Promises from the Heart

What kinds of classroom rules do you have in your class?? I was never a fan of the "no kicking, no hitting" types of rules. I've always felt that they were extremely boring, redundant, and totally restricting. If I were a student, I wouldn't want to see an entire paper filled with No this, No that.

Years ago when I was in my first round of student teaching, I had a mentor teacher who had this amazing set of class rules called Promises from the Heart. I'm not sure where she got them from and I don't think they're very known since I didn't come up with anything from a google search.

Anyways, these rules are so adorable and positive! Just like Whole Brain Teaching rules, there really is no way around them. Kids can never say "but it's not in the rules". The rules are actually very simple and go like this:

"I will:
H: Help everyone to have a fun, safe, and successful learning experience
E: Express self control and positive behaviors
A: Actively participate to the best of my abilities
R: Respect everyone and everything
T: Try to be better today than yesterday"

I do use the whole brain teaching rules in my classroom daily, but I also incorporate these. I always find myself telling those extra energetic children "Billy, self control" haha. They can never get around the rule: respect everyone and EVERYTHING! Also, when students get in trouble for anything, I always like to use it to teach them a life lesson. Usually, since I take the time to let each child talk to me about their behavior, they really get it and most times start crying because they are disappointed in themselves or that they let me down. I always bring back to take this and use it for tomorrow to have a better day. This always makes them feel better.

This morning I decided to whip up some posters for these rules. I have this really ugly handwritten one that I'm ashamed to show you and have no idea why I haven't redone them yet?! haha.

Head on over to my TPT store to get your copy of these rules!! Perfect timing for the beginning of the school year!! I hope these can be as successful in your classroom as they are in mine.

Made it Monday: Teacher Toolbox

Woohoo!! I've had two productive days in a row. For me, that is extremely good since I am a huge couch potato. My mom teases me and says I have bum tendencies, since I could lay in front of the tv, curl up on the couch and watch h.g.t.v, and cooking  channel all day long!! haha. 

I'm linking up to Tara at 4th Grade Frolics for my very first:

I've jumped onto the teacher toolbox bandwagon! For those of you who haven't seen this yet, you must get yourself one ASAP. I'm hoping that when the school year starts, this will keep my desk clean (crossing fingers) haha. No more 'junk collectors', aka cute cups that hold all of my pencils and pens. 

I now have this handy dandy and super cute toolbox!

These toolboxes have been showing up on blogs and pinterest pages ALL OVER. In the pinterest search bar, type in teacher toolbox and you will see all the different kinds people have made. I believe the original idea came from Rebecca at Create*Teach*Share. She also shares the labels that she used, which are the same ones I used. 

Daily Schedule Cards and Updated LIbrary Labels

Phew..I've been busy at work today since the boyfriend is not home. I made the choice today to buy a resale license from Thistle Girl Designs. Their graphics are so adorable! Before I got into blogging or TPT, ALL of my school things are done with DJ Inkers. Unfortunately, we cannot use them to resell so today I started converting some of my files using other fonts and clip art. I have a LOT of converting to do..but I guess this will be keeping me busy :)

These are the daily schedule cards I use in my classroom. I actually ended up typing and laminating my times since I didn't like how it looked handwritten. All the times stay the same throughout the week. All I did was laminate my cards then stuck magnets in the back. They have held up for two years and still look great!! Now, I can officially share it with everyone since I invested in that license!!

Here are the cards that I use!! I added some new ones and did different clip arts for morning and lunch recess. If you would like to grab a copy, head over to my TPT store.

Awhile ago, I also shared the library book bin labels that I had created when I was re-organizing my classroom library. I originally had my library organized by AR levels but I found that when my students were book shopping each Monday morning, it was taking way too long. They were searching in their leveled baskets but were having such a hard time finding books that they liked. After talking with my students, we agreed that having our library organized by genre, favorite authors, and chapter series would make it easier for them to shop for books. SO, I spent two WHOLE weekends reorganizing my library. This made book shopping much easier for my students. They quickly went in...looked for the type of book they wanted, checked it out and they were done. I'm so glad I switched over.

These labels come with a total of 32 different labels. If you decide to purchase these and you find that I am missing a category in your library, please let me know and I will be more than happy to create it and send it over to you! This is also in my TPT store, and is discounted until Wednesday!! You may also click on the pictures to be linked directly to my store :)

Last but not least, you all know the drill..the FIRST person to comment this post and tell me which file you would like, gets it for free!! Don't forget to leave your e-mail!!

Saturday's Adventures!

So, since I'm on summer vacation I told myself that I wouldn't spend every day cooped up in the house and working on school things. This was one of the very few Saturdays that my wonderful boyfriend had off. We rarely EVEr get to spend the weekends together since he is always working. SO we went on one of our favorite hikes, Kailua Pillboxes. The trail begins across the street from a private golf course...my bf took a picture of this since he wishes he could play there :P

This hike has one of the most beautiful views ever. You head uphill on some very steep and dry dusty ground. The beginning doesn't look too pretty, but trust me the views are breathtaking!

This is the ridge, heading up to the first of two pillboxes. These boxes were built by the military during World War II. 

Here I am, taking a picture break for all my bloggy friends on my way down :) 

Once we were done with out hike we were really hot and sweaty so we headed down to the beach you see in this picture to take a refreshing dip. While at the beach swimming, there was a cute little honu (turtle) swimming about 10-15 feet away from us! 

He keep popping his head out of the water like this! How cute huh?! The last time my bf and I went paddle boarding, I almost bumped into a turtle!! I had to try and maneuver the board in the opposite direction and almost fell of doing so! haha. 

After the beach, we headed to have a yummy lunch at Whole Foods. Do your whole foods serve the wok bowls?? They are so yummy! You fill up a bowl with all the vegetables you want (about 30 to choose from) , choose a protein (chic, beef, shrimp, tofu), pick a sauce (teriyaki or lime and garlic), and a starch (noodles, white or brown rice). Once you've chosen all of these things, you hand it over to the person behind the counter and they stir fry all the ingredients up. It's so yummy! I wish I took a picture.

Once we were done eating, we headed out to some garage sales. For those of you who know me, you know I love me some book shopping at garage sales :) I scored all of this:

For $20!! I got almost 40 books, all in great condition. A Shel Silverstein book of poems, a sterilite 3 drawer organizer and a cute little clear basket. The basket is filled with all chapter books!!

I'm a sucker for buying books I would have liked to read. This past year, I had trouble getting my lower level boys to find books they like. As I was going through my library, i noticed I don't have much variety for 'boy books'. I have a ton of Magic Tree House, just got a bunch of Nate the Great, ton of Flat Stanley, a handful of Horrible Harry books and some Goosebumps and Animorphs. Other than these books, what do your boys like to read?? 

Printable Plan Book

As I was going through the teacher supply store yesterday, I couldn't bring myself to paying $14 for a plan/record book that was so simple and nothing to my liking. I'm sure for those of you who live in the mainland, plan books aren't as much as they are here..everything seems to be way pricier here in Hawaii. Anyways, I made the choice to not purchase a plan book this year and create my own!

The plan book I created has 144 printable pages for you. The pages itself are very plain, because personally, I enjoy doodling in my planners and adding cute stickers :D Here's my first attempt at taking screen shots..I still need to work on positioning haha.

Anyways..this planner includes the following:
-Cover page (However, I will probably create my own with my new handy dandy cricut) :)
-Student information sheets
-2 different types of monthly calendars
--long term lesson planning pages
-40 weeks of lesson plan pages
-student grade book and record keeping pages

The awesome thing about this planner is that you can print them again and again. I originally started with numbers in the monthly calendar but decided to leave them blank so people can hand write them in. This way, you never have to purchase another teacher calendar from the rip off education stores :P  haha.

If you would like a copy of this plan book and want to get started way early before the year starts, head over to my tpt store! First 2 to comment and leave your email address for me can have a FREE copy of this :)

PS: I must say, with all of the fantastic quality products that all of you make and sell on tpt, I find myself being totally disappointed with the quality of workbooks and supplies at teacher supply stores. Am I the only one who feels this way??

Fab. Five for Friday

I ordered a Cricut on Sunday, and it just arrived today!! I am so excited to open it up, buy some cartridges and get going on making some super cute crafts!! But before I do I must finish the product I've been working on to upload to my TPT store. Until then, I would love some advice from all of you cricut users. I just ordered the Cricut Expression. Any advice, tips, favorite cartridges, types of papers, project, etc you would like to share with me?? I'll probably head out sometime next week to find a place to pick up all of my paper and cartridges so any leads would be awesome :)

I took a short break from pinning for awhile since I was so busy towards the end of the year..but I'm happy to say I'm back into pinning and am going full force :) I have some awesome pins to share with you this week!

Source: via Courtney on Pinterest

Now

I am totally loving this room for a sweet little girl. I saw this room when I went house shopping today with my brother and sister in law..I just had to take a pic :) The flowers and birds on the wall are little wire sculptures! How cool is that!

Source: michaelannmade.com via Courtney on Pinterest

I'm also loving this super cute and simple tissue paper flower to dress up gift bags or even wrapped presents!!

Source: tupelohoneycaro.blogspot.com via Courtney on Pinterest

This is almost the same setup as my white board at school but I'm really liking the decorative borders!! I'm not sure what this teacher uses to separate her objectives but I use this colored tape like thing..not super sticky but stays onto the board and comes off with no mess.

Source: blogs.scholastic.com via Courtney on Pinterest

Although it's summer time, all of us bloggy teachers are also thinking ahead for the next school year. This is the smartest thing ever! Use plastic table covers for your bulletin board backgrounds. I'm not sure about you but I know the paper that I use at school that claims to be fadeless...always fades (really bad). Plus, these are such bright and bold colors!!

Source: laceandlacquers.com via Courtney on Pinterest

Of course, I need to include some fancy nails!! I absolutely love these nails!! I'm usually one for uniformity when it comes to getting my nails done but they all go so well together. I especially love the one glittery nail :)

Stay tuned for my fab. five pins for next week...or feel free to follow my pins on pinterest and you can keep yourself updated with my pinning obsessions :D 

Seattle and Portland Conquered, and June's Currently..

Boy..I sure feel like I have been starting every post talking about how it's been awhile. What a terrible blogger :( I promise to try and be more diligent this summer!!

My boy and I have had a wonderful 9 day vacation conquering Seattle and Portland. It was lovely, and believe it or not we absolutely enjoyed the cold and rainy weather! It was nice to get away from the heat and sunshine for a bit :P

In Seattle, We were lucky enough to stay with my Aunty on the beautiful Bainbridge Island. Each day we needed to catch a ferry to and from Bainbridge to Seattle. It was a nice 30 minute ferry ride.

This is the beautiful view we saw each day as we were leaving Seattle.

We did a wonderful tour by Savor Seattle and went through Pike Place Market. We went to about 14 of the most popular spots in the market and got a sampling of their most popular items. At each stop we sampled about 2-3 different things. This was one of the highlights of my trip, and if you are in Seattle or even live near the area..I highly suggest checking this out. They talk about the history of the market and give a lot of background information about the sellers and the market itself. We also sampled some amazing foods and snacks that we would have NEVER stopped to try in the first place.

One of the MANY fruit and vegetable stands in the market. This place has the sweetest fruits at such great prices!!

There were a ton of BEAUTIFUL fresh flower bouquet stands. These bouquets were only $5,$7, and $15. What a deal!!

Some Fresh seafood..and of course, the famous flying fish!! A lady on our tour actually got to catch the flying fish!!

Some DELICIOUS Mac N Cheese :)

In Portland, we did a TON of shopping!! I've never shopped from sun up till sun down for 3 days straight before. Literally, we would wake up and head out at 8, get to the malls by 10, and shop till dinner time. We then stayed out and explored Portland and got home around 10 or 11 each night. We did take a little break from shopping though and did a breathtaking hike to Multnomah Falls.

Yep, that's me. All bundled up and cold :P 

Isn't this absolutely breath taking?? You hike up to about the middle of the falls and feel the mist all over your face!! 

And..I'm soon heading back to reality and will be able to reminisce and go through all of our wonderful pictures :) I'm linking up to Farley again and here's my Currently for the month of June.. June already? Geez I need to start making use of my time when I get back home :P