Monday Made It- August 1st

  What?!? August 1st? How the heck did that happen? I am not ready for August yet. We only have two weeks before school starts again and I am so not ready.  

  Today I'm linking up with Tara over at 4th Grade Frolics for Monday Made It! I always love checking out all the creative things people are making/doing for their classrooms.  

  I'm seeing all these fun teacher planners out there and loving them! I checked out ordering some stickers for my new planner and they just didn't fit my needs. I needed more of this and less of that. So.... I stretched myself and figured out how to create my own! Oh I am one happy girl now with a happy planner! I did some online research on how to print, scan and then cut out the stickers. I wasn't about to hand cut all of these cute stickers! No way. So after a few attempts I figured out those sweet little kiss cuts and offset lines and I've got my very own custom planner stickers! Whoop!

I shared them on Instagram and by request, I've added them to my TpT store! If you are looking for custom made planner stickers that match your district's calendar and needs exactly, then these are for you! AND they are on sale right now with the big TpT sale! You can check them out here.

I am excited to say that I finally finished my curriculum development class last week! Yahoo! I focused on sight word development for my deaf/hard of hearing students. 

 

For extra enrichment, I made a new sight word game crate! I took all of these ideas I found on Pinterest and made 20 sight word games for my students to play this next school year. We focus a lot on sight words, so I know my kiddos will love these activities. 

In order to incorporate some more hands-on sight word activities, I plan on playing a sight word game at least twice a week. To make it more exciting, I made some craft sticks with all of the sight word activities.  We'll randomly pull a stick to choose the game.   

If you'd like to make your own sight word game crate/box.... here's a little freebie for you. Grab your own sight word game sticks here.    All of the ideas for my game crate came from these awesome pins here on my Sight Word board on Pinterest.   Have a great week everyone!   

Monday Made It- July 4th Edition

Hey! Hey! It's summer time! Well.... for me summer school is still in full swing and I have not official started my summer quite yet. But it's coming very soon. I cannot wait!  

  Today I'm linking up with Tara over at 4th Grade Frolics for my first Monday Made It of the summer!  I found a little down time this weekend to make our Summer Bucket List board.    First off, I found a frame at the Goodwill. I took out the glass, spray painted it black and added some mesh chicken wire to the back. Then I realized our tiny clothes pins were not going to fit in the mesh, so I tied on some bakers twine in order to clip on our cards.  

 My girls and I sat down and thought about all the things we'd like to do this summer. They wrote on some Project Life tropical theme cards that I found on clearance at Joann's. My girls are 8 & 6 and I adore their little kid writing. I started to write on the cards as they dictated, but heck, why not have them write them out!?! I added the date that we completed that event at the bottom of the card. I think at the end of the summer I might make a little summer album with pictures and these cards. Super cute!

We clipped them onto the bakers twine. We didn't even have enough space for all the things they'd like to do! Apparently our summer is going to be pretty darn full!

  I have been pretty busy working on my Curriculum Development class for some extra units this summer. No rest I tell you! So I'll share a few things I've done for my class. I am working on putting together a sight word curriculum for my little guys moving up to my class. All of my students are deaf/hard of hearing so we don't spend very much time on phonics. =) It's all about sight words in my class.   

 I'm using Lavinia Pop's sight word readers, flip books, homework, and writing centers to create weekly sight word activities. I've paired them with nonfiction readers from Scholastic to also do some interactive reading. I was able to get all of my lesson plans done and submitted for my class. Boom. Done.  

I found some ready to print Read Every Day homework folder printables here. I've got my envelopes prepped and ready to go for the new school year along with my parent letter. Check that off the to-do list. Happy 4th of July everyone! I'm off to spend it with my family!

Monday Made It- August 10th

Ahhh.  My last week of summer vacation has arrived. *Insert solemn music here* I am getting my classroom ready as well as all of my curriculum for the school year this week. Fun! But for now, I'll show you what I made this past week!

I'm very excited about my pretty new student mailbox. I was pretty sick of the ugly green hanging files, so I covered them with scrapbook paper and added pretty new labels. Each side of the hanging file took one half sheet of black 12x12 paper on the bottom, and one sheet of patterned 12x12 paper on the top. I wasn't sure how much it would take to do the job, and could have made things a lot easier by getting enough patterned paper. But I didn't.... so I improvised. I added some white vinyl letters to the front of the file box using the silhouette, and done. Love, love, love the way it turned out.

This little stool sits at my writing area. The spray paint keeps chipping off, so I added some vinyl polka-dots and dressed it up. I seriously need my own Silhouette Cameo. Are you listening Santa? Or I could even partner with Silhouette America. I'm not picky. =)

Thanks to hosting #SPEDChatSaturday, I was able to get my mainstream notebooks ready for the school year. If you're a special ed teacher and want to see how I use these at the start of the school year, check out Saturday's post. 

 

This year I'm going to be coming up with 101 ways to use Post-it notes since I have a *slight* surplus in the classroom. (Due to my inability to check my whole cabinet before deciding I didn't have enough when I ordered supplies. I now have 1000's of them. No joke!) So I made these fun little IEP reminder sticky notes as well as my contact information on sticky notes for the mainstream teachers I work with. You can find these IEP reminders here on TpT as a freebie.

This is my favorite project from the week. It's obviously not for the classroom, but for home. I'm not a fancy, lots of jewelry kinda girl. But I have been adding to my collection recently and am trying to dress outfits up a bit more. So I needed a place to store all of my earrings and necklaces. I bought this $3.99 frame at the Goodwill. I spray painted it. My husband added some knobs and cut down the chicken wire for me. (By the way, the knobs cost more than the rest of the supplies combined! Geesh!) I added a little fabric to the back to match my bedroom. I love the way it turned out! Now clearly I need some more earrings to fill up all that empty space!

Okay, I'm on the home stretch. We'll see if I can get any real projects done this week with setting up the classroom and savoring the last few days of summer! That cute fabric garland is still on the to-do list!

Monday Made It- August 3rd

Hello August! How did you sneak up on us so fast?! I'm linking up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for her weekly Monday Made It, as I feverishly try and get things ready for my classroom. I went in yesterday and my room has not been cleaned. =( The carpets were wet, but nothing has been cleaned. Ugh. So here is a little peek at what I have been up to.

I have several very low readers in my class. Last year several of my older kiddos struggled to read our job chart. So I remade it this summer with clipart. I just love the way it turned out! I use clothes pins with name labels hot glued onto the pins. This job chart is apart of my new Simple Black and White Classroom Decor set that's on sale right now.

Those same kiddos that are having a hard time reading the job chart, also struggle with reading and writing their numbers. I really needed a reference for them to use whenever needed. So I created a number banner and hung it around my room. This was an empty space before, and now it is filled with something very useful (and cute) for my students. I just added the Number Banner to my TpT store yesterday. If you're looking for a specific color combo to match your classroom decor, just let me know.

I have a few little guys in my class coming in that cannot reach the soap at the sink. I've needed a stool for a while, so this week I made that happen. I got a little wooden stool from Joann's with a coupon and spray painted it black. Then I added my signature polka dots. That's my daughter, shown a little #redbootlove while I was taking pictures.

Each summer I donate the fabric and sew the quilt for Camp Hapitok. This is a summer camp for children with speech and language disorders. I worked there as a teen and as a staff member for many years. This summer I did a little consulting work and enjoyed being apart of it in a small way. Each camper and teen pair make a quilt square. On the last day they raffle off the quilt to one of the teen volunteers as a fundraiser. This is just my tiny little contribution to a program I hold dear to my heart. 

Whew! What a busy week! Throw a little mini vacation in there and I'm not sure how I got it all done. Two weeks until school starts. Ahhhh!

Monday Made It- July 27th

It's Monday again! I'm linking up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for her weekly Monday Made It. It was a busy week, but I did get a few things done for the classroom.

This week I saw these adorable little student birthday gifts that Learning is Something to Treasure had on her blog a while back. She even has the free printable! I got the cups and lids at our local Smart and Final. I took advantage of the free candy this week at Party City and filled the cups with a variety of candy. I then topped them off with a black and white zebra pencil for a 'straw', and a red Tootsie Pop for the cherry look. They turned out super cute and I know my students will love the goodies!

I am loving the many uses of vinyl in the classroom! The possibilities are endless! This week I created vinyl name labels for each of my student's pencil boxes. (And for the group of kindergarten students I work with in the afternoons during our Fairview rotation time. They share a box of supplies.) Then my daughters wanted in on the action, so they got some girly little hearts as well. I really need to invest in a Silhouette of my own. For now I am borrowing a friend's. 

While I had the Silhouette out, I also finished up this project. I have had these little foam squares from the Target dollar spot for a while. I decided to make a new alphabet center out of them for those new kinders coming up that I will be working with in the afternoons. I added some vinyl letters (See! The possibilities are endless!) to the squares. Now it's an upper and lowercase alphabet matching center! Super simple and quick. 

This project has been sitting in my living room for the past month and I am happy it's finally done! I had so many literature units that they no longer fit in my two crates. Really, the problem was that I kept too many copies of copies of copies. (Anyone else have that issue?) So I went through every single file and cleaned them out. It's amazing how much space I have now! I made some pretty new labels for the files and separated out the seasonal literature books that I use. Those dividers are super simple, but will be quicker for me when I am looking for a specific theme book. Another summer organization project complete.

My to-do list is still pretty long for my summer projects. But I am checking them off one by one.

Monday Made It- July 20th

Hey everyone! I'm linking up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for her weekly Monday Made It. This is the first time linking up since last summer! Boy have I been a slacker. I only got a few little projects done this week since I was working Summer School up until Wednesday. Our laminator at the office was also broken, so that stopped quite a few of my projects dead in their tracks. Hopefully they will get it fixed and I'll be sharing those projects next week. 

First up, I made myself a little savings jar for Vegas 2016. I watched all the fun that was happening at the TpT Vegas conference last week and decided I need to be there next year. Which means I have to start saving now! So I got a little glass jar at Michaels. I made a little cut file and cut out the shape on vinyl on the Silhouette. Now I can start collecting my pennies. Here is the cut file if you want to make a savings jar as well. 

I got this idea and free printable from Fun in First. It's a super cute first day of school activity and goody bag for your students. I filled the goody bag with Orange Crush mix in, orange straw, a Reese's peanut butter cup and an orange balloon. My students are going to love this and it will give us a welcome back activity to do first thing in the morning on the first day of school.

I was also able to finish up my Daily Folders for my students. I've used this home to school system for several years and it works really well! You can read more about how I use them here. This product is from Clutter Free Classroom. I just adjusted it to add Spanish for my Spanish speaking families. I use the sturdy plastic three prong folders and they last all year long without any issues. I still need to get my behavior calendars updated and our school calendar printed to add to the pockets. 

Last up, is my teacher binder. I was really sad to see that the seller who I got my teacher binder from several years ago was not updating it this year. That lead me on a hunt for a new one. Wow! There are a million out there on TpT and it was really hard to choose! I ended up picking the Editable Teacher Binder by Joey Udovich. I loved the editable calendar for the year and there were so many pieces to this binder that I didn't realize I needed until I had them. =) The nice part is there is also pages to make a sub binder as well. So not only did I update my teacher binder, but I updated my sub binder too! Now they are both cute and coordinating. We know that makes my teacher heart happy!

Now that I look back on the week, I actually did get quite a bit done. For summer that is. =) Have a good week everyone!