School Counselor Blog

This week's Fabulous Find is Bag it Forward! If you have been to any department stores lately, the secret is out. Summer is over according to the retail world, and BACK TO SCHOOL time is underway. As a counselor, I have worked with many students and families who cannot afford school supplies. As a daughter of a teacher, I have been on countless shopping trips to buy school supplies with my mother for her students.  Teachers (and counselors too!) spend a lot of their own money on school supplies for their students. This week's Fabulous Find, Bag it Forward offers a great opportunity to help students and teachers by supporting Adopt-A-Classroom .  Elmer's is will donate $10 for each blog post donating a "virtual bag of school supplies" and supporting this amazing campaign!  Please forward this to everyone you know, especially bloggers who can post it to their blog! I am donating my "virtual bag of school supplies" to my mom, an amazing fifth g...

This week's Fabulous Find is a Pool Noodle or Funnoodle®. For this week's Fabulous Find, I created a video of how to Create a Stress Reliever Using a Pool Noodle or Funnoodle® . Students will love these fun stress relievers and they are super cheap to make! I was able to make 58 - 1 inch stress relievers using the Funnoodle® for $2. Pool Noodles and Funnoodles® also come in different shapes too, such as flowers.   Watch the my video and create your own stress relievers today ! Do you have a Fabulous Find that you Fancy? If you have a suggestion for a Fabulous Find, comment below or email me  and I will try it out! Your Fabulous Find may be Featured on a Future Friday, Friends! ;) Danielle is a K-12 Certified School Counselor, Nationally Certified Counselor, and blogger at  School Counselor Blog , a place where school counselors share innovative ideas,  creative lesson plans,  and quality resources.  Contact Danielle via  email , follo...

Each week I will be selecting an item for Fabulous Find Friday. This Friday's Fabulous Find is Self Care. Summer break has been the perfect wake-up call for me that I am in need of more self care. At the end of the school year, I was feeling pretty burned out and overextended. There were a lot of things I was trying to accomplish before the end of the school year.  I have felt a huge wave of relief since I have finished the school year.  I miss school, especially the students, but the break has been a welcome one! I finally have time to think about things that are not related to work.  I really did not realized how caught up in my work I was until I have had a break from it. I feel so much more relaxed and able to focus.  For my own personal self care I have been spending time with friends and family, exercising more, reading, finding new recipes to cook, and just enjoying the freedom of not having a schedule (the joy of being in education). So, what is self ...

Each week I will be selecting an item for Fabulous Find Friday. This Friday's Fabulous Find is Vistaprint ! Vistaprint  is a company specializing in personalized products for professional and/or personal use.  Vistaprint personalizes items such as business cards, pens, t-shirts, notepads, car door magnets, tote bags and much more! Vistaprint hosts great sales and specials and always has FREE personalized items too! (you only have to pay the shipping!) I have ordered products from Vistaprint and I continue to be impressed by the quality and value of the products.  Business cards are one of my favorite products Vistaprint offers. The first time I ordered business cards I used the basic design business cards and received 250 business cards for FREE (I only paid shipping). Vistaprint also allows you to customize your business cards with your own design or logo.  I created a double sideded business card to match my website theme.  My website , em...

Each week I will be selecting an item for Fabulous Find Friday. This Friday's Fabulous Find is Grooveshark . Grooveshark is a free MP3 streaming and Internet Radio website. Members can search for MP3s and listen to them live.  Members can create playlists, get recommendations, and share their favorites with others. To learn more about the features of Grooveshark go to Grooveshark Help . (Membership is FREE!) Grooveshark is easy to use. After you search for songs, hit the plus sign near the song to add it to your collection. You can then create a playlist and drag songs into the playlist. This week's Fabulous Find was inspired by a counseling activity: "Soundtrack of Your Life. " I wanted to find a cost-effective way for students to make a playlist using their  "Soundtrack of Your Life. " Grooveshark was the answer! Using Grooveshark , members can create a playlist and play it online.  The playlist can then be shared with others through email or b...

Each week I will be selecting an item for Fabulous Find Friday. If you have a suggestion for a Fabulous Find,  email me  and I will tryit out! Your Fabulous Find may be Featured on a Future Friday! ;) This Friday's Fabulous Find is a collapsible cargo crate .  This collapsible cargo crate has definitely been a life-saver. As a school counselor, I am constantly lugging around all kinds of strange things. My collapsible cargo crate can fit books, materials, tote bags, toys, and much more. I have used my collapsible cargo crate to cart materials to classrooms for lessons and bring materials to and from school. I will be using my collapsible cargo crate to pack up my office for the end of the school year.   When I was still an intern, I saw teachers using collapsible carts with wheels but I had no idea where they got them. I ordered mine from Amazon almost two years ago and it is holding out great. The  collapsible cargo crate is space saving becau...

I started new feature on School Counselor Blog called "Fabulous Find Friday."  Fabulous Find Friday is a way for me to highlight specific resources and items I use in my everyday work as a school counselor and how I utilize them. Each month I will give a recap of the Fabulous Finds featured for that month.  Here is a recap of the first five fabulous finds: 1. Bubbles : Bubbles can be used in classroom guidance lessons, group sessions, and individual sessions with students. I have used bubbles with students of all ages. Adults love them too! 2. No Spill Travel Mug : If you are in need of a great travel mug for coffee, tea, or whatever else you fancy, look no further! I love that I can carry all my bags out the door with no worries about spills thanks to this no spill travel mug ! 3. Balloons : Balloons are not just for parties! I have used balloons to teach deep breathing and about anger in classroom guidance lessons, group sessions and individual sessions....

Each week I will be selecting an item for Fabulous Find Friday. If you have a suggestion for a Fabulous Find,  email me  and I will try it out! Your Fabulous Find may be Featured on a Future Friday! ;) This Friday's Fabulous Find is the  Altec Lansing iM-237 Orbit Ultraportable Speaker . I decided to feature the  Altec Lansing iM-237 Orbit Ultraportable Speaker  as a fabulous find this week after receiving many questions and comments about  the speaker I used  during my presentation at the Pennsylvania School Counselor's Association (PSCA)  Conference on " Social Networking for School Counselors. "  The  Altec Lansing iM-237 Orbit Ultraportable Speaker  is definitely fabulous! I have used the  Altec Lansing Speaker  during individual sessions, group sessions, classroom lessons, and presentations. The  Altec Lansing Speaker  plugs into a headphone jack on most electronic devices.  The  Al...

Each week I will be selecting an item for Fabulous Find Friday. If you have a suggestion for a Fabulous Find,  email me  and I will try it out! Your Fabulous Find may be Featured on a Future Friday! ;) This Friday's Fabulous Find is Prezi ! Prezi is an exciting and innovative way to present information. I saw a Prezi presentation at a Response to Intervention and Instruction (RtiI) training. I was immediately captivated by the Prezi presentation!  Prezi  is unlike anything I ever saw before! The first thing I did when I got home from the training was a Google search for Prezi to find out more about it. I discovered educators can get a free Prezi account! Needless to say I was thrilled! The Prezi website is great! The  Prezi Academy has tutorials for learning Prezi basics and more advanced  Prezi  techniques. There is a Prezi gallery called the Prezi showcase where you can watch, use, and share public Prezis . Prezis can be made private o...

Each week I will be selecting an item for Fabulous Find Friday. If you have a suggestion for a Fabulous Find,  email me  and I will try it out! Your Fabulous Find may be Featured on a Future Friday! ;) Today's Fabulous Find is BALLOONS! I use balloons in a variety of ways with students in classroom guidance lessons, group sessions, and individual sessions. I have used balloons to teach deep breathing techniques by demonstrating how you have to take a deep breath to make a balloon fill with air. This can be used to teach students who have difficulty calming down when they are angry or anxious. I have also used balloons to teach about anger management. In a classroom setting, I have two students volunteer to be my “helpers.” One student receives a red balloon (symbolizing anger) and the other student receives a blue balloon (symbolizing cooling down or calmness).  I read scenarios aloud that might cause someone to become upset, such as "someone took bumped into you i...

With mother's day just around the corner (it's Sunday!) I decided to include a fabulous find that you could buy for yourself, or you could give your mother for Mother's Day! Ok, so the Oxo Good Grips Plastic LiquiSeal Travel Mug is not exactly a counseling resource, but it is a fabulous find! Buying a coffee mug that doesn't spill could be related to self-care. ;) If you are anything at all like me you probably juggle bags, lunch, keys, and other random items when you are leaving for work. I usually end up spilling coffee on the floor or myself when I am carrying too much. I was at Target the other day and I spotted this travel mug . It caught my attention because it was pink, but after reading the label with the "no-spill" claim, I had to try it out. I took it home and filled it up with coffee the next morning. The Oxo Good Grips Plastic LiquiSeal Travel Mug has a button on the lid that you can click to the down position to drink and click to the up...

There are so many great resources and items that I use as a school counselor. I wanted to create a way to share the items that get the most use in my office. I have decided to call this way of sharing great items "Fabulous Find Friday!" Each week I will be selecting an item for Fabulous Find Friday. If you have a suggestion for a Fabulous Find, email me and I will try it out! Your Fabulous Find may be Featured on a Future Friday! ;) Today is the first Fabulous Find Friday! Since the weather is getting warmer and summer is just around the corner, I chose bubble solution as the first Fabulous Find! It may sound simplistic, but bubbles are a great resource! Bubbles do not have to be used only in the spring or only outdoors! Bubbles can be used indoors – any time of the year – in your classroom guidance lessons, group sessions, and individual sessions! I have worked in many different settings and found that students of all ages enjoy blowing bubbles .  Younger students...