She shopped, she scored! Plus a FREEBIE for you!

Oh... my... goodness, blogging friends!  I cannot tell you how excited I am right now!  Here is why:

I have been wanting to make those crate seats for a long time now.  (You know what I am talking about, right?  Seems like every teacher has them, except me.)  Here is an example:

I asked my dad if he would help me make these (he is super handy) and he was willing to help.  However, he was nervous about what would happen if a student fell through and was injured on a "teacher-made" seat.  (Unlikely, but you cannot blame a daddy for worrying about the well-being of his little girl, hehe.)  So I became somewhat discouraged about making these cute creations.

Then... I saw another interesting picture on Pinterest that came from Pam's blog, My Second Home. 

Pam said she found these ADORABLE storage seats at Big Lots, so I have been meaning to stop by that store forever now.  Well... I was driving passed a Big Lots today and thought to myself, "Fat chance that I will actually find those storage seats, but the hubby is at work and I have some free time.  Eh, why not give it a shot?"  (If you are a Big Lots shopper, you know how AWESOME that store is, but you also know how random their shipments are.)  But wouldn't you know it, I found them!!!

Don't you just LOVE the colors and designs!?  They were $15 each, but like Pam mentioned on her blog, I would much rather spend $15 than spend the time and energy making these things.  (I wish I was creative like many of you awesome bloggers / teachers, but I just do not have it in me!)  I would have liked to get more than two, but this was all they had in the store today.  I will keep checking back.

I also scored some other things for my classroom.  I am switching to Third Grade next year, so I am all about this "Share Chair" idea that I see all the time on Pinterest (a special chair students sit in when they are sharing writing pieces with the class).  I found this bright and cheery beach chair at Big Lots that I will eventually decorate to become our "Share Chair."

I am hoping my friend will help me paint it to make it look cute.  (Did I mention I am not creative?)  Best of all - these things all fold up, which is wonderful because my new classroom is WAAAAAAY smaller than my current classroom (boo hoo hoo).

I am a huge fan of tableclothes.  I love how I can throw a tablecloth over a table and it really brings life to that area... so easy, so inexpensive!  I found this cute tablecloth today at Big Lots for a few bucks.  I am going to put it on the main table in our classroom in the "Central Station" area.

Okay, now on to other matters...

Did you see Marlana's FREE "Chocolate Bunny Activity" on her blog, Lil Country Kindergarten?  Head over to her blog to grab it!  I used this activity with my kiddos and they LOVED it!  (Duh... they got to eat chocolate.)

Here are some pictures of what we did in our classroom, using Marlana's activity:

We labeled the parts of a chocolate bunny.  I did this on chart paper and my Kinders did the same on their own copies.

I then gave each student a chocolate bunny (I found 3-packs at the Dollar Tree).  I instructed them to take ONE bite out of their bunny.  Then, they decorated their own bunnies and cut off a piece of the bunny to show where they took a bite.  Finally, we graphed the results.  As you can see, our data was completely lopsided!  Next time, I will encourage the kids to take a bite out of ANY part of the bunny.  (And, in case you are wondering... yes, I let my students finish eating their bunnies, hehe.)

Well... if you have read this whole post, you definitely deserve a FREEBIE!  I created some organizational sheets for my teacher planning binder that look like this:

If you would like to grab your own copy of these pages, visit my Teachers Pay Teachers store (where everything is always free) by clicking HERE!  If you would like to add more pages to your own collection, contact me and I will happily send you the Word version.

Phew!  That turned out to be a LONG post.  Thanks for sticking around and, as always, thank you for stopping by!  :)