No Time to Take Time!

Hi!  Sorry posting has been a bit light lately, but it's the end of the year!  Similar to the end of the world, but I might manage to survive this one!  :-)  Maybe!

I know I am preaching to the choir for the most part, but CHEESY COW!!! I am swamped with work!  As are my little friends.  Take a look at this calendar.

Every year I put up a countdown calendar on our whiteboard.  This year it came out a bit crooked, so I drew the skinny guy holding up one end.  As you can see, we have been very busy with all things 5th grade.  I really put this calendar up, not so much as a countdown, but because I needed to see at a glance what was happening when.  I kid you not when I say this calendar is not even complete.  These are just the "extra" events we have going on.  What it doesn't show are all the end-of-year assessments my friends are being overwhelmed with, all the final writing unit projects we are scrambling to get done, and the other crazy things like promotion practices, chorus/band practices, and middle school orientation. 

On the teacher end, I am giving up a life this week to get all those things graded.  Plus, my  marking period grades (which aren't averaged because I STILL HAVE SO MUCH TO GRADE!) have to be in by the 13th, my placement forms for the middle school also still need to be done among many other things.  While I am willing to give up my evenings for the next two weeks to get all this done, there are those pesky things that won't let me like an evening music concert my friends are all singing in, a couple of retirement parties for much loved colleagues, an author's celebration at a local bookstore that my friends will be reading at, and all the before and after school meetings, meetings, and more meetings that are cropping up almost every day!  It's just a crazy time of year!!  The only saving grace is that the weather has been cool, so my room is not 900 degrees this week!

I haven't even really begun to pack up my room yet, either.  It is a hot mess in there!  I'm hesitant to even pack yet because we keep hearing there is going to be a lot of movement in our building.  I don't think most people realize that we don't work for a school, but for a district and can be moved anywhere.  In my district, there are four elementary schools.  If the rumors of lots of movement this year are true, I don't feel too bad about not packing up anything in my room yet.  Packing to stay in your room is very different from packing to leave for another building! 

On a totally different note, I saw this on Pinterest and thought it was a fantastic idea.

It's from the blog MargeD Teaching Posters.  It is a great blog with lots of pictures and fantastic ideas like this one.  THIS LINK will take you to the page where she explains how to use an old CD binder to hold your die-cut letters.  I happen to have on lying around, so I might just try this.  However, I was also thinking that my MacGyver like storage solution might work just as well.  You could make a binder full of baggies with your letters in each bag.  I do think the CD binder would be better if you really wanted to sort your letters more, such as by upper and lower case or actual words/sayings that you use on certain bulletin boards.  Go visit Marge D's blog.  It has a bunch of great ideas!  I know I really liked this one!  And, on that note. . .

9 SCHOOL DAYS AND COUNTING! 

Who am I kidding? 

I'm teaching summer school  for five weeks this summer. 

Really just trading an old group of friends for a new group of friends for a few weeks! 

But, it's still fun to think. . .

9 SCHOOL DAYS AND COUNTING!