Five for Friday and a Freebie!

Today I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five For Friday! I was on vacation and missed last week's link up, so this one will kind of be a recap of the last two weeks.

Last week, I went to Chicago for the first time! It is such a great city; I had a blast! Here are a few pictures from my trip:

Of course we had to get a picture in front of the Bean!

We also went on the Skydeck of the Willis Tower and stood on one of the ledges with a transparent floor. I'm not really afraid of heights, but looking down definitely made me a bit nervous!

This is at Buckingham Fountain. It's such a gorgeous fountain. There was a bit of a rainbow that day too. Can you see it in the background?

Of course we had to try Chicago deep dish pizza while we were there. It was delicious! I am definitely a fan now!

After my trip to Chicago, I hopped on a plane to North Carolina, where I saw some old friends and got tons of shopping done. I got lots of classroom goodies from Target, Walmart, and Lakeshore. It was my first time going to an actual Lakeshore store and that place is AMAZING. Teacher heaven, I tell you. I order things from the catalog each year for my school orders, but man, being in the actual store is a totally different experience. I didn't take a picture of the things I bought from Lakeshore, but here are some of my Target finds:

I was excited to come home just in time for the TPT back to school sale. I save my credits and use the discount code at checkout so I always get huge savings. Here are some of the amazing products I bought:

I think I would by anything that
Haley O'Connor makes! Her
products are so cute and kid
friendly! I'm super excited to
use this data binder with my
students this year. 

I had to snag Reagan Tunstall's
all about me flip book! This is
going to be an awesome first
week activity. 

I am always looking for great
resources to help my students
improve their fluency. These
interactive word work activities
by Karen Jones will be so much fun!

    

Learning in Wonderland's editable flip
book is just what I've been looking for!
I can't wait to use it for Back to School
Night!

I'm excited to use Amy Swan's sight
word folder system this year. I'm
planning on adding a sight word
section to my students' take home
binders to help parents to be more
involved and up to date on their
sight word progress.

Click on any of these pictures to be taken to the product on TPT. 

 Now that I'm back at home, I've been trying to sort through all of my goodies and get back to work on some classroom projects. I can't get into my new classroom right now because it's being cleaned, but luckily, I measured my bulletin boards beforehand and was able to work on layering my borders this week! I pre-cut them and used hot glue to layer them. It takes some extra time, but I love how it makes my bulletin boards pop. My first year of teaching I layered the borders using tape while I put them up on the bulletin boards, but I learned the trick of pre-cutting and using hot glue from Maria at Kinder Craze. She has a great tutorial that I found really helpful. Click here to check it out! Do you layer borders in your classroom?

I started a Teachers Pay Teachers store a long time ago, but it has been very neglected. Now that I've started a blog, I'm going to get my store going and get some products in it. Here is my first product! Click on either of the pictures above to see it on TPT. It's free so go ahead and download if you are needing some labels for your pencil buckets. Please leave some feedback and consider following my store too! :) 

Thanks for stopping by! Now head on back to Doodle Bugs Teaching to read the other Five for Friday posts!