What am I Pinning?

 Have I told you how much I love Pinterest? Well I should have been singing its praises long before now. So I was on vacation in Minnesota and Chicago but during the ride (we took a road trip from Virginia) all I did was pin things left and right. Of course when I got home, I could get a hold of my laptop to really pin things. I haven't figured out how to create a pin on my ipad, I only can repin from someone else. It's a good thing that others were still pinning while I was on "vacation". I now have 22 BOARDS which makes it difficult to quickly pin anything but I had to "organize" them or I was going to be one of those pinners who just pinned and didn't use. You know there is a linky party going on about Pinterest pins called Monday Made it With 4th Grade Frolics.
 Another reason why I LOVE Pinterest is because of all the new bloggers I can find by following their ideas back to their posts and reading about them. Yesterday I found and added some new bloggers onto my ever-growing list of blogs I follow.

  Please venture out and check out Aloha Kindergarten. She made me feel bad about my 20 kids I complain about LOVE during the year. Her class consists of 36 kindergartners and she was wondering if adding all those clips to her clip chart would be too much. I wouldn't know where to put 36 kinders in my classroom let alone find them each a place to hang their stuff. I ventured to Aloha Kindergarten for her ideas on Calendar Math which had me exploring and I stumbled upon her Poetry Journals which also had me pinning them down.

 She has so many freebies that she has a tab called FREEBIES at the top of her cute blog. And make sure to check out her SMARTBoard activities.

 Please check out Kindergarten Nerd Herd who I stumbled upon. You should check out her Word Family kits post of how she refurbished old DVD cases and made them traveling centers.

Or check out her post on Behavior Races and blend this generation of students to old school games and characters. (They really don't know it's old, just that they've never played it yet.)

 And I don't know if you all know but I have been "mapping" out ways to get organized this year. I even cleaned and combined files (those given to me my first year) and stacked up piles of worksheets that I want to pass to someone else. So anyways the one thing that I do not have figured out is my Teacher Binder and Calendar. I am trying to figure out if I need to purchase a 2012-2013 weekly planner like I have been doing since college and never really use it through to the end of the year or try something new. So I have been searching the blogs and Pinterest too and I love checking out the different calendars and ideas. I still have found "the one" but I am hopeful.
  So my search lead me to Elementary Organization. Yup I typed that right... I am so excited to have found her blog. It was a pin from someone else on her calendar and of course I had to check it out. Her calendars have another purpose... curriculum.

 She wants to align her state and district standards and map out when they need to be taught for her team. They discuss any changes to the calendar as a team of course but it's mapped out and in a notebook for her team to use. And she has a lot of DIY projects for those who feel inclined to do that. Me not so much. I haven't even finished the crate seats I started like 2 weeks ago. 

Another blogger, Mrs. Ayala's Kinder Fun...

  Check her out as she offers some cute kindergarten freebies for anyone who is still struggling to get a "theme" going for your room, like me. I have my color scheme down maybe: blue, green, purple and black (all my favorite colors) but I also want to have frogs, butterflies, bumblebees, birds, dragonflies and ladybugs as my station groups. How to tie them together? Or do they even need to fit?
  I followed an idea from A Teeny Tiny Teacher, who is going "against the norm" as she says it and is not doing clip chart behavior. She asked that her readers not throw tomatoes at her for what she writes in her post. While reading her post I loved her wit and personality and how easy going she is about doing something other than clip charts or lights. Her love is Golden Tags!

Which got me thinking how could I incorporate the golden tags with my clip chart or was I setting myself up for failure as that would be too much to handle? But I do love her idea and it would work in areas that my clip chart failed this year. But she uses her Golden Tags for positive behavior and gives them out to students and on Friday students count them up in tally mark style and record them on the weekly sheet. Students are working toward earning which order they get to choose their Fun Friday centers in. Which got me thinking... Fun Friday? I only tried it for a short time but never kept up with it but it would make things so much easier. I may try to fit this into my schedule and my behavior plan. Is it too much?
And this post wouldn't be complete without telling you about a giveaway!

Venture over to The Moffatt Girls' blog and enter in her giveaway. She has an easy entry for today, just be a Facebook Fan and your entry is golden. Make sure to visit her often as she is having 7 days of giveaways!!

Go to Penniless Teacher for details on the Classroom Direct Fiskars scissors giveaway... we all could use some cute scissors!

And don't forget the Teacher's Notebook Back to School Bonanza to help raise $10,000 for educators. Go to their Bonanza page and tell them how any contribution to helping you get resources will help you. And venture back as on August 9th they will begin their sweepstakes for those contributions to be distributed.

Phew! What a post! Enjoy:)