Five for Friday

Happy Friday everyone! Even though every day in the summer is like a Friday for us!! Today I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her totally awesome Five for Friday linky party!!

This is a great linky that lets us share with you five random things from our week. Here are some things from my week!!

On Monday I went for my 5th round of laser surgery treatments. I really LOVE my doctor, he is so upbeat and positive! After Monday's treatment I was cleared to be weight-bearing again!! I have to use my walker or crutches, and wearing a big ol' brace, but I can finally put weight on my ankle again!! My doctor thinks I'll be able to walk without crutches/walker come the beginning of August. He says that I won't be able to spend three hours at the mall, but I should be able to do my job! He reminded me that it's going to be a long, slow, uphill struggle to get back to where I was, but at least I'm able to get started!!

Have you heard of Maren from Malimo Mode? Well if you haven't let me tell you, she's pretty awesome! She is a teacher in Norway and always shares such GORGEOUS pictures of her home! She has some really amazing things in her TPT store, many of which help with planning and organization. 

This little freebie that she offers is one of my very favorite things to use! It helps me to plan out each month and allows me to check off various social media boxes for each date! If you haven't checked out this freebie yet, click on the image above. You won't be disappointed!! Anyway, Maren and I are going to team up. She is letting me be a guinea pig for her newest planner and organizer!! I am SO EXCITED!! I get to test it out for her and share all about it on social media! Stay tuned because I know you're going to love it!!!

I was checking the feedback left at my TPT Store and found this little gem of awesomeness!!

Talk about excited! I was ecstatic to realize a real life educelebrity not only purchased a product from me but took the time to leave such incredibly sweet feedback!! I haven't been able to stop smiling since I read it!! Days like today make me glad I've spent so much time and energy on developing my TPT store. Could it be that I'm finally getting noticed????

I've teamed up with Once Upon a Classroom: A Teacher's Tale for her Share and Prepare linky party. This link up is all about sharing a product that will help teachers prepare for the upcoming school year. This week I am sharing my Color the Room packet, which is perfect for the beginning of the year in pre-k or kindergarten.

This packet is designed to get kiddos used to the procedures and routines of Write the Room activities without actually having to write anything. A lot of my kiddos come to me in the beginning of the year unable to form letters or copy from a model, so these activities only require them to color in pictures to match the posters. Great way to practice for our later in the year Write the Room activities where they'll actually have to write things. Want to win a copy? Head over to my blog post and enter using the Rafflecopter! Just click on the image below to head over to that post!

Finally, I wanted to share with you a challenge I have set for myself. Like most of you, I am a huge fan of all the incredible freebies that are posted on TPT. I download freebies almost every day and really enjoy incorporating them into my classroom. However, I'm not always the best at leaving feedback for the freebies that I download. I know how hard people work to create products and that their hard work deserves to be recognized. Leaving feedback on freebies has been a constant battle for me, as I'm always trying to keep up with the immense amount of freebie feedback. I have tried all sorts of different things to keep me on track, and I always seem to start out strong. Then inevitably I begin to slack off until I stop leaving freebie feedback altogether. Leaving feedback for paid products is easy, after all you get to earn TPT credits for paid purchases. But leaving feedback for freebies is just as important! In order to hold myself accountable for leaving freebie feedback I have issued myself the Freebie Feedback Challenge.

I developed this template to help keep me on track. On Monday I checked TPT to see how many freebies I had downloaded that still need feedback. Almost 600, yikes!! Every day I am challenging myself to leave feedback on at least five freebies, though hopefully I can manage ten freebies a day.

This is from this morning. As I download new freebies the number in blue will change. Every time I leave feedback on a freebie I will change the green and purple numbers. So far this week I have left feedback on 31 freebies, and as you can see I am A LONG WAY from my goal! My long term goal is to get the number in purple to be 0!! I think it's just as important to leave feedback on freebies as it is on paid products. The same amount of work goes into freebies, and the only recognition the creator gets is through feedback. I also know how frustrating it can be to spend so much time and hard work on something and have it downloaded but nobody lets you know what they think! I myself have a freebie that has been downloaded over 3,000 times and only ten people have left feedback. That's less than 1%!!!! 

I'll need your help to hold me accountable for this challenge though! Every Friday I am going to post the template above to show how I'm doing with this challenge. If ever I don't post it, I'll need you to remind me! Feel free to stop by my Facebook page or Instagram account during the week and ask me who my Freebie Feedback Challenge is going. I can really use your support to keep me on track! I really want to tackle this freebie feedback this time and not slack off like I have so many other times!!!

Don't forget to head back over to Doodle Bugs Teaching to see who else has linked up for Five for Friday! You can link up too and share five things from your week with us!!