Monday Made-It {Baby Shower, Mother's Day}

Oh my goodness!! I haven't linked up for Monday Made It with the wonderful, sweet Tara at 4th Grade Frolics in SO long! I love this linky and have a few things to share. We are in the home stretch now. Last day with students is June 24th but there is so much to do before then. I am loving the warmer temps…finally!

So…my baby sister is having a BABY! She is due at the end of August but we just had her baby shower a week ago and it turned out super cute! My older sister made her invitations. She went with the hot air balloon theme. :)

Table with cookies and flowers (real Gerber Daisies that looked fake!) on table as guests enter. 

Table cloth is burlap fabric.

 Pinwheels made from paper

 Chalkboard frames from Michael's

Card basket from Michael's and my sister made the hot air ballon decoration using strips of paper, burlap and pinterest directions! Love it!

 Pom poms hung from ceiling made from tissue paper. We had about 12 of them and people took them home after for decorations in teen rooms and offices!

Banner from burlap and cut out letters from scrapbook paper. It says "Welcome Baby Brown".

Better view of banner but this was not at the shower.

 Table decorations. My sister made the Mason jars by painting them with acrylic paint and lightly distressing them with a soft wire brush (to avoid brush marks). Those were door prizes for games when we ran out of other prizes.

 "Wishes for Baby Brown" idea that I got from my friends at Pinkadots Elementary. These turned out super cute and I am taking the completed wishes to place in a photo album to give to my sister and brother-in-law as a keepsake.

One game that we played was "The Price Is Right". Everyone loved this game and it was quick. This was another idea from my friend, Theresa at Pinkadots Elementary!

I bought all the items for "The Price Is Right" game and held them up for the audience to see. Since the baby's sex is a surprise, I bought two of each burp cloths, socks, and change of clothes. The one they don't need can be take back using the receipt. One guest was only $0.82 away from the correct total!

We played Baby Bingo where guests wrote down gifts they thought my sister and brother-in-law would receive. This kept the audience active during the opening of presents. We had many little prizes to give away and then started giving away the flowers on the table in the painted Mason jars for bingos. I wrote "Brown" at the top instead of "Bingo".

Here is a picture of me (far right) with my mom and two sisters at the shower. We coordinated colors! :)

Mother's Day is over, but this would also be cute for Father's Day or an idea to pin for next year. My students created Wordles for their moms and I laminated them. They turned out cute!

The only advice I would give is to have students copy the words they type in the box before hitting "create". If for some reason, they lose the page, they would have to start typing all over again. If they copy it first, then they can just paste it again. This happened several times and saved many students!

Here is a project I completed in the past for Father's Day and I have a freebie in my TPT store for it.

 I "made" these pencils by placing duct tape at the top and writing student numbers on them with a sharpie. I used three different tapes for my three blocks since the numbers repeat for the three blocks.

 I blogged about my pencil challenge here a month ago and I am so thrilled to report that it has been working! Only six students out of 50 have not met the pencil challenge the entire month and the rest all have the original pencil! It has been great because if a student even thinks about "wasting time" to get a pencil, I just say, "So, you are out of the pencil challenge?" Since most students are keeping this pencil as a back up in their math boxes, they respond, "No! That's right! I have an extra pencil in my box." The pencil must be always sharpened and ready to go to stay in the pencil challenge as well so it works well as a backup. They can only sharpen pencils in the morning, at snack time, and right after class.

I thought this was cute. We received these from the Parent Teacher Association for Teacher Appreciation Week but it would be great for back to school.

That's it for now! I am looking forward to getting my Made Its on for next year come July!

Don't forget Tried It Tuesday is new tomorrow for the month. 

Link up anything all month that you have Tried, new or old, school or home!

Have a great rest of your week! :)

Monday Made It {March}

I am linking up some Made It projects from February with the amazing Tara at 4th Grade Frolics! I know Valentine's Day is over, but there are some freebies listed that you might want to download for next year to get ahead of the game! I'm always doing projects at the last minute but I have this dream that one day I can be prepared far in advance for holidays. Haha!

These are the little treat cups for Valentine's Day that I made for my class. I love these little cups that are four for $1.00 at Walmart. Instead of a little baggie, they can reuse the cup! This works for many holidays too. :)

I already snatched up some more cups for a little Easter gift (4 for $.97 at Walmart).

For the first time, I made homemade Valentine's for my son and daughter's daycare friends. This was the Smooches kit from PaperCrafts Go To Kits.

Here are the lips cut out (I had to trace them and cut them out and then they fold up like a card), the strips of paper (I used my scrapbook paper cutter), and the ribbon (I measured and cut).

 My six year old helped make the cards! Even she could tie the ribbon on the little strip of paper!

Step one to tape down (I use double sided tape).

 Step two-tape down strip of paper with ribbon:

 Add writing and a sucker!

 Cute and personalized!

Click on the pictures below for a template for the lips and directions for paper sizes!

I printed these great figurative language interactive bulletin board posters by Head Over Heels for Teaching. They print black and white to save on colored ink. You could print them on colored paper, but since I didn't have any on hand, I just printed them on white paper and colored in the middle with a colored pencil. They are hanging in front of my room below the bulletin board. When a student finds figurative language in a book they are reading, they add the sentence to a post-it note and we hang it by the coordinating poster.

 I also laminated this game of Winter Zap for complete sentences, fragments, and run-ons by The Teacher's Desk 6. My students are recording their answers and changing the sentences that are run-ons or fragments on this handout I typed up. It is a center for work on writing. The students always struggle with fragments and run-ons!

I am working on adding spring ELA centers currently and these next two weeks are crunch time for me! State ELA test for all my 4th graders is April 1-3. Ah!!

Don't forget to check out this giveaway by my BBB at Ideas by Jivey!

I'll leave you with this picture of my kiddos with one of my favorite Disney characters! My baby Charlie (sniff, sniff) turned four on Saturday! Time flies!

See you tomorrow for Tried It Tuesday!

Monday Made It {Getting Classroom Ready!}

Monday Made It with the wonderful Tara at 4th Grade Frolics is up for the month of September!!  I started working on this post this afternoon but my Buffalo Bills kept me on the edge of my seat and I was completely distracted.  Of course they wound up losing after I was already all worked up:(  At least it wasn't a shut out and the Bills gave those Patriots and Tom Brady a run for their money!!  It would have been nice to see Brady cry though! :) You wouldn't think that is mean if you were a Bills fan and watched them lose the last 24 of 26 games to the Pats.  Our day will be coming soon. I can feel it!

Anyway, school started for me last week and I have been busy getting things ready for open house and the first day with students last Thursday.  I made these cute CAFE letters and headers to go with my owl theme.  You can download them here for free from my TPT store.  

I later saw this post by the amazing Emily at I Love My Classroom and I was intrigued that she used the acronym "FACE" instead of CAFE.  I asked her about that and she said that 4th graders don't really know what a Cafe is (uh, yep!) and she explains her board as "This is what the 'face' of a reader looks like".  I love that!  I forgot to take a close up picture of my board changed but you can see the "FACE" acronym in this picture.  Emily also gave me a link to some free CAFE strategy cards for your board that you can download from the Down Under Teacher.  You can read more about my owl tree and the papers above my board shown in this picture here.  

I also made these smaller labels for my Daily 5 book boxes to coordinate with my owl themed book bin labels in my classroom library.  Since we are departmentalizing this year, I needed to find space for 50 book bins!  I decided to number them 1A to 17A, 1B to 17B, and then 1C to 17C.  The letters are for the three separate sections of ELA that am teaching but I can use the same numbers for all three sections.  When I use my popsicle sticks to draw names or any other "number" organization strategies, I can use the same numbers for each class.  I like that I don't have to keep 50 popsicle sticks with names on them and I can reuse the same 17 numbers for all three classes.  

 I added the smaller labels (almost 3") as an addition to my editable book bin labels for sale at my TPT store.  There are five themes available (owls, chevron, polka dot, zebra, and superhero).  This is the owl preview version.    

Here is a closeup picture of the book boxes (sorry it is so blurry).  I taped the labels over them using clear shipping tape (one of my favorite school supplies!).  The brown book boxes were given to me by my teammate.  The best part is that they were free! :)

 I didn't make these Citing Evidence posters but my lovely friend, Joanne, at Head Over Heels for Teaching did!  I printed and laminated some of them for use on a bulletin board.  Citing text evidence is essential for the 4th grade Common Core and this will be a great visual.  I am planning on having student examples posted for each on sentence strips around the posters and change them out often.  

 I also printed and laminated these colorful genre posters by Sabra at Teaching with a Touch of Twang to display below my board.  They are a facebook fan freebie but I don't know for how long!!  I love how the posters have examples of books for that genre.  We are working on exploring genres as we get to know the classroom library and have already referred to them in the first two days of school. 

I remembered to take pictures of each student the first day of school with this freebie sign I laminated and printed from the fabulous Run Miss Nelson's Got the Camera.

 Finally, I laminated these super cute owl bookmarks by Michael Friermood (another freebie!) for each student.  I haven't passed them out yet.  I gave each student a plain strip of colored paper for a bookmark and plan on giving them a fancy bookmark after they reach some reading goal (not sure yet!).

I am off to check out all the creative Monday Made Its (mine are not very crafty!).  Those artsy bloggers just amaze me! :)  See you Tuesday for Tried It Tuesday and don't forget to check out the amazing 1000 followers giveaway at Ideas by Jivey!