Welcome to my stop on the hop! A bunch of my second grade superfriends and I are sharing some of our products, freebies, or ideas to help you over the last little hurdle before that sweet, sweet relief of summer! All day pj wearing, coffee drinking, trash tv watching summer. Well, at least that's usually my reality. Although I do plan to fit in some working out and definitely cooking some healthier food.  But I digress, back to the hop.

If it's products you need. I'm your girl. I'm going to use this for the last week of school. We have a three and a half day week but there are some special events and things going on plus a lot of the room will be packed up and extra supplies sent home by then. So, this pack will be my saving grace. Click on the pick to see more.

Next is Compound Beach Bingo. It's perfect for the last few days or even your end of the year party. And it's free and It can be found by clicking on the picture below.

Every year I have my current class make bookmarks for the next year's class. I always ask them to either welcome the new students or tell them something they might need to know about me or the class to have a great year.  I just cut a piece of card stock into strips, let the kids write on and color each side, and then sometime over the summer (or the night before the first day of school) I laminate them.

I'm mad that I can't find any better pictures because usually they are pretty hysterical! But the ones below have got the biggies covered: Welcome. Beware of all the math. Work very hard on everything. You will be writing a lot. Make sure Mrs. Boehm gets her coffee <---most important.

Also, tie-dye circles were all the rage last year.

Ready for more great ideas? Just hop to the next stop!

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SunnyDays

It hardly seems real, but it's true! No I'm not pregnant. I just realized it might sound like I was leading up to that! #biteyourtongue. No, there are only six weeks of school left! How in the world did that happen?

I guess it flew by because I've been super ridiculously blessed with an amazing principal, fantastic class, awesome team, parents that spoil the bejeezus out of me. You know, time flies when you're having fun and all.  I don't say that to make anyone jealous, Lord knows I've had years when six weeks felt like an eternity left to go. So whether you're lovin' life this year or secretly scratching countdown tally marks on the wall behind your desk, it's almost over!

I've been trying to plan ahead a bit because these six short weeks are jam packed with Rigby testing, conferences, our big parent event, report cards, celebrations, etc, etc, etc, you know the drill. So I've spruced up a few things and found a couple of freebies you might be able to use as we wind down.

First is the summer edition of Ready, Set, Print! I loved making this one - must be all the flip-flops and seashells. These are great for the last few days of school when you have eleventy-billion things to do while maintaining that rigorous academic focus right up until that last bell! {can you tell I've heard that speech a few times?} And you can prove it because, as always, Common Core standards for grades 1-3 are on each page. There are a lot more pages in the pack, but here's a sampling, you can see more in the preview HERE.

I've also finished up the June Writing Journal to go along with the task cards. This entire writing bundle for February to June has been updated to include the journals, by the way. This one for Back to School to January will be too, really really soon!

If you're not in school for too long in June, consider sending home this journal for your kids to use over the summer. I know some schools actually require work sent home over the summer, so this might fit the bill for you there too.

This next one is a long-standing favorite of mine. It's a literature companion unit for Last Day Blues. You can check out the book here if you don't know it. If you read First Day Jitters to start the year, you've GOT to close out with this gem. There's lots of fun stuff in this unit which will keep you rolling for a few days at least. You can find the unit HERE on tpt. Don't miss the freebie from the unit HERE.

And speaking of freebies, I hope you'll enjoy this one. My kids went bonkers over this last year and I'm excited to bust it out again soon. It would also be fun for a class party with a beach theme, or maybe even camp if you're working over the summer. You can snag it HERE.

And then there's my monthly freebie Bump Game, in both addition, multiplication and a blank board for you to do with as you please!

I've got some more summer stuff too, but I feel like I'm already on overload. But that's par for the course lately!

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Welp, it's here. Summer! I'm not sure it's really settled in yet. I still feel like I'm firmly in teacher mode. What in the world is wrong with me? I am enjoying drinking my morning coffee from a real mug though. That's a real plus. I'm particular about my mugs. Currently I'm in love with my Bodum mugs from Crate & Barrel, they're super light and really keep the coffee hot longer than a regular mug. I'm also currently sporting nasty dragon lady fingernails because I'm long overdue for a fill and half of them are broken or chipped from packing my entire room and balancing it on a 20 inch countertop. Look familiar? 

It was actually a little easier this year because I did a major clean-out and purge in the middle of the year. So anyway, before all this packing up, we had an eventful few days leading up to the end of a great year. I'll do it in pictures. I love seeing into other people's rooms, I'm nosey like that. I have a feeling you're a lot like me. So, let's start with the party. Our last day of school was Thursday, but we have a ginormous school so we all have our parties on different days. Ours was Monday. I like getting it over with and out of the way early. This year I decided to have it outside. We back up to a big, beautiful park and we normally only get to go there for 15 minutes every 3 days, so my kids were super excited to get out there for an hour and a half. It rained for about 5 days straight before the party, but my prayers were answered and on Monday morning the sun was shining. Yahoo!

We just set up some games all along the sidewalk and they played with whatever they darn well felt like playing with! No schedule or rotating or direction. And they loved it! The boys pretty much played kickball the entire time and the girls rotated around all the other games we had out for them. These kids are very active, so I knew that the outdoor party was the way to go for them. We do so many crafty things as part of our normal routine, so I wanted to just be able to let them play and go wild. And they did! And it was awesome. And I probably sweat (sweatted? swat?) enough to fill a gallon bucket. But it was worth it not to have all that craziness in my room because the kids had a blast.

Ok, so the first picture in this block above almost made me cry. I have these two cute little girls who would always belt out the Star Spangled Banner on the announcements into glue-stick microphones with this stance that they thought was very respectful, almost like they're waiting to start a race with one foot out in front of the other. Well, when they started on the last day of school, all of a sudden, the rest of the class spontaneously joined them! I grabbed my phone as soon as I saw it starting to snap a pic and I got the perfect shot! Check out the look on the face of  the little one in green as she realized what was happening. Precious! Then next pic is the gift I gave my team. They seemed to really like them, even though I didn't cute it up with a printed tag or anything. And of course, no year is complete without shaving cream day! Yes, that's a pig. And it's pooping. 

I've never done end of the year awards before, but I did this year. I looked and looked at different awards but couldn't really find ones that I felt fit my special little group of nuggets. Valerie from Georgia Grown Kinders even made a special award for the little girl who sang the National Anthem every morning.  In the end I went with the Candy Awards from my buddy Reagan at Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits. You can see from their faces - they freakin loved them!

Then we had our "box lunch". Just lunch in the room with boxes as tables, which for some reason is super exciting for them. And then we snuggled up and watched a bit of a movie together. We didn't have a ton of time since it was a half day and we still had more excitement to come!

During the last few minutes of the year on Thursday, we rolled out the red carpet for our principal who is moving to another school. She walked through the entire school and all the kids (all 1200 of them!) were lined up in the hallways to say good bye. I had the pleasure of having her son in my class, so it was definitely a little emotional to see him see his mom being treated like a rock star. Two of my girls had some extra large hands to wave good bye with. There's actually another fun tradition at my school that I didn't capture in a picture, called the Clap-Out. All of the kids in the main building line up in the halls and clap for the 5th graders as they leave our school for the last time. I saw a bunch of my former students at dismissal and was able to give them a hug as they left. Many, many tears. From them. Ok, and me too. I can't help it. I'm a mush-ball. (no picture of me crying. You're welcome)

Then after all that emotional craziness, the kids went home and we collected ourselves and finished packing up the room. On Friday we go in and file the cums, finish any loose ends and have our rooms checked and then we head to a luncheon. This one was fantastic! It was at a local Italian restaurant. Perfect venue, amazing food, lots of fun.

It's hard to believe that next year will be my 20th year in the classroom. I think there should be some type of special award for that. You know, something to keep my mind off how old I actually am to be able to say I've been teaching for 20 years. I kid. Kind of. But not really.

See more great ideas at this fun linky!

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SunnyDays

Every year I create an end of the year slideshow to show at our final Tasty Tuesday (which I'll be blogging about soon, promise!) 

Let's start at the start. I'm a Mac girl, so making the slideshow is seriously easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy-super-breezy! I import my pictures into iPhoto and add them all to one folder. Then when you click on that folder, you'll see this - look at the bottom of the window. Just click that slideshow button and DONE! No joke. It's that easy. If you're a PC person, it's ok. We can still be friends and all, but you will have to skip way down to the bottom of this post to see the Dropbox part. Unless of course you want to see the awesomeness that is Mac, then just keep reading ;)

That button will play a great little slideshow in which you can choose the transitions and even choose music from preloaded tracks or your itunes library. 

Now if you want to go one step further,  click on that "create" button over on the right and choose "slideshow"

Then you can choose the theme for your slideshow. The great thing is that the themes will randomly insert your pictures into cute frames or collages wherever they fit best!

Then choose your music...

And finally, under settings, you can choose things like having the slideshow repeat after it's finished, the length of time to play each slide or timing it so that the pictures end when the music does. It really does a remarkable job of making a professional looking slideshow SUPER easy.

Now...the big question. The parents always love it and they always want a copy. The usual route is to burn a dvd for cd for each child. This of course, requires time and a major expense. This year I wised up a little. When you are done making your slideshow with the steps above, you'll see the "export" button at the bottom of the screen. When you click that, the menu below will pop up. I chose medium and export. It just takes a couple of minutes, and then your slideshow will be on your desktop in a sharable format.

Here comes the genius part  (that I have to credit my hubby with). You'll need a Dropbox account. It's free and you can sign up for an account here. It's a great way to store and send files online. Once you're in Dropbox, drag the video to your Public Folder <--- that's the important part. Don't just put it in  your general Dropbox files, it has to be the Public Folder. (Edited: Accounts started after October 2012 no longer have a public folder, but you can share a link from any folder. Much easier actually!)  Then after that, control-click on the video in the public folder and you'll see the option to copy the public link. Do that.

Then it will give you a link that you can email out to your parents! Then they can see the video on their computer and even download it themselves. See, told ya it was easy!

I sent it to all 20 of my families and they've all been able to see it, otherwise I would be a little hesitant to share this with you. We've got about 2 weeks to go here, so things are really starting get hectic. Being able to free up all that time and energy (and money) I usually spend making DVD's has been a lifesaver. Hope it helps you a little too!

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SunnyDays

We're down to about 13 days left and they're jam packed! On Tuesday we'll be welcoming the parents into our rooms for our final Tasty Tuesday so that's been consuming every single second of my time and every ounce of my energy. I'll be taking tons of pictures and blogging about the whole shebang next week. It's so much work to get ready for, but it's a great day for the kids and their parents - and me. All I have left to do is some last minute shopping and a little praying that the sub doesn't let the kids destroy the room on Monday while I'm out for a training.

In other news,  I have this great gift idea to share with you. I actually got this from my class two years ago but never got around to blogging about it. My room mom was seriously the stuff of dreams. The PTA at our school always collects money from each student for a gift for the teachers. Most often the room mom gives us a gift card with the collection, which is all kinds of awesome. I'm usually set for Starbucks through June and July...

Well, that year my room mom put together this little book with several gift cards to all of my favorite places. So cute, right?

The last page had an envelope with the leftover cash in it. I liked this idea so much that I've used it for gifts for family members myself. For my father-in-law we made one that had movie gift cards, his favorite restaurant, Home Depot, and a gas card. I love giving (and receiving) gift cards, but sometimes it feels so impersonal. This is a great way to make a practical gift very personal.


I think I have gift ideas on the brain because May is seriously our second Christmas. Our May family birthdays incude both of my sisters, my brother-in-law, father-in-law, childhood bestie, and my niece. Throw Mother's Day in there and it's non-stop shopping and family gatherings this month. In May, which just happens to be the busiest work month EVER (besides August, of course...) but it's all good. Food and fun with family and friends is what it's all about, right?

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SunnyDays

There are 17 school days left here in my neck of the woods and my to-do list is getting longer by the second! We have our end of the year testing next week and our big grade level parent event to get ready for, so it's definitely still full steam ahead.

I don't know about you, but my kids love bingo games. So I made this one for them so we could have a little fun after testing. It originally started just as a summer bingo, but then I realized how many summer words were compounds and then things just snowballed from there and it became Compound Beach Bingo.

I made it with a 4x4 grid instead of the traditional 5x5 to save a little time when they make the board and also so that the games go a little faster. I like to have my kids choose the words for their board and illustrate one in each box and write the word. You can have them do either or both.

I also made the cards with two different ways to play. You can have the kids call out the actual word or you can use the cards that give a little clue to the word. The second choice obviously bumps it up a bit. Either way, keep an uncut copy of the word cards so a helper can put little markers on the words already called. Click here to download from tpt.

And just in case you haven't seen this in my newsletter or on Facebook, I've opened my own little shop right here on my blog. You can get to it by clicking way up at the top (under the flip flops) where it says Shop Right Here. Right now it's just got some of my best sellers listed, but I'll be adding to it for sure. As a little token of my appreciation and a celebration of my grand opening, here's a coupon that you can use through Monday 5/13.

{It's only valid here at my blog shop, not tpt <---which I totally love and have no plans of leaving anytime soon...}

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SunnyDays

Welcome blog hoppers! How fun is this little trip to all your Florida friends?  I hope you were able to make a new friend or two.  I've got some links for the rest of the hop at the end of this post just in case you  happened to hop in here. I'm stop #11. We're each offering a freebie and a glimpse at a paid product you might like. My freebie is from my favorite book for the end of the year, Last Day Blues. It's the companion book to First Day Jitters, another one of my faves. Click here to download from tpt.

And to keep the theme going, my paid product is my complete unit for Last Day Blues. I made this one about 2 years ago and when I went to get it ready for myself this year, I realized it needed a major upgrade, which I got to work on immediately!  If you already own it, just go to "your purchases" on tpt and you can download the new version. If not, feel free to check it out by clicking here.

And just for fun, here are some of my favorite books for the end of the year. 

Next hop stop is my adorable friend and real-life co-worker Caitlin at Kindergarten Smiles!

 I'm stop #11, so if you want to hop backwards through the rest,  click on Lisa's super cute blog button. She's stop #10.  If your OCD is freaked out by that, you can find the actual beginning of the hop right here at Mrs. Russell's Room. It's ok. I know how it is...

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SunnyDays

Part of the end of the year ritual always includes cleaning things that you somehow neglected for way too long. For me, that included my class laptops. These laptops are in my library corner and hold two castoff laptops that work  *just enough*  if you cross your fingers on a good day for the kids to access AR. That being said, they are used constantly throughout the day and I have the kids trained to close them at dismissal and wind up the headphones. So, what I'm trying to say here is that there really is a good reason why I didn't really notice this <gag> grossness that had accumulated on them!

Really, can that BE any more disgusting? When I got the notice to turn them in for the summer, I knew there was no way I was going to return them in this condition. Never fear, with the most minimal effort about ten minutes later they looked brand spanking new!

Now, I'm going to share my cleaning secret but I can't take any liability if you try it with different results or damage to your 'puters. Mine are so janky that I was willing to risk it. And no harm befell my little laptops. So, have you guessed what I used? That's right! The Magic Eraser my friends!

That thing really is magic. Like scary magic. I don't know what is in them or how they're made, but I'm sure it's some sort of dark secret that mere mortals are not meant to know. I used a brand new eraser and squeezed it so that it was just about dry and then swiped it over the grime. I rinsed it a few times between the two laptops and man did they look sparkly clean when I was done!

I swiped a few other neglected nooks and crannies before it started to disappear in my hands (more magic?) but I started to feel like I was in a commercial dancing around my room overly excited to be cleaning some nasty crevices. I finally came to my senses and put a stop to that nonsense. I  capital-H HATE cleaning, but some of that crazy magic must have taken over for a few minutes. It was scary, but I escaped the spell unharmed before I went too wild with myself. Nice try, Mr. Clean. Nice try.

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SunnyDays

Well I have already transitioned into the phase of summer when I forget what day of the week it is! Love it! I am also loving my coffee in a real mug that is actually still hot when I drink it! Ahhh...it's the little things...

What, you guys don't make pretty pictures in your morning latte??

Thursday was our last day with the kids and it was just a half day. Of course I didn't really start packing up until Wednesday after school - but I actually like doing it last minute. I don't like to break down the room too much while I still have to have the kids function in that room for a few days. But on Wednesday I did indeed bust a move so that when the kids came in on Thursday morning, they were a little freaked out!

The only thing left for them to help with was to empty and clean their desks. After we all accomplished that, we pushed the desks out of the way and had some fun playing Twister, Jenga and Boggle. It was actually a little hard for them to keep themselves occupied without the computers or the whiteboards that they love!

When it was time for lunch in the room, I realized that we had nowhere to sit! It was rainy and nasty and we were being invaded by mosquitos for the past week or so, so outside was not an option. As I looked around, I noticed that I had a few cardboard boxes left from packing that I didn't use. Inspiration struck and we turned those boxes upside down and they became our lunch tables!

It was actually pretty fun! We had a little impromptu picnic lunch and watched a movie together during our last little bit of time as a second grade class. One giant group hug later and off they went - down the halls and out the doors into what I hope is a fun and carefree summer for them all!

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SunnyDays