Late nights

I'm sure you've had that moment.  You leave work around 7 and think to yourself, "Whose van is that?  Normally the parking lot is empty when I go home on Wednesdays."

Pencil Trade-Out

Remember the crayon vases I made?  I had to buy a large pack of mason jars instead of just a few.  Silly Walmart.  I have found many uses for mason jars, including my fancy, wonderful, slightly impractical pencil trade-out system.

Like the new camera?  It has a lot of settings and I like to play with them.

I took a mason jar, found a cute pencil-themed font from dafont.com, typed up the labels, glued them to pencil-colored card stock, and packing-taped them to the jars.  Then, I screwed on the jar rims, throwing the top disc things under my bed next to that green styrofoam crap and some old boxes.

You don't have to do that part.

Next, instruct your children to keep pencils IN THEIR PENCIL CASES and only to trade out a dull for a sharp if they have NO SHARP PENCILS IN THEIR PENCIL CASES.  Then, make sure the dull ones go in the dull jar, and the sharp ones in the sharp jar.  We have a Pencil Sharpener job during Job Time, and that is the ONLY time students can sharpen pencils during school.

My pencil sharpener was $50 and I love it like I love my own unborn children.  It sharpens pencils in seconds!  I highly recommend that investment.

I caution you: my sweet little chicadees ADORE trading out their pencils.  They all demand a perfectly sharp one, and are also too lazy to get them from their blue bins at the back of the classroom (we don't have desks, just tables).  I have had to crack down, I tell you!  But now we've got the hang of it.  In March!  Also, they're glass jars, so maybe they're not the most brilliant container.  Luckily, my cherubs are delicate and cautious.

...

I think the blurry part in the back is called "bokeh" and you adjust the aperture to make it focused in the front and get that lovely "bokeh".  I might be talking out of my butt.

Here's how they know when to throw out a pencil that is too small:

This is taped to the table in front of the pencil jars.  The kids hold the pencils up to the one drawn on here and throw it away if it's too small.  This helps avoid their love of sharpening their pencils until there's barely anything left and then trying to write with it!

Keeping It Real

Someone pinned this picture from my blog and commented, "I wish I was this organized!!!"

HA.

HA.

HA.

Note the chairs taped together there on the left side?

That means school hadn't started yet.  Flash forward to today:

That stack of papers on the left with a bag on top?  The bag is leftover supplies the kids brought in SEPTEMBER that I STILL don't know what to do with.  The stack of papers?  It is a pile of extra worksheets.

The stack next to the bigger stack?  A pile of crap someone left in my room.  I don't know whose it is.  I think it's an accumulation of other people's paper and overheads and folders and math games.  The tray?  Rocks and minerals exploration.  The pile next to that?  I have no idea.

Ugly red bag?  Emergency grab and go bag that I still have not figured out where to put.  It is collecting dust.

Don't get me started on the giant box of Goldfish.  Do the words "salty snack craving" and "binge" mean anything to you?

Yes, it's great to have "a place for everything, and everything in its place," as my Grandma taught me.  But to have the discipline to put things where they belong in the moment?  Knowing where to put the random crap you didn't plan on?  I have yet to master that.  I have done the opposite of mastering that.