolted to the wall of my classroom (they completely ignore the fact that it only eats their pencils!) so this was the perfect solution!

The company is owned and operated by a teacher named Troy and they donate $1 of every pencil sharpener sale to a charity called Pencils of Promise that uses the proceeds to build schools in developing countries.

It is so easy to operate that a baby could do it (okay, maybe not a baby... but a young child could certainly use it without a problem!). You can have a perfectly sharpened pencil in SECONDS. Yes, seconds! I mean seriously, look at this point! And did I mention that it's QUIET?!

If you want to see a tutorial of how to operate this pencil sharpener and see it in action, check out my YouTube video below!

Is there even a reason NOT to buy this pencil sharpener? I've yet to find one!

One pencil sharpener is $24.99 with FREE shipping and they come in every color imaginable!

If you choose to order a 3 pack or 36 pack, they are even cheaper! The package includes a clamp that can be used to secure the pencil sharpener in place or you can purchase a permanent mount from their website! They also carry replacement parts so this is the only sharpener you will need for the rest of your teaching career!

What are you waiting for?! Click here to order yours today!

Do you own this pencil sharpener already? Tell me your thoughts in the comments below!

THERE'S NO CRYING IN BOOT CAMP!

February.

Despite being the shortest month, it always seems to drag on!

There are more indoor recess days than any sane teacher can handle.  Students start slacking. You are literally counting down the days until spring break!

What better way to break routine and whip your students back into shape than BOOT CAMP!

It all started when I saw an army helmet at the dollar store and my mind started racing with all of the possibilities! I decided it would be best to incorporate reading, language arts, and math so the boot camp could be a full day adventure! I ended up continuing boot camp for 2 full days and very easily could have done a third! There are so many possibilities!

I purchased anything and everything camouflage I could find from Amazon, Dollar Tree, Hobby Lobby, and Party City and went to work decorating my classroom! Not going to lie... You could have put a camo umbrella in front of me and I would have bought it!

The camouflage helmets and aviator sunglasses both came from Dollar Tree (I may or may not have visited Dollar Tree stores over 100 miles away to get enough for all my students!) The dog tags, pencils, and table cloths all came from Party City and the canvas bags are available on Amazon.

The camouflage netting and inflatable tires all came from Amazon (thank you Amazon Prime for offering two day shipping!) If you can borrow an air pump from your P.E. teachers, I highly suggest it! Nothing makes you feel out of shape quite like blowing up 8 inflatable tires!

I hate to admit it but dressing like a Drill Sergeant was the most comfortable decision I have ever made! I snagged the green pants super cheap from J Crew (you can't beat $70 pants for $6!) They might have been in the men's department but I'm just going to pretend they were put away in the wrong area.

Anyone can put on a costume but getting into character is an entirely different story. I cannot stress the importance enough! Your kiddos will eat it up! Although my throat is a little rough after yelling "ATTENTION!" for 2 days straight!

Of course I had background music playing throughout the day! Here is one of the links I used:

Now let's talk CONTENT! Enhancing the atmosphere is one thing but teaching rigorous content is what matters! I decided to focus on the skills that my students have been struggling with since the beginning of the school year. They are tired of reviewing them so this was the perfect opportunity to engage them to the max!

For math, we focused on the dreaded WORD PROBLEMS. My kiddos normally cringe when I mention them! But I must say... I didn't hear an ounce of negativity about word problems the entire time! Although I did tell them there's no crying in boot camp so they may have been intimidated!

I used my Word Problem Survival Guide to well, guide my math instruction for the 2 days! This flip book includes examples, guided practice, independent practice, task card practice, and more! Not to mention it can be created with only 3 pieces of paper and no trimming!

My 75 minute math block normally consists of 30 minutes of whole group and 45 minutes of math groups/stations. I have 4 math stations that my students visit (you can see how I organize my math groups here) and my students completed the "DRILLS" and "OBSTACLE COURSE" for 2 of those stations.

I decided to use these binoculars from Hobby Lobby with the task cards so students could focus on taking a "closer look" at each problem. Some times you just need simple props to convince students that the activity is fun (even though they are still doing work!)

For reading, we focused on MAIN IDEA/author's central message/central theme/whatever else you want to call it. This is that one skill that we just can't nail down. So a little extra practice never hurts!

For the first day, I decided to incorporate some hands on practice. I started by showing a Flocabulary video on main idea and then completed a mystery bag activity to help students understand the difference between the subject, details, and main idea. I filled the canvas bags I purchased from Amazon with various items that were all related in some way. Students worked in groups to go through the items in each bag and decide the subject and write a main idea statement about the items.

Here were the items I stuffed my bags with:

BAG 1: Up DVD, Frozen DVD, microwave popcorn, M&M's, Mountain Dew bottle, and remote

BAG 2: scarf, glove, ear muffs, snowboarding goggles, and fuzzy socks

BAG 3: bag of coffee, powdered creamer, sugar packets, coffee mug, and coffee filters

BAG 4: plastic cups, plastic spoon, bottle of water, plastic ice cubes, lemonade packets, and sugar

BAG 5: chocolate chips, cinnamon, measuring cups, measuring spoons, beater, and wisk

We went through one of the bags together as a class as an example (bag 5). We decided the subject was baking, the details were the individual items in the bag, and the main idea was that you need both ingredients and tools to bake.

For the second day, we reviewed the mystery bags from the first day and listed all the main idea statements that students came up with. Then students were given an article on President's Day (hooray for cross curricular!) and worked in partners to write the important parts of the passage on index cards (mostly details). Students "packed" the index cards in a "duffle bag" (AKA a manila envelope... come on people, keep it simple!) Then students were told that their duffle bags were too heavy and they had to unload them! They were only allowed to take the most important index card... the main idea! This activity really helped students differentiate between the details and the main idea! I was so caught up in this activity I forgot to take pictures... oops! #reallife

For language arts, we focused on CAPITALIZATION! Goodness knows we are still struggling to use capital letters correctly in our writing.

Again, I used a Flocabulary video to review what my students already know about capitalization (they know a lot... they just struggle to implement it!) Then of course we needed a cadence to match to since was boot camp after all! I wrote this cadence to identify the main uses of capitalization. If we can remember the lyrics to the whip and nae nae, we should be able to remember the words to this as well! I'm inserting a JPEG that you can use in your own classroom!

Then I broke students into 2 groups for a mini obstacle course relay! I gave each student a sentence with magnets on the back that either had correct or incorrect capitalization. Each team got into a line and had to jump through the inflatable tires one at a time to put their sentence on the board under the correct category (correct or incorrect). Then we reviewed each sentence as a class and identified the capitalization rules!

For the second day, we trained to become Army medics that needed to tend to "wounded soldiers"! Our wounded soldiers were paragraphs that had numerous capitalization mistakes! Students worked in partners to repair the mistakes with bandages and write the capital letter on top. This activity was a BIG hit!

I found a box of 60 bandages at Target for less than $2! Each group of students needed 8 bandages so I used 2 boxes. Super easy!

If you are interested in my Word Problem Boot Camp product, you can click the image below! The product contains the flip book and task cards featured in this blog post along with a pre-assessment, post-assessment, and more!

Here are all the links to the items I used for decorations and the prices!
Canvas bags (6 pack) - $16
Inflatable tires (8 pack) - $37
Camouflage netting (6'x8') - $12
Camouflage table cover - $3.50 each
Dog tags (12 pack) - $6
Pencils (12 pack) - $3
Binoculars (2 pack) - $3
Army helmets - $1 each
Aviator sunglasses - $1

I could not have had more fun with this transformation! My students all learned a TON and had fun while doing it! Best of both worlds! If you have any questions, please leave a comment below and I will be happy to answer them!

We Heart Maryland BLOG HOP

What better reason to come out of semi-blog-retirement (AKA letting life get in the way of posting for weeks on end) than a blog hop with FREEBIES and GIVEAWAYS?!

Do you need any more reasons to realize that Maryland teachers are down right AWESOME? We have 10 freebies and 10 giveaways for you to hop around to! On each blog you will find a freebie only available during the blog hop, a Rafflecopter to enter for a giveaway, and a button to hop on over to the next blog! Not to mention you will see a different reason to heart Maryland on each blog!

How do I pick only ONE reason I love Maryland? Between the crabs, Old Bay seasoning, and beaches everywhere you turn, everything about Maryland just feels like home to me! I have lived in Maryland for my entire life and couldn't even begin to imagine living anywhere else.

As strange as it may sound, the number one thing I love about Maryland is the flag.

Yes. I actually do have the Maryland flag on the wall of my office. If that isn't Maryland pride, I don't know what is!

Not to mention, I have the Maryland flag on multiple articles of clothing.

This may seem ridiculously weird to a lot of people, but here in Maryland it is completely normal to put your state flag on anything and everything! I swear!

Now that I have bragged about my state a little, it is time for a FREEBIE!

February is one of my favorite months! Between Valentine's Day, President's Day, and the 100th day of school, there is plenty going on all month long! I personally know that months like this can be crazy so any timesavers for the classroom are appreciated!

I don't know about you but designing cute task cards for math, language, or reading can take FOREVER! These February Editable Task Card Templates will allow you to create task cards for any subject in the blink of an eye! Just click the image below to snag your FREE set of 3 templates perfect for the month of February! [NOTE: The freebie is no longer available. It was only available during the time of the blog hop]

Please note that these templates are for personal use only. This freebie is ONLY available during the blog hop from February 13, 2016 - February 20, 2016.

If you like this freebie, you will LOVE my giveaway!

I am happy to announce that I am giving away the full set of my Monthly Editable Task Card Templates! This full set includes 3 themed templates for each month plus 3 bonus surprise templates that are not available anywhere else!

It's a $36 value that could be yours for FREE! Enter for your chance to win using the Rafflecopter below! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

That is only ONE of the 10 freebies and giveaways! Hop on over to see what Cheryl loves about Maryland! Don't forget to keep hoping until you have entered for a chance to win all 10 giveaways!