Show Us Those Piles... Linking Up to Share the Truth!

Today I am linking up with Christina Bainbridge for a linky party to confess the obvious: Teachers tend to create piles of belongings wherever they are!

I have to admit I'm a little starstruck. Christina was one of the first bloggers I ever followed (when she had bunting in her classroom, but not in her blog title!). Even though she teaches younger kids than I do, she has wonderful ideas for classroom organization and design and I always get great ideas when I visit her blog.

Everything Christina does is cute! Look at that button. So CUTE!

So here we go...

I have always been a... "collector" of all things school-related. I have hundreds (maybe even thousands!) of books and I cannot resist an office supply store. (I even visit them on vacation!) I always have ideas in my head for projects which seem to get started (and rarely finished) usually on my dining room table. I love creating and planning on my own time, at home, so let's just say I need to have a lot of things at home to get things done. How's that for an excuse?

This linky party invites us to show off the piles of "school stuff" that have accumulated during the summer. For me, this means that the piles have spread to other rooms!

Here is a pile ready to go to the garage. The blue box is full of things to shred, the pink box holds the leftover beads from a craft project, the spirals were a donation and the binding machine just looks dangerous! (But having one of my own means that I can finish a project at midnight in my PJs!)

There are always boxes of books at my house. Increasingly, these books have Common Core in the title... Currently these are in front of the door to the patio!

At the moment, there is a pile of items sitting next to the dining room table. I have to sort through the boxes of math manipulatives. It's amazing the things I find in there: erasers, old assignments, an occasional love note... It's always an adventure! I'm not sure what is in the other box... aside from the laminator and the stuffed pig (She's our mascot for a math game... and is currently in need of some sort of cleaning!)

Sometimes I try to "sneak" piles into corners. As if anyone sitting in (or near!) the rocking chair isn't going to see the pile of boxes from my literacy centers. These need to be readied for back-to-school. I'm just not mentally ready to tackle that challenge yet!

Doesn't everyone have nine plastic milk crates taking up half of the space in their guest room? These house the math tools and other center materials in my classroom. I'm going to try to sneak them into school tomorrow. (Sshhhh. Don't tell.)

An hour before this photo, they were found here...

Yep! That's the bathtub! My room has the playground on one side and a dirt field on the other side. Needless to say, everything needs to be dusted, vacuumed and or washed... often!

So that's how things look in my house. Halfway through summer I am always dying to take a few car loads to school just to free up some space. However, once I arrive in my classroom, I often find something else to bring back home!

So, what about you? Are things piling up in your house? Do you have a laminator, a binding machine or a paper cutter somewhere other than your classroom? Have you hit the back-to-school sales and started piling up plastic bags in a corner?

THAT'S OKAY! You are not alone! And no one is going to call the Hoarders Hotline or stage an intervention. (That's another great thing about the blogging community: We don't judge--We share!)

Come on! Join up! Click HERE or on that sweet button above and head over to Christina's blog. Then grab your phone or a camera and share some photos. You'll be in good company--and you might make a new friend while you're there.

Sending you wishes for happy sorting, creating and organizing...

Five for Friday (UN-linked)... and a Bear or Two...

Doodle Bugs Teaching is on hiatus... but my Five for Friday post (from last week) was already finished when I discovered that bit of information. So, I am posting this unlinked and alone... but with sweet thoughts toward Doodle Bugs just the same.

When I left off on my travel saga, we had left San Francisco to begin our camping adventure. Here's our sweet little tent...

 

We were camping in the southern Sierras, and the weather was cool and lovely. We even met a nice ranger who directed us to examine this...

And then we took a careful look at this...

Which would have all been nice precautionary information had the ranger not continued with a detailed description of the bear that had been in the campsite the previous evening, snuffling through the area and trying to remove the doors from cars in search of a late night snack.

Which meant I went to sleep with some "tools" right next to my sleeping bag...

Fortunately, the noise-makers remained unused, and we moved on to our next camping adventure... although I sort of felt like I was living a cause-and-effect essay!

Our next stop was a campground next to the Kern River. It was warmer, but not too hot. I was feeling more-than-proud when I put up the tent all by myself., (Of course, then I wanted to drive back to civilization and get ice cream!)

It was just beautiful sitting next to the river... {sigh}

Isn't that just lovely?! Of course, it wasn't long before the campground host came by to inform us that a bear had been spotted roaming the area...

Needless to say, I was already prepared! And, fortunately, we heard nothing but the peaceful sounds of the river and woke up to a gorgeous (bear-free) day!

 I brought some professional books (carefully enclosed in plastic bags, sandwiched between cardboard to keep the corners from getting bent... OCD anyone?) and I loved reading them in the quiet sunshine. It was heavenly!

And here's a little secret: I remembered that I had downloaded a movie on my iPad. And, just because I could, I watched it in the tent! FUN! (Does this contraband technology disqualify my adventure as "camping"?!)

I finished a novel too! If you haven't read The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, it's a great book. This is the sequel, The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag, and it wasn't quite as good, but entertaining nonetheless. If you like mysteries, you'll love the adventures of Flavia de Luce, an eleven year old with a love of chemistry, disdain for her sisters, and an uncanny ability to put together details in order to determine the culprit in a murder in her little village in the English countryside.

The day after we got home I had to scurry back to school to finish cleaning my classroom. I know, I know, many of you are getting ready to go BACK to school, but I am always behind, so my classroom had remained semi-disastrous. (Don't I have the most forgiving principal and custodial staff on the planet? After all these years, I don't think they were even surprised to find I was the last one to check out...)

The first thing I saw when I walked into my room was one of the programs from our sixth grade promotion. I am still missing my last group of kids... I generally love September, but June often tears at my heart. And the chance for a Do-Over is always a good/bad thing about teaching!

And then it was time to start getting things in order. As I cleaned my classroom, I filled up my car with things to sort, clean and organize.

 

I love to go back to school with everything already washed and scrubbed and clean-smelling. I clean out my cupboards and drawers in advance so that I can return to my classroom and focus on the new year. I haven't tackled my library yet. That is always the hardest task for me to accomplish. And I have a lot of books to sort and label.

But, for now, I am still in summer mode... reading, planning and thinking--and enjoying it all.

I am sending you happy wishes for at least a little more summertime before you have to return to the classroom...

Happy Fourth... Along with a Blog Hop to Follow...

I feel like I have been waiting forever to use this cute star paper! It's from Teacher Wife's "Pretty Papers" set (HERE on TpT). Isn't it festive?!

Even though it is summer vacation for me, I thought that today I should behave like it is a holiday... A grill-your-dinner, sit-in-the-sun, watch-a-movie "vacation" day. Even though all the other days are "vacation days," I still feel compelled to get things done. Today I am trying a little harder to relax...

I have been doing some professional reading during the past few weeks. I am almost finished with Productive Group Work by Frey, Fisher and Everlove. Reading this book has reinforced that I have a HUGE role in making cooperative group work successful. There are certain things I need to say and do to make the learning more efficient and I need to be strategic to be sure that everyone is making academic progress. Nothing about it sounded easy--but it all sounded true!

In my last post, I commented about following me on Bloglovin. I finally "borrowed" a button designed by sweet Melissa at Common Core and So Much More. I hope that you will click on the button at the top (right) of my blog to follow me with Bloglovin.

Here is some awesomeness for you: Melissa is willing to share the button with you too--she even has a tutorial on how to install it... right HERE!

And if you'd like to link up with some other bloggers on Bloglovin, Sidney at Teaching is Gift is having a Back to School Blog Hop and she is giving away some adorable posters with a chalkboard theme. She's hosting the hop along with A Teacher Without a Class who is holding a giveaway for a laminator that looks mighty wonderful! Enter through rafflecopter on her site--What a great back-to-school present to yourself!


So click on the graphic above to read more about the Blog Hop. You can even have the link up on your site if you choose! And when you get there, click on the bloggy-buttons at the bottom of the post to find some new connections. Isn't summer the BEST time to make new friends?

If you are not following my blog, I hope you will add me to your list. And if you are, thank you so much for sticking with me through the changes from Google Reader to Bloglovin--or whatever other "reader" you choose. I am honored to be a part of the Blogging Community and truly value the fact that people stop by my blog to visit and/or comment! (I still get teary-eyed when new comments pop up. Truly!)

So, Happy Fourth, Happy Thursday, Happy Summer. Wherever you are today, I hope that you are enJOYing what you are doing...