Monday Made It and a Winner!

First I want to congratulate Sue Cahalane on winning my giveaway! :) She gets my chevron lesson plan book and 2014 calendar agenda.

Click here to purchase the lesson plan book.

Click here to purchase the 2014 agenda. 

I am really excited about my Monday Made It project this week!  

 I used a large mat (11 by 14 opening) from Michael's and my mom's Cricut to make this cute picture frame that the kiddos will hold for me to take their first day of school pictures. I seriously need to get my own Cricut! (Hint, hint, John, my husband!) This frame will be put to use in two weeks from tomorrow!

I


Thank you to 4th Grade Frolics for hosting this fun linky!

Monday Made It- 7/29

School starts in three weeks! Eeek! I do not feel ready! My classroom is getting there, but I still feel so disorganized!  And, I'm not ready to say goodbye to summer vacation and playing with my girls.  My girls go to a great daycare- they are in great care and learn a lot!  Last year, Isabella was introduced to Jolly Phonics, the same phonics program I use in kindergarten. (She is only three!) She can identify capital and lowercase letters as well as the sounds they make!  Although she will be in the same classroom as last year (the rooms are divided by age), this will count as her first year of preschool! 

I have pinned lots of cute first day of school picture ideas. I settled on making a chalkboard to document the important first day of school for my girls.

I spray painted an old picture frame I found at Goodwill years ago. I used Martha Stewart chalkboard paint from Michael's to paint the backing of the frame. (I gave it four coats.) Fortunately, it was nice and smooth!

 I might be addicted to chalkboard paint!  I have seen lots of cute ways to use it on Pinterest and Monday Made It linkys! 

Visit 4th Grade Frolics for the Monday Made It Linky Party!

Monday Made It- 7/22/13

I am so excited about this planner I made for a gift for my sister. (Hopefully she misses this blog post so it can be a surprise!) She loves the look of the more expensive life planners but wasn't willing to spend $50+ dollars to own one, so I made her one!

    I am so pleased with how it turned out, and I love that it cost way less than the more expensive planners!  I had the front and back covers laminated at a local school supply store ($1.00) and had the black spiral binding done at Staples (about $4.00). I used card stock ($5.00 for a ream) and ink, which I already had.) 

 It features twelve monthly calendars.

 And weekly calendars, too.

It's available now in my TPT store!  Click here to get your copy!

Also available-  is a matching lesson plan book!  I haven't printed it yet, but I will share pictures once it is done!

Visit 4th Grade Frolics for more Monday Made It inspiration!

Monday Made It- 7/15/13 and a Freebie!

I love this behavior chart I read about on Kindergarten Smiles back in April. I had a stoplight last year and didn't want to change anything mid-year, but knew that I wanted to use the clip system for behavior management in my classroom in the future. I finally laminated the cardstock and assembled my new behavior chart.

 

I punched holes in the cardstock before laminating and used a small knife to poke a small hole through the lamination film to thread ribbon through each card.   If you're wondering why I made two charts, it is because my class maxes out at 28 kids.  As of kindergarten round up, I was very close to that number! There is no way I could fit 28 clothespins to the green starting section. The boys will use the chart with the blue ribbon and the girls get the pink one.  I like Caitlin's idea of giving crystals for moving past purple. I found some small crystals with sticker backs at Michael's that I will be using when the children get to "Outstanding." 

At the end of the day, I will have students color a calendar the color that their clip is on.  I will end the calendar home on Friday for parents to sign and return.  Click here for free calendar pages for the 2013-14 school year. 

I'm excited to see how this new behavior management system works in my classroom. I really like the idea of moving up past green and being rewarded for good choices! 

Visit 4th Grade Frolics for more inspiration at the Monday Made It Linky party. 

Monday Made It

I painted this picture at a painting class with my husband's family. Each month, all the aunts and female cousins get together for a Girls' Night.  The painting class was our last Girls' Night. I love anything artistic, so I had a blast!  This is in my older daughter's room. I bought a canvas at Michaels when everything was on sale so I can make another for my younger daughter.

Hop on over to 4th Grade Frolics for the Monday Made It Linky party!

Monday Made It

 My three year old LOVES princesses! (And pink!) I saw these Disney silhouettes ages ago on Pinterest and decided to make them for her. 

As I'm writing, I wish that I could take a better picture of them, but my little girl is asleep and I don't want to risk waking her up to get a closer shot. 

First I found Disney Princess coloring pages through a Google image search. I printed them and taped them to a piece of pink scrapbook paper. Pressing hard, I traced around the perimeter of each picture. Once I was finished tracing each picture, I removed the coloring page to reveal indentations of the princess picture.  I used tiny scissors like these to cut on those indentations. Using a gluestick, I adhered the pink silhouette to pearlized white scrapbook paper. Finally I framed the pictures in white picture frames from Michaels.

Isabella loves these pictures! If Olivia is anything like her older sister, I better start making a set for her bedroom!

Link up with 4th Grade Frolics for this week's Monday Made It! 

Monday Made It

I'm so glad I found this linky party with 4th Grade Frolics. Thank you to my mom for introducing me to it! 

I want to make a bulletin board in my classroom that can be easily switched out, so I decided to go with ribbon strung across the board and clothes pins to quickly hang student work, anchor charts, etc without the holes of staples or thumbtacks.  But how could I make it more exciting than plain wooden clothespins? GLITTER!

Isabella, my three year old, and I love to use glitter!  I painted Elmer's Glue on each clothespin and Isabella dipped them in glitter.

 

We ended up glitterizing one and a half packages of clothespins. (That's 75 sparkly clothespins!)

I let them dry overnight before sealing the glitter with Mod Podge. I chose the glossy finish.

 The Mod Podge dried clear and now we have some beautiful sparkly clothespins to showcase Isabella and Olivia's work at home as well as lots of sparkly clothespins for my bulletin board at school!

Our door display of the girls' projects.  We have a stainless steel refrigerator, so we can't hang anything with magnets on it. Isabella is proud of her work and loves to show it off to Mimi and Papa when they visit. I had to remove the bottom ribbon because 9 month old Olivia is on the move and kept pulling the artwork down!