School Counselor Blog

It's almost time to break out the New Year's party supplies, say farewell to 2020, and make a bulletin board for the New Year! 🥳 One thing I love about being an educator is that we have two New Years - January 1st and the first day of the new school year. Two opportunities to celebrate new beginnings and a fresh start. The first day of school always feels like a celebration to me. I have had the idea for a long time to somehow use a "New Year's party" theme for the start of the new school year.  For the 2019-2020 school year, I created a bulletin board out of discounted New Year's Eve Party supplies from Target. I saved them from the beginning of January 2019 until the beginning of the new school year. I was so excited to put this bulletin board together.  To make this bulletin board, I used a black piece of roll paper, chalk, and the New Year's Eve supplies. I stapled the party hats and the banner onto the board. I used roll glue ...

I have been making Winter Stovetop Potpourri for years. It is an easy last minute gift that makes the recipient's home smell amazing. Before I start making bags, I like to lay out all of my ingredients. You will need cranberries, candy ginger, mandarin oranges, cinnamon sticks, and whole cloves. (No worries if you can't find candied ginger... I added a tag that doesn't list ingredients other than the citrus so you can replace the ginger with something else or omit it). Each bag contains the following:  1 mandarin orange 1/2 cup of cranberries  3 pieces of candied ginger (optional) 2-3 cinnamon sticks 1 tsp of whole cloves fresh pine branches (optional) I add all the items to the bags in an assembly line. I put everything in small cellophane bags, tie them shut with a ribbon, and attach the instruction gift tag. I like to put everything in a cellophane bag so the recipient can see the festive colors of the ingredients. A...

I have a confession. I love packaging, wrapping, and giving gifts. Really I love everything that goes along with the gift-giving process. I especially love a good theme. This year it has been a little more difficult to purchase gifts since I have been primarily relying on things I can pick up curbside or get shipped.  For my daughter's therapists, I decided to keep it simple with a candle and a gift card. I bought candles via Target drive up and Starbucks gift cards in the drive-thru.  I put the candles in cellophane bags, tied them with ribbon, and clipped the gift card and tag to the candle with a clothespin.  I like to save ribbon and other accents throughout the year to add some flair to gifts. Tinsel also makes a great gift accent year-round! (I learned these awesome tips from following Amy Lou Hawthorne on Instagram. She owns a shop, The Ever Co. ) A few years ago I purchased these cute printable gift tags...

When browsing Instagram one day, I stumbled upon an idea from another school counselor, Jonathon Allen. He had his students decorate coffee sleeves for a local coffee shop for the Great Kindness Challenge. You can view the post here .  I loved the idea and decided to try at my school. I met with a student from the Student Council Service Committee that I advise. She assisted me in calling Starbucks near our school and inquiring about decorating coffee sleeves. Our local Starbucks was super supportive and gave us over 150 coffee sleeves to decorate. Students came during lunches to decorate Starbucks Coffee Sleeves with kindness messages. I then took them to our local Starbucks to be distributed for Random Acts of Kindness Day, which was February 17th this year (#RAKWEEK). This activity was a quick and easy way for students to spread kindness in our community. How do you celebrate Random Acts of Kindness Week at your school? Comment below,  tweet ,  contact ...

Our Positive Behavior Intervention and Support (PBIS) theme for February is Kindness. I created this bulletin board to encourage students to spread kindness and to give them some ideas of how to be kind.  Below is a close up of some of the kindness ideas I included on the bulletin board. I love the idea of "sprinkling" kindness by doing small things that can make a difference for others. This "Sprinkle Kindness Everywhere" bulletin board kit is available for FREE download in my TPT store . What bulletin boards do you create for kindness?

In my last post I shared about Digital Citizenship Week Ideas . Each month we host a monthly PBIS theme. Digital Citizenship is the monthly theme for October. As an additional way to reinforce what students are learning this month about Digital Citizenship, I created an interactive, Halloween-themed, digital safety bulletin board to share digital safety tips with students and staff. I designed the bulletin board to be interactive. Students/staff can lift the flap to learn more about each digital safety tip. Everything you need to display this bulletin board is included with the bulletin board kit - social media icons, candy clipart, and a Jack-o-lantern face to glue on a bag. How do you educate students about digital safety? If you display this item in your own school I would love to see it! Please share with me on  Instagram  or  Twitter .

Each month our PBIS program hosts a monthly theme. The theme for October is Digital Citizenship. October 14th - 18th is also Digital Citizenship week. We facilitate lessons, events, and activities each month related to the monthly PBIS theme. For Digital Citizenship month, all students received a Nearpod lesson in advisory about creating a positive digital footprint. There are lots of FREE Digital Citizenship Lessons available on Nearpod through Common Sense Media . To reinforce the information students learned during the PBIS lesson about creating a positive digital footprint, I created digital safety tips to display on our TV monitors throughout the school. To create the digital safety tips, I used  Canva , a free digital media tool. Canva has tons of excellent, FREE, digital media templates. Canva is also very easy to use. You can create teams and share your designs with other staff members. Here is an example of what the digital safety tips look like on th...