Where's the schema?

One of my sweet little boys brought this book up to me today from my class library and said "Mrs. Gilchrist, where's the schema?"  Maybe it's just reading teacher humor...but it cracked me up!

Summer Reading Fun!

I just uploaded a little sheet on TPT that I made to keep my students reading this summer.  For each activity they complete, they will color the book picture next to that activity.  Once all activities are complete (all books are colored), they will have a parent sign the sheet and when school starts back in the fall, they will bring it to me for a prize!  The prize could be as simple as stickers, a pencil, treasure box, etc.   Many of my students come from low income families that do not have a lot of resources.  For that reason I tried to keep the activities on this sheet easy with minimal materials. 

Click on the picture of the Summer Reading Fun sheet below to go to TPT!

This is only $1.00.  Hope it's something you can use with your students too!!!!

End of Year Teacher Gifts

The countdown is on!  7 days left for us!!!  I went to the mall yesterday looking for teacher gifts and found a few fun things.  I looked around without much success, because I didn't have anything in mind, so I headed to the old standby....Bath & Body Works.  Here are a few things I put together (more info below):

I needed some small gifts for helpers that have come into my room this year to work with some of the kids and found these cute clip-on air fresheners:

They had the birds in blue too.  I got several of each color and packed them up with a card that said:  Thank you for being so "tweet"! 

 Click here if you want to download the cards I made to go with these.

I also saw these and thought they would be cute with a card saying "Your one in a "mellon".

Or this... with a card saying "I couldn't have "picked" a better teacher (or friend, or co-worker, etc...)

Or this one, with something like "Have a great summer!".

After that I got apple antibacterial soap for my daughter's teachers.  Her school is very heavy in Fine Arts and for electives she takes drama, chorale, dance, art, Life Skills, Structures (building structures), French, Kinder Coach (they work with the Kindergarten classes), Library and honestly, I am probably forgetting something.  This is in addition to her regular courses!  Anyway, the point being, she has a LOT of teachers and I do not have a lot of money so this worked out for all of those "extra" teacher gifts.  I had a coupon for $10 off and got 10 bottles of apple soap for $25.00.  Bath & Body Works had cello bags that they gave me to put the soap in and I went to Michaels to get ribbon to tie the bags up.  I printed some clear labels that said "Thanks for being a great teacher!" with an apple on them and stuck those to the bottom of the bag.  (You can see one of the finished bags in the photo at the beginning of this post.) 

I also stopped at Michaels and got some stationery sets for some of her other teachers.  They had matching notebooks, notepads, pens and sticky note sets plus bags that matched:

I am still thinking of gifts for the girls on my team....any ideas????

Pete the Cat & Children's Book Week

Last week was Children's Book Week.  I LOVE Children's Book Week - our Media Specialist is AWESOME and she makes it FUN!  I was THRILLED to find out that my class won the door decorating contast held on Friday and we got a $50 gift certificate to the Book Fair - Yay!!!!!! We had to decorate our door to reflect our favorite book. It was a no-brainer! I took these photos a few days after the contest. I also had a table out by my door with a laptop, Pete the Cat book, Pete the Cat doll and a "take one" bucket with hearts my class made (see below). On the laptop, we had a music video playing that my class made to "Rocking In My School Shoes". Here's the video:

Here are the photos of our door:

I was very lucky to be asked to be a guest reader on Monday for Children's Book Week and I asked if I could bring a few friends along to help with the story :) The video is a little very grainy, but here it is:

Hot off the press: Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons! 

This week we had a special visitor at our school:  JACK HARTMANN!!!!

One of my little angels hugged him and immediately said "I'll never wash this hand again!" TOO funny :)