Preparing

Yesterday, I spent the majority of my afternoon packing up my "library." I have so many children's books that it's getting a little ridiculous. Here's my solution:

1. Get a hold of some boxes that are relatively the same size. My boxes were all used for copier paper at my father's office. My mother usually grabs the empty boxes that are set out for recycling (lol). They hold a surprising amount of books.
2. Put all of one type of book together...could be by theme, author, etc. Make sure you write down the books that you put in the boxes so you have a running list.
3. If you have animated literacy books, I would keep those items together in separate boxes.
4. Use a sharpie to label the boxes.
5. Take to school and organize the boxes in your closet. (I'm praying that I actually get access to the one in my room this year so I have a place to put all of these books!)

I picked up this little guy today for .99 cents at Goodwill. Mine doesn't have the overalls, but I can probably figure out something for him to wear. I love using If You Give a Mouse a Cookie for therapy and now I can really bring it to life. He will go well with my random collection of puppets and Dr. Seuss stuffed animals. 

I also picked up this game for 1.99 during my brief venture out. I have several students with sentence formulation goals. This game has two levels: 1) you fill in parts of a pre-formed sentence using the tiles 2) You make up your own sentence using the tiles using different parts of speech.

You could make up your own tiles using note cards cut into small squares. I would use a poster board with a grid (one side blank and the other partially filled) as the game board.