Classroom in the Works

I am worn out y'all! Today was a busy day but a lot (thankfully!) was accomplished. 

I did have a few minions at my service--adult minions that is...my fabulous and fantastic husband stopped by after work and my mom even popped over after her professional development meeting. It takes a village to make a classroom look cute, am I right?

Here is my sneak peek:

Ha! There is my handsome husband helping me decorate my desk. Yes, he is wearing a contact paper unibrow! He was going for the Anthony Davis look--we love Kentucky basketball in this house! :) He always keeps me laughing and we have a lot of fun together. I just had to take this picture for my black book. Thankfully he approved it for the post. 

Now I have a question for y'all. See those horrible desk legs that are all smudged up and not shiny? Any advice? I'm not sure what to use to clean them with or if I should just cover them with something. What do you do? HELP! I will be forever grateful!

Ugh, and please ignore my messy desk right now. I literally have crap thrown everywhere as I try to get it all cleaned up. And of course, my McDonald's Diet Coke...I live off this stuff! (On a funny note, one of my kids was asked something about drawing a picture of a teacher (I think it was supposed to be a comparison between two teachers or a teacher and a student) and he had drawn a picture that resembled me and had a Diet Coke McDonald's cup! LOL!)

I'm hoping to post pics soon. Keep your fingers crossed--tomorrow will be a full classroom day!

Monday Made It! (Freebie!)

I was a lazy bum this weekend and plan on making up for it this week. I have completely gotten off my sleep schedule and am having problems falling asleep before 3 or 4am and then getting up around 11am. This morning I made myself get up at 6 even though I think I didn't fall asleep until 4ish. I have got to get back on schedule.

I always find it a little difficult to get back in the routine for school. It seems like my body is trained that unless I am exhausted it is hard for me to fall and stay asleep. Anyways, wish me luck tonight that I can get to bed at a reasonable time after my zombie-like state today. :)

So after seeing Amy's post at The Teacher Next Door I came up with today's Monday Made It! I loved her post on creating a sign to display that shares with the kids what I am currently reading and how many books I have read throughout the school year. It reminded me that we did this at my old school too! We had a sign outside every classroom with what the teacher was reading and the author of the book. It didn't matter what subject you taught. It just reinforced that we are all readers. It was also not limited to just kid books. If I was reading John Grisham's latest book I put that up on my sign. 

Now, y'all have learned I read a lot of romance books. Did I put up "Fifty Shades of Gray?" NO WAY! Sometimes I will put up a book that I just read over the summer that I can still talk to the kids about, etc. Maybe that is bad, but some things don't need to be shared. HA!

4th Grade Frolics

So here is what I made for myself using the paper from The Hazel Owl which was completely free. I should note, I didn't see my classroom colors so I edited her design to fit my needs. I hope this was OK but it didn't say anywhere that I couldn't do this and since they were free already I didn't feel as bad doing this. Since my room theme is blue and green I used her blue and gray patterned paper and overlapped the gray circles with green ones.

Here is what mine looks like:

Available here for free: Teachers Pay Teachers

Feel free to edit it to work for you!

I plan on framing it in a Dollar Store Frame and posting this outside my classroom. Another inexpensive option is to just laminate it and maybe put a cute colored piece of paper on the back. I'm just going to write on the frame with an Expo Marker. Maybe I can get some of my colleagues on board to post one outside their rooms too! It was such a neat thing to see what everyone was reading and for the kids to take notice of this too. 

While I was at it I also decided to make some reward passes. My fabulous collaborating teacher last year, Heidi, had lots of different reward ideas for our kids throughout the year. It was a great incentive and the kids loved getting rewarded! We used QR codes for awhile and did a random draw at the end of class using Class Dojo. She gave out all sorts of different codes. Some said, "Wear a hat in class today," "10 points towards a class party," or even "10 minutes of computer time." 

I really wanted to continue this with my other classes. I liked the idea that someone had shared about giving out a card at the end of class and kids enter a weekly raffle. At the end of the week you draw names from each class to win some of these awesome passes! I also really like this post: Reward Passes. 

I especially like the "grumpy pass." This might be happening soon! Hey, even middle schoolers have bad days and sometimes just need a break. This is a great way to use the grumpy pass! I think it is important that they realize they don't necessarily get out of work for the day. If it is a test/quiz day they can't use it--or maybe if it was a real kind of emergency grumpy day I'd rather let them use it and make it up later. Not sure... I think you'd have to use teacher discretion.

Here is what I made:

I can't remember whose blog I read about all these different passes on! Please let me know if it was you or if you know who it was! I usually write this down somewhere but I can't find where I wrote it down! :( 

I also posted these for free on Teachers Pay Teachers if you want them! 

Some other people use gum passes, no shoes passes, etc. I didn't make these for a few reasons. First, we have a no gum rule for the whole school. I don't feel that I should go against that. Second, I ask my students to take their shoes off when they are in the reading area to prevent dirt from getting on the nice carpet or, in last year's case, the foam flooring. This makes me feel that it is at least a little cleaner for kids to lay on their stomachs or sit on the floor with a good book.

We do have a school policy on electronics, however I did not feel as bad about bending this one a little. Our school is pretty awesome in that our principal is very open-minded and with teacher discretion I think he would be OK with this. Also, we allow the kids to use electronics at lunch. My principal liked the idea that kids should know that electronics have a time and a place and at lunch is okay--I LOVE THIS! :) After so many years of babysiting (17+, but who is counting? LOL), I also realized that more and more of my kids were reading on their devices. Hey, if they want to read on their tiny iPod screen I'm not going to stop them! So I allow them to use them in my classroom with permission. Yes, they must ask me every time so that I know exactly what their intent is and so they have told me as well. I have let them know up front that if I catch them not reading and playing games, etc. then they lose the privilage. Simple as that. Don't ask me again if you are caught. I don't go looking if the kids have lied to me about this either. I believe them. I mean reading on an electronic device looks completely different than playing a game, right? So far I have not had anyone violate this rule. I think they find it fair. Because this is also their personal reading time I don't care what they read--they can read comics, sports, magazines, etc. Just enjoy it! :)

The last thing I made was name plates for my desks. Harry Wong always said to start off the first day of school assigning students seats. It lets them know your expectation from day one. I haven't always done this. In fact, last year was the first year I gave it a shot and assigned seats. I just tell kids to find their name when they walk in to class. I didn't know the kids last year so I put them into alphabetical order. This year, since I am moving up a grade level and will have about 1/3 of the same kids again, I intend to mix them up. I know a lot of them and so if they are a talker I'll try to find them the best seat possible for them--maybe close to me or maybe near some people who I know are not talkers. There are 7 class periods at my school--2 I do not teach but share my room with an exploratory teacher. I went ahead and included all 7. I will explain more about why I did that in another post. :) 

I don't mind sharing these, but I wasn't sure if these would be appropriate to put up on Teachers Pay Teachers since they are specific to 1st-7th hours. If you all are interested I can put them up too!

That's it for my Monday Made It! I am off to the Teacher Resource Center for an hour or two. I have a few things I need to finish making for my bulletin board and I need to print a few things in color. I plan on working in my classroom afterwards. :)

Hope you have a fabulous Monday!

Snapshots of the Week

Source

I decided to jump in to Mrs. Nelson's Saturday Snapshots...and other photos from the week.

Since I've never shared photos of my "babies" I thought I would show you a few. Hubs and I have only been married 4 years and don't have any children yet, but we do have "fur babies." I had an adorable kitten, Izzy, when we started dating. Why yes, she got her name from the one and only Grey's Anatomy Isabelle Stevens but I shortened it to Izzy.

Shortly after we started dating hubs got an adorable pup from the pound. Unfortunately, she was very ill and needed a liver shunt, daily injections, etc. and was only 4 months old! The vet told us he had never seen a dog so sick at such a young age in his 30+ years of practice. There was no way hubs (my boyfriend at the time) could keep her and so we had to take her back so they could put her down. We had adoringly named her Lucy--a nickname my family has always called me. 

He really wanted a pup and was so sad that this sweet one was so ill and it just about broke my heart. I found the other cutest pup in the world at the Kentucky Humane Society and we traveled to see/purchase her the next day! We named her Ethel--to pay homage to our Lucy--and call her Ellie.

Here is baby Ellie. Her ear stuck up for a day or two and then went back down for a button-ear look. She is in the garage at my parent's house on the day we graduated from undergrad.

We got married a year later and combined our lovely pets into one household. They have a love/hate relationship that is quite humorous for us to watch. Also known as the dog who wants the cat to love her but the cat who wants nothing to do with the dog. HA!

Hubs also has a slight obsession with Ms. Izzy. He has never had a cat before and acts like a five-year-old with her because she doesn't really like anyone but me and likes to do her own thing. It is quite humorous!

Here are some fun pics (and a few oldies!)...

Nothing like coming home to hubs and Ellie...dressed up? Hubs likes to mess with her too sometimes. ;)

Pretty typical Izzy. She loves her cat tunnel! She also LOVES plastic bags but I am way too worried she would strangle herself so I have to put them up. This tunnel makes that nice crinkle sound that she loves. It's a compromise! HA!

"If I fits, I sits!"

Last week I had a lovely little shipment from The Container Store with a pristine box. This was the perfect size and it was love at first sight!

So I made a joke to the hubs the night before that I might "bling" out her box since I was trying to be more crafty this summer. So this happened...

Hubs took over my job. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if Izzy liked it so much. She sort of stopped playing with it as much. Needless to say on cleaning day we ended up pitching it out. It was fun while it lasted.

Which leads me to the fun we had this weekend. We are obviously huge party people on the weekend. Last night Izzy kept trying to grab my hair tie off of the coffee table (she has a weird obsession with these and we find them all over the floor! I swear I pick them up!). So hubs decided to have some more fun...

He thinks he is so crafty after watching me all summer... nothing like some ribbon hanging from my family room ceiling with one of her jingle balls on the end and... at last! The amazing hair tie!

Hard to see it but she has hit it and it's swinging!

Hours of fun! We eventually added a second hair tie and then she attacked my bobby pins so one was added. She tired out soon after.

This was my creation over the weekend! I took some quotes I loved and typed them up over a fun background. I bought cheap Dollar store frames, spray painted them and voila! Cute pictures frames for my classroom. Izzy enjoyed them too!

She may look angry but this is her begging me to pet her. :)

Now you probably know way more than you wanted to about our little obsession with Izzy & Ellie. Hopefully I'll have some real pics next week to share with you with a few less animal pics. :) 

Tuesday Made It (Freebie!)

It has been such a busy day for me today as I try to get as much stuff done before school starts as I can. We do not have students until August 14, however as of August 1 I have to be back at school for Language Arts meetings. I would really like to just get everything created, laminated, etc. before then so that it is all ready to go up in my classroom. :)

So yesterday I made some table numbers to hang from the ceiling over my desks. I liked the blue but thought that they might not be the exact blue that matches my other classroom stuff. Therefore, I also made the green and linked them up in my last post.

At my school we have to post our starter, exit slip, outcome, agenda, etc. We also have to have CHAMPS posted on our board. So I made these quickly last night:

 

These will be cut out on cardstock, laminated and then I put magnets on the back for on my whiteboard. 

The blue Moroccan tile CHAMP cards can be downloaded free HERE

The green Moroccan tile daily starter, agenda, exit slip, outcome and date can be downloaded for free Here.

I have also been getting some images and quotes ready for my bulletin board on the memoir Warriors Don't Cry. This is my exploratory class that I am teaching this year. I will teach the unit 4 times to 4 different classes this school year. I thought having one bulletin board up all year with pictures about the Little Rock Nine will be great to have as a reference for the kids. I also have purchased a few books to display in the front of the classroom so that they can look through them whenever they have some free time to get a sense of what life was like in 1957 and during segregation. I absolutely love teaching this book and my class I taught it to loved it in the past. I am super excited to be teaching this again!

The last thing I have been working on today is finding some uplifting quotes to put in my dollar store frames that I purchased. I have spray painted the frames to match my classroom colors and now I just need the quotes to pop in them. I'll keep you posted on what I finally decided on using.

Tomorrow will probably be another Teacher Resource Center day so I can laminate my many items. I'm hoping to take some pictures (if I remember) so that I can share this fabulous place with y'all.

Monday Made It (Freebie!)

I am so excited about my Monday Made It item! I wanted to make some really cute Table Signs to hang in my classroom. After perusing the internet I finally decided I would just make them myself.

 

I made a large circular table sign to hang over clusters of desks. I think this will especially be helpful for our Interactive Notebook Groups. I intend to print them, cut them out, put some solid white cardstock behind them, laminate them, hold punch them and hang them with ribbon! Wow...I still have a lot of work to do! HAHA

 

Here is a quick pic of what they look like:

I have uploaded the document to Teachers Pay Teachers for free so you can get them too if you like them! Get Them By Clicking Here or For Green Click Here

 

Let me know what you think! This is the first time I have ever uploaded an item I have made to TPT so I would love the feedback if you do download them.

Monday Made It

I wanted to join in on today's Monday Made It!

First thing I received this morning was an e-mail from Vistaprint with a coupon for 50% off items and 50% off 7-day shipping! I have been using Vistaprint since I started teaching. They may some great items, many of which are free so long as you pay the shipping! I love Vistaprint!

Here is what I made today:

Free address labels with my name on them. Sometimes the kids will take a stapler to their desk or another teacher will need to borrow a hole punch, stapler, etc. I thought these would be great to label my items so that they find their way back to my classroom.

 

 

 

 

 I also ordered a free small free banner. This has the classroom blog address on it for my students/parents but it up for on here. I try to put several reminders around the classroom. I also try to choose the neutral colors so that I can hopefully reuse this banner for a few school years in the event that I want to change my classroom theme colors.

 

 

This is just a free bumper sticker I made. I have two more that I ordered last year. This has the classroom blog address on it, but I covered it up. Again, I tried to pick something neutral that I can hopefully use for years to come.

 

 



Probably my favorite thing that I ordered was this postcard! I purchased 100 of them for a little over $12! My goal this year is to have more student responsibility and to take some of that off of my plate. I am going to have a student help take attendance every day. Their job is to write the student name on the other side and put it on my desk. I will then enter attendance for the class period and at the end of the day staple/paper clip this post card to their work and put it in the "absent" crate.

 

 



This is the back of the postcard. I could've added more than the 3 assignments, however I did not want to cram my handwriting onto tiny lines. I also wanted to add the "additional notes" area in case there was something that I needed to explain. At the bottom of the postcard I put the classroom blog address again to remind them to check it so that they can keep up with class. I try to put this on everything so that the kids will utilize it! I erased it for posting online. I will probably order more later in the school year as needed.

 

The absent crate has not been created yet, however I have several extra crates in my classroom. I was inspired by this pin on pinterest but can't find the original pinner to give credit to.

 

 

 

If you know who created this please let me know! I love that everything is organized alphabetically by last name. With 5 classes to teach this will probably be the easiest method to use and I can then reuse them again next year!!!

 

So that was what I spent some time working on today. I found a lot of other free goodies (pens, post-its, etc.) but you can only order 2 free at a time! I will purchase freebies with my next order.

 

 

I also started another project around 10pm last night but it is not yet complete. I will post pictures when it is finished! :)

 



Classroom Decor

This has been my first summer that I have actually taken off and not picked up a summer job and I am loving it! I have had so much time to plan lessons, organize units, and, of course, get decorations ready for my new classroom!

Pinterest is a dream for teachers! It is so easy for me to spend a few hours looking at amazing lesson ideas, crafts to make, etc. Throughout the school year I created a pin board called "Summer Projects Home & Classroom" of ideas and inspiration for the new school year. Over the summer I have tried to get some of these projects done so that I can make my classroom more comfortable for my students.

Here are a few things that I have made over the summer so far for my classroom:

 

This is a really cute (and giant!) wreath I made to go on the wall in my classroom. I saw this pin on pinterest of this wreath from The Simply Scientific Classroom and had to make it! The curtains I bought for my classroom last year are green and white polka dot and I had also purchased blue and green crates from Target. I love the two colors together because they are not too feminine or too masculine for all of my students. The wreath was perfect because it had pops of pink and black in it. This picture is a little dark because it was taken at night, but I will show better pics once my classroom is all arranged.

 

I found a blog tutorial by Miss Kopy Kat on how to make this spiral deco-mesh wreath. It was too easy not to at least attempt it and I love how well it turned out!

 

 

To make this you will need:

• 16" wreath wire frame from the floral department $3.99
• 4 rolls of deco-mesh in your colors (mesh is 21" wide and 10" yards long) Note: Yes, you will use almost all of this on the wreath if you want it to look full!!!
• Black pipe cleaners (also called chenille now (really?!? when did that happen?)

This was even easier for me to make because my husband helped hold the spirals while I twisted them with the pipe cleaners (note: I put on a really good move to help pass the time and appease the spouse and lower the grumbling) and put them on the wire wreath.

 

 

 

 

Another item I made this summer was the Teacher's Toolbox!

 

I am in love with how it turned out! I first saw this post on Fun in Room 4B's blog and knew I had to make one! The drawers of my desk are always full of these random items still in their boxes but they take up so much space and they are not always readily available. This was such a fun craft to make! I did have to order the toolbox from Lowe's because my local home improvement stores were not carrying this item on the shelf. I spray painted it black (note: make sure you spray the whole box first with a primer so that the spray paint will stick!) and let it dry. I used Fun in Room 4B's template for the box and just customized some of the labels that I thought would be more useful for me.




One of the most time consuming tasks for me was making my hall passes and plaque for on the wall. I got the idea after seeing a pin on pinterest that connected to Miss Jenning's Hall Passes. I wanted something similar for my own classroom for when I simply don't have time to fill out an agenda for a student to go to the bathroom because I'm in the middle of teaching or for when they have to go to the office/nurse, etc. I wanted to make sure I did this in the same blue and green theme of my classroom with maybe a pink pass or some black here or there.

It took a lot of work...

and a few days to let the paint coats set before I could add another paint color. I bought everything at Michael's craft store. I bought the wood plaque sign and spray painted it black. I then used stencils to add my pink letters after it had dried, HOWEVER because the black paint had not been painted over it was still sticky and lifted up some of the black paint. I then had to go back in and hand paint the pink lettering and touch up the black plaque.

 I also added a few polka dots in green and blue. I learned the easiest trick ever for how to add polka dots from pinterest. Use the eraser side of a pencil! DUH!!! This made the perfect sized polka dots. Even my husband was asking how I got them so perfect.

I also made the READ letters to go on the wall in my classroom library. They are originally posted by Queen of the First Grade Jungle. I don't have a close-up of them yet but will add one once they are on my classroom wall. I love them!

The hall passes are a little bit of work but so cute! I used one hall pass like this last year. The wood signs are $0.79 each! Such a steal! By the end of the year last year one student had dropped the pass and part of it had broken off but I'm not going to complain when they are so cheap and accidents happen.

I always feel guilty making a student use one of their personal hall passes from their agenda (students at my school get 10 hall passes each 9 weeks) if they have to go to the office or to see the nurse. I like to have something that I can quickly grab and let them go. I also noticed that several kids wanted to go to the library last year towards the end of class. I HATED to make them use a personal pass because I am the Language Arts teacher and who am I to discourage a love for reading? That is when these passes come in handy.

I painted each of them with acrylic paint that was on sale at Michael's for $0.49 a bottle. It took about 3 coats to really get a good color and to make sure that you could not see the wood grain through the paint. I then used black acrylic paint to write on the passes. Obviously, from the picture above, you can tell that I did not use a stencil. I learned my lesson with the wood plaque and was weary of doing this again. Next year I might try to just buy a fine print paint sharpie to do this.

My name is on the back of the passes.

My intention is to paint a layer on all of these to seal the paint and to get rid of the sticky feel this week. I will then loop ribbon through the passes and my husband is going to put 6 knobs on the "Mrs. Finley" plaque to hang on my wall. I also bought a picture hanging kit at Bed, Bath & Beyond for $3.99 that holds up to 30 pounds to put on the back of the sign so that I can easily hang this in my room.

My masterpieces drying:

That has been the majority of the crafting for the month of June. I intend to do a few more projects before school starts.

A few more things I have bought for my classroom:

Our school has tiled classrooms. Last year one of the teachers that was retiring gave me some foam mats that link together for in my reading corner. The kids seemed to think it was okay, however I was annoyed at how dirty it always looked (I ask my students to take off shoes and just wear socks in this area) and how small it was. This year I wanted a carpet remnant. I ended up buying one that was unbound to go in my classroom for $83. Although this was a little expensive it is a 12 x 9 piece of carpet and I intend to use it for many years to come! I'll post some pictures later of it in my classroom.


I also bought this futon at a garage sale for $45! Such a steal!

This is going to go in my reading area at school! I am going to wash the cover and then put a fitted sheet over it. I may need to add something to the cushioning to make it a little more plush. I think the minions will love it!


I also would like to add some table lamps around the room. I am not a big fan of the fluorescent lighting. I really do think it gives me headaches during the school year and so I prefer to always leave one set of them off or even completely off (depending on what the students want). I think adding some lamps around the room will make the ambiance more cozy and, hopefully, lead to less headaches.