Monday Made It - Planning and Organizing

Happy Monday!!! While I love Sunday nights in the summer - with no last minute frenzy of household chores and planning I do not love Mondays so much - they sometimes feel like the day that signals summer is passing, another week is starting and we are getting closer to the craziness that is BTS.

Over the last week I have moved myself away from the "I am resting, recharging and relaxing" mode that I entered about 15 minutes after the last day of school. I started to pick up things for the classroom, looked at planning for the new year, started a professional text and organized the massive pile of resources that still live in my basement from my move last summer.

In this new mode I made a few things, so I am linking up with Tara at 4th Grade Frolics for her linky.....

First up a teaching planner (okay I printed it and organized it into my binder, but it still counts)!! It is from Tina's Teaching Treasures, you can find it here. This is my first time EVER using a real planner. I usually just use a daily/weekly template and print and photocopy as needed. But not this year, this year I have the whole planner ready to go and it is only July. I used the "Trust Tina" option for July 2015-2016 and then a few extra pages.

I printed the entire planner and three hole punched it, I considered getting it coil bound but since this is my first time doing this I thought it would be best to have options of moving it around in my binder. The binder cover is from the pack I purchased from Megan (check it out here) and I just made a binder spine. I used a few binder tab dividers to separate the months. I also moved the monthly calendar so it is right in front of the weekly planning pages.

 I love the layout of the weekly planner with room for notes on the side and bottom.

 This is the year at a glance page. Notice how the boxes match so beautifully with my Flair pens!! I printed out extra copies of this page and will be using them to do year overviews of subjects - like what genres and units I plan to attack that month, any read alouds I need to get ready, craft ideas and special celebrations or projects. The one I started is for our school spirit activities.

I love that I have a calendar for the summer months too and I LOVE this note paper. I can not wait to attend a meeting so I can use it!!

I am very excited about my planner, again, if you want to check it out just click on the button below.

I made myself a nice little label for this notebook. I bought it at a dollar store and love the rainbow edging - really it is the little things.

I will be attending my first blogger/seller get together this Wednesday and needed to have something super cute to take notes with. I saw the ones my friend Joanne, at Head Over Heels for Teaching, made for the Vegas conference and had to steal her idea (one of my fav past times!!). 

I bought the print to the edge circle labels, because I have wanted to try them forever. I inserted my TPT button, hit print and done. I love that the labels are glossy - so fancy!! I just have to figure out what I want to use the rest of them for!

I made labels for my class tool bins and garbage cans. Last year I focussed on having my students identify the tools we use to help us learn. I gave each student a red "tool box" to hold their tools in their desks. When I was at DollarTree I noticed they had the supply caddies in red and the garbage cans too. Sooooo I am switching some of my containers to red - the ones I want to clearly identify as holding tools for learning (ok, so I am still crazy and math tools will still be housed in blue tool bins!!)

At another dollar store I found these blackboard labels and a chalk marker.

 I had planned on make and taping labels to the bins but thought I would give this a try. The chalk marker is holding up, I am worried about the stickiness of the labels as they are removable. If they don't hold I will be making my own labels.

As mentioned above each of my students has a red tool box to hold key items in their desk (pencil, expo marker, eraser pad for expo marker, highlighter etc). Last year I tool all of my baskets and spray painted them red......then I saw dollar stores were carrying red baskets....I am slowly replacing mine as I find them (and can sneak them into the house!!!). This year I decided to make labels for each students basket to really hit home that they are toolboxes for learning.

Here is what they look like so far....

I was just playing with the placement of the words and clipart (needed to move both over a bit). I love the look with the ribbon, but thought I would love the thin ribbon but now want to use a thicker ribbon - good thing it is not expensive!! I will also laminate them. You could also just tape them on the baskets too.

You can grab a copy here if you would like these tags. You could add text for each student's name or print, laminate and add names with an expo marker.

I also made a tag for my toolbox. I have one of these lovely rolling drawer systems at the front of my class to hold tools that I use or take out during lessons (can you tell I can't get into my class, sorry for not having pics). Only in my frenzy I spray painted it red as well.

 I made a sign for that too.

You can grab a copy here, There are a few different options as well as one you can add your own text too. You could save them as a picture and then insert them into a new ppt to make different size tags or labels.

Okay this is it for me - off to check out my to do list - well after reading a few MMI blog posts of course