Teacher Tips

Recycling Bin Labels for the Classroom

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Do your children know where recycling items are supposed to go?
Many days I have had to sort the recycling myself prior to emptying it in the large school bins that go out to the road. Despite many hands on lessons to teach my students about proper recycling habits.
Many children do not understand the concepts of different types of materials, or simply don’t care about it. This causes frustrations for our custodians and even our eco-team.
As a result, I created these visual recycling labels. I needed something that kids, or visiting adults to my classroom, could easily reference to know how to sort each item.

I simply printed them, laminated them and have posted them for kids to reference as an anchor chart. 

Having these clear labels has helped stop this confusion in my class. I no longer have to sort my recycling bins before it gets dumped into the big school bins anymore. This is a huge time saver for me at school!

As many different areas have different rules, I have created multiple printing options. Check them out by clicking on the images in this blog post if you’re interested an anchor chart to help your kids learn to sort your classroom or schools recycling!

Printer Friendly End of the Year Awards

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You are never too old to get an award and enjoy being appreciated.

This is exactly why I created these awards designed for students in junior, intermediate or senior grades. They have a simple, clean-cut design and cursive font that older students can relate to.

Printer friendly end of the year awards are perfect for teachers looking for a simplistic design on a budget!

Awards make kids feel special and ensures students know that we “get them” when we acknowledge their unique, amazing qualities that make each one of them special.

Click on the image below to check them out!

Character Trait End of the Year Awards

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I love focusing on character traits throughout the school year. 

I firmly believe we need to build up children’s character and help them understand that this is what makes them into human beings that bring out the best in others and in themselves.

Some years, I like to give out simple, generic awards that all kids can relate too. I particularly like this set for primary grades as the graphics are kid friendly and they can easily relate to the alphabet being relevant to their day to day lives!

This set offers 111 black and white character trait awards. My students enjoy coloring them and making each one uniquely theirs and I like it as it is printer friendly and cost effective when I have to print at home.

Awards make kids feel special and ensures students know that I “get them” when I acknowledge their unique, amazing traits.

Click on the image below to check them out if you’re interested!

Editable End of the Year Awards

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I love to let my students know that I recognize them for being a unique person. One of my favorite ways is by giving them awards.

Awards make kids feel special and ensures students know that I “get them” when I acknowledge their unique, amazing traits.

I’m in love with the kid theme version of these editable awards as there are 241 printable options! I promise, it is easy. All you need is PowerPoint or Google Slides. Everything is set up for you already. Simply fill in your names, the date and then press print!

You can even highlight the text to change the font if you want a fancier font to give to students!

Over the years I have had a lot of fun coming up with a variety of ways to acknowledge students. Many of the awards I have made were for specific students I have taught. I’ve even had many people email me to request additions to this file!

I love that I can add our names, choose the font and font size as well as add the date to each one. This means I can reuse it yearly!

Are you looking for different awards that are not included in this file? Don’t worry! There are 15 slides that allow you to create your own!

If you would like to give these awards a try, check them out at my TpT store!

Editable Back to School Mailbag Labels

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I cannot believe that it is already time to prep for the new year again!

It’s to set up our classrooms and get everything ready for the new students and parents who are new to the school routine and how we each organize our own classroom.

Let’s be real. Communication with parents needs to happen ALL. THE. TIME. in Kindergarten and primary grades!

As a result, one of the very first things I tackle each year is my communication mailbags. Students send them home nightly with any mail that needs to go home and return them the next day. I’ll be honest, I like a uniform look so I make the bags up myself and it allows parents to read our expectations instantly, as a reminder, if required.

I always ensure that students names are on the bag so that they are easy to identify if they get lost.

Parents appreciate that they know I’ve got everything ready for them and I love the organized look!

Teacher Tip: 
Ensure you have these ready for your first parent meeting so you can go over expectations in person. Parents truly appreciate this personalized communication.

Happy back to school!


Our “Debug” Tool to Support Self-Regulation

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Young children need easy ways to remember how to solve social problems.

We often make a fun reference to this and describe it to children that others may be “bugging” them and this helps them regulate their emotions when they are upset with their peers.

When we do this, we can discuss bugs and our feelings around them. They may bother us, but in reality, we live with them and to a certain degree need to get used to them!

Our problems with others are the same!

Students need to be able to feel safe learning how to solve problems and guided through how to do it. These strategies have been very effective with our students.

When someone is bugging you we can:
* Ignore
         We can ignore things that are not true or other people’s problems.
* Talk Friendly
         Always talk in a kind manner, assuming others will listen!
* Talk Firmly
        To show we mean what we say we speak firmly but still with kind words.
* Move Away
        If our words do not work we can choose something else to do or someone else to play with.
* Get Adult Help
        When the other strategies don’t work, or if someone is hurt we can always seek help from an adult!

I hope you find these strategies to be helpful with your students!

I use a visual prompt for the non-readers in the calming corner area of our classroom. After we have pre-taught and repeatedly modeled the different strategies, students will independently go to use the poster to help them remember how to solve problems.

The following poster gives picture cues that children can easily understand and help them solve their problems independently. If you want to check it out, it can be purchased by clicking on the following image below.

Walking Wednesday: Whole School Activity

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Kids need exercise and walking is a great way to get it.
Families who walk to school help build relationships within their community as families get to know each other.

Exploring the outdoors, being in and around nature, helps ground kids and them supports their appreciation for the world around them.

A few years ago our staff put out a challenge to our community to make it a goal to walk to school every Wednesday. It was a pretty easy adjustment for our community as we already had done this during Earth Week to support our learning of taking care of the environment.

The community bought into this weekly activity and all the students enjoyed participating in it. This is a perfect year-round activity for eco-schools.

Older students wrote announcements to encourage student participation, younger grades graphed who came to school by walking, driving or on the bus

Class awards were given to the class with the most points per division and celebrated all student participation by collecting points for each child who participated (our school collects color house points to help build school spirit).

If you want to start something like this at your school it is pretty easy to do! If you click on the image above to find premade activities, templates, and awards for your whole school to use!

How to Customize Your Desktop Images on a Mac

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Have you ever wanted to customize your folder images on your MAC? 
I just learned how to do it this week and I am super excited to share it with you! 
It is super easy to do!
First of all I create my images in powerpoint. 
The image size I use is 5″ * 5″.  I made a shape, filled it in with a background that I wanted and then added my text.
Next you need to highlight everything that you want to include in your image. 
Double click on the border surrounding it and click on “Group” and then “Group” again.  The image will look like the one below without showing the lines for the text. It is now one image. 
Right click on this image and copy it (command C) or click file and copy.
Double click on the file that you want to pick and click on “Get Info.”
Now you must click on the blue “folder” at the top left of the Info that appears on your screen. As soon as you have done that press copy by either clicking on “File” and then “Paste” or using the Command V shortcut to paste it to replace that blue image! 
Instantly the image at the bottom and top will be replaced and it will look like the image below and your done!
Have fun making your customized desktop!

Digital Holiday Concert Planning for Busy Teachers

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Do you ever forget what songs your students have performed at school concerts?

Ever changed schools and wondered what has been presented by classes in years prior to you being at the new school?

I’ve had this happen to me multiple times throughout my career. I will admit that although my teaching partners have been fabulous at keeping me in the loop, when switching new schools, sometimes it is handy just having all the information all in one place.

This led me to do some brainstorming and I came up with a digital product for Google Sheets. 

How Do We Collaborate?

One slide allows for all teachers to input their song or poem selection that they will be using. Teachers can easily and quickly input their ideas during a staff/planning meeting. You can also send this out to staff through an email and have them fill it in by a predetermined deadline. 
This allows everyone to instantly see if there are duplications for songs. Having all the songs in one place for everyone to see for years to come allows for greater collaboration and a wider understanding of the culture of the community you are teaching in!
I decided instead of everyone reinventing the wheel I’d share it with you already put together.

Additional Benefits:

Another slide is provided with 96 examples, at the time of this blog post but will be growing, of different songs and poems for primary grades. A variety of themes are included! 
This sheet is not limited to any grade. It could easily be adapted for older students and anyone in your staff can make additions to this as long as you ensure you share the file so that others can edit it! If you want to check it out, click on the image below. There are a variety of other “features” included in this file. Check it out if you want more details!
I hope that you find this to be as useful as I have found. It really has helped our team be more collaborative. We are definately planning more effectively, less energy and time put into organizing compared to previous years!

Reflecting Children’s Lives Book Review

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Our Kindergarten team has studied a book each year in a book club.

It is a great way to develop common language, support each other in our learning and give each other ideas to use in our classroom.

We recently studied “Reflecting Children’s Lives” by Deb Curtis and Margie Carter.

Overall, I found that it was a great book which for teachers who are just starting on their journey into emergent practice and a reflective book for teachers who are currently using this model.

Our team had a lot of “ah ha” moments where we acknowledged the growth from where we started years ago and could name how we are actively embracing this philosophy in our classrooms and as a team during outdoor learning.

My favourite chapter was the chapter 2 on Revitalizing the Environment.

The book highlights many principles to keep in mind to encourage an emergent environment but we noted in our group that some of the philosophies of the book are geared to a daycare toddler setting versus an actual Kindergarten classroom.

We had some great discussions about these differences and the importances of them.

These small reminders were great:

  • looking at the whole classroom from a Childs perspective
  • easily accessible learning materials
  • open-ended loose parts and materials
  • using diverse textures in materials, sensory and even lighting
  • ensuring a flexible classroom environment
  • reflect students lives
  • ensure to reflect multiple cultures in your room based upon the students in your class
  • be flexible
  • use natural materials
I would highly recommend reading it as a professional read to reflect upon your learning.

If you are interested in purchasing it I have a link to my Amazon affiliate where you can check it out by clicking on the photo of the book above. This simply helps support me with maintaining my blog expenses.