Monday Made It

I'm joining Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for her weekly linky party Monday Made It.

This week I completed several projects for school. The first idea was  a ten frame made from popsicle sticks that I got off of Pinterest. I changed mine up just a bit by using colored popsicle sticks. I was going to use a my hot glue gun to put the sticks together, but it was at school so I used  Tacky Glue and it worked fine. I am using foam cubes from Dollar Tree as my counters.

After making those, I guess I had ten frames on the brain. My daughter was making some scrambled eggs and I thought I could cut the end off of an egg carton and have a ten frame that is very easy to make.

When I was reading Kimberly @ Funky First Grade Fun's post, I immediately had an idea for another type of ten frame. this picture was my inspiration.

When I saw these place mats, I thought, "Hey, I could make a giant ten frame to use on the carpet with the whole class. After thinking about it I decided it would cost too much to buy all of the place mats. Then I remembered that I had seen some foamy coasters at Dollar Tree that I thought might work. It wouldn't be as big, but the frame would be easier to make. What I ended up buying was some foam grippers, they were bigger than the coasters. I got a piece of foam board to make the ten frame. I used some washi tape and black marker to make the grid.

Here's a picture to show you the size comparison.

My next project was super easy. I got it from Teacher Tipster. 

I bought 8 pool noodles and the bag at Dollar Tree (again). I ended up with 15 tens and about 20 ones.

While I'm talking about Base Ten blocks, look what I found at you guessed it Dollar Tree.

 My next math project seemed like a great idea to help kids with coin values came from Nikki @ Teaching in Progress. All you need is unifix cubes, coins and tape. She used the same color of cubes. I just thought the different color towers would make it easier for the kids to see quickly how many there were.

I finally did make something for reading. The idea came from this pin. It's another quick and easy one. Write sight words on ping pong balls. The kids pick up a ball, if they can reading it they get to make a basket. The colored ping pong balls were 6 for $1.00 at Walmart, the white ones came from Dollar Tree, 8 for $1.00. Sorry for the blurry picture.

 I bought these two "baskets" several years ago and I have never used them. I believe I bought them at Mardels.

I made one thing  help with classroom management. I got the idea from HERE. The pinner said the kids were supposed to write kind things about each other and put it in the box.

My final project for this week is a bulletin board redo. Don't look too close, the board was in worse shape than I realized. I'm hoping since it is just for me, it will hold up. Here is what I started with. It had felt that had been stuck on top of the cork. 

I spray painted the frame black and then used some spray adhesive to attach the fabric. The fabric doesn't match my colors exactly, but it was some I already had. Wish me luck, I'm trying to recover my office chair in the same fabric. If it turns out OK, you'll see it next week. ; ) 

Have a great and productive week!

Favorite Pins Friday! and Picture Book Linky #2

I'm joining with Cara @ The First Grade Parade for her linky party Favorite Pins Friday.

It's easy to do, just share your favorite pins from last week. It can be school, home, fashion, food, etc... There's only one requirement and that is to link back to the original post where the pin came from.

So Here Goes:

1. I love this DIY to a book shelf. My daughter has one that looks very similar at least in the shape, it definitely isn't this pretty....yet. I couldn't find the original link for this picture.

Here

2. I absolutely love these parent helps that Jodi @ Fun in First offered as a freebie. I plan on sharing all of them with my parents at the beginning of school.

3. I love this idea to use a shoe organizer on top of a desk to help organize. I bought one yesterday to use next year. I like that is will work to store paper. I'm going to use it on my table to help me stay organized.

You can find it Here.

4. I went to a vocabulary workshop last week. One of the things it talked about was using the term "shades of meaning" instead of synonyms. After hearing that I saw this idea from Field of Poppies. It fits perfectly!

5. I used Everyday Math last year for the first time. I'll be honest with you, I absolutely hated it! Several have told me it gets better. So I got on TPT to look for some EDM materials. Courtney Davis had created word wall words  with pictures for all of the units of EDM and best of all ...they were free! :  )

Courtney Davis' TPT store

OK, I can't figure out how to show a picture of them, I pinned the picture of her from here TPT store.

Doesn't she look nice? She has a lot of free things on her TPT. 

6. I found a pin that was all about team building HERE. The teacher has all kinds of activities to help your class work together.

7. My last pin I'm sharing is a quick and easy idea for dinner that the kids will love.

"Mini Corndog Muffins" Check it out  HERE

 I don't know if it is OK, but I'm also joining DeAnne @ First Grade and Fabulous for her linky party on picture books that teach math concepts.

The first on, I haven't read, but it looks like a terrific book to help children understand the concept of a second or minute. Sorry it is so blurry, that's the best I could do. : /

Who doesn't love the M&M's Counting Book? I have the original one that still has the tan M&Ms. The kids always like it, especially when you follow up with an M&M activity. Yum!

I love this book because it uses all of the comparison words like long, longer, longest and tall, taller, tallest.

This book is great, it shows the 100 ants lining up in all sorts of ways like 2 rows of 10 or 5 rows of 4. It's great for showing different ways to make 100.

Even Steven and Odd Todd teaches odd and even in a fun and creative way.

I know I have lots of books with math concepts, I just couldn't think of them. These are the ones that google helped me remember. ;P

Hope you had a wonderful 4th.

Monday Made It

I'm linking up with Tara at 4th Grade Frolics for her weekly linky party Monday Made It. this week I haven't done much for school at least making things. I did go to 3 workshops last week and it was so hard to make myself want to go. I didn't have to go but we are just now this year implementing  Common Core (I know we are so behind every one.) and the workshops were on close reading, text dependent questions,and tier 2 vocabulary. I was glad  I went, there were only 4 or 5 other crazy people like me there so we could ask LOTS of questions.

OK so back to Monday Made It, I did go up to my new room on Friday and put my bulletin boards up. I only have 2, but they are rather large. I know a lot of teachers use fabric on their boards because it doesn't fade and you can easily re-use it. Well I found something that doesn't fade too, but you can't re-use, but it is super cheap.

That's right plastic table covers from Dollar Tree.  They are wide enough that you don't have to piece it at the bottom like you do butcher paper. My bulletin boards are so long that I did have to piece about 4 inches at one end but there was enough left over from the bottom to cover it. they do have other colors, these are just the ones I was thinking about using.

Here's the best part of using the table covers...they get static electricity in them and they stick to the bulletin board by themselves. no need for an extra person helping you hold one end while you staple. Here is a picture of one before I smoothed it out.

Here is another one after I had smoothed it out, there aren't any staples in it and I didn't have to get my daughter to help me hold one side or anything.

 Here is the finished board. I did put some staple in it before I put the border on, but I guess I really didn't have to. I have no staples in the middle of it just up at the top.

 I think I need to go back and put the orange down at the bottom, but as you can see there really isn't room unless I do the bottom in a different way.

 Here's my other board, again I only put staples at the top, I put a couple where I had to piece it and I did put a few at the bottom on this one.

My next few "made its" were ones I did with my daughter. The first one was "painting" hot rocks with crayons. I found it here on Pinterest. Ours didn't turn out quite as bright and colorful as the one I pinned, but Delaney still enjoyed doing it. It was simple to do, just heat the oven to 350 and put the rocks in the oven for 15 minutes or so. I also saw different version where you color the rocks and then put them in the oven at 200 for about 10 minutes. Delaney liked painting the hot rocks the best.

 Our next project was obviously all for Delaney. We worked together on the items which means I tried my best not to take over if I saw her getting something on really crooked. We made some furniture for her American Girl. First up, we made desk using an old shoe box and the chair is made from foam board.

It was so cute, she made Caroline a notebook.

And to my surprise, Caroline actually wrote in it. ;P

We used the bottom of the box she came in to make her a bed. I used my minimal sewing skills to make a pillow and a mattress. I still have a blanket to make.

We used a creamy colored duct tape to cover every thing so they would match.

Last but not least, I have made a big mess! Does that count as a Monday Made It? Hopefully next week I can show the room all cleaned up. I have been trying to go through things and simplify my life. This week I actually got Delaney on board and she went through a bunch of her things. If I watch a couple more episodes of Hoarders, I'll probably have a truckload of stuff for Goodwill.