August Currently and Five for Friday and a Freebie!

It's officially August. I have conflicted feelings about August, with my birthday yesterday, moving to our new apartment on Monday, and my Dad visiting on Wednesday I'm excited. Then there's school starting, it's my first official year so I'm both excited and nervous. I have so much to do between packing and back to school preparations. August also means the return of Farley's Currently and Five for Friday!

listening: Sabrina has been my guilty pleasure this summer. :-)

loving: My hubby gave me the most beautiful bracelet from Catholic Bling for my birthday yesterday!

thinking: This one is pretty self-explanatory with school starting before I know it. My school to-do list is a mile long. Plus, I have to finishing packing and cleaning our apartment for our move on Monday.

wanting: We're super excited about our new apartment! I just wish we could skip all the grunt work that needs to happen in order to move in.

needing: I seriously need to buy shoes! I only have one new pair to start off the school year. Eek! 

B2s must haves: 

1. Have you tried out the new Pilot Frixion Pens? They are amazing! They come in multiple colors, and they are erasable! 

2. Last year I had the Erin Condren planner and loved it. This year I decided to upgrade to the teaching planner and I'm not regreting it. I'm most excited for the pages and pages of student checklists to help keep me on top of all my students paperwork. 

3. This year I'm finding the majority of my back to school purchases to be organizing solutions. I find organizing to be a huge challenge and anything I can find to help is worth it.

1. Printables!

This week I opened up my Teachers Pay Teachers store! My first freebie is up, click on the link to get it. I've had so much fun playing around with Photoshop this week. I have some more printables in the work, I'll post on here when I've uploaded them to my store. I would love it if you'd leave a comment if you like my How We Go Home Clip chart. 

I can't wait to get this printed out and up in my classroom!

2. Shopping

I scored some really good deals at the LOFT this week during a shopping trip with one of my teaching buddies! 

 3. Birthday

I celebrated my birthday yesterday with my hubby. We ate so much tasty food and found a great Vietnamese restaurant.

4. Books

I discovered Half-Price Books yesterday. I need to find the time to go back to look for more books for my classroom.

5. Classroom Supplies!

Pre-K Technology

1. I took a screenshot of a PowerPoint I created to make it easy to launch YouTube videos during circle time. Next week, we will be learning about shapes and I found some great videos from Have Fun Teaching! I introduced the circle song earlier this week, and my kids loved it! One of my favorite tools for watching videos in class is a site called ViewPure. It creates an ad free link to YouTube videos, no more worrying about which ad will turn up when your on YouTube in class. I also use a PowerPoint to aid in music selection at the end of the day. It helps my students to make choices, and wait for their turn to make a choice.



2. I downloaded Monkey Preschool Lunchbox on my Nexus 7 for school, and it really motivated my students to keep learning. It covers colors, letters, counting, differences, and matching. It also continually plays, so the kids can keep playing without getting frustrated.

3. Hulu...not for the classroom but for this teacher planning her next week and watching old Sabrina: The Teenage Witch episodes! Greatest discovery, I used to love watching it every week.

4. Teachers Pay Teachers. It's a no-brainer that it's an amazing resource, but I finally broke down and bought some amazing products with the Sunday Super sale. Picked up an incredible cute Owl newsletter for my classroom from MsFultzsCorner, some Chevron letters and numbers and an ice cream graphic (I'm super excited to make a file folder game from the Icecream Pile Up clipart!) from Graphics From the Pond, and a great social story on sharing from Thespecialedteacher.

Have a great week!

Stacy