Helpful Hints with Blog Hoppin'

Hello and happy Tuesday!
I was home yesterday with an ear infection and two sinus infections, also know as, my 3 kiddos!  All of them are now on antibiotics and since they are finally feeling better this mama is getting some sleep again!  Thank goodness. It seems that you leave the ability to pull all nighters behind in college!!  It has been a very long time since I was able to stay up all, or most, of the night and still be able to function! :)
So I missed out on Blog Hoppin's Monday linky and am jumping in on Tuesday.

I have been teaching for 13 years, all in 2nd grade and I like to think that every year I find a little way to make my life at school flow a little easier!  Since adding 3 kiddos in 2 &1/2 years I have had to really find ways to streamline my workload at school, because at the end of the day I am ready to be home with my babies!
My first hint is just a word of advice that I have had to learn the hard way!  You DON'T have to to do it all. Just do the best that you can and let go of what you can't get done. Prioritize the things that need to get done and don't worry about the things at the end of the list that are things you just want to get done.  Unless you want to be a ball of stress at all times you need to be able to go home and leave school at school! :) (as often as you can!!!  I know we all have to do some planning at home sometimes!)

Katie and I have posted about this before!  This is our Star of the Day.  Instead of a helper chart we have one Star every day.  They are in charge of helping with anything and everything!  After my first year of teaching and the nightmare of trying to remember to change a job chart I moved to this and never looked back.  Best decision I ever made!  The kiddos don't mind waiting for their turn and are so excited to be the helper for everything that day!

Don't be afraid to use things in unexpected ways!  I found these bookcovers in the clearance section at Target at the beginning of last year. These provided a solution to a problem I have every year!  I have had book boxes, reusable bags from Hyvee, etc and have never found a great solution to keeping books at kiddos desks!  These book covers make great book holders for the backs of student chairs!  I think I only paid something like 35 cents apiece! My kiddos and I loved them so much that I sent them home with them at the end of the year and bought new ones again this year!

Use fabric on bulletin boards!  My first year of teaching I put up paper and was not happy when I realized that changing a bulletin board generally meant that I had to replace the paper too.  I spent some money in buying the fabric but it was such a good investment!  Now my bulletin boards stay up year round and I can easily change what is on them without having to change the background.  It also still looks pretty doggone nice even if it takes me a day or so to put something back up!  You can easily change over a few boards at a time to avoid having a huge expense up front.  Also, make sure that you use JoAnn Fabric coupons!

Spur of the moment sometimes equals great time saving ideas!  I was tired of getting out mats for different math activities and one day realized that I could just have my kiddos draw them on their desks with dry erase marker.  They love to practice spelling on their desks this way so it made sense that this was a perfect fit for math too!  No more searching for the right math mat, just a quick draw and we are ready to go.


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