A Freebie and Packing for the End of the School Year

What do you have to/want to/need to do before you can leave for the summer?  At my school, we have to have EVERYTHING packed up and put away so that the custodians can move all of the furniture out, strip the floors, deep clean, and wax the floors to prepare for the little darlings to scuff them up within the first week of returning.  hahaha... Seriously, sometimes, I wonder why they spend so much time and effort (and make us pack/unpack yearly). 

As a veteran teacher of 23 years, I have learned the more I do now, the easier it will be on me when I return to the most stressful time of the school year...PRE-PLANNING!   Here are some things that I am doing in preparation already...

1)  All new items for my walls, door, etc., I have already sent in for laminating.  Then I will only have to put them up during pre-planning.  I visited the Dollar Tree last week and saw these large cutouts in the teacher section.  I thought they would be cute to make a new birthday display.  Since we have not received money to spend in our classroom for several years, this was a cheap frugal way to get a cute updated one.

2)  I use fabric for my bulletin boards.  Then I do not have to worry about fading.  I go ahead and hang everything up.  If I am worried about dust, I just cover with bulletin board paper and then remove in the fall.  You can see that in the above pictures.  I also turn my calendar, schedule, et.al. pocket charts around toward the board.  They are all ready.  I just have to flip them back over come August! 

3)  This was my first year in this classroom and everything just kind of got shoved in during pre-planning last year because we couldn't get into the building during the summer, so I have been pulling out everything from the cabinets and organinzing my shelves by subjects/items.

4)  I have all copies ready for the first couple of weeks of school.

5)  I leave a space on one of the shelves empty for all of my desk items.  That is the FIRST thing I do when I return for pre-planning.

6)  I have students sort all of my books by levels or genres to make sure they are in the correct bin.  (I'll do that the last couple of days of school.)

7)  We prepared a 2nd grade supply list which will be copied and placed at Walmart for parents to use when purchasing.

8)  We are adopting the Whole Brain Teaching Behavior Management for 2nd grade next year.  I made the rules for all 2nd grade teachers.  We have them posted, ready to go.

I'm sure there are MANY more tidbits that will help everyone out, but I want to leave room for others.  SO, link up your post below telling how you prepare for next year now and what you are required to do for this year.  Be sure to grab the linky party picture to link back to my blog so we can all learn from each other. 

HAPPY PACKING!

AND for reaching 200 followers on my blog, here is a freebie to help you teach Collective Nouns next year (one of those new 2nd grade standards)!  Thanks so much for being a follower!  :-)

Cynthia