My Newest Toy...And the News Truck

Lately, I've wanted to amp up my Writer's Workshop a bit.  I figured that creating books with my students would be a fun way to do it!  All I needed was a binding machine.  So I thought about it and thought about it.  One of the administrators at my school said there might be a machine somewhere in the basement I could use, if I wanted to dig it out.  Um, no thank you.  

Insert My Binding here.  They came to my rescue!  They sent me this beautiful Comb Binding Machine!

I got it while I was on vacation and it was a wonderful sight to come home to!  Ok, I'm not going to lie here.  I was a little intimidated to open it.  What if I mess it up?  What if I break it?  I don't know how to use it!  Finally, I decided to just suck it up and dive in.  And then I realized all my worrying was for nothing.  This thing is so so easy to use!  And it only takes minutes to bind a book!  Amazing!

I'll walk you through my discovery...

First, look at all that fun stuff!  It comes with the binding machine,  a few packages of binding, some sample covers and directions of course!

To start, you just slide the pages in and pull down on the lever to punch the holes - so easy!

Ta-da!  Look at those nicely punched holes!

Then you put the binding on the top of the machine and push the handle down.

Make sure the binding is all the way to the left!

My husband helped (apparently he had one of these at his old job-who knew?).  Here he is lining the pages up on the binding:

And the finished product!  

It's a calendar courtesy of Charity Preston over at The Organized Classroom Blog.

I can't wait to use my binding machine this year with my students!  I think they are really going to love making their own books.

Now, the News Truck.  I mentioned the other day that there was a news truck sitting outside my house and I had no idea why.  I was trying really hard to spy on them but the darn trees were in the way so I couldn't really see.  And I was kinda still in my pj's so I couldn't actually go out there.  They were there for over an hour.  I was intrigued.

I shouldn't have been.  I watched the 5:00 news to find out that it really wasn't that interesting.  Our neighbors have a tree in their yard.  It reaches over the fence to neighbor #2's yard.  Neighbor #2 want Neighbor #1 to cut it down.  Neighbor #1 doesn't want to.  Lawyers are involved.  Told ya it was boring.