Fabulous Find Friday - Awesome Pencil Sharpener!

So I'm writing this on Thursday afternoon, hoping beyond hope that Elizabeth at Fun in Room 4B is still having her Fabulous Find Friday linky party tomorrow.  I'm thinking she will, though I will be in meetings and won't be able to check out everyone's amazing shares until this weekend.  
I want to share my new favorite find. I was able to try out this pencil sharpener from Classroom Friendly Supplies at my home this past month.  I've seen the different reviews for it on the different blogs and on Pinterest, and I wondered if it was really possible to have a dream pencil sharpener like they mentioned.  The box came in the mail, and I had to see for myself.
They weren't joking!

This pencil sharpener is so quiet - it does make a tiny amount of noise, but nothing compared to the annoying sound that my electric one makes.  I could easily still teach a lesson and this be used at the same time.  It has a crank handle, but it doesn't need to be drilled down to a table because of a special clamp.  It was easy to put together and sturdy - all you have to do is just place the clamp into the little hole and it's done.  I didn't even need to ask my husband to put it together, I could handle it myself.    

It didn't take forever to sharpen a pencil either.  My boys are little helpers (or they were at that moment in time), and they each wanted to take a turn too.  I didn't have to worry about whether they were going to break it - it all was pretty simple without electricity!  There are also videos if I needed on the Classroom Friendly Supplies website if there were trouble-shooting issues, but nothing bad happened so I didn't need them. 

I wanted to see how easy it was to dump it out and clean it - simple!  The school kids come this coming Monday, and I told my teammates about it - they want to check it out as well - so it's heading to the classroom tomorrow to share.  If you are interested to learn more about it, head on over to the Classroom Friendly Supplies website.  
Have a great weekend!

Fabulous Find Friday: Countdown to the Classroom

This Friday I'm linking up with Fun in Room 4B and sharing a couple of things from this past week that I am so excited about.  I have done a lot of school shopping.  What is it about glue sticks and dry erase markers that make me want to clear the shelf?  

Okay, here's part of my shopping for this week:

The travel pillows are from Walmart's clearance.  They happen to match my new chair, 2 metal big tubs, and my beach towel from Target's clearance.  $4 each and will compliment the t-shirt pillows I made.  

This pile of stuff came from Michaels.  The baskets were 70% off plus my teacher discount - so between $3 and $5 per basket.  Everything else was 99 cents in the scrapbook area.  Those black things are each a 15 pack of greeting cards - perfect for cutting in half and using to frame student pictures.  There are 2 other packs of card stock, and those red things are each a 50 pack of bookmarks.  Just plain colored bookmarks that I will use to stick my library labels and book bin labels on before taping inside my plastic shoeboxes.  The other thing is colored filler paper.  I saw them and remembered junior high with writing notes on colored paper.  Ahh, memories...  I'm planning on organizing my whole class notes for Math, Social Studies, Reading, and Science using the colored paper in my example binder.

This pile of stuff came from the Dollar Tree.  I have one plain wall at school, and though I'm planning on using it for my Math anchor charts, I still really want some color to back it up and to hide the yucky walls.  So, I turned to yellow plastic tablecloths.  Pinterest has said that plastic tablecloths don't fade, so I'm going to try it out this year.  If it doesn't work, then I'm only out $6 - and I probably didn't even need 6 of them.  The red tablecloths are going to become a valance of sorts above my 2 windows.  The little trophies will become awards from the clean desk fairy and the cursive fairy.  The foam blocks will become more dice to play a bunch more math games.  

I also wanted to share my tech page on Pinterest - lately I keep finding so many wonderful apps and websites to use in the classroom.  Maybe one of the things will help you as well.  I had every intention of just picking one thing, but there really is a lot of great things out there from downloading You Tube videos (if it's blocked at school), to easy graders, to Reading Rainbow, to Bill Nye, to organizational stuff.  Enough said, here it is:  

http://pinterest.com/esumma/tech-stuff

Okay, okay - it's already Friday!  We are able to get our school keys next Tuesday, July 31st.  The school dreams have already started, and I'm so ready to be able to have my dining room back to being a dining room rather than a craft/organizing station.  My boys have chosen their new backpacks and lunch boxes for this new year, and it's starting to feel like it should be time to start setting everything up.  I really do love summer, I just really love the beginning of school too!

Friday Finds - I Love Target and Vistaprint!

I'm linking up with Elizabeth at Fun in Room 4B 

to share this week's gotta have it.

 Target's Summer Clearance

Everything at my store is 70% off at the moment- so picked up this chair for $2, 2 huge metal tubs in this same print for $4 and $5, same print beach towel for $3, and plastic cups & beach pails for 50 cents each.  I'm still on the hunt for this print in a table cloth (and I've already gone to 5 Targets with no luck).  Perfect with the colors in my classroom.

I also found that Vistaprint is having a free shipping sale for all of July when you purchase $10 of materials.  So here is my $10 worth of stuff - one free box of business cards, and 2 other sets for $5 each.  There are 250 in each set.  I got the ideas for these from Stephanie at Teaching in Room 6.  She has an entire page of Vistaprint ideas.  

I know I'm supposed to be finding something for my home as well, but other then grocery shopping I'm not picking up anything for home at the moment.  Websites I do love when I am shopping are Personalization Mall (for special gifts) and Tiny Prints (for personalized cards that are perfect to give).  
Hope everyone has a great day!

Fabulous Find Friday (Giveaway ends in 5 days)

Once again I'm linking up with Elizabeth in Fun in Room 4B with her linky party.  

I'm so excited about these products, and yes since I took these pictures I have opened up the packages.  Both I saw from other bloggers, and I figured that they were such good prices that I couldn't live without them any longer.    

  

 Circle cutter and mat - both pink =)  Cutting out plain circles is so easy now with many different sizes.  I just am trying to figure out how to place a circle that has print on it, to get it lined up perfect to be able to cut it out.  I seem to be off kilter... 

 A monthly set of notepads, post it notes, and page markers.  It was a bummer that I couldn't use the education discount on this, even though I tried to convince them that I would be using this in the classroom.

On another note my book of the Book Whisperer came in the mail too.  I'm trying to get into it, so far it's been difficult with so many distractions around here.  Life with 3 sons is never dull.  Add this past week of helping out at VBS (Vacation Bible School) in 100+ temps and I'm downright exhausted by the time that I actually have a moment to read.


Lately I have been doing returns of all the stuff that I thought I needed from Costco, Target, Michaels, and Barnes and Nobles.  Well, actually I didn't do the returns, my dear husband took care of it all. (It was safer this way.  I would have done the return and then went shopping again).  I love shopping, but I really need to start living in reality and remembering that my classroom is full of stuff just waiting for me to get back in there in a couple of weeks - I don't need any more stuff to haul back in.
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Remember - only 5 days left to enter my 100+ follower giveaway.  Sign up if you are interested!

Fabulous Find Friday - Internet 4 Classrooms

I'm linking up again with Elizabeth at Fun in Room 4B to share my Fabulous Find.

I love technology.  I think that it helps the students a lot when it comes to review.  Sometimes a website can make reviewing a concept fun, and of course kids will remember the material easier if it is in a game format .  This website isn't one that I found recently, but the past couple of years I have my students use it ALL THE TIME.  

Internet 4 Classrooms (www.internet4classrooms.com) has been a wonderful tool in my classroom.  It's free to use, and contains grade level skills for students to practice.  This website links up different games in each category from all over the web.  I usually use it for Language Arts review, since my students have a subscription for ixl to help them in Math.  They cover grade levels from PreK to 8th grade.   



On Internet 4 Classrooms I use the Grade Level Help Menu , then my students go to 4th grade Language Arts to work.   Below is a picture of the set up on the grade level help.  You can see there are different options.  

	4th Grade Skills

4th Grade Skill Builders

Language Arts Activities

Mathematics Activities

Social Studies Activities

Current Standards

Language Arts

Mathematics

Science

Social Studies (*)

Prior Standards

Here is what the Language Arts section for 4th grade looks like, each grade level is set up pretty much the same:

	Grammar

1. Antonyms

2. Capitalization / Punctuation

3. Homonyms

4. Parts of Speech

5. Prefixes

6. Plurals

7. Sentence Structure

8. Spelling

9. Suffixes

10. Synonyms

11. Verbs

12. Vowels

13. Word Usage Errors

	Reading

1. Authors Purpose

2. Cause / Effect

3. Compare / Contrast

4. Main Idea

5. Parts of a Book

6. Reading Comprehension

7. Sequencing

8. Stories

9. Vocabulary Builders

I'm pretty new to Google Docs (so I hope this works), but here is the game sheet that my students use to play the different games and earn class prizes.  It's functional.  It's in a document, so you could change the skills and strategies that are on the bottom of the form to match up with your grade level. 

I have this website available to my students all year on our class website, but it's really in March when we start the major "test prep" that I have them do these fun activities to really review their grammar and reading skills.  This is the site that I pull up on my Now!board to play game when we have those 5 minute windows of time.  On the class computers or at home they fill in the game board and turn it in for class tickets.  It has worked great for me the past 2 years.  Hope it helps you as well.