Monday Made It and Must-Have! (Cupcakes, Book Clubs, and Monday night TV!!)

I am linking up today with two awesome Monday linkies!!  

First, the amazing Tara from 4th Grade Frolics is beginning her WEEKLY Monday Made-It series today for the summer!  I LOVE this linky and it kept me going all summer last year on my to-do list!  Although I am not on summer vacation yet and I blogged about many Made-Its here on May 13th, I have a couple Made Its to share:)

Home Made It:
I already posted about my 6 year-old daughter's diva birthday party 

(think nails done, face painting, and dancing!).  

All I had to do was bring the cake to the party!  So stress free:)

I decided to make cupcakes and found this awesome rainbow cupcake on Pinterest from CosmoCookie.

Since my daughter's favorite colors are pink and purple, I decided to go with those.

I followed the directions and bought a white cake mix (I do love to bake from scratch but who am I to argue when the directions say to stop overachieving and go with the box mix?).

I divided the cake batter and colored half of it pink (with just a touch of red food coloring) and the other half purple (half red and half blue food coloring).

I poured each color one at at time into the middle of the cupcake paper cups.  I layered it pink, purple, pink, purple.  Here is a picture of the first two layers.

Here they are baked:)  So pretty!

 My daughter had a fairy theme for her "diva" party and I bought fairy cupcake holders, toppers, invitations, thank-you notes, and gift bags from the 

Meri Meri Flower Fairies line.  

Isn't the pink and purple layered in the middle so fancy?

 I thought they turned out super cute and they were super easy and inexpensive!  The moms were also so impressed and asked all about how I made cupcakes this way:)

Classroom Made-It:

I made a couple handouts (that counts, right?) that I wanted to share with you to accompany the Book Clubs I am doing in my ELA class right now.  You can read more about their kick-off here.  I purchased Laura Candler's Classroom Book Clubs and am loving this amazing resource with step-by-step how to videos!  

We just started Book Clubs last week and were only able to meet two days due to Memorial Day, Science State Testing, and a Field Trip.  However, my students have finalized their calendars as groups for reading their books and when to complete their reading response assignments by June 11th.  I made these guidelines for groups to know what is expected on full meeting days and daily quick checks.  The written assignment directions are also provided.  

For the written assignments, I made a tic-tac-toe choice board (students LOVE choices!) of some of my favorite reading response activities from the amazing Rachel Lynette's Reading Response Worksheets for Grades 3-6.  Here is a picture collage of my Tic-Tac-Toe board and snapshots of Rachel's Reading Response worksheets.

Click here to download my Book Club modified directions and Tic-Tac-Toe Board in editable powerpoint (minus the cute border that needed to be removed due to copyright...but you can add your own cute border!).  The font doesn't show up right unless you have that downloaded on your computer too (I used Oh{Photo}Shoot for the title font).  We will be continuing Book Clubs this week and I am anxious to see how it works out!  I will update and share more soon:)

I would also like to share a Must-Have and link up with the wonderful Sabra from Teaching with a Touch of Twang.

I apologize for another personal link up here but since it is Monday, and my Must-Have just makes Mondays super special, I have to share my guilty pleasure of the Bachelorette/Bachelor.  Currently, it is the Bachelorette (with Des?) and I am THRILLED that Monday night TV over the summer will be so entertaining!  Seriously, I have watched every season of Bachelor/Bachelorette and will be super sad when it doesn't continue anymore (all good things come to an end eventually, right?).  

Barely anyone I work with watches this show (they look at me like I am crazy when I start trying to talk about it!).  I don't think they know what they are missing!  Haha!!  If you love this show, you have to check out Teeny Tiny Teacher's Talk About It Tuesday.
She is a huge fan and her reviews of the show are hilarious:)

Definitely a MUST-HAVE for me!  

Oh, I almost forgot to update you on the Tried It Tuesday survey for continuing over the summer!

I was actually surprised by how many readers and bloggers wanted to continue the linky WEEKLY over the summer!  Yay!!  It wasn't unanimous though (about a 75/25 split).  

So, I have worked out a little plan in my mind.  I would like to:

Continue hosting WEEKLY FOR JUNE (Yes, check back tomorrow for reading or linking up!)

Host JULY ONLY ONCE on the 2nd Tuesday of the Month (July 9th)...

"TWOSDAY"...get it? :)

Go back to hosting WEEKLY IN AUGUST.

Thank you all for your support and I think July will be a good break since just about everyone is off this month.  Of course, as always, you can link up ANYTHING you have tried (NEW or OLD) and it can be classroom or home related!  I love reading about them all and have learned so much.  I will need the summer to sort through all the new pins:)  Thank you again for your bloggy love, whether it is by reading, commenting, or linking up!!