Monday Made It!

Ohmygracious!   It is now Sunday at midnight and I have been painting all day!  I think this will be my last Monday Made It for a while.  School starts on Aug. 9th so I need to get in program mode.  I'm incorporating Daily 5, Debbie Diller's math stations, and a new behavior plan all this year.  I may be crazy..or will be by September!
But it's been fun!

This is my take on the READ sign that everyone did this summer it seems.  I brought in my star theme and those bright colors I love.  The D is still wet!

Next, I have this horrible problem going on by my classroom door.  I used to have one of those rotary pencil sharpeners. Hated it!  It would only sharpen one side of the pencil.  I finally asked the custodian to just take it down and throw it away.  That left me with this ugly wood block.  

I wish I had taken a close up pic of it.  This is actually a zoomed in shot of that whole side of the room.  I found these fab felt stars at Walmart and planned to make a bathroom pass holder out of the star.  I could never get it just right.  This morning on my Walmart trip (I really need to buy some Walmart stock), I found this little chalkboard.  I painted it and painted it and painted it.  Geez Louise, I think it took 6 coats of white to cover the chalkboard part!

Then I realized that I could cut up the felt star and glue it to the back of the chalkboard!  This was the finished product.

I'm not really happy with the writing but I dared not mess with it again!  Haha!  My friend Nancy is a crafting goddess so I'm going to make her fix the writing.  
I painted 2 huge clothespins and labeled them Boys and Girls.  I may ditch these for smaller ones later if they don't work how I imagine.  The small green clothespins are for trips to the library.  We are allowed to send 3 kiddies to the library at a time.  I'm going to attach this to the ugly wood block!  

It is now Monday!  We just got back from the vet and for once this month it was less than 100 bucks!  Yay!  Miss Bella got her stitches out and some meds for her swollen knee.   Bless her lol.  


Go link up with Tara!

Monday Made It!

I know I'm breaking the rules with two posts today but....It's time for Monday Made It!

I have to tell y'all that my mother thinks it's hilarious that I'm becoming crafty.  I used to moan and groan growing up when she'd drag me into the craft stores.  I'm still a craft newbie, though, so keep that in mind as you view my projects for this week.

First, I wanted to add a lamp to the counter behind where my reading group table is going to be.  I found a simple red lamp at Family Dollar for 6 dollars.  It was okay as it was, but I wanted to kick it up a notch.  I had the ribbon and polka-dot paper already.

I'm surprised no one heard me cussing from where you are as I ironed the ribbon and tried to hot glue the ribbon on straight.  I DO NOT IRON...I fluff in the dryer lol.  I think that was the worst part!  The before picture is of better quality so you might think it looked cuter before I messed with it.  

I have low crafter self esteem.  :-)

Second, I found these cute star patterned buckets in the Target Dollar Spot.  My classroom theme is stars so I wanted to re-do my pencil buckets.  Nothing special about these--just proof that I made something! 

The third bucket will be my Top of the Chart bucket.  Kids that get to top or off of the chart on my new clip chart system will get to put their names in for a daily/weekly prize drawing.

Speaking of behavior clip chart!  I worked on this all day yesterday and asked for opinions on it last night..  I changed a few things based on suggestions and printed it out.  I started to put it together and noticed something else that bugged me.  Here it is..

Pardon the pic!  It's on the dining room floor and I'm standing on a ladder.

  

There's too many dark colors on top!  I need to swap some colors out, don't you think?  I may take one Good Day or Great Job out too.  It's so tall!  Any opinions are appreciated!

Go link up with Tara and see what everyone else made this weekend!

Don't call Hoarders!

Don't call Hoarders on me please!  I have been trying to clean out my house and get some organization at last.  There are some things I've come across that have made me shake my head in wonder.  I didn't know I was that big of a pack rat!

I found these in a cabinet and almost tossed them.  Ever since I got my iPod I don't have much use for these even when I do burn my own cds.  I had quite a collection!

I thought about making picture frames for kid work next year.  But then I got some polka dot duct tape!  Yahoo!  I ended up making number tiles for my kids to practice skip counting next year.  

I put 2's on one side and 5's on the other side.  I think they turned out super cute!  That tape is so fun!  I got zebra print, paint splattered, and silver.  

I spent the day lounging by the pool reading the latest Sookie Stackhouse book.  Anyone read those?  I have a thing for paranormal romance.  Don't think less of me, haha!  

Tomorrow I'm taking my sweet mama shopping....pray for me.  She HATES to shop, but she's lost so much weight that new clothes are a must.  I LIVE to shop!  I don't know where I got the shopping gene!  

Do you ever start to blog and lose all sense of where to put commas?  Or am I the only one who worries about such things?  **sigh**

Much love,

Fun with Bottle Caps!

Good evening!  I hope all of you are having a fabulous week so far.  I'm officially sick of rain.  I have a beautiful crystal clear swimming pool in my backyard, but it won't stop raining!  I'm becoming cranky and grumpy.  Hopefully I'll be able to soak up some rays tomorrow and get back to some trashy romance novels.  I have my priorities, right?  Ha!

I'm babysitting for my friend who is Florida this week. Her doggy, Fletcher, is PRECIOUS and is Bella's boyfriend.  They wake me nightly chasing each other around the kitchen table.  This was my view as I ate dinner tonight.

They look like they are STARVING, don't they?  Haha!

About a month before school let out, I noticed my kiddos were throwing lots of water bottle lids away.  I let them have water bottles at their seats because our classroom is honestly about a football field away from the restroom/water fountain.  I saw a pin using bottle caps and had the kiddies (and their parents) start saving for me.  Unfortunately I didn't apparently pin that pin so my brain flat-lined on what to with them.  Oh, bless me...

This was my water bottlecap booty before.

My first project I decided to do with the caps was a making words activity.  I cleaned the caps and then applied 3 sets of alphabet stickers.  I wanted to be sure we had plenty of letters.  Then I Modge Podged the stickers on so my little darlings won't be able to peel off the stickers.

This is how they turned out!

This is how the sheet will be used.

Here is the sheet if you'd like to use it! I know it's not lined up perfectly.  My first graders won't care!  Mostly I'm very particular, but not tonight it seems.  C'est la vie! Click the pic to download (if Google Docs is cooperating).

I had plenty of caps left over so I decided to use them to help my firsties practice their numbers.  Several had much trouble this year identifying numbers after 50 and especially after 100.  I just wrote the numbers on with a sharpie and then Modge Podged over the number to prevent rubbing off.  The idea is that they should be able to put the caps on this chart in order and then write them on another chart.  

I'm very frustrated with this chart.  It needs to be a bit bigger for the caps to fit perfectly, but I absolutely could NOT get the boxes any bigger. I took the margins away.  I tried it in Word and in PowerPoint.  Grr!! I'm sorry!  I will take this to school and slightly blow it up before I laminate these.  Give me some tips if you know how I could have made them bigger.  I hope you can use it anyhow!  Click the pic for the Google Doc.  I hope it works..Google Docs has not been nice to me tonight!

All in all, I had a very productive day!  I didn't even nap today!  Haha!

Are you working on any projects?  

Much love,