It may not look like it where you live, but Monday, March 20, 2023 is the first day of spring! When I lived in Michigan, the spring equinox generally didn’t look anything like spring, but it still gave everyone a sense of hope that within a month you could put away your snowblower. Here in…
I love Pinterest! It’s such a good way to keep track of activities you want to use in the classroom —and cookie recipes, because cookies. Posting on Pinterest is one of my tasks for The Mailbox. So of course, I can see what teachers are viewing the most during the last six months and what…
As a teacher, you know that games are a fun way to reinforce important skills, but you also know that creating the games can eat up a lot of your time. That’s why The Mailbox® has a Bingo Game Maker! It comes with your Gold subscription along with tons of other goodies to make your…
March 1, 2023, is National Peanut Butter Lover’s Day. As a child, I would eat almost anything—cooked cabbage, pickled beets, and liver were all perfectly fine. But peanut butter? I despised peanut butter. I would even give my Dad all of the peanut butter cups from my trick-or-treat bag every fall. (No, I have no…
As I drove to an appointment this past week, I noticed a woman outside her home decorating her yard with faux Easter eggs on sticks. It took me about a mile more to process that it’s February and Easter isn’t until April. That’s a bit like decorating for Christmas in October. I’m all about people…
I can tell you the exact moment as an adult when I gave up and embraced the crazy sweet-filled extravaganza that is the classroom Valentine’s Day party. I was teaching kindergarten at the time and decided that instead of parents bringing in tons of candy and sweets for the party, I would lead the children…
Deciding who and what to write about can be daunting for students…and adults as well. (An aside: I’m married to a writer and I hear him muttering a lot in his office.) Various graphic organizers can be a big help for students when planning narratives—and we have tons of them on our website! After a…
My work desk is right next to a window that faces our backyard. I generally have a view of squirrels, birds, and the occasional neighbor—but the other day a very round groundhog waddled into view. I squealed like a fool and went to get my husband so we could stare out the sliding door at…
I suspect that in every living situation you will experience a thermostat war at least once. My most heated experience (heated—do you see what I did there?) occurred during college when living with two other women off campus. We had noisy baseboard heat and two-thirds of us, including myself, preferred it to be cold in…
We all like to have options—different potato chip flavors, different ice cream choices, and paint colors in every shade and hue. After all, we’re all different and have different needs, likes, and dislikes. That’s why I’m tickled that our Make and Print tools have new borders. It’s great to have lots of options! What are…