Friday, June 27, 2014

Summer, school planning, and babies!

I feel like so much has happened in the last few months, none of which involved me blogging. Oh well! That's life. Now that summer break is officially here and I can settle into the groove of being at home and feeling organized I'll be back on her throughout the summer months with some revisions and new ideas to kick off the next year.

I always try to limit my school work over the summer, but I'm admittedly a little too type A for that. Once I see a great idea I have a hard time not following through with it until it's finished. My current project is making Morning Work for my students. Our daily schedule is changing this coming year and we are going from Homeroom that went from 8:10-8:40 to one that is going from 8:10-8:30. Those 10 fewer minutes really will make a difference in what I can do.

So here's my BIG idea for solving that problem, and dealing with that hectic homeroom time of day. Morning Work! It'll be great structure for the kiddos to know what to expect each day, plus I think some of these activities are pretty darn fun :) Basic template will be:

Math Monday
Writing Tuesday
Reading Wednesday
Science Thursday
Social Studies Friday

Work in progress but here are a few screenshots of what I'm working through. I'm using a lot of resources I already have, or ones gathered from Teachers Pay Teachers (love them!).
Example writing activity

Example reading activity

Example science activity

Example social studies activity

Example math activity
As I said, work in progress but I'm making myself a big binder with black lines so I can just run and copy them each week. The other main reason I'm working on this is because I want to have a structured activity for when I have to leave for maternity leave this winter. That's right folks, baby on the way! I'm due early December assuming all goes well. Another reason not to have blogged the end of the year, that first trimester nearly did me in. Thankfully I had an awesome intern who took over basically everything for me. I'm looking forward to getting the year organized early so I can enjoy the first few months with my students before leaving.

I'll be back soon with more info on Morning Work as well as how our new math planning is going. Hope you get to sit in the sun and relax today. Enjoy it, you earned it!