Writing Utensils Organization

It's MLK weekend and grad school hasn't started up yet, so I found a little time to do some crafting for my classroom.  I am focused on reducing the clutter in my small group teaching area!  It's been a mess!

I've been using random cups to keep my writing utensils in, but I wanted something a little cuter.  I found some pencil caddies on the Internet and in some stores, but didn't like the selection and they were too expensive for me.

So I thought about jazzing up some veggie cans with just some spray paint, scrapbook paper and mod podge. 

It's pretty easy & quick! 

First pick out your color combo of spray paint and paper! Then, spray paint the washed and dried cans & let dry.

Next, cut the scrap book paper. I cut mine to be 2.5 inches wide and the length of the paper (10 inches). 

I also printed out the labels on the computer on scrapbook paper (.5 inches by 10 inches), cut and glued it to the fatter label.   Tip: Put the text in a text box, to see the lines & cut straight.





Then, glue the label on the can with rubber cement. I put the label around the part of the can with ridges. 

Last, you can Mod Podge it, if you want the texture to be a bit different than paper.  I'm really happy how these turned out. I made 6 of them: pens, pencils, dry erase markers, highlighters, red pencils, & markers.

Sight Word Candy Land

My students LOVE playing this during Word Work.   Below is a picture of the edition I made.

  The original idea came from the blog "First Grader.... at Last!"  Mrs. Cooley has some really great ideas, so you should check her out!

http://firstgraderatlast.blogspot.com/2010/11/candy-land-sight-word-edition.html

Organizing my Classroom Library

So I know that it's been a while since I posted. What can I say? Things have just started to slow down and get into routine.  I have LOTS of things I want to share about what I have been doing in my own classroom. I am loving first grade!

My mega project that I focus on during my weekends is growing my classroom library. I've been going to budget book places, resale stores, garage sales, etc. looking for books to fit my WIIIIIIDE range of readers in my classroom.

If you are trying to grow your classroom library I HIGHLY suggest heading over to Half Price Books and asking for a donation form.  When you fill out the form accompanied with a letter on your school letterhead telling what kind of books you need, they go through their overstocked and clearance books and hook you up.  They provided me with 4 HUGE boxes of books!
Thank you Half Price Books!

Now, I sorted through them and had to take out the ones that weren't appropriate for public school and then considered what my classroom needed About 60 books were a perfect fit for my class. All for FREE! :)   As the other books, I'm sharing with other teachers on my campus so they can build their libraries as well. 

As I was sorting through all the books, thoughts kept coming to my mind if I were to see a child looking at a book. I was thinking, I wanted to tell my kids something about a certain book, but I can't always be there when they are book shopping, so what could I do?

I came up with this idea- To put a sticker with me and a speech bubble saying what I would if a child picked up a book next to me.  I'm pretty stoked about it and might have made a few from my dog recommending some dog books.....

They say things like
- Can you make a text to text connection?
- I recommend this book because the experiments are really neat.
- I recommend this book because it was a favorite when I was a kid.
-This book is great for practicing your sight words.

 


I was really stoked about how I have organized my library so far, but I now realize that I didn't leave enough space for growing. So here's my library now. In the next few weeks bins will be replaced with some larger ones and some of my categories will become more specific. I'm pretty sure I'll change the shelving too. Stayed tune to see how it will look!

Where are you? Chart

I created this chart and put it by the door of my classroom. When the students come in in the morning, they move their clip from "Absent" to "With Ms. Y".  I keep my hall passes close by and when my students leave the room, they are responsible for moving their clip to the respective spot.  I printed the sections out on cardstock and I reinforced the "Absent" and "With Ms. Y" with some light cardboard from a box since most clips will be on either of these days. The other ones such as "nurse" and "restroom" I just reinforced with another piece of cardstock. I laminated them and used a hot glue to attach it to the pink craft ribbon.

I am all about making class jobs for the most basic of tasks so I made a class job be the "Clip Mover". This person's responsibility will be to move the clips back to "Absent" so we can start the next school day there.

End of Year Reading Gift

I don't know about you, but I'm always trying to come up with an end of year gift that my kids will love and somehow will remind them throughout the summer to keep learning. This year, I made these pinwheels to my kinder kids.

The label says, "Keep your brain spinning this summer! Read every day!"

I made them promise that they were going to read every day by repeating, "I promise that I will read every day. I know that I'm a good reader and am smart!"

Then we all blew on them and made them spin.  I suggested that they could keep it next to their bed and when they woke up, to blow on it and think about what book they want to read!

I found the pinwheels in a pack of 3 at Dollar Tree (steal!) and used mailing labels to print the message.

Mason Jar Sewing Kits

Not my original idea, but below is the link to the page on how to make these cute mason jar sewing kits!


http://www.momtastic.com/diy/168161-diy-mason-jar-sewing-kit

They are great gifts and you can really fit them into any theme. I made them for my team I left this year to say "I'll miss you 'sew' much" . For my my parent volunteers, they had a note that said, "Thank you 'sew' much."


Credit::  http://www.momtastic.com/diy/168161-diy-mason-jar-sewing-kit

Say it like a Turtle/Rabbit Pointers

When teaching my students how to read, I often say "Say it like a turtle" to stretch out sounds in a word.  When I want them to put all the sounds together, I say, "Say it like a rabbit."
For example I would teach,

"Alright, lets look at this word. I see the letters "c" "a" and "t".  Let's sound each of them out like a turtle would because turtles like to be cautious and go real sloooooooow. Say it like a turtle: /c/ /a/ /t/. One more time, /c/ /a/ /t/. Now, this time when we read, we want to put the sounds together fast like a rabbit. Let's read it like a rabbit. Cat!"

I wanted to help them visualize it so I made these super duper cute pointers for cheap.

First you need these items:
*wood cut out of the animals (found these at hobby lobby for 67 cents each)  You could even use paper cut outs/images and laminate them. 
*acrylic paint & brush
*Super glue, (I LOVE Goop. It works so well on all my crafts)
* wooden dowel rods

I painted the dowel rods and let them dry. Then I super glued the rod to the wood cut out.  

So that the glue didn't show, I put a piece of scrapbook paper over the glue & stick while it was still wet.

Let dry according the super glue instructions and then you have cute pointers to use to help your students visualize segmenting and blending words! 

You can be as creative as you want make as many pointers maybe for reading centers or to match themes! I'm might not be that ambitious. :)