I made it!

O.M.G.
What a crazy week! I am seriously exhausted after a great first week with my new sixth graders. So exhausted that I finally got out of the bed around 1:30 p.m. even though I have been up since 8:00 a.m. Crazy!??! They are so cute & extremely polite! It is refreshing to see that some parents are still teaching their kids manners.

I late posting a few things, so I am going to try to tackle a couple of things in this post.
Here it goes:

Hug Your Heart jar & Brain Break Activities (in the smiley face jar)

I have no idea where I originally heard of the Hug Your Heart jar, but I decided to make one a few weeks ago. I want to emphasis the good things that students do. I teach sixth graders and sometimes their actions can be quite the opposite of kind. Clearly, when I took this picture, I hadn't filled it with Hersey Hugs yet, but I think it's pretty cute. It is plastic because I can see it being dropped (sixth graders don't have the best coordination)! I covered it with owl stickers because for our Greek mythology unit, I am the goddess Athena. I try not to let my newly found owl obsession run wild!
I'm going to add a cute poem to this that I found on  a first grade blog. I will be making it owl themed of course...I can't resist.

The smiley face jar has brain break activities. I got most of the ideas from a third grade blog and added a few of my own. I have yet to introduce the concept to my kids since we have only seen my classes twice in four days, but they are really interested in knowing what is up with the smiley face jar.
I wrote the activity on one side of the stick and a description on the back. I'll have to link up my activities, but they include the following:
Cha-Cha Slide, Telephone game, Mab Libs, Simon Says, Seat Switch, and Hot Potato questions

That's all for now. I'm off to actually enjoy my weekend and not focus on school stuff for a while. Off to a practice tailgate party. As we often tell the kids, practice makes perfect! :)

Holy Moly...

First off, today is a happy day! Just found out that my very first DonorsChoose project just got funded in under 48 hours! This is one shocked and happy teacher! :)

In other news...tomorrow is the first day of school! I cannot believe it! Summer went by so quickly! I am clearly in a state of complete shock! Although, I cannot be too mad because the weather is cooling off and football season is gearing up. Bliss!

The last few days have been a fast and furious scramble to get everything ready for the big day. To my knowledge, everything is taken care of (schedules, lockers, health forms, course outline). I hope that when I wake up tomorrow, I still have this false sense of calm about me.
With all of that being said, I am really excited to see my new students. Summer Sizzle Fizzle was Saturday (registration). They kids for the most part were very excited to start the 6th grade. I can only hope that the enthusiasm carries over to tomorrow morning!

I did want to share a few pics of the room that I managed to remember to take this afternoon. Still missing one or two things, but it'll do for day one.

My desk area & the computer station

View from the doorway
Decided to pair up the students for the first few days of school

Student supplies & paper turn-in boxes labeled by class period

"Hug" Your Heart jar
The smiley vase contains our Brain Break activities

View from the front of the room
Labeled crates on the back table to hold their interactive notebooks

Wishing everyone a great first day of school!