Wordless Wednesday July 30th

I want to start by saying Happy Birthday Mom! My mom is my hero, inspiration, mentor and best friend. She is who I call when I have exciting news and when I need to vent.

So she is also the inspiration for todays Wordless Wednesday.

The night I got engaged!

Our growing family (2 years ago)

I'm not the only one who loves her!

Her "Girls"

She is one of the biggest reasons I became a teacher. I watched my mom go back to school when my baby sister started Kindergarten, so she could get her Bachelors degree, then Masters and Sixth year. She has been teaching 6th grade since 1999, and before she went back to school she taught pre-school. I can always hear her advice before I even call, but still always call to hear her say it.

So my question for you this week is who is your inspiration, your hero?

Hot Mess Classroom

I saw Myshoestringlife.com idea for a linky party on IG to show off our hotmess classroom, and decided to join. 

http://www.myshoestringlife.com/

 I have dropped by my school a few days, but today is the first time I started trying to make my room look like a classroom again.  In June when we check out for the year, the entire floor is emptied.  I am lucky that I have cubbies and a counter in my room since there are only 2 rooms in the building with them!  Anything on the floor; shelves, tables, file cabinets, etc. are taken out so our floors can be waxed every summer.  If shelves are one wheels they can be left full since they can be rolled out of the room.  Mine of course are not so I take my library apart every summer.

I took some pictures when I stopped by when the room was still empty.

As empty as it looks, it has so much more stuff than the very first time I walked in 2 years ago on the day I was hired.  The room had 1 kidney table and 19 kids chairs and that was it!  By the time I went in again 2 days later other teachers "donated" things they didn't want any more.

Today I felt very productive, but looking back at the pictures I took, I'm pretty sure all I did was make a mess!

And I took these pictures before I decided to try and organize my library!

Take some pics of your class and link up with Myshoestringlife.com to show how much work you have done.

Kelly

Made it monday 7-28

Time for my 2nd edition of Monday Made it!

http://4thgradefrolics.blogspot.com/

I have been busy creating this week. My brain is in that place where it is thinking about school a ton, but I have a month before I start back so I have time to do fun stuff!

I made my beach names and name tags for my new class.  I love these letters and use them in different places throughout the year so I love having them made before the year starts.

These lead to the 2nd thing that I made this week.

I printed and laminated about 5 miles worth of things for my room including; my new calendar cards, Name tags from above, and CCSS standards.

Thank goodness for my paper cutter or I would probably still be cutting!

I finally finished the toolbox and file drawers from last week by glueing the labels to the front of all of the drawers.  I also decided I wanted the small toolbox for behind my small group table, and my mom decided she needed one too so we will be making more in the next few weeks before we both go back to school.

I put the finishing touches on my planner and it is officially 100% done and I am 100% in love. The problem when that happens is you want to show off so now my mom is insisting I make her one too!  I can't complain since the finishing touch I made with my mom's new Silhouette cutter. She has been trying all summer to make painted signs with letters and wanted to know how people put sticky letters on their whiteboards in school. She had never heard of a Silhouette cutter until last week when I mentioned it to her.  She bought one immediately, and I was put in charge of making it work.  My monogram was what we decided to start with (ambitious) since she couldn't decide what she wanted to cut first.

I am officially obsessed with the Silhouette cutter and promise to show all of the projects we will be making over the next few weeks and how I'm getting ready for my new group of 1st graders!

On a personal note, it was my husband and my 1 year anniversary this weekend and I can't imagine being married to a more supportive and caring man. Anyone who marries a teacher deserves a special place in heaven for all that they do to support us!

Kelly

Help!

As a newbie to the blogging world I am learning daily.  After joining a few Linky Parties, I have been asked if I have Facebook.  So my question to other bloggers out there is, is your Facebook a page, a group or a new profile created just for your blog, or a combination?  Any advice would be awesome, I love hearing from other teachers and would love to have more ways to get my blog out there.

Kelly

Wordless Wednesday- Classroom Prep

There is officially 1 month and 2 days until school starts again.  Between now and then is my 1 year anniversary, at least 1 trip to Cape Cod, a friends wedding and as much time on the boat as we can manage.  So today while my husband was at work and my stepson was at camp, I went in to school. 

In my family there are more teachers than I can remember (at least 8) and a ton of my friends are teachers (and not just the ones I met at school).  Teachers somehow just find each other.  My family laughs that we can be by ourselves out shopping or somewhere random and find the only other teacher in the building.  I'm sure all teachers think this way since it seems to be true.

Linky Party with Miss DeCarbo

So now my question for Wordless Wednesday..

What do you look forward too the most and the least on the first day you go back into your classroom?

I know I look forward to completing a bunch of creative projects I started at home or had planned.  Just before school ended I bought Teal Chevron contact paper from Amazon for my desk.  My teacher desk is all solid wood right out of the 1930's I think.  It was the only one the school could find when I got hired since I was an added class not taking over for someone who retired or left. 

Before

Such small drawers

So dark, but its real wood so I don't want to paint.

After

So pretty, and much lighter!

Tried to cover the handles but they are a weird shape

Now for the part a never look forward too.  I had some tables get ruined over the summer when they were moved out of the room so the floor could be waxed.    

I'm not even sure how this happened or
how to fix it.

It goes across the whole table!

I have 4 tables like this; Yellow, Red,
Green and Blue

All of the corners look like this.

When I saw them I wanted to cry, especially my awesome kidney table that I covered with dry erase contact paper.  The kidney table I think I might have to completely remove the duct tape and contact paper and redo it.  Now I know for next summer to cover it with a tablecloth or something to protect it. My flower tables are only 2 years old!  They were bought just for my classroom since the room use to be a second grade room and they have desks.  Fortunately I saw the custodian and I asked her what she suggested I could cover the corners with (I was thinking Duct tape if I could keep the kids from peeling it).  She was shocked and is calling the company to see if they have a warranty!  Her guess was the high school kids who work for the town cleaning every summer (awesome kids!) tried to roll the tables since they are soooo heavy.

So for those of you who have already gone back, and those of us who are getting ready to, think and let me know...
 What do you look forward too the most and the least on the first day you go back into your classroom?

As a parting thought, I discovered today my dog can roll her tongue.

Kelly

Monday Made it

Yesterday I spray painted plastic tubs for the first time and discovered I am a very messy spray painter!

Green fingers!

How do you get paint off of rings?

I should have had my husband take a picture for me to show that I was these colors from my knees down, my feet looked like Smurfett.

I am pretty excited about how everything came out.  I initially planned on painting only my math tubs.

I inherited these from my aunt and uncle with the wooden stand!

My room is mainly Lime greens and teal so the primary colors really weren't working for me at all.  I used them this way last school year and was going to just continue to ignore the color until I learned through fellow bloggers on IG that Rustoleum 2 in 1 paint and primer works on plastic.

Then I found the tool box while buying my spray paint, so that was added to my list.  And while wondering Target the other day I found the 3 drawer file drawers on sale for $7.50 (usually $8.99) and decided they needed some paint too.  I thought I was all done finding things to paint, when I went to visit my parents this weekend.  They had cleaned the garage earlier in the week and found a bunch of directors chairs a family friend had given them.  I couldn't take them all since my mom is a teacher too, but 1 chair was a tall one and didn't match the rest so now I have a directors chair that of course needed to be painted!

The teal and lime green I planned to start with.

All of my goodies to paint!

I ran out of paint part way through the process, 2 cans is not enough for all of the things I added to my list to paint.  When I went to buy more paint I decided to add yellow to the mix.

This is the only pic I took before running to get more paint.

I want to mention a few things I learned, other than don't stand where the paint will get on your feet or hold the bucket in your hand when painting! 

First, DO NOT spray paint on plastic!  I thought I was being nice to my husband and protecting our grass, but I think I got so messy because of the plastic, and the things were sticking to the plastic.  When I lifted them up, some of the paint around the tubs peeled off the plastic and stuck to the tub. Fortunately my husband had something delivered from amazon partway through this adventure so I was able to steal the huge box. 

Second, if you are going to spray paint a bunch of stuff like I did buy one of these.

It makes it much easier on your fingers, and helps you to move more smoothly back and forth.  It hooks right on the top of the spray paint and can be moved from can to can very easily.

The finished products!

New Math Tubs

Teacher tool box, and 1 of the 3 file drawers for my Monday-Friday bins and Copy/File/Grade bins

Ok, most the way finished.  I need to add the drawer covers I have already made to the toolbox and file drawers.  

All projects are kinda like giving a mouse a cookie.  Now I want to paint the wooden stand for my math tubs, I just need to decide what color, and I want to paint the canvas for the directors chair, maybe even add my name!  My goal is to have them done by next Monday I can post the 100% finished products, in addition to a few other things I started today!

Kelly