What do you do when you get sick in the middle of the night?

If you teach long enough, you'll eventually get to join the "Oh! No! . . . Club".  Which really means, "Oh!  No, why didn't I organize my emergency sub plans at the beginning of the year when my principal suggested it?!!!"  We've all been there and done that at one point or another, and hopefully learned from our mistake.  How does the old saying go . . . plan for the worst, but hope for the best.  That should be the motto for all teachers.

Through trial and error, notes left from substitutes telling me the information that I forgot to leave in my Benadryl-induced haze, and talking to substitutes in the teachers' lounge, I developed an emergency sub kit that will give you peace of mind because you know your class is running smoothly.  According to the substitutes or guest teachers, this kit has information that teachers frequently forget to leave, but they need.

When I went out on maternity leave, which is the Mt. Everest of sub plans, I knew I wanted my students' education to continue to be at the same high standards, but I also realized that a long term sub was going to be so busy learning our procedures and all the other day-to-day stuff, that I wanted to help her out with some of the busy work.  At the time, I was teaching kindergarten and part of our routine was morning message on chart tablet paper.  It took a good chunk of time to write these messages each day.  I felt like my LTS's time could be better spent doing other things.  So, I tried a new method of morning messages.  I typed up my morning messages.  Each student got their own copy and I showed an example on the overhead projector (yes, this was 12 years ago).  The first couple of times we completed it together, then we graduated to the students at their table-teams working together to complete the assignment and sharing their team's answers at the end , and in the end almost all of the students were able to complete the morning message independently.  Below is a packet with 5 morning messages that you can try out.  These work great for emergency sub plans or those days when you get pulled from class for a last minute meeting.  If you like this, there are more morning message lessons for sale on TPT.

This is the complete kit.

TPT - $5