Mardel Sale!

I found out from a friend that Mardel was having their 20% off sale today, so I decided to go and get some border that I wanted. It was only $3.99, and I wouldn't buy anything else, right? Wrong.  I have fallen for this Isabella design that has all the colors I normally use (turquoise, lime green,) but there is red in the group.  I have kinda stayed away from red, but I have decided I can't fight the red chevrons any longer, gotta have 'em!  I ended up with some really cute border to go with what I already had and the red chevrons complemented it so well.  Here is the "haul"...20% off!

Borders, letters (on sale for $5) and pennant banner: (sorry about the glare - cell phone was all I had at the time!)

Isabella Collection Chevron and polka dots

Banner and letters from Isabella at Mardel

My new t-shirt for this year! 

And my FAVORITE find...Learning Chips from Kagan ($5) There are 16 chips and they will be perfect for group work, my teacher station, or writing stations. I can see letting each group draw out two or three chips, discussing and writing about it after we've read a story, then sharing what they wrote.  They are really good fiction questions! I can't wait to use them. 

Learning Chips from Kagan at Mardel

Here are some sample questions from the set of Learning Chips.

Ready to hang border and decorate! 

Julie 

I just wanted one little thing...

...from my classroom and I ended up staying an hour.  Since June 18th, the air-conditioning in our school has been off.  Let me remind you that I'm in Texas, and you DON'T want to go up and work in that crayon-meltin' heat with no a.c.  If I go up to school for something in the summertime, it's a run-in and run-out kind of situation.  I had lunch with my teammates today...I love them. I have THE BEST team of friends to work with.  Afterwards, I decided to swing by the school, run inside and grab a hanging file of math stuff to reorganize at home.  When I walked in it was just "ahhhhh."  The good kind of ahhhhh, like when you come in from hot recess and you're hit by that cool air when the door opens.  A team of custodians had been cleaning carpets and walls, etc...so the air was on.  They were finished with my room, so I stayed of course!  My furniture was shoved into a big pile in the corner, so I moved it more to the middle, still in a pile, put my teacher desk back where it goes, and started to organize some things.  I thought I'd share a picture of a couple of things.  Well, two pictures and one thing.  The first one is my room after I moved the student desks kinda to the middle of the room.  Can you see my clips hanging from the ceiling?  I keep something hanging from the ceiling all of the time during the school year.  I'm 5'3", so hanging anything from the ceiling used to require me walking on the desks after school, risking life and limb.  I came across these neat little gadgets that work if you have acoustic tiles.  They fit on the metal strips between the tiles. They come with a little tool you use to install them, and you just attach it to a broomstick (just use the one you ride to school on when you have PMS.)  You just "twist" and the plastic thing locks onto the metal strip, then the string is adjustable. (Probably a good thing I'm not a technical writer for a living.)  I have them hanging so I can stand on the floor and clip stuff up without climbing.  I ordered mine through some company in a catalog, but they have them at Mardel, click here to see a picture. Here are a couple of photos of my room today:

www.lovesthirdgrade.blogspot.com

www.lovesthirdgrade.blogspot.com

Here's a picture of our hallway decorated in the spring of this year.  We change it about four times a year, seasonally. We reinforce symmetry using the butterflies.  We cut them out, dot some food color on one half, and fold it over to make a print on either side.  The kids then color around the food coloring, but in a symmetrical fashion on each side.  

 I seem to develop super-human strength when I want something moved and there is no one to help.  I hope if I ever really need to fight some bad guy, it'll reappear at that moment.  I moved a half-hexagon table from down the hall into my room. It had to have weighed several hundred pounds...well I don't know how much it weighed, but it was heavy and it's now where I want it.  My husband will come home and the whole living room is completely changed.  Where there's a will, there's a way, right?  

I'm not going to leave you with the impression of my classroom from that photo.  I'll post "after" pictures later!