Five for Friday: Back to School (and back to blogging!)

What a week! I have always loved linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday and am setting a goal to get back on a blogging schedule and not miss joining in on the Friday fun!

My life right now is a little crazy, but the absolute best part of it is getting to be this little guy's mom! He is growing so fast! We love cooling off and playing in the pool! 

I have such a rambunctious crew of little ones this year! I needed a creative way for them to keep our rules in mind so I made these fun little (FREE!)  Rules Rings! 

I blogged about my Back to School Favorites and Freebies and I'm giving away a few of my favorite back to school resources! Hop over to this post to enter!! 

Kole and I are anxiously awaiting the arrival of his cousin, Ella! She is due any day and we had fun making some cute onesies for her! 

If you are looking for a few fun new stories, I just got these two and they didn't disappoint! I already have so many great lesson ideas and can't wait to read these stories to my kiddos! 

Back to School: Favorites and Freebies!

I know what you must be thinking...where the heck has she been and why is this her first blog post in MONTHS?!?

Okay, so admittedly I have been awful about blogging. I had to take a break for a while to focus on family and my life outside of my MacBook! But I am back! And I can't wait to share with you some of my favorite back to school goodies!!!

I have a VERY rambunctious group of kiddos this year and found out fast that they were going to need A LOT of reinforcement with our rules this year! ENTER: Rules Rings!
These little rings serve as such great reminders of our rules! I made a color copy for me and then made each kiddo a set with colored cardstock and VOILA! a perfect solution to my little ones' memory problems! Not only will your kids love taking ownership of their rules with these rings, they will love the picture reminders! As an added bonus, try giving out stickers to students to put on the back of specific rule cards when they are doing a great job mastering that rule!
Oh and did I mention that they are FREE?! :)

Another one of my must use beginning of the year resources are my (also FREE) Back to School Reading Surveys for Beginning Readers. I LOVE using these little surveys at the beginning of the year to get to know my new kiddos and learn all about their reading interests! This year I am even making them their very own reading interest packs, stay tuned for more about that later!

If you know much about me, you probably already know that I really really love sight words! Sight word sentence strips are an absolute staple in my classroom and I love creating different themes to use throughout the year! These Back to School strips are such a fun way to introduce school vocabulary and have your students practice their sight word fluency at the same time! 

If you are looking for a GREAT and easy sight word center, check out my growing bundle of strips for over 15 different themes (and many more to come!)

One of my other favorite ways to start of the year is to begin collecting data about my kiddos.  One of my favorite parts of teaching has always been seeing the growth and transformations my students go through as the year goes on. I love using these data collection pages to be able to watch my students learn and grow! They make for great talking points during conferences and you can put them together at the end of the year as a gift for parents! It is AMAZING to see how much your students grow! (Plus, let's be honest, administrators always love to see those data collections!) 

What are your Back to School favorites??