Friday Favorites

Holy cow. School at the end of the year as a teacher is NO joke. Right now I have six 4th graders who just want to run and play outside instead of study for their state science assessment. And honestly, I don't blame them! To celebrate another successful week I'm joining Erika, Narci, and Andrea for Friday Favorites!

I feel like each Friday I sing a Friday-themed song and today I woke up singing one of my absolute favorites...N'SYNC :) All day I have "Thank god it's Friday night and I just (ju-ju-ju-juuuust) got paid! (money money money money)" I have never been happier to see a Friday! This weekend I have some fun plans with my friends, some dinner plans with my family, and hopefully I'll revive the garden I destroyed last week. They say that self-care is the most beneficial thing special educators can do for themselves and their students, right? Self-care is most certainly a favorite this week!

After I fell off track for a couple weeks, my lunch prep routine is back on thanks to the lunch series Double Dose of Learning has been blogging about. Their 4-part series has been really helpful, especially those lunches for the anti-Pinterest teacher. The last installment of this series is going to be posted soon but check out their page for their current posts!

Have you seen the new dry erase crayons that Crayola came out with? They've been all over the teacher Instagrams and I decided to test them out myself! I just bought the regular ones from Amazon and I'm still deciding if I like them. They're certainly fun! They write like a crayon but wipe off like an Expo marker. My only complaint is that they're not as vibrant as typical white board markers and they can sometimes be difficult to see. Below is a picture of the dry erase crayons compared to a white board marker.

So I haven't done a really great job of highlighting the actual design of my classroom BUT I refer to it as my "home away from home." Some weeks I've spent more time in my classroom than in my house, so it needs to be comfortable, organized, cute, and oh-so-perfect. If you really stepped inside my classroom you'd notice that glitter and sparkles are everywhere...

P.S This Solar System Unit is from Double Dose of Learning!

Recently I discovered that Kate Spade came out with a line of Keds and oh-my-glitter, they were beautiful. I just knew that I had to have them. Of course, I picked out the gold glitter :)

I wore these to my student's baseball game last weekend. It's the little things, like getting a giant wave from your student when he's in the outfield because he recognizes you by your sneakers!

Five

I needed to save my favorite "Friday Favorite" for last this week! My students are so unique in their needs and I'm constantly spending money out of my pocket to purchase little prizes, snacks, and school supplies to keep my kiddos engaged that I usually don't think to spend the additional money on "extras." Unfortunately, these little "extras" are the things that my students need. Therefore, I decided to start a Donors Choose page for my classroom. On a whim I posted two projects: one for culturally relevant books and another for self-regulating materials. To my surprise, both were funded extremely quickly! Below are some pictures of our new classroom supplies...

Currently I have one classroom project that I'm really, really hoping to get funded during our extended school year session! My students come from really challenging backgrounds and their families are unable to donate , so I rely on kind people of the world to help me and my sweet students raise the funds for such materials. You can check out our current Donors Choose project and see what we're currently asking for. Hyperactivity is THE perfect word to describe my kiddos and if you check out my project request, you'll see exactly what I mean :)

Happy Fri-YAY!