Long Term Substitute Planning

Hi Friends!  It's Abbey from A Teacher Mom blogging this gorgeous summer morning away!  My little one is at camp for the morning and I have a little bit of mama time to spend with you all!  Some of you know that I am expecting baby #2 in August, so that means I will have the first 3 months of school home with him!  In many ways this is AMAZING - I mean who doesn't want to spend TONS of bonding time with their family.  However, if you are like me (super type A who likes things done in a certain way - sound familiar??) the idea of leaving classroom set up and routines to someone who hasn't been a part of my room is overwhelming!

I was sort of lulled into a feeling that it was all going to be perfect - A little too perfect if you know what I mean??  My student teacher from last fall (who was so perfect!) was going to take over for me and then spend the rest of the year in England - timing was perfect right?  Well it didn't quite work out that way - our principal realized just how fabulous she is and scooped her up to fill a last minute full time Kinder position - on the last day of school!  Talk about maternity leave panic!

We have since found another candidate (who I think will be great - I'm just nervous that she too will find a full time gig).   But since this lovely lass has not spent more than a few minutes in my room, I need to do a lot of pre-planning and set up that I was hoping to avoid.  

I called upon my blogger friends for some ideas and of course scoured Pinterest (this is what I was doing while all my dear friends were partying away in Vegas - BTW I am going to be there with you all next year!!).  There are tons of great long term sub planners, but I wanted to share with you the one I chose and how it is coming along - save this post for down the road when you realize just how hard it is to teach someone how to be you for 3 months ;)

The final binder I chose was The Long Term Sub Binder - Editable from Kelly McHaffie.  

I love that I can edit the covers and the content. 

There are tons of section titles and I was able to print the ones that I needed.  

And then just insert the information needed behind each cover!

I wanted to include pictures.  I hope to be able to do most of the set up, but I really have no idea when this baby is coming (I'm due August 22nd, but I was early with my first...), so I wanted to include as many set up pictures as possible.  

One of my biggest concerns about leaving at the beginning of the year (and returning after Turkey Day) was that the routines I use for guided reading and guided math would not be in place - and who has time to reteach routines in December??  So I added pictures of my boards and directions. 

I also tried to explain each station - how to set it up, how often it should occur and the expectations during each station for the kids.  

This is an organizer I use to figure out who does what station each day - The LTS will have to modify if to match the needs of the kids in this class, but this will be a great start - and hopefully mean less for me to do when I get back!

Some other awesome parts to this pack include these calendars (editable and non).  I put the ones the LTS will need and placed dates I was already aware of - she can add to them.  

There are two different cover/section options to choose from!

Option #1

Option #2

There are also these helpful docs that will help the LTS stay organized and will hopefully give me the information I need once I return!

Thanks for checking out my post today - I hope that you got some ideas for the future (or maybe you are in the same boat as I am and can use it now!).   For now, continue enjoying the summer and your friends and family because we all know that it goes by far too fast and soon enough we will all be back in the throws of all that encompasses the school year!