'Mani" Thanks! A great end of year gift for volunteers!

Happy almost summer everyone! Hope that you are making it through these last few days or weeks! I have 6 days left with kiddos and then 2 more days to pack up my teacher life for 2 months! I really hate packing!! 

Packing is just as bad as unpacking! Why oh why must I pack up?? I mean, I know why but I still don't like it! 

So, another year has gone and I wanted to find a cute and fun (also not bank breaking!!) way to thank my sweet volunteers who have helped me this year. So I decided to give them a jar of "mani" thanks! 

All you need is a :

*pint size mason jar (right now Michaels has them for $1! Plus if you show your teacher ID, you get 15% off!)

*mini-manicure items (I also found mine at Michaels)

*nail polish (your choice of colour)

*something extra if you want and it can fit in the jar

I found the nail polish and cooling eye masks at TJ Maxx! They have great spa and beauty items for less. I had some extra room so I put some in there. You can add whatever you like though. 

I placed all the items in the mason jar and added my label and done! It's super cute and easy to make. 

You can download the labels for FREE! Click on the picture to download a copy. It is editable. 

Hope this helps make it easier for you! I'm excited to give this to my volunteers! Happy end of the school year friends! 

Symbaloo: An Online Tool to you stay organized!

Hey all! I know it's been a while but I think I'm ready to blog again! :-) So glad you have come here to visit me-- again! LOL!

I have always been a tech-gifted person! I love technology and I love incorporating it into my lessons and classroom. If you know me, I am the IT (not IT but Information Tech) for my grade-level and lots of other numerous people at my school. So, when the opportunity came for me to have a blended learning classroom, I jumped at the chance! 

So, today, I'm here to share with you something that I and my students use. It's called Symbaloo.

I totally use it everyday. 

Symbaloo is great because you can have all your bookmarks that you use ready at the click. Before, I had to go to my bookmarks or have a bazillion short cuts on my desktop. 

I am a little ashamed to show you my desktop at school but it has quite a few shortcuts and files that I just need to organize! I'll get to it... someday! Actually, I have cleaned it up some but there is always something new to add! 

So, yes, that is my bookmark menu and then some. Then I came upon Symbaloo and it has made my start-up in the mornings easier and just getting my sites up and ready in a blink!

You can use Symbaloo for anything. Here is a screenshot of my teacher one:

I have all of my most used sites listed on my own Symbaloo. You can create single tiles or group them if you need to.  Seriously, a life saver! I log into these sites on a daily basis. You can color code your tiles to make it easy to find. I also created a group tile for all the songs we sing. I uploaded them in a sharesafe link. No more youtube or getting ads galore! If you haven't heard of sharesafe, you can view my tutorial {HERE}. 

You can create symbaloos for your students to use:

This is an example of one I created for Place Value. You can create tabs for whatever you are learning. I have ones for place value, keyboarding skills, phonics, for example. If you don't have time to create one, then you can search for one already made!

Here is an example of a Symbaloo I created:

http://www.symbaloo.com/mix/longvowelpractice

My kids love doing Symbaloo in class as it is so easy for them to click and go! No more hearing, "Mrs. Hamlin, what do I click on?" 500 times over and then some. All the links you want them to view, play, or complete are in one place. 

Oh, did I mention that Symbaloo is free?? I created a Google account for my class so that I could keep my accounts separate. I really hope you will try it out. I KNOW it will save you so much time! Let me know how it worked out for you and your students! 

Take care!