Monday Made It!!

 This week I have Monday Made Its out the whazzooo!  I was a very busy girl last week, so here is a short list of what's on the blog today: 60th birthday party decor, Writers Workshop bulletin board, Journey's First Grade Weekly Target Homework, and my cute little burlap tassel banner!  Whew, get ready!

Last year I made a little WELCOME burlap banner for my classroom door.  It was cute, but totally thrown together at the last minute!  I had some scraps of fabric and burlap in our craft room, so I decided to get my craft on!

Here's what you need:

Scraps of fabric

Scraps of burlap

twine or jute rope

First thing you need to do is cut your fabric/burlap into strips.  I made little cuts on the edge of the fabric, then tore them into pieces. It was very easy and gave it that worn out look.

Next, I cut the burlap fabric into strips.  Make sure you do this outside, it can get messy!  If you have burlap ribbon, I think that would work great too!

Then I took strips of each fabric/burlap and stacked them on top of each other.  Fold it in the middle, then wrap a piece of jute rope around it and tie into a knot.  Make as many little bundles as you want, then string up on a long piece of jute rope.

My next Monday Made It is my Writer's Workshop bulletin 'board', which is really a funky angled wall!  The shape of my classroom is so crazy, it is pretty much a hexagon!  Here is a pic of my little writing corner.

I wanted to incorporate more chalkboard stuff in my ocean theme room this year, so I put black paper on my wall using a hot glue gun.  Then I picked up these awesome borders at IPA in Springfield, MO.  I'm sure they are found at education stores around the U.S.  

The chevron print is from Carson-Dellosa, and it's double-sided!  I had not clue, the other side is funky circles.  

I decided to add the yellow border after my IG friends told me to go for it!  I also made some blue tissue paper poms to put above WRITE.  I will be showing you that in my BTS classroom post in August!  You can find my WRITE banner in my Little Writers Workshop pack.

I'm super excited that my school district is replacing our old curriculum with Journeys this year!!  I dove into those teacher's editions and fell in love!  Especially with the close reads, I love close reading!  Last year I was always scurrying around on Fridays, typing out the next week's spelling list and fluency story.  So this year I am trying to be an organized little teacher. :)

I created First Grade Weekly Target for my kiddos to take home every Friday.

On one side it has spelling words plus a menu for ideas on how to practice at home, vocabulary words we will have in our story, plus a list of ten Fry words from our 1-100 list.  As the weeks go on, we will continue through our list and hopefully get through the first and second hundred.  

On the other side is our weekly story.  I call it our fluency story.  At the end of every week, I test their fluency and time them reading it for one minute.  For my higher readers, I usually find a passage out of one of my Complete Core units to use.  Gotta differentiate! ;)  

I will copy these front and back to save paper and I usually copy on colored paper, to make it easy to find for the parents.  I have a feeling this is going to be a lifesaver this year!  This little guy will be on TPT in the next couple of days.  I will have unit 1 and 2 ready to go!!

My last Made It is my Dad's 60th Birthday Party!  He loves the Eagles, so our theme was Take It Easy.  I made ticket master lookalike tickets for the invitations and my brother in law made awesome cool cans for souvenirs!

It was incredible!  I think my dad enjoyed it! ;)

Have a great week everyone!!!

Tell All Tuesday! Top Ten Teacher List

It's Tuesday once again and I'm here to spill the beans on the top ten things I have learned as a teacher!

A few of my favorites were if you give a student a hug, hold them for a second, they may really need it!  We ALL have those students.  Those poor things that don't get the love they deserve, so give them that extra hug!  It's OKAY to leave right after school, your family needs you too!  This is sometimes hard for me to do when I have a million things to get finished.  But family comes first, no matter what occupation you have!

I loved this linky with My Day in K and Teach Talk Inspire!  Head over to their blogs to join!

Five For Friday + Target Dollar Spot Finds

It's Five for Friday and I am announcing my love for Target on this blogpost.   Muahhh!  Love you, Target! ;)

But first I have to chat about a few things.  My little family of four took a trip to Lake of the Ozarks last weekend.  Actually more like Daddy is working on the road, so the girls will tag along!

All is fun in the sun until you get a tornado warning!!  Yes, I said tornado warning!  My fourth one of the year, are you kidding me???  Everyone in the hotel had to go to the parking garage....fun stuff I tell you.  The rest of the trip was great though.  And the tornado ran off to find Dorothy, hehehe.

Next is my Chalk Paint Mason Jars!  Besides Five for Friday, the Monday Made-It linky is one of my faves!  I love browsing through all the crafty stuff.  Here is the post if you are interested in how I made mine.  They look fabulous on my desk!!

To celebrate the 4th of July, I am putting my entire TPT store on sale!!  Click the graphic below to find some good deals on teacher planners, national parks, math clip cards, Mo Willems, writers workshop, and more!!

Finally, what you've been waiting for, my Target Dollar Spot goodies!  I hit Target while at the lake, with kids and hubby in tow.  I have seen pics on IG and FB of the coveted glass jars, and just KNEW I wouldn't find them.....well what do you know!!

I think I will use them to store smarties and other yummies so that kiddos don't see what's inside.  Next up is the cutest teal chalkboard apple sign!  It looks perfect on my desk.  My classroom decor is an ocean theme and this year I want to use more blues and chalkboard styles.  

I love this cute SMILE banner!  And it's really wood, so it's nice and sturdy.  I plan on hanging it on the front of my desk, maybe pairing it with two small tissue poms on each side. (sorry for the side view;)

My Word Work station is getting a total makeover this year.  I immediately grabbed these cute magnetic letters and the best part was they were on clearance!  Fifty cents a piece!!!  I should've bought all they had.... I grabbed another turquoise caddy to hold them.  I am in love with caddies of all colors!

Finally, some staple supplies for the classroom.  Love the jute rope! I use this to hang my first week of school pennant banners outside the classroom.  You can check out the Meet the Firsties pack in my TPT store.  It's full of cute back to school/making friends activities!

Finally, let's have a giveaway!!  I would love to send five of my products to YOU for FREE!!  All you have to do is enter the Rafflecopter below by following my TPT store and leaving your name, follower number, and email.  You have until midnight tonight, Friday, July 3rd.  Super easy peasy!  

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful 4th of July!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Winner Wednesday + TPT Masterpiece!

It's Winner Wednesday plus my TPT Masterpiece today on my blog!  I have to admit, I'm a little bummed it's already July.  I mean, where in the heck did June go????  We had lots of fun in June and were so busy that it whizzed by.  But I'm excited to join A Dab of Glue Will Do for Winner Wednesday.  

Today I'm giving away this little 'Masterpiece'!  This baby took me forever to finish with its 125 pages!  I love this pack, mostly because I really, REALLY needed a writing unit at school.  The writing that is included in our reading curriculum right now is pretty blah.  And I absolutely love Lucy Calkins' work, but don't want to purchase it out of my pocket...anybody feel me?  

So I added mentor texts to this unit at the last minute and I am so glad I did!  The mentor texts are books you probably have in your own classroom library, like Fly Guy and Skippyjon Jones.  Plus I made anchor chart labels and story maps to use as a whole group.  This is perfect for making the story an example for the students to use while they write their own piece of work.

You can check out my blog post on it here or at my Mrs. Baker's Dozen TPT Store.




Plus, I'm giving a copy away on the Rafflecopter below!  

Good luck and make sure to check out the other Wednesday Winners!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tell All Tuesday! Summer Flashback At Disney World!

Ooooohhh, I love this week's topic for Tell All Tuesday: Summer Flashback!  Click the picture above to join the fun!  I absolutely love looking at photos of our old family vacations.  This one to Disney World is at the top of my list!

Here we are at Disney World 2012.  Lily (Cinderella) is four almost five and Claire (Minnie) is about one and a half years old.  Pardon me while I get some tissues :( boo hoo I miss my babies....

Cinderella and her handsome prince ;)

We ate breakfast at Cinderella's Castle and got to meet a lot of princesses there.  It was totally worth the $150 breakfast!  Not kidding :)

And my sweet Minnie Mouse!  She was a trooper through the crowds and rain, I mean downpour of rain!  Exhausting and so so so much fun!  My daughters have grown out of the princess stage, but I may have to drag them back there. ;)

Monday Made-It Chalk Paint Mason Jars

I'm so excited to join the linky this week!  If there is one thing I love to do during the summer, its crafting! (plus cleaning, remodeling, reading....)  So many choices, so little time. ;)

This Monday Made-It was incredibly easy peasy!  I chalk painted some Mason jars I had lying around, tied some twine around the top, slapped on a chalkboard sticker, and BAM!  Beautiful storage for my desk supplies at home or school.

Supplies:

Mason jars

1/2 c. Plaster of Paris

1/2 c. cold water

1 1/2 c. latex paint

Check out the blog post that inspired my DIY Chalk Paint.

Mix up the plaster and water, then add the paint.  It has a bit of a rougher texture, which is totally great for rubbing off on the edges.  I used sand paper to give it the rustic look.

I scored the chalkboard stickers at Wal-Mart for $1.97!!  

This baby is over 100 pages of writers workshop magic!  Great for grades K-2 and here's the best part, (my favorite part) it includes mentor text and anchor labels to use during whole group writing time.  The very BEST BEST part is that my preview contains 4 pages of FREEBIES!  Download the preview here.

Have a wonderful week!