Widgets Galore! Gearing Up for a New Year

I'm soooooooooo excited! For me, the countdown to the first day of school has begun. Everywhere I go, I find new things to bring into the classroom (photos to follow). And while I am at home 'surfing' the internet I find things to use in the classroom, projects that we will be doing with classrooms around the world, and 'widgets' to add to the blog. Below is a widget welcoming my class.



Are you as excited about the beginning of the school year as I am?

Font Crazy

I'm going C*R*A*Z*Y! (Though my husband might say I was actually just going 'crazier'!) I'm overwhelmed by the creativity shown by some of my elementary fellow bloggers, as well as, the folks pinning away at Pinterest. Needless to say my creative juices are flowing and I'm approaching that time of summer when I start creating forms, etc. for the classroom.

I'm a fan of Lettering Delights and have purchased some of their alphabets and fonts. But I'm also a fan of *FREE*!!! So here are some of the sources which I use for fonts:

Dafont.com

Better Fonts - just make sure you click on the 'free' tab!

Fonts 500

FontStruct - if you're talented and want to create your own font, here's a great website to do so

ScrapNFonts often has free fonts available.

1001 Free Fonts

Scrap Village

Kevin and Amanda

Sugar Frog Fonts

Miss Tina Fonts

Google Web Fonts (who knew?)

Font Park

Font Cubes

Ace Free Fonts

and finally...trying to identify a font, but can't? Head on over to WhatTheFont? .

And please remember, before downloading a font you really should read the TOS (Terms of Service), especially if you are planning on using any of the fonts in something you plan on selling.

Enjoy!

If you have another source for free fonts, please leave a comment below.

Look Elsewhere for Inspiration

If you are like me, by now you have amassed a HUGE number of blogs that you follow and are grateful for the likes of apps such as Google Reader or Feeddler Pro (iPad) to help you manage all of that information. My management system is simple - I 'star' items I want to take a closer look at and then once a week I go through all of my 'starred' items, read them, bookmark them, send them along to friends, etc. This is all well and good, but I find myself surrounded by the 'same ole, same ole'.

I decided I needed a break and needed something to spark my creativity (which is buried at the bottom of a very, very, very long to-do list). Enter, Pinterest. I don't remember how it crossed my path (though I suspect I saw reference to it on Twitter), but all I can say is 'WOW!!!'. I entered the world of Pinterest with caution (I mean, really, do I NEED yet ANOTHER place to distract me?), but once I dipped my toe in, it did not take long to just dive right in. And being such a visual learner, this fit the bill to a 'T'.

But don't just take my word for it -- I mean, why would you, I probably haven't built up enough 'web cred' for you to blindly follow wherever I send you. So start small - check out the link (see it? there on the right) to my boards and check out what I have 'pinned', then go on over and sign up for a (*FREE*) account. Once you spend a little while navigating and getting the hang of pinning and repinning do yourself a HUGE favor and click on the 'Everything' link in the top menu. Just make sure you have a couple of hours to lose yourself in an amazing world of inspiration! Oh, and don't go blaming me that you didn't get your chores done around the house, that you forgot to walk the dog, that supper ended up being take-out, or that those lesson plans just didn't get written tonight -- as a local store's motto says, 'It's Worth a Trip from Anywhere!'

Welcome to A Super 2nd!

I would like to thank all the wonderful bloggers from Teaching Blog Addict and Me and My Gang for inspiring me to start (yet another!) blog, this one devoted to the concept of 'pay it forward'. And actually, it was Kristen from Ladybug's Teacher Files who so generously shared one of her Leveled Reading charts that was the catalyst of this blog. So thank you Kristen (and I did leave a comment telling you I would 'pay it forward'! LOL)

As I get ready for the start of the school year (September 7th with kids) and I revise or create new documents to use I figured I would share things out here.

As my byline reads, 'Stay Tuned & Stay Connected'!

P.S. (Is that still valid? I mean, in blog posting?) Please excuse my 'growing pains' as I tweak the look of the blog.

Nancy