Theme Chosen! Bring on the Bugs!

I went back and forth for a long time about the theme for my classroom this year. Since I teach multi-age, I have an A Year and a B Year for Science and Social Studies. Last year my animal life cycle was frogs, so my theme was frogs. This year we are studying monarch butterflies, but I thought just butterflies as a theme might be too "girly" for the boys in the classroom. So I've decided to go with an all-out bug theme.... butterflies, bees, dragonflies, ladybugs... they all work! Now that I've got my theme decided I am having a fun time getting started creating homework folders, newsletters, and other templates galore to match this cute new theme! Here is an example of our new B.E.E. folder covers:

The clipart was free online and I got the yellow polka dot border from www.msfultz.blogspot.com! Go check her out! I will print this label out on large sticky sheets (two labels per page) and then put them on my two-pocket prong folders (also in yellow to match). I also created the inside labels for the folders:

I always use the "Left at Home/Bring Right Back" inside my kids take home folders. Its an easy reminder for them which items need to be left at home and which need to come back to school. It also makes it easy when they are packing up... Plus, I think they look pretty cute!

I am now working on the inserts that go inside the folders. I always put a few clear sheet protectors inside the prongs and include important papers here, such as:
* a class list along with phone numbers and parent e-mails
* monthly lunch menu
* specials schedule
* our weekly newsletter
* student BEE-havior logs (see example below)

I love having the kids assess their own behavior and productivity each day and find they are almost too brutally honest. However it opens up good dialogue between myself and the students about the choices they made throughout the day. We take a few minutes at the end of the day to fill these out and at least twice a week I write positive comments on the lines at the bottom (some weeks I am able to do so every day). If there is a behavior issue that is small, I will note it here as well. I might also include a note to call me about behavior, etc. The kids love filling it out with a wet erase marker (since it is inside the sheet protector) and it eliminates waste of paper.

Do you use BEE Folders or any similar type of folders? What inserts do you include? I'm always looking to make things better!

My next project is to get my Literacy Notebook files ready to go for the upcoming school year! I'll do a post on those soon!