Luggage tags and Beanie Babies--together?

Ok, upon looking at the title of this post you are probably thinking---huh? The girl has lost it. Nah not really---just two posts in one I guess?! 


I'm leaving Saturday for a week to go on a mission trip to Kentucky with a team from church. So I needed some cute luggage tags so my suitcase(s) don't get lost in the shuffle. Well--it won't get lost--ok ok I just made them because they are cute! Thought I'd share.

Cute right? :)

Alrighty--now that that is out of the way---on to the beanie babies. A friend of a friend had these little guys stashed and didn't know what to do with them, so I thought well I'll take them! :) I"m going to use these little guys for my retelling station. I've never been that great with keeping up my retelling station--mainly b/c life takes over and it gets busy and I forget to keep that one little station up to date (or sometimes a few of them--ssshh!)

One problem--not enough space in the room, but I have tons of canvas bags and I'll be using those to store the retelling stuff in. I'll be making crate seats when I come back from KY (I jumped on that bandwagon--post pics when I get back) and I'll be using those seats to house the retelling bags. So the storage part has now been taken care of! :) 

But with the Common Core standards really big on characters, retelling, and the like---I definitely want to make sure I stay on top of it this year. And because the students really enjoy it. 

I have used websites such as makinglearningfun.com (which btw--has almost any kind of printable possible!) and kizclub.com as well for popular books. But I guess I've always wanted some other things that aren't always something that I have to print out. So I'll be using these little guys as well as those printables! :)

 

Here is what I was given---sorry about the shot--it's as close as I could get to get them all in the picture. In no particular order---three cats (one kind of looks like Skippy Jon!!!, a puppy, black dog, gorilla, an aardvark, platypus, elephant, eagle, goose, an otter, an owl, weasel/ferret, raccoon, and a hedgehog).

I do believe the cat that looks like Skippy Jon will be named appropriately as such! :) and the raccoon looks like Chester from The Kissing Hand so he will be used for that book. The hedgehog of course is Hedgie from The Hat. 

I think I may use the gorilla for Good Night Gorilla. Not sure about that one yet. 

Any ideas about the others??? Here are two close up shots.   

For more great retelling bag ideas---check out KindergartenWorks for some retelling ideas. 

Do you have any good ideas for a retelling station?