2 weeks till school starts

Today is officially two weeks until school starts

Top 10 things to do with 2 weeks left

1. make a list - or in my case lists. I am a list maker through and through currently I have 8 or so lists going. I break my lists down into categories such as "to do before back to school night" "to do before orientation" and so on. This way I am not spending times on things that don't need to be done for another few days.

2. send letters - or back to school notes, post cards, supply lists etc. This can be done earlier if need be, make sure to give parents plenty of time to buy things.

3. clean classroom - heavy cleaning is usually done over the summer, I always go back and clean my room so that I know it is as germ free as possible.

4. organize room - usually I rearrange and change things over the summer, good time to do this.

5. shop - this is not hard for me :). I usually shop all summer. I hit up garage sales, discount stores, retail and friends.

6. plan - by the time school starts I try to have at least 2 weeks of lesson plans done. They ALWAYS change and I usually end up redoing them a few times but they are done. The start of the school year is crazy, its nice to have the plans done.

7. know the calendar - know when back to school night is, teacher work days, the first day and other important dates

8. talk to your principal - see if anything has changed over the summer that you/parents need to be aware of.

9. get to know the teachers you work with - go to lunch, shopping, coffee. Get to know the people you will be working with, they will be your best source for information/ideas.

10. do something fun - take one last break and do something summery and fun while you still can :)

Good Apples - going school supply shopping today :)

Bad Apples - having to tell parents something that could cause them to not send their kids to school.

Thoughts

I have been thinking for awhile - I should start a blog. Of course there are many questions to think about when starting a blog

1. Will anyone read it?? - I have no idea

2. What will I write about?? - This took some thought (more later)

3. Will I actually write on it?? - I hope so

When I was thinking about what I would write about on my blog I was sitting on three weeks till school starts. As I was writing my lists of things to do for school I thought I could write a blog about teaching. As I am preparing my lesson plans each week for my class I always look for ideas online. Then when it comes to the next year I think I wish I had that web site again, or I wonder where I got that from. I got to thinking wouldn't it be nice to have a place where all of my links and ideas were kept so I could just look back to what we did before. Thus the blog was born. I hope to help a few other teachers with ideas and maybe get a few ideas from people.

So my background, I have a Bachelor's degree in Early Childhood Education (prek-3) and a Master's degree in Classroom Technology. I currently am starting my third year of teaching preschool (ages 3-5) in rural Ohio, I am the Preschool Intervention Specialist and I work everyday with a Regular Education Teacher and an Assistant.

I hope to post at least once a week with things we are doing in our classroom. Also at the end of every post I hope to have good apples and bad apples, these will be things that either I learned during these lessons, would do differently next time, funny things the kids said/did, or just random thoughts I am having.

Feel free to use things from my blog, ask questions and leave comments.

Good Apples - back to school letters have been sent out :)

Bad Apples - it is really hot and there is no sign of it cooling off - my school has no AC