I Love Chocolate!

I went on an exciting vacation with the family.  I went to New Jersey for a wonderful workshop with a hundred teachers.
Then, I returned home to find that CTP has all the new products for the new release ready to ship. Now, that means I have to go to work....enough fooling around!

One of the favorite parts of my job is to take the new stuff and use it the way teachers would use it.  Working with this release has been fun. Next week, I will have pictures of some of the things that I have been making.   

Yesterday, Trevor informed me that school starts for him in two weeks.  He will be going into fourth grade.  Kate starts kindergarten.  She is SO ready.  I am not sure that kindergarten is ready for her! It is an exciting time for kids and a busy time for teachers!

It is always fun to decorate your class around a certain theme. What is your theme is for this year?  Click on comments below and leave a message or a picture. 
This year my favorite is CHOCOLATE.

CTP started the chocolate craze a couple of years ago and the theme has grown and grown.  Go to www.creativeteaching.com to see all the Dots on Chocolate.  They are really SWEET!

New this year is the Dots on Chocolate Classbook bulletin board.  This is already one of our best sellers. It is a great interactive way to start off the year.

 Haleigh, Trevor, Isabella and Savanah volunteered to help me with this display.  We had a great time putting everything together.  In this picture Haleigh is putting the pieces on a magnetic white board.  Meanwhile,  the others were working on the pieces to go on the board.  After a few minutes one of them said, "Hey this is like Facebook only I can do this!  My mom doesn't let me post on the real Facebook. I can post on this!" 

There is so much to the kit.  There is a poster for class rules, a welcome poster, and well as the "classbook" part.

Post your own rules.  I tried to come up with ones that were positive instead of "don'ts".

I printed the rules on colored paper and posted them in the circles of the chart.

Check out Isabella's profile.  Individual cards are included in the kit so each child can post his or her own profile.  There is a reproducible  sheet inside the bulletin board kit for the kids to write their profile information.   It is like an "all about me" sheet. After the kids complete their information the pages can be bound together to make a class book.  The kids can read to find out more about each other.

My helpers were completing the pages to go in their book.  I heard Trevor say to Savanah , "Oh, you read Harry Potter.  I do, too.  Which ones have your read?"   This book is a good conversation starter.

The last part of the page has a place for a joke.  This is an example of third grade humor. 

Where do Hogwarts go to the bathroom?   In the Harry Potty!

If you mount the major pieces of the bulletin board to a magnetic board you can simply change out the spotlight, blog, newsfeed, and notes by using printed pages attached with magnets.  The teacher or kids can update the blog and news feed daily.  Of course, I covered the magnets with the mini dots on chocolate cut outs to make them sweet too.

 

The bulletin board kit co-ordinates with all the dots on chocolate products such as the jumbo and mini dots, name plates, name tags, letter stickers, border and designer letters in dots and the new designer letters with stitches on chocolate. 

So as you get ready for another school year....

Don't miss out on the chocolate!

What are you doing in your classroom???