Colorful Organization & Cleaning Caddies

Hi - I can not believe how long it has been since I blogged last!  Yikes!  Well leave it to Tara at 4th Grade Frolics to motivate me to post to her awesome Made It Monday linky!

My first project was to transform my old yucky black in boxes!  Honestly, when I packed up my classroom at the end of the year I was going to throw them out and go purchase new white ones from Staples!  Then I had an idea…  Spray paint + yucky old in boxes = COLORFUL organization!  I love, love, love spray paint and have accumulated quite the collection of colors over the years!

So I cleaned them off and got to work spray painting them!  I used an old plastic table cloth as my drop cloth so the hardest part was making sure the boxes didn't stick to the table cloth - SO my advice to you is to use newspaper and don't spray them in the grass like I did!  ;)

Well - here they are and they look even better in person than in this picture!!  I still can't get into my classroom because summer school is there until next week but as soon as I can I will be setting these up behind my desk!  

My next project isn't for my classroom at all but I had to share because they turned out so cute and I totally used classroom goodies to created these!  My daughter graduated high school this spring and is head off to The University of Kentucky this month (sigh)!  She is lucky enough to be in a brand new dorm that is a suite style so her and her 3 roommates will not only have 2 bathrooms to clean but a small shared kitchen area!  So I got 3 sterilite shower caddies - the same kind that I have used as shared supply bins in my classroom and created them cleaning caddies.  Of course I had to personalize them and simply used stickers and stick on gems to decorate them with a little UK flair!

I hope you are all having a blast creating this summer!  I can't wait to go check out more of everyone's Made It Monday projects!  They really motivate me and get me excited to get back into the classroom!  

Kindness Updates & a Giveaway

I have been busy this summer working on so many projects! One that I am especially proud of is the updates that I made to my Keys to Kindness unit!  I love starting my year out with these keys to kindness and going over our classroom expectations with these keys in mind.  This summer I created mini posters with cute graphics to show each key and some fun word work to keep my little kiddos busy during those long first days of school!!

Ok - time for the GIVEAWAY!

It's almost back to school time and to celebrate and get us all in the mood, I am having a giveaway for a $10 Teachers Pay Teachers gift card!

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Check out my store and Facebook page for even more ways to win!

We LOVE Maryland Blog Hop

We love Maryland for many reasons!  You probably already know that Maryland has some pretty awesome things; crabs, beaches, history and of course our TPT sellers rock too  

I grew up in Virginia and met my hubby at college (WVU), he is from Maryland and we moved here right after we got married!  I can't believe that I have lived here now for almost 25 years and am happy to call Maryland my home!  It's true that home is where your heart is because what I love best about Maryland is all the wonderful friends I have made and memories that I had while raising my family here!  What do you love about your home state?
Thanks for stopping by our fun blog hop!  

Click below for your Freebie of my $4 Winter Word Work Unit with over 20 pages of fun word work activities for your students!!!  

Click below and enter the Rafflecopter to win my giveaway for my Snowman Shades of Meaning pack!

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Be sure to check out these Maryland sellers…

Thanks for entering the fun and good luck!!!

Dollar Store Clipboards & Pebble Go Freebie

I LOVE the dollar store - really The Dollar Tree!!  I know most teachers do too - so I just had to share my latest dollar store creations with you all!

We use our computers everyday in the classroom and I love students to be able to do research using the computers and listen to stories online during our Daily 5!  I often give them follow up worksheets or note taking sheets for them to use while on the computers.

It is hard for them to manage the keyboard and paper with our limited space and even more challenging for some of them with the larger clipboards.  So I headed to the dollar store in search of mini clipboards.  They didn't have any at the time but I found 6"x8" chalkboards and these cute colorful metal clips.

So I pulled out my trusty hot glue gun and glued the clips on the chalkboards to create my mini clipboards!!  The best best best thing about these clipboards is that they have a handy little handle for hanging them.  So while I had my glue gun fired up I hot glued some hooks to the edge of my computer tables and hung those suckers up!!  It makes me so happy to see them all hanging there all neat and tidy!

We are fortunate enough to have access to Pebble Go so I made some note taking sheets that work perfectly with my mini clipboards.  

Click below to grab the freebie for yourself and there is also a larger version for you in case you don't want them to have more room to write! 

Enjoy and happy dollar store shopping!!

Rewarding good listeners...

If you are like me and my little ones you know that we work so hard at the beginning of the year on becoming good listeners!  We practice and practice sitting on the carpet and I have even started teaching using Erica Bohrer's cute Whole Body Listening posters!  Thank you Erica - click picture to grab some for yourself!

They are great visuals and teaching points for getting us all ready for school!  Well, after winter break or a bunch of snow days ;) we seem to have forgotten and need some new reinforcements!  

About this time last year I was teaching a whole group lesson and after redirecting a bunch of friends several times I just had a spark of inspiration that instead of constantly redirecting some friends I should give some reinforcements to those kids who were always doing a great job.   My hope was to inspire the distracted ones to try harder in order to get the "reward."  So I walked over to my closet and stuck my head in looking for something to use as a reward and I spotted my container of stuffed animals. I grabbed all my care bears and put them all on my lap (I have 5 or 6 of them).  I continued the lesson and didn't even mention the bears - I am sure they thought I was a little crazy for a few minutes!  

As soon as I spotted someone who was one of those great whole body listeners, I leaned down and handed them a bear and simply said, "great listening" and kept on teaching.  It was awesome and the kids really responded.  

This year I made some blue star stuffed animals to go with my behavior chart.  

You don't have to drag out your sewing machine like I did because the care bears were just as effective!  Give it a try and let me know how you like using them or better yet let me know what little tricks you are using in your room to keep your sweetie pies on track!

Blizzard inspired Measurement Freebie

Wow - we just had ourselves a Blizzard in Maryland and all over the east coast!!  School was closed on Friday in preparation and has been closed already for Monday and Tuesday!

I was inspired during the snow day on Friday and came up with a fun way to track how much snow we were getting using some non-standard measurements!  So, naturally I ran up to the dollar store to gather some supplies!

I grabbed an old board from the garage and my trusty hot glue gun and glued down all sorts of things that I thought might be fun ways to measure our snow!  Legos, markers, straws, bugs and of course some rulers!  I used some sharpies to mark the measurements and wrote a cute little title on my board and bam!  I was ready for the snow to come!

I moved the sign today and got our final measurement right in the middle of my unplowed street!  

So now I know how deep the snow was...

The blizzard of 2016 was 3 1/2 straws deep 

7 bugs deep

16 dominos deep

55 Legos deep

4 1/2 markers deep

22 inches deep

Whenever we get back to school I am going to share the pictures with my students and hopefully my principal will let me take them outside so we can measure the snow ourselves!  

Click here or the images above to grab a freebie for your class!  I hope everyone in this blizzards path will be dug out soon!  :)