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!

TPT, Facebook, and major rudeness!

This is absolutely not the post that I should be working on...  I'm procrastinating.  I should be working on my Thank You So VERY Much for the Awards post.  I have received the Lovely Blog, Versatile Blogger, and the Liebster award. I started the post three weeks ago when I got the first one and have been trying to find 35 blogs to nominate.  There are just so many good ones!  I'm going to cheat I think because I'm stressing over it!  So look for that post coming by midnight on Sunday.  I don't mean to be rude honestly!  I appreciate the awards so much. More than words can say!  I've just been a funk lately and feeling like I'm worthless.  

I've done a few things this weekend to help push me out of my funk.  The first is that I've opened a TPT store!  There is only one item listed--my star behavior clip chart (and it's free if you want it)!  

Here's my link:

The other project I've been working on today is to add a Facebook like box.  I've had a Facebook page for a little while but didn't tell anyone.  It's that worthless funk!  You've got to laugh that I liked myself.  Mine is one of the faces you see there!  

If you want to like me, it's over on the sidebar over there ---------->  

Educlips went live tonight.  It's been touted as Pinterest for teachers.  I tried it for a while, but it was very slow.  Probably too many users.  If you aren't familiar with Educlips, there's a link to it on my Facebook page.  Haha!  Gotcha!

The other happy for tonight is that Christie from First Grade Fever came to visit and actually followed me!  It's like a visit from a celebrity!  

I guess I should head to bed since I'm planning on being at Walmart at 6am.  I ran out of paint for my Monday Made It project and just couldn't drag myself out of the house today.  I'm going early in the am so I can take Bella with me and she won't have a heat stroke.  She's been a good girl and deserves a bye-bye trip.  And there will be fresh donuts...  Diets always start on Mondays, right?!  

Newbie Bloggers Blog Hop

Why does today feel like Saturday?  It has suddenly hit me that I really only have 1 more week of vacation until summer inservice starts.  Yikes!  Where did the summer go?!

Guess what??  I hit 100 followers last night!  I'm so excited!  I know numbers shouldn't matter, but we all watch them!  I'm thinking about what I want my first giveaway to be so stay tuned.  

I came across this blog hop while I was looking for people to nominate for an award.  I just had to join in!

Grade Three is the Place for Me is hosting a:

Click pic to visit her!

During this hop you need to share:

 1.  what state you are in

    2.  your current teaching position

    3.  your teaching experience

    4.  when you started blogging

    5.  share a blogging tip / blogging resource

My answers:

1. I live in East Tennessee.

2. I am happy to be teaching 1st grade again!

3.  This will be my 11th year in 1st.  I looped to 2nd with my firsties once.

4.  I started my blog in February but didn't start seriously until April.
5. I have learned so much from Kristen at  Ladybug's Teacher Files.  If you haven't watched her video tutorials, you definitely need to do so!  Also, Barbara from Grade ONEderful started a blog design business called: 

She redesigned my blog and was just amazing to work with!  Check her out if you want a redesign!  


Go join the hop!

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!

Picture Book Linky Party

Lindsey at The Teacher Wife is having a fun linky party!

.  Omigosh..I'm addicted to children's books so I'm LOVING this linky!  I have several new ones on my list just from everyone's posts.  

Here are mine:

1. You Will Be My Friend!  I found this book last year and it is so AWESOME!  It's about a bear named Lucy who wakes up one day and decides she's going to go find a new friend.  She has some trouble with this and goes through just about every emotion in speech bubble form.  It cracks me up to read it!

2.  This is a sweet story about a zookeeper who takes care of and plays with his animal friends everyday.  One day he gets sick and they come take care of him.  It's just a precious story about what true friendship is.

3. Okay, I'll admit it.  I love funny books.  This one is hilarious!  It's about a chick who knows the story so well that she keeps interrupting her dad.  It teaches about manners, but I love it because it's so fun to read.

4. This is a story about a possum named Epossumondas.  He's his mama and auntie's sweet little patootie but he's not very smart.  This is a Southern story and you have to read it with your best "hick" accent.  I'm from Tennessee so I have no trouble with this.  I do his voice very sloowly and southern, and the kids L-O-V-E it.  I bet I read this book 20 times this past year.  

They begged for it.  

I could go on forever, but those were my faves from last school year.  I can't wait to see everyone else's favorites.  Go link up with Lindsey!