Home Sweet Home-My Bedroom

The next stop on my home sweet home tour is my bedroom. I think it's really important to be in love with your bed--and I am. 

Our bedding is LUCIANNA MEDALLION DUVET from Pottery Barn. I always love me a blue & white color scheme and fortunately Mr. Sneaker and I agreed on this bedding set. I think it's a good balance of our tastes that is feminine enough without being too girly. 

Closer look?

I like to read in bed, so I have my iPad, my Kindle, and a real book on my night stand. And Baby Sneaker likes to read in my bed too, so I have one of her books as well. I started to read the Dreamkeepers by Gloria Ladson-Billings awhile back and I never really got into it. I think I am burned out on non-fiction education texts for the time being. Now I'm onto some books from this list of 14 books to read before they hit the big screen. 

(more about that in another post). 

Some of my favorite things in my room are

Bo the teddy bear. Mr. Sneaker gave this bear to me on our first Valentine's Day together. He's been a favorite sleeping buddy since. Yes, I sleep with a teddy bear. ;0) 

I love this photo of Baby Sneaker. She is so serious, but her eyes are so big and blue and it always makes me smile.

I also love my closet. My color-coding doesn't stop in the classroom and I always group my clothes by color and style. I love the longer hanging space for dresses and for the hanging shoe bag that houses all my ballet flats. 

And of course, I love my sneakers!

What do you love about your bedroom? 

Good Finds-Math Version

I met with my Kinder team yesterday to discuss our year plan. I shared the math plan I've been working on and we discussed our plan for all subjects and aligned our science units/lessons with the themes in our new reading program. I like the idea of fitting the various content areas together which is not something we have really done explicitly in the past. Teaching that way just makes sense to me, so I am getting really excited for the upcoming year.

It doesn't necessarily make sense to share my plan for math, but I thought I would share some of the resources I recently purchased from TPT to go along with our math instruction. Since I am using the CCSS to guide my instruction more so than just my math curriculum, I was on the lookout for resources that are aligned with CCSS. I am always in awe of busy teachers who somehow find the time to create incredibly cute and creative items for their classrooms. Sadly, I do not share their talents, so I will continue cheering them on by buying their cute products. 

I love these teen number pages. 

Number Sense Know How! {THE TEENS} Number Worksheets For Eleven - Twenty

Common Core Math {Understanding Teen Numbers 11 to 20}

And these are great posters to hang in the classroom

Teen Number Posters- Common Core Aligned Numbers 0-20

I also thought this would be a fun game for the kiddos to play to match the teen numbers with their dots representations on the 10-frame. Our math program introduces a ladybug puppet called 10 bug, so this game goes well with the ladybug theme.

Composing and Decomposing Numbers 11-20 Ladybug Matching Game

and for FREE

(who doesn't love a good freebie?!)

Number Practice Pages for 1-10

Monkey Madness - Trace, Stamp, Write (numbers)

Are you a TPT seller? 

Have you found anything good on TPT lately? 

Super Sweet

I am pretty pumped about my new Erin Condren Teacher Planner. 

I chose this cute apple design for my cover. I added my name and school too. 

What I really liked about this planner is that I was able to view a video of a teacher flipping through the entire thing so I could see the various pages and what is offered. It's difficult to find a planner that suits my needs, so I usually make my own. I decided that finally becoming Dr. Sneaker merited a splurge. And by splurge I mean spending a whopping $77.35 on this baby (which will either be deducted from graduation money or reimbursed by my school district since it is indeed a school related expense). 

The base price is $59.00, but I got some add-ons including extra double-page checklist spreads ($7.50) and a pen holder  ($2.50) plus shipping ($8.35). 

It was so excited to receive this pretty baby in the mail that I already started filling in dates based on my school year calendar. 

Take a look...

Colorful tabs to make everything easily accessible. 

  I will definitely be adding some items to these Year at a Glance pages today when I meet with my Kinder team. 

 This is the layout for weekly plans. Lots of open space. I don't think I could fit all my plans on these pages if I taught full day, but for half day I will surely be able to write down everything within the spaces. I already jotted a few notes for first day activities. 

 These are the pages that I ordered lots of extras. I plan to use them for checking in HW, documenting data from my behavior chart, and organizing assessment data for report cards. I think I will section them off so I have a bunch of pages for each grading period. 

I love all the little teachery quotes throughout the planner. Colorful and inspirational.

Although definitely not a reasonable cost for a teacher's budget, I do think that this was a fun splurge. Will I buy one every year? That depends on how it works out, but I definitely like it. I am always striving to be more organized and I think this will help me to have all the info I need in one place. There are also many pages for notes after each monthly calendar which will be great for meetings. That way when I take notes, I won't lose the rando piece of paper I bring because I can write them in my planner and then refer back to them if needed at a later time. I also love the graph paper because I can keep track of my seating arrangements and keep a record of it so I don't (gasp) put a child at the same color table twice during the year! 

Home Sweet Home-My Desk

The next stop in my Home Sweet Home tour is my desk. I already posted a pic of my workspace when I wrote about making my year plan for math, but this time I have more photos and some of my favorite items as well. 

My desk is in the kitchen, so I am trying really hard to keep it looking neat. I have a huge stack of school stuff on top, but Baby Sneaker's grabby hands and its location make it important to keep most things put away. 

The desk we got is part of the Bedford Collection from Pottery Barn. This collection allows you to build your own desk based on which components you want. We decided on the rectangular desk, which fits perfectly along our wall. We chose one 2-drawer file cabinet and one 3-drawer file cabinet for the bottom pieces which gives us 3 deep file cabinet drawers in all and 2 regular drawers for storing other desk items. I have one drawer and then Mr. Sneaker has one drawer too. 

(I'm so good at sharing). 

Mr. Sneaker just added this set up so that I have a larger screen to look at. My laptop is underneath. 

I love the blue case that I got from Amazon. It comes in a variety of cool colors. When I take my laptop out to use in a different location, I never worry about wear and tear because the case keeps it safe from scratches. 

My drawer (which has a Corner Flex Latch from Babies R Us because it's Baby Sneaker's favorite stash to break into) contains a few of my favorite items...

If you've been a reader for awhile, you probably already know about my obsession with Post Its. LOVE them. So, naturally I have an assortment. I love the lined ones for longer notes. My First Grade team introduced me to those awhile back and they have remained a favorite. I don't settle for plain yellow Post Its. They must be colorful. I also like various sticky flags and tabs, so I keep those in my collection as well. 

I also have an assortment of colorful pens. I like to color code things, so sometimes I use a particular color for each family member and another for work when writing events on my calendar. I also like to color code academic quarters on my assessments so I use a different color for each marking term. I like to keep my special pens and Post Its in these clear containers from Storables. 

My sister in law introduced me to this cool custom self inking address stamp from Tiny Prints. It makes putting a return address on cards super easy and it always looks really nice. They aren't cheap, but it really comes in handy when it's time for holiday cards. 

 Next is my file drawer. You can see color coding at work in here as well. I love to buy the brightly colored file folders and hanging files just because they look pretty, but it's also useful to use different colors for different categories. Each family member has their own color and then I have all of our household files in another color. All of our files from our previous home are in the last color. I used a label maker to label all the files so they look neat and tidy. 

 The great thing about getting a new desk is that it forced me to reorganize and make it neat. Let's hope it stays that way.

What are the essentials in your workspace? 

Is your desk in a private/quiet area or out in the open?

***Stay tuned for photos of my Erin Condren teacher planner***

Home Sweet Home

Since I don't have all that much to say about teaching at the moment, I thought I would show some of my home spaces. Who doesn't like at peek into someone else's home? 

I'm starting with Baby Sneaker's playroom. In our previous home, we had a much larger space, but it doubled as my office. Her current playroom basically houses her toys, but she has the run of the entire first floor. We do spend a good amount of time playing in this room, but she also spends a lot of time exploring other areas as well. 

I did a little before and after shot. The top photo is what this room often looks like during the day. The bottom shot shows what I wish it looked like all the time. How cute is Baby Sneaker putting a diaper on her baby doll? 

A closer glimpse at some of my favorite parts of this room.

I asked for these alphabet cards as part of my baby registry. I think they are so cute and I love the teachery touch it puts in the play room. We never put them up in the previous house because I wasn't really sure how I wanted to hang them. I didn't want to frame each individual one, but I also wasn't really sure how to pull off putting them on a clothesline type deal. Luckily, this room has the perfect little ledge that they can lean on. When Baby Sneaker gets bigger she might pull them down, but for the time being she's not tall enough. 

We have two of these storage units from Target. I love putting things away so that the overall look is not total clutter. The baskets come in all sorts of colors and they are perfect for storing all the little toys, stuffed animals, and blocks. I like having the books more on display, so I keep those in the middle. Baby Sneaker can easily pull the handles to get the boxes out and access her stuff. 

My best friend got this Pottery Barn Kids Anywhere Chair for Baby Sneaker when she was born. I used it for her monthly photos and it was so cool to see how she went from a floppy little baby just propped on there to a 1 year old who could sit on her own. I stopped taking those monthly photos once she turned one, but she still loves to sit in this chair because it's the perfect size for her. She likes to sit on it with her little books. Pottery Barn Kids offers this chair in tons of different colors/patterns and I think a large and small size. I love that it can be monogrammed as well. My sister in law has a different chair for each of her three girls and I love that they each get their own with their name on it. Something special that can be just theirs. We'll definitely get another one when we add another baby to our family.

These mattresses went to a daybed that we previously had. We bought it in the US, shipped it to Germany and it got damaged. So, we got it replaced by the moving company, but we had to get the new one in Germany so the mattress size was different. We sold the bed and the Euro mattresses before we moved back, but we still had the original US mattresses. So, although it's not the prettiest sight, we have them on the floor as a nice little cozy place to lounge while playing. And a certain little monkey likes to jump on the bed, which is pretty fun since it's so low to the ground and not a big fall. On those early mornings when mama is just a little too tired, it's a great place to lounge while the peanut plays.

What do you think?
Do you want me to share more of my home spaces?

Roll Call

Hey all you blog readers (hopefully there are some!)...I need a favor! I'm looking down my blog roll and the majority of my education bloggy friends have not posted in a long time. I'm not judging...trust me...I'm not judging. I have been a very lackluster blogger as of late, but I think that I need to mix up my blog roll a bit and maybe that will help in the inspiration department.

So...here's what I need from you....

Tell me who you are.
Tell me what your blog is (if you have one).
Tell me who else you're following that you think is awesome.

I think I've lost that lovin' feeling of bloggy connectivity. I'm going to do a little blog roll clean up and I'd like to add some others because that's how I stay in touch with my bloggy friends.

Let's be friends!