Monday Made It

This past week has been kind of blah for me for some reason.  I AM enjoying my summer vacation, but I have not been motivated to do much of anything.  Today I am feeling a bit better (even made it to Body Pump this morning) so hopefully it was just a short thing that has passed.  Anyway, enough of that and on with the things I did manage to accomplish! I am linking up with 4th Grade Frolics for Monday Made It.

This year I have decided to match my classroom to my blog.  I know, I know, maybe a little bit overboard, but I like it, so don't judge! LOL!  Anyway, I've gotten started with an alphabet display and numbers for my clock.

I wanted to hang them up, but they weren't finished cleaning up my classroom yet.  It looked like this when I went in.

I am thinking I will hang the alphabet on this wall, but I'm not 100% sure since my word wall is going on the opposite wall.  Decisions, decisions.

The other thing I made this week were my business cards for the upcoming Teachers Pay Teachers conference.  I am so excited and can't wait to meet all of my teaching blog besties in real life!

They came out pretty cute if I do say so myself... I ordered them from Zazzle and I am very impressed with the quality and the ship time was AMAZING!  I wasn't expecting to get them until at least July and they came in less than a week!

What are you making this week? Link up and share!

Made It Monday - How to Build Your Own Reading Ottomans For Your Classroom Student Project

I purchased some small reading Ottomans from Wal-Mart last year and they were broken during the first month that I had them.  One of my parents offered to take them home to try to repair them.  The repair never happened, but what did was so much better.  The couple came into our classroom to help us make our own.  The kids had a blast and learned so much from the experience.  Students from other classes peeked into our room and said, "You have woodshop in your class? Lucky!"  Here are a few of the pictures of the work in progress along with the final products.

Here is the link to the directions.

I am linking up with 4th Grade Frolics for Monday Made It!  Stop by and see what everyone else made!

Monday Made It

 

Well, I haven't had much time to make anything (except for my classroom a mess - lol!).  I am moving into a new room that used to be the staff room, so there is a ton of junk and professional reading material that I've had to pack up before I could unpack my stuff.  I've been working on it for two days straight (yes I went in on Sunday) and I still don't feel like I've made a dent in it :(  I did manage to get my desk area together (really a table) but, that is about it.

 

I did need to take a short break from packing and unpacking, so I decided to work on these:

 

(still in progress)

 

 

(This one is complete)

 

I will be painting two more and will be using them for something special inspired by Pinterest.  When I finish I will show you the final project along with the pin that inspired it.  I can't wait to see the finished product!

 

I also worked on a game for my massive Place Value Unit- I hope to finish it up this weekend so it is ready for the beginning of school.  It is currently 220 pages!

 

 

And those are my Monday Made Its!  What did you make this week?

 

Monday Made It

When I was a little girl, I carried around a Snoopy doll everywhere I went.  I might have even said that I was going to marry Snoopy.  So you could imagine my reaction when I saw the Peanuts line from Really Good Stuff.

Yes, I screamed and shouted really loud and asked hubby if he minded me changing my theme again this year.  He agreed and I ordered tons a few of the things they had.

But... I have a few classroom items that I use that I wanted to match, so for today's Monday Made It I wanted to show a few of the things I have been working on.  I haven't printed anything out or hung them up yet, but I have finished a few things on the computer.



The first thing I made were schedule cards.  My kiddos are constantly asking, "What time is recess?  What special do we have?" With schedule cards I can just direct their attention to the board.  They have to solve the elapsed time on their own!

 

 

I also use Whole Brain Teaching in my classroom, so I made the 5 rules Snoopy style as well.  Here are two of them:

 

They came out pretty stinkin' cute in my humble opinion!

 

I have also been hard at work on my place value unit for the beginning of the year.  It will be available at both TpT and Teachers Notebook when I finally finish it!

 

It has I Can Statements

 

Vocabulary/Word Wall Cards

Lesson Plans

Games

 

 

And Assessments

 

 

I will let you know when I finish it... It is a monster of a project.  Also, don't forget to enter my contest to win a TpT gift certificate and other great prizes!

Setting Up A Teacher's/ Life Binder - Monday Made It

School's out for me, which only means one thing - summer and time for Monday Made It with 4th Grade Frolics!

I had been wanting to have a teacher's binder or a control journal a'la Flylady for some time now, but I just have never gotten around to doing it until recently. I wasn't sure that I wanted to keep track of 2 different binders for home and school, so I decided to put them together.

I made the following categories:

• Weekly Worksheet (I got this idea from The Together Teacher). I love that it has a place to put priorities for classroom, school, and personal all in one.  At the of this section I also printed out a Weekly-Round up Agenda (again from The Together Teacher) and put it in a sheet protector.  I have been trying to get better about setting aside some time on Sundays to follow this agenda to get everything organized and planned for the week.

• Calendar - I actually keep several calendars in here.  First, I printed out a Comprehensive Calendar from The Together Teacher here. Then, I added my school monthly calendar that the school sends out to all of the parents.  I also have my boys' baseball schedules and my gym's class schedule.

 

• Lesson Plans
• Standards
• Class Data
• Student Info - I added a set of alphabetical dividers so that I can keep information on each of my kiddos next year.  I have had a few times this year where I was asked about a particular student during collaboration or with meetings with my principal and I would have loved to have this on hand.
• School Meetings
• Misc

My boys keep asking me where "the binder" is so they can check on their baseball schedules and other events.  You know when your children use an organizational tool it is definitely a keeper!

I am sure that I will continue to tweak it a bit until it is perfect (or close to!) but so far, I am loving it!

Do you have a teacher's binder?  What do you use it for?

I am also linking up with two of my favorite bloggers Fun in Room 4B and Ladybug's Teacher Files for their Optimum Organization linky party. They are sharing tons of organizing ideas and I am loving learning from all of those uber organized teachers out there!