Rampin' It Up In 3rd!: Five for Friday

Today I'm linking up with Kacey for Five for Friday for my first time and I'm super excited! It's going to be hard to share only 5 things, but I'll try! ;)

1. MY FROG CHAIR!!!!
I am obsessed with frogs!! I've been in love with them since watching Kermit on Muppet Babies. My classroom is frog themed and I have frogs every where! My calendar is frog themed, my birthday chart, my number line, I have even have a tape dispenser that looks like a frog!! Ok back to the chair. A few years ago while I was blog hopping, I happened upon a picture of a frog themed classroom and that's when I saw the chair! I knew I had to have it. So after a long, exhaustive search on Amazon, it was no where to be found :(. Heartbroken, I gave up the idea of the chair and focused on finding other kind of seating that my kiddos would enjoy. Then, in the beginning of July, one of my teacher besties, Grace, from First Grade's A Hoot, found the chair!!!!! She was blog hopping and found a link for it!!! We then realized we had been searching for the wrong thing. Instead of an inflatable chair, we should have been searching for an inflatable ball pit!!! Needless to say, I was ECSTATIC when Grace sent me the link. I bought it right then and there and couldn't wait to put it up.

But I had to :( The floors in my school were being waxed so I had no where to put it. One month later, it was time!!!

Once the chair was finished I couldn't contain my excitement! I was so happy!! Of course I need to take the first week of school to teach my kiddos how to be respectful of the chair, if I want this awesome chair to last! The cute pillows are from Target, my second favorite store, Amazon being my first :)

2. Working on My Classroom
I have been working on my classroom for the past 2 weeks! First, Grace and I decided to make our libraries unified and purchased lots and lots of bins from Really Good Stuff. So I spent the past two week sorting and organizing all of my books. I'm not quite finished, I need to put labels on the bins, but here's a peek at what my library looks like:

I plan on letting the kids take the ottomans and move them around the room during reading time.
On top of changing the library, I also decided to change the color scheme in my room. I am in love with all of the awesome files Ladybug's Teacher FIles creates so in order to coordinate with my purchases, it just made since to change the color scheme! I played around with a lime, turquoise, black theme, but decided to stick with just lime and black since I already had a lot of colors in the library. Here's what the front of the room looks like please excuse the mess!): The borders are all the same, Frog-tastic Frolic by Trend.

3. Working on my schedule
This is the most dreaded part of the school year for me. It's so hard to get schedule everything I want to do! And having to coordinate with my partner teacher makes it even harder! This year I plan on doing readers' workshop (like I said in my earlier post) but have also decided to incorporate the Daily 5. I'm not quite sure how it will work out, but I am positive that it will be fine! (Cross your fingers! Haha!) Anywho, here is a look at my schedule, which is probably going to change because I haven't touched based with my partner teacher yet.

4. My crazy research for reading
At the beginning of the summer I decided I wasn't happy with how I planned my reading block for that year and wanted a change for the coming year. So I discussed my thoughts with Grace and we decided we were both going to read up on reading workshop. We began with Growing Readers. I really connected with a lot that was in the book and began researching units of study for third grade. I found some and was really excited to begin planning. I planned out all of September and then was ready to start! I discussed with Grace my plans and playing devil's advocate, she helped me to see that during my schedule when I pulled a guided reading group, they would miss independent reading time and what is the most important thing to being a good reader? Practice! So I went back to the drawing board. Grace suggested that I read the Daily 5 and to see how I could fit it in. I was resistant at first. I wanted to do readers' workshop! But after reading I realized that I could both (hopefully!) So I will be spending this last week of summer vacation planning and interweaving these two "programs".

5. Monster!
Monster is my 7 year old pomeranian.

He's such a cutie! And he is so sweet! He loves to cuddle and give kisses. He also LOVES green beans and will follow you around until you give him some!

A few years ago I visited the allergist and guess what! I am allergic to dogs! Of course! So all of Monster's fluffy fur has to be shaved off every few months or so, so that I can have some relief. Now instead of being a fluff ball, he's a fuzz ball!