Totally Terrific in Texas: July 2016

I am loving every moment of my summer and I'm definitely not looking at a calendar. I love getting up late, going to bed late, and everything in between. My little guy starts first grade in August and I love the time we've spent together reading books, playing games, exploring, and working on art projects. Our family made a point of visiting educational places like the DoSeum this summer that offer fantastic hands-on educational experiences for children. I am super thrilled at the growth I see daily in my little one's reading and writing. As teachers, we know and understand the importance of working with our children over the summer. We also know that there will be a learning loss for many of our students that return after the summer break.

I was beyond thrilled when a Houston business reached out to me about this very topic. Precision Garage Door of Houston shared this fantastic infographic with me that is designed to help families prevent this loss of learning over the summer months.

Please check it out below:

The graphic is filled with wonderful tips for parents. It's scary when you read that 2.5 months of math skills can be lost over the summer, but as teachers we know that this true more often than we'd like to see. We know the same can be said for reading.

As a teacher mommy, I know how important it is to set aside time each day to dedicate to reading books together with your children. I absolutely love this special mommy/son time with my own sweetie. It's not too late, there is still summer left! Grab a book and just keep reading, just keep reading! Clearly I've seen Finding Dory a few times this summer!

I am super excited that businesses like Precision Garage Door of Houston are standing up to support educators. They deserve a large round of applause!

Every summer I purchase a planner for the upcoming school year. Okay, it's not actually a planner. It's more of a calendar. This calendar is one of the many things I carry home nightly in my teacher bag. My teacher friends know that bag....the one that weighs a ton and sometimes doesn't even get opened once it arrives home. In addition to the lovely calendar I just described, I always have a binder filled with basically all my important teacher forms...attendance, grades, RTI info., student info., planning pgs, etc. In an age of everything going digital, I still manage to keep hard copies of everything. Maybe it's my own distrust of those clouds that are supposed to keep all of our important documentation safe in digital land, or it could be the fact that anytime I desperately need a form, the internet just happens to be down!

This summer, I decided that it was time to get organized and eliminate some of the unnecessary things I carry in that teacher bag. I didn't want to carry both a binder and separate calendar any longer. This only added more bulk to my already heavy bag. I did consider purchasing one of those beautiful planners that are perfectly bound together with everything included. I tried one many years ago when I first started teaching. It was gorgeous, but I ended up not using the lesson plan part because our campus is required to have ours digital. That left a large portion of my planner unused. I also found that I really needed the ability to add and remove pages to meet my own classroom needs. Instead of purchasing a planner, I decided to go the route of a printable binder. I started by searching my computer for all the important planning forms I've created over the years. In my search, I found quite the assortment of forms with different borders, clip art, fonts, etc. I decided to stream line all the most important pages and that ~~little~~ giant project turned into a digital teacher planner.

I wanted to share the planner with all of my teacher friends. It has a simple design with just a splash of color. Several of the pages are editable. You can check out the pics below to see if it's something you could use in your own classroom. I'm going to include LOTS of pictures to give you a good sense of what is included.