Wow, it has been a very busy first 2 weeks of school. I finally finished my new chair and stool for my classroom and brought it to school. I plan on getting 3 more chairs of various styles and painting them all differently. For the seat cushions on the chairs, I'm using red vinyl because it cleans up easily. I went ahead and purchased extra yards to ensure that I'd have the same color for each chair. I painted the top of the stool red to match. They are so cute!I don't think the picture does them justice. In the classroom, the colors are actually a lot brighter.

Here is a creative writing procedure I learned while touring a "Whole-Language" (All you oldies will know what I'm talking about! LOL) school quite a few years ago. You take library pockets and label them with letters from the alphabet. Insert index cards with the corresponding letter in the upper right-hand corner. When a student needs to know how to spell a hard word that they would like to use in their writing piece, they bring the index card to you with a pencil in hand and you write the word on the card for them. When they are finished writing the word, they put it back in the pocket and it's there for the next student who needs it or if they want to remember how to spell the word in the future. This procedure encourages students to use higher level vocabulary words without being afraid that they don't know how to spell the word. It is especially useful when you don't have time to look the word up in a dictionary, and the students learn to spell the word correctly instead of using "invented" spelling. Works like a charm! I wouldn't have a year of class without it.