I'll let you in on a little secret - since I am in VA on EST (and it's a church day), my "flash freebie" will be available from 10am EST (or as close to it as possible) till probably about 2-3pm that day!
In addition, I'm throwing a 25% sale off my entire store Sunday and Monday! Be sure to check it out!
On another note....
So, I've been in my classroom a couple times, in between meetings and such, and have been working hard. I envy the pictures I see of other classrooms where they have bulletin boards started and things hung on the wall. Nope, not me. No *sigh* every year I go in during the summer to ORGANIZE. (I'll get to the hanging and such later on).
I've come to the realization that by the end of the school year, I am dog tired! I cannot for the life of me even attempt to organize at that time of the year, other than to hope my counter holds all my stuff that doesn't fit in the cubbies and cabinets!
I don't know why every year I have to organize - again. Well, yes, I add more things during the year and over the summer, but that can't be the only reason. Anyhow, today I found myself working on my math/science cabinet and math manipulatives. Somehow, by changing containers and regrouping things, I actually had some extra space! Wow - it makes me wonder if I have something hiding somewhere that's supposed to be in that space. Why can't this ever happen at my house????
I also had to come to terms with a few things. For example, years ago, my mom gave me her collection of buttons she had inherited from a neighbor. I decided to use these as counters. Well, I have to admit - other than 1 student in the past couple years, no one has used these. We've moved on to hundreds chart, number lines, etc. I have other items that I can use for 1-to-1 correspondence.
So, thankfully, that's when a brainstorm hit. I didn't want to get rid of the buttons and they don't take up a TON of space. Why not use them for identifying attributes? One of the concepts my students always have difficulty with is identifying faces, vertices, edges, etc during the Geometry unit. Why not give them extra practice identifying attributes with the thousands of buttons that I already have? Throw them into a BUILD center for practice the first month of school, and most likely, beyond that?
So, tonight, feeling all "gung ho," I created this:
I have it at my TPT store (there's something wrong with Teacher's Notebook tonight, but it's on my list to add it there, too) for $1.00 (teachers will have to provide their own buttons!).
But for you, dear reader, since you've made it this far, if you comment with your email by Sunday evening, I'll send it to you for FREE! My only request is that if you like what you see, please consider following me at my store! I am soooo close to 100 followers and would love to be able to throw a "celebration" of my own! :)
