Thanking Volunteers

Have you ever been on a work committee that was just so insanely pleasant that you couldn't wait to work with the same people again?  I was SUPER lucky to have worked on our school's volunteer appreciation committee with two of my school friends.  There was no drama.  There was no stress.  It was an absolute joy.  Oh, I love those ladies.

Our school has the most amazing volunteers.  I have volunteers on almost a daily basis to check my homework folders.  I am incredibly blessed with supportive, giving parents.  I have been on the volunteer appreciation committee for the past two years, so I can show our parents how much their help means to us.

We had each grade level make a poster to thank the volunteers.  They were hung in each grade's hallway, and in the work room.














We had goodies all week in the work room.  Since it was the week before Easter, we had four days of treats with cute sayings.


I made the signs and put them in an 8" x 10" frame from the Dollar Tree.  The week of goodies cost less than $30, and I had a TON left over.  I probably should have only bought one bag of candy per day.  I will remember that for next year, and enjoy the extra candy this year.  :)

We had a morning reception before school.  Starbucks donated coffee (they are always willing to donate coffee if you ask), and each staff member pitched in some money so we could buy some goodies from Sam's Club.  We bought more Dollar Tree frames, and had our cute sayings near the food.  The trays are from the Dollar Tree as well.







We also organized a bulk purchase of plastic cups for our volunteers.  We looked around the internet and priced things out.  A website called 4imprint.com was the best price.  We ordered so many that it was less than $2 per cup.  We had our school logo imprinted on the cup.  They were SUPER cute!

I was SO happy with the service at 4imprint.com.  The cups were high quality for the price.  The printing was great.  The cups were shipped very quickly.  It was a dream!  SO EASY!

Then, we printed these flags from Lisa Storms and added a lemonade packet.

 

Fast, cute, and fun!

In order to help you thank your volunteers, I am giving you all of the printable signs I made for our volunteer appreciation week.

Click here to download this great {FREEBIE}.

Have a fantastic day!

Parent Teacher Conferences

This week, we had two days of parent teacher conferences.  On Thursday, the kids left at 11:40, but I was there until 7:00 pm.  That was a LONG day.  My mouth is sick of moving by the time my last conference is over.  :)

THE BIGGEST help for parent teacher conferences is the sheet I use to gather my thoughts before my meetings.  It has a place to write things to "glow" on, things to "grow" on, long term goals, and how parents can help.  This year, I added DIBELS goals for the entire year, so parents can see the DIBELS expectations throughout the year.

I have a non-editable version in my Teachers Pay Teachers Freebie, but I like to type my sheets.  So, I brainstormed and found a way to give you this sheet without violating my clip art agreement.  :)  

Please read the following:

• You will need Microsoft Publisher to download and open this document.  
• If you want to keep the same fonts, you will need to purchase Cara Carroll's fonts.  In my opinion, her fonts are amazing, and buying this one set will make you want to purchase the other two sets.  I just wanted to give you that warning.

If you would like to download my parent teacher conference sheet, please click here.

I hope your parent teacher conferences go well (mine were awesome!), and this sheet helps you remember everything you had wanted to say.  :)

Have a fantastic weekend!

I was busy this weekend

I've been working on quite a few projects this month.  I think about the back to school season, and I get all inspired to find new ideas and new ways to teach things.  School hasn't even ended, and I'm in back to school mode.  I know... I'm nuts.

Maybe it has to do with our incoming kindergarten testing that has been going on.  Those little peanuts seem so small compared to my almost first graders.  It makes me think back to my first goal as a kindergarten teacher: Walking quietly in a straight line.  Anyway, we are using my "Getting Ready for Kindergarten" pack, and we've gotten some great feedback.  We e-mailed it to parents because it has clickable links to great videos and resources.  We simply asked parents to give us their e-mail address, and our wonderful registrar sent it off for us.  If you are interested in learning more, please click here.

I've also been working on a sight word speed reading pack.  I wanted something where the kids could graph their progress, and see how far they've come.  I figured that I could draw the line on the bar graph and the kids could color it in.  While I was making that pack, I thought about DIBELS, and I added nonsense words.  So, the pack includes Fry's first 300 words, nonsense words, graphs for each, and certificates for your speed readers when they meet their goals.  If you are interested in learning more, please click here. 

While I'm on the subject of sight words, I created a game to practice them.  "Pop" contains Fry's first 300 sight words, nonsense words, capital and lower case letters, along with Spalding's first 70 phonograms.  The clip art popcorn is in black and white, so you can print on yellow cardstock or paper.  For more information, please click here.

Don't worry... You can still read.  These are the nonsense words.  :)

Whew!  There is more to come... I need to take a break because I'm being pampered by my husband and kids.  They cleaned their playroom and have been loving me all day.  My husband made all of the meals and painted my toenails.  I'm one lucky gal!

Show Chaperones Some Love

I do not like field trips.  I'm just going to come out and say it, because they make me nervous.  I don't like riding on a bus, and I don't like being in charge of 24 kinders when we are off school property.  Last year when I taught fourth grade, we went to the Grand Canyon.  I had a group of boys that I thought would get too close to the edge.  I almost thought about buying those little monkey backpacks so I could keep them on a leash because I was so nervous about them falling.  We all made it back, so I was elated.

Anyway, I could not go on field trips with parent chaperones.  We are going on our annual field trip in two weeks, so it got me thinking about field trips.  I made a handy, dandy field trip packet that includes permission slips, yes/no notes to the chaperones, response activity for the kiddos, checklists, chaperone thank you notes, and more!  Take a look at the pack here.

I decided that I am going to show our chaperones some love by attaching some of the cute notes from my pack to a little goodie.

This is only one of the five options.  Hooray!!  Here is the link to download your freebie.

 

                          Don't forget about some of my other products.  Check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store and my Teacher's Notebook store for more products.