Boo! I'm back with great seasonal ideas from the current grades 2-3 and intermediate editions of The Mailbox® magazine! Enjoy! Ready to Order To prepare this seasonal center, write each sentence of a step-by-step description on a different sentence strip...

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During a recent conversation with my brother, he mentioned that he was in charge of getting my third-grade niece, Carly, to school by 9:00 the next day. Since I’m settled at my desk by 7:30 most days, 9:00 seemed like a late start to me. But then, thinking about my teaching days, my start times definitely varied.

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I love it when Hollywood takes a great kids' book and makes it into a movie. Now don't get me wrong; they don't always make the movie the way I would like. But they usually get kids interested in the book. Anything that gets a child interested in reading is all right with me.

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I’ve been planning for the next school year. And, well, the spreadsheet format I’m using is a little tricky. So I’ve been learning some new processes, and I’m here to report—it has not been easy.

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I know it sounds cliché, but I just can't believe that it's time to get ready for a new school year already! Preparing the classroom for my students' arrival was one of my favorite things about teaching. I know that establishing a routine can make all the difference in the classroom, so I've scanned the August/September 2009 issues of the Mailbox® magazine to find tips you can incorporate into your planning.

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Summers are getting shorter. At least that’s the impression I got during recent trips to discount stores. While getting ready for a beach trip, I went shopping for swimming supplies. What I found was that the outdoor-living area, which had overflowed into several aisles in May, was reduced to one aisle. In its place was—you guessed it—every kind of back-to-school supply imaginable! This was early in July! I felt like summer was being snatched away from me.

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I’m curious—how many of you are working with students this summer? Many of my summers involve working with students in one way or another. For a few years, I taught a summer program for special education students. The goal of the program was to help kids maintain the skills they had learned during the year so they could pick up where they left off when they returned to school in the fall. The kids and staff worked hard, but we also had lots of fun. The summer atmosphere was relaxing, and it lent itself to activities that we couldn’t do during the regular school year. (Think sprinklers!)

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Some of my favorite days with students were spent in the summer school classroom. In our situation, the atmosphere was a bit more laid-back. The children and I could get to know each other and, best all, we could take advantage of fun summer themes! I’ve gathered some of my favorite theme-related activities from current issues of The Mailbox® magazine to share with you. Enjoy!

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Change is good, right? I know it is, but here’s my confession—sometimes change scares the heck out of me. And yet I know I embrace change on a daily basis. I guess it’s the big changes that can throw me for a loop. To this day I vividly remember the afternoon my principal informed me that the following fall I would be changing grade levels. My knees went weak and my head began to spin—and not in a good way!

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Yesterday was a great day. Fellow editor Krystle Jones was working on a reproducible partner game for The Mailbox® magazine, Intermediate. We had talked over the idea and were both sure it was going to be great. Then, when Krystle started working on it, several issues popped up. So we sat down to problem-solve. Boy! We hit one wall after another. Several times, we just looked at each other wondering if there was a solution.

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