Monday Made It 8/3/15

I have a quick Monday Made It to share because it was so obvious when I saw them that I HAD to do it!!!

I found these super cute tins in the Dollar Spot at Target.

 SO I naturally felt compelled to buy 2 along with some letter stickers and make ......

New Sharpened and Not Sharpened cups.

What else are you suppose to do with pencil tin cups? Put pencils in them of course.

I also found these cuties in the dollar spot and I love them so much I just had to share.

I couldn't believe it when I found these wood, canvas looking signs in the Dollar Spot (so they were $3, but that's ok). I had to have them and I plan to put them on the window ledge in my class, behind where my co-teacher has her small group table.

Then I found this cute school house shaped chalkboard sign, that I plan to write an inspirational quote on and put on the ledge behind my desk. 

If you have any suggestions for inspirational quotes, I'll take any suggestions. Look for these gems when I post my classroom reveal in late August/early September.

Remember if you made something link up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics and share what you made!!!

August Currently

It's the beginning of August, which for many means school is right around the corner, I'll be singing that song with the September Currently, but for now a few more weeks of summer & a link up with Farley from Oh' Boy 4th Grade for August Currently.

I'm listening & trying to watch the 80s movie Little Monsters with Fred Savage & Howie Mandel. I loved this movie as a kid & when my sister told me it was OnDemand, I had to watch it.

I'm loving that it's still summer. I still have 4 more days of summer school left & I'm already in back-to-school mode, but it's still a nice feeling knowing there's nothing I absolutely have to do (except read through my loooong list of summer reading).

I'm already thinking about my writing curriculum & how my co-teacher and I should approach writing this year. After reading Stephanie from 3rd Grade Thoughts different posts on how she does writing in her classroom, I was TOTALLY inspired. If you haven't ever read them you can find them here (scroll to the bottom), she has some great stuff happening in her room.

I'm really wanting to work on my classroom. We moved to a different room for this school year & this is what it looked like a few weeks ago...

Luckily it doesn't look like this anymore. It might actually be worse, since we've started rearranging & unpacking. My library is done & all the boxes are at least unpacked (for the most part). But I have that extreme teacher urge to be in there & organize everything.

I'm needing to have my hubby make me some crate seats for my room. My co-teacher & I acquired a round, blue table from a teacher that was transferred to another school; however, it use to be a pre-school table so it's very low, too low for an adult to work at, so we're thinking of making it a table for our writing center. I also happen to have a lot of crates in my room, which I stored in the closet last year; however, in my new room my closet isn't as big. I'm also all about alternative seating (if you can see the orange ball in the corner of one of the pics above, it's a yoga ball that my kiddos can sit on). We also have multiple chairs in the library, as well as oversized pillows to go with our small IKEA end tables that kids can sit at. As long as you're working I don't care where you sit. 

For my B2S RAK I was thinking of making these for my team and a few other colleagues.

From Inspiration for Moms

There's always a day we could all use a little chocolate.

If you're heading back to school I hope you have a great year, if not enjoy your last weeks of summer.

Five for Friday 7/10/15

First week of summer school done...4 weeks to go and to end this week a little weekend away with my hubby. So while he takes a little nap before dinner I'm linking up with Kacey from Doodle Bugs Teaching.

This was my first week of summer school and my Wednesday I felt like I had finally gotten into a grove, not bad, the 3rd day. You can check out my Monday Made It post to see some of the centers I made for my kiddos. I really should be figuring out what I'm going to do next week, but I'll save that for tomorrow. This is my problem when I don't have to write formal plans, I end up taking it day-by-day and I really don't want to. I want to have a plan for the week. Maybe I should say it again & I'll actually do it "I want to have a plan for the week!"

 My hubby is testing for his paramedic test so I went with him for the weekend to New Hampshire, so he could take his test Sunday morning. I figured this would be a good chance for us to spend some time away since we didn't do much for our 5 year anniversary.

I couldn't get the video I took on the ride to save right to my computer, so this is a pic from Wikipedia but this highway we took the Merritt Parkway is absolutely beautiful. There are trees like this along the whole thing and no trucks are allowed on this road. It was such a nice ride up this road.

 Since we're away for a little mini-vaca I've decided that we are not eating anywhere that we could eat at back at home. As soon as we walked into the hotel they had an i-Pad with a site of places to eat, things to do, etc. and right away a BBQ place caught my eye (I'm a little obsessed with BBQ lately...ribs & pulled pork especially).

So I think we'll be eating at this place when my hubby gets up from his nap.

At some point tomorrow I think we'll be stopping here...The Red Arrow Diner.

 They were featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives some years ago, but I'm all about trying the places that Guy Fieri has featured, especially if I can drive there or I'm in the area.

I'm thinking maybe we'll stop for a late night bite to eat tomorrow night after we go to a comedy show. I'm hoping there won't be as much of a line then.

The great thing about my hubby have to do some school stuff while we're away is I get to READ!!!!

I've brought 3 books with me....just in case, but currently I'm half way through Nora Roberts The Liar, so I can't wait to just sit & be alone and do some heavy duty reading. 

A little boring this week, but definitely relaxing this weekend!!!

Have a great weekend & week!!!

Sight Word Activities & Freebies - Monday Made It 7/6/15

It's Monday and my first day of summer school, and because of that I was a busy bee this weekend making some centers for my kiddos, so I thought I would link up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for her Monday Made It linky.

Since I started summer school today I had to prepare some centers over the weekend.

I know my kiddos need work on their sight words and I needed a way to assess their current knowledge, but I didn't want to use flash cards. So I created a powerpoint for each of the Dolch sight words that automatically transitions after 3 seconds, since they should be able to name the word within 3 seconds. If you think you could use this you can get the file here from Google Drive.

Once I've assessed what words they know and what they need work with, I made a few activities or resources to help with that.

I made these sight word flip cards for each of the Dolch word sets (3rd grade isn't shown here, I know I won't need them this summer, so I just have to finish them before the school year starts). My kiddos can use them to read into Whisper Phones, write, or do another activity with. They are all color coded, so it's easy for me to tell a kiddo to grab the yellow words. You can grab yours here.

I also made Dolch Sight Word sticks to go with Reagan from Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits sight word stick center. You can read her post about them here. You can buy your copy of the center from her Tpt shop here. So to go with these I made the Dolch words so they would fit on popsicle sticks.

I sized the words to fit onto the popsicle stick. Cut them to fit, then used packing tape to secure them onto the popsicle sticks.

I put each set into a Crystal Light container & labeled the outside with what list it was. They are also color coordinated. You can grab your pre-sized Dolch lists here to fit on popsicle sticks of your own here.

The last thing I made for my kiddos to practice their sight words were shakers, since I had these old parmesan cheese containers laying around, so I cleaned them and got ready to put them to use.

I typed up the different Dolch lists and printed them on card stock. You can get your lists here and all you have to do is print them. 

Cutting them up was probably the most difficult part because it was time consuming and made my wrist hurt.

Here are some of the things I picked up to fill the containers with. I got salt, rice, small shell pasta, beads, pom-pons, and confetti. I got all of this stuff from the dollar store, except for the rice, but that was under a dollar from Wal-Mart.

I started by putting some of the words at the bottom of the container.

Then I added a layer of filler, in this photo it was pasta shells.

Then I added another layer of words.

Here's the finished product. Make sure to leave some room at the top so the kiddos can "shake it up!!!"

I finished them off by putting clear packing tap on the lid so the kiddos could open them. I also labeled them ( color coded), so we can easily identify which list is in which container.

I also made a shaker for addition and subtraction facts. Addition facts to sums of 20 and subtraction facts starting at 20. If you would like your copy you can grab them here. 

Here are all the shakers finished.

I hope you can use these freebies to help you make some of these activities. Enjoy!!!

Five for Friday 7/3/15

It's that time of the week...FRIDAY. I know that doesn't mean too much during summer break, isn't every day Friday? Anyway I'm linking up with Kacey from Doodle Bugs Teaching.

We lost out power AGAIN Sunday morning, so instead of sitting in the house, I took my little guy to breakfast, then we went to Target. Uh-oh!!! The Target I went to (there's 3 within 20 minutes of my house) had some back-to-school stuff out in their dollar spot. I might of gotten a little carried away, but you just never know what you might need during the upcoming school year. Plus I got some stuff for my little guy, like the pointer finger, dry erase board, & the box containers that the pails are sitting in. I just can't resist the Dollar Spot, but then again what teacher can?

I also won 2nd prize at a local Wendy's. My sister and I entered a drawing for beach prize packs. I won 2nd and she won 1st prize. I got a towel, camping chair, beach umbrella, cooler, and misc. toys. I never win anything so this was a nice surprise.

We took our little guy to play mini-golf, for the first time. He looked more like he was playing field hockey, the way he was chasing the ball, but that's ok, he loved it and was so proud whenever he got the ball in the hole.

Yesterday was my 5 year wedding anniversary. We've been together for 12 years, but only married for 5. It was a low key day, dinner our just the 2 of us, then we went to the drive-in and saw Jurassic World. Yes I said drive-in, a nearby town has one, which is the only one in the state apparently. It's a deal you can't beat, 2 new movies for the price of 1.

Cleaning up these old grated, parmesan cheese containers to make some sight word and fact shakers. Look for a Monday Made-It post next week about these & some freebies.

I hope everyone has a happy and safe 4th of July weekend.