Monday Made It! Back to School Decor!

I love Back to School season! Won't be joining in this year with the baby on the way (VERY soon!), but I still couldn't resist whipping up a calendar.

I simply used a black piece of poster board, velco, and the printed pieces from a DIY Calendar pack on TpT! It's pirate themed, of course. One of my favorites!

Ta-dah! The month and the numbers are attached with velcro so they are completely removable. I love the red on black! It really makes it stand out!

Click the image below to get your own pieces!

Next week for Monday Made It, I'm making these poof ball things out of coffee filters! I might even share a video of it! Super easy and WAY cheaper than buying the pre-made tissue paper ones that are not very durable. :)

Monday Made It!

Every now and then I get in the crafty spirit, especially during Back to School season! This year is a lot different for me however, as I am 36 weeks pregnant and about to POP! I won't be headed into the classroom this year, but I am still itching to create, create, create! So, I made a little wall art for my son's nursery that I plan on making in the future for my classroom when I return and I just HAD to share! It's time for a Monday Made It!

And keep scrolling for a MARKDOWN MONDAY perfect for Back to School! :)

For this first one, I found some "Pinspiration," of course. This has been pinned on my Pinterest for ages and I finally got the supplies and went to work! This image is from the blog Catch My Party and they have a lot of crafty ideas.

I chose the colors of my baby boy's room and snagged some cardboard letters from Hobby Lobby on sale! Love it when that happens...

In her tutorial, she used Mod Podge, but I found that the hot glue gun was a lot easier and stuck a lot better, so I wound up using it the most. I wrapped the yarn vertically in areas that have a top and then made sure that the majority of the visible yarn was the same direction on each letter.

That "S" was no joke, people. This was after working on it for a while. It took a long time for me to find my rhythm, but once I did, I was whippin' on through that first "A." I got a lot of Netflix watching in during this project. ;) Added perk to crafting, if you ask me!

Finally finished the wrapping and then started hot gluing some dinosaurs to the letters! (Had to move to the coffee table because we needed the kitchen counter lol). I, of course, ran out of hot glue as I was adding those cute dinos... So those letters sat there for like a week until I finally went out for glue sticks.

And VOILA! I am totally loving it. It isn't on the wall yet, as we just finished our baby shower the other day. Once I get that nursery up and running, I'll share a picture of it above his crib on my Instagram! Make sure to follow HERE!

Speaking of baby shower, my mom totally made me CRY! She made the sweetest gift for my baby boy and even though I didn't make this one, I have to share. It is beautiful and completely, 100%, hand stitched.

Everything on the blanket has meaning to us. Our furbabies (Daisy and Pudgy) on on the top right. There's a policeman hat and nurse symbol for my husband's parents. There's a piano and a trumpet for my mom and stepdad. There's a penguin for me (my favorite!) and a Superman symbol for my husband. There's an Italian flag and a Native American dreamcatcher for my heritage. It's so wonderful and I can't express how much I LOVE IT!

Even though I am not returning to the classroom for this quickly approaching school year, I am doing some updating in my TpT shop and stumbled across my old Pirate theme classroom from two years ago. I thought I'd share the images because they are still SUPER adorable! Right now, for TODAY ONLY, the Table Numbers below are on sale for just $1.

My pirate ship desk! That was SUCH fun. The wrap around was created with 2 tri-fold Science Fair display boards. The wood look was created with wood grain contact paper from the dollar store. The red is duct tape, and the port holes are made of polka dot paper plates with blue construction paper. The flag is a matching plastic table cloth attached the a pool noodle (also wrapped in the wood contact paper).

This was our reading corner! The sail is a plastic table cloth attached to a pool noodle (wrapped in the wood contact paper). This stayed up all year, too. I was shocked it made it through the whirlwind of Kindergarten...

Found these frames from IKEA! This is an updated product in my store as well. Click the image to see more.

My paper plate word wall!

And last but not least, my construction paper X. I was in a portable that school year, which meant I could staple into the walls! Made decorating a heck of a lot easier, folks.

Let's See Your Classrooms!

Share with me your blog posts about your classroom setup! I really want to see them! Leave a link to your blog in the comments below and I will view all of them and comment on all of them!

That being said, here's mine. I am extremely pleased with it! I'm even linking it up with Monday Made It over at 4th Grade Frolics because my mom and I totally raided The Dollar Tree for the materials for most of these projects! I am so excited for my #pirateclassroom !

This is a picture of my reading corner. I did hang a couple of small posters up to the right of the mast about picking a "just-right" book and the procedures of choosing a reading buddy (stuffed animal) and putting books back, etc. but I took this picture before I hung them. Oops! This project was so easy!

I found this beauty and bought them for $1 a roll! For this project it took 1 and a half rolls of the contact paper.

Also at The Dollar Tree, I found a white plastic table cloth and two pool noodles. I duct taped the pool noodles together and wrapped it in the wood grain contact paper for the mast.

This picture cracks me up! That's my mom under there! We cut a hole in the center of the table cloth the size of the pool noodles and put the noodle through it. For extra support we used Scotch tape to secure it in place on the noodle. We then just used packing tape to attach the bottom of the noodle mast to the wall towards the bottom (by the floor). 

I am fortunate enough to be in a room where I can staple into the walls. We stapled the top two corners of the sail into the walls on either side. Then we took some string which I had leftover from a project I did several years ago and tied a big loop on either side of the sail to make it look kinda bunchy. Isn't my mom cute with her nautical shirt on? She's so supportive!

This idea came later in the process. Originally, I wanted the letters attached directly to the sail, but as we were working with the plastic table cloth, we quickly discovered that it is hard to get things to stick to it. So since we used string to bunch up the sail, I had the idea of making a sign to hold the word "Adventure" in "Reading is an Adventure." We used leftover contact paper on some cardstock and attached the letters I got from a teacher supply store (on clearance!!). My mom chopped up the edges a bit to make it look like a piece of wood on a pirate ship.

We used a mini stapler and simply stapled the cardstock sign to the strings that were tied around our sail.

Using the same kind of string as the sail, we created a draping string of letters with some different letters I also got at the teacher supply store to spell out "Reading is an." We tied the strings of lettering between the two strings that bunch up the sail and they looked great!!

Here's another picture of the finished project but with my super cute chevron rug. I found that at the flea market brand new for $12, ya'll!! It looks like bright colored waves in the ocean!

Here's a breakdown of how much this project cost me:

1 white plastic table cloth = $1

2 pool noodles = $2

1 and a half rolls of wood grain contact paper (I used the rest in another project) = $1.50

cardstock (leftover from another project out of a pack of 12x12 with 100 sheets) = $0.05

Lettering (out of a huge pack that have a lot more letters to use) = approximately $0.75

TOTAL: About $5.30

MORE PICTURES of my classroom:

"Captain's Corner"

4 rolls of wood grain contact paper = $4

polka dot plastic table cloth = $1

1 pool noodle = $1

4 polka dot paper plates (out of a pack of ten for $1) = $0.40

red duct tape ($3 total and used for another project) = approximately $1

parrot cutout (part of a pirate classroom decor set for $10) = approximately $0.25

skull and crossbones printout (printed by myself onto cardstock) = approximately $0.10

2 leftover science fair display boards = free for me (but about $3 a piece)

TOTAL: $7.75

iPhone Job Chart:

1 oil drip pan for cars = $11

1 black plastic table cloth = $1

6 sheets of cardstock and color ink =  approximately $2

Mod Podge (a whole bottle cost me about $6) = approximately $1

TOTAL: $15

For more info on creating the red polka dot word wall with paper plates, click HERE for a previous post or click the photo above!

For a previous Monday Made It post on how to make the Teacher Toolbox, click HERE or the photo above.

This is an old DVD shelf that my sister-in-law gave me years ago that I have had in my living room for a while and then in storage for a while waiting to be used. Once we moved into our new house, we didn't want it anymore, so I repurposed it as a shelf for my classroom by covering the backs of the shelves with colored paper and some fish die cuts I had from a yard sale. The shelves are the perfect size for our reading series leveled readers and small things like flash card sets, dice containers, small containers of manipulatives, etc.

These are on each table. Each frame was 99 cents!

This is a rules poem I found online and loved. I typed them up and printed them to put into more 99 cent frames. They are hanging next to my white board.

If you love my classroom, I have bundled all of the printables and materials needed to recreate these projects into a Pirates and Polka Dots Theme Pack on my TpT store. There's much more included! Here are images of the preview which you can also see HERE.

Enjoy!

Word Wall is UP!

This being my first year teaching, I have a LOT to set up! One of the very first things I tackled was my word wall. I don't have large bulletin boards in the room, but I do have two very large white boards. I only plan on using one (the one in the front of the room), so I created a word wall out of a portion of the other one (on the side of the room)! I have a plan for the other portion which I will post soon. :)

I did things a bit differently. I saw an idea on Pinterest to use plastic table cloths from the dollar store instead of bulletin board paper because they don't fade (and they are only $1)! So that is what I decided on. I grabbed a red one and went to town. Here is what I discovered:

1. My white board is plastic... which means my initial plan of attaching everything with magnets didn't work out.
2. It is nearly impossible to get the table cloth flat, so there will be bumps. I can see where this won't happen on a bulletin board since you can use staples, but on a plastic board where tape is your only hope, it is a headache.
3. Packing tape and sticky tack are good for nothing on that plastic.
4. Duct tape is your BFF.
5. The table cloth rips easily around the edges.

I initially wanted the red table cloth and then a red, yellow, and blue alphabet border around it that I got on sale at a local teaching supply store. I was then planning on attaching black letters. Easy. Peasy. BUT THEN I FOUND THESE AT WALMART:

If you've been keeping up with my blog, you will know that I am doing a pirate and polka dot theme in my room and my main color is red! How cute are these?? They were in the party section for 97 cents for a pack of 10, so I grabbed 3 packs and knew I had to integrate them somehow into the room. I thought my word wall would be great for this!

I had already had my border up, so I went with it. I decided to put some yellow and blue papers in the center of the plate so the colors would match the border a little better and the letters would stand out more. Plus, yellow is pretty dominant in my room as well. Here was the result:

I LOVED my plates. But I hated the combo with the border. It took me so long to get that border up on that plastic table cloth that I kept trying to convince myself that the kids wouldn't care and that I should leave it. Well, I did leave it over the weekend. I went on vacation and didn't think about school for 4 days. When I returned this afternoon... it seems I was destined to change it...

The strong packing tape I used in combination with a little sticky tack (well, the sticky tack was really only to help me keep the cloth straight...) totally did not hold the plates. When I originally hung the cloth with the alphabet border I was not planning on adding so much weight to it. After I found those awesome plates and added them to the mixture, things went awry. I was not upset though! This meant I had to change it! All I did was use black duct tape as the border AND the adhesive and VOILA!

The black looks so much better and I am confident it will stay up. My only complaint is the lump and streaks in the plastic, but as mentioned before... it was a pain to keep straight. I was able to smooth it out a bit after I took this photo and I think over time as I add words to the wall, it will smooth it out more as well. But I am happy with it! I can't wait to start using it with my first class of kinders!

I Finally Made a Teacher Toolbox

This is my first Monday Made It post and I'm linking up with 4th Grade Frolics! I have seen so many awesome things other teachers have made and have gotten a TREMENDOUS amount of fantastic ideas from this linky. So here's my first!

This past weekend, I FINALLY made a teacher toolbox for myself! I have been eyeing them on Pinterest for ages now and a few of my friends just made their's and I just KNEW I had to make one for myself.

I had decided that I would make the labels myself since I couldn't find the exact thing I wanted on TpT to download and print. So, I ran down to Michael's and they were having a one day sale on scrapbooking paper!!! WOOO!! I snagged the patterns I wanted for 16 cents a piece instead of the regular 59 cents! I should have gone back and gotten more, but I didn't... :(

First my husband helped me out and spray painted the frame/base/thing black. The only color they had was navy blue!! And I thought I was being practical by wanting it in black... But oh well. The spray paint worked just fine. The hardest part about it was waiting for it to dry! I wanted it to be done so quickly!

Then I made some labels on my computer. This is a close up of the small labels which fit the 1"x2" drawer fronts. I made them using the label clipart from Ms. Fultz's Corner on TpT. 

I then started the tedious task of cutting them out. Initially when I printed the labels out and saw exactly how tiny they were, I was dreading this and thought that I would for sure resort to handwriting all my labels! But it wasn't bad at all! It took far less time that I thought it would and it was worth the short periods of hand cramps. ;)

As simple as it is, I just used a regular old glue stick! Well, this one is the jumbo glue stick, perfect for all my gluey sticky needs! I cut my scrapbook paper finds to fit the little drawers and glued the labels on. Easy peasy.

It was a beautiful site to see all these done! I made the large drawers (as you can see) in red and white polka dots to break up the black and to match the red stuff in my classroom. I am pretty sure I just stared at these for a good 10 minutes, completely in love.

I went the easy route and used scotch tape on the inside of the drawers. I was thinking that I would glue them and then mod podge the edges on the outside of the drawers so it wouldn't look so faded out, but I really didn't like the idea of the paper being on the outside. I really feel like it would tear over time, so I put them on the inside, which means all I did was use plain old tape! This also means that for next year I can just rip them out and make new ones with a different theme and not worry about the drawers looking wompy after the glue.

So there ya have it! I LOVE IT SO MUCH! If you have not made one of these bad boys yet, I recommend it. Everything is out of my desk and organized beautifully on a shelf at my fingertips!