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.

2+1 Wishlists!

I am so excited for the sale on Monday and Tuesday! Probably more excited than I should be... but I can finally get my wishlist items for a LOT less money out of my pocket! And that brings me to wishlists! I found a great linky over at Coffee Cups and Lesson Plans. So many of you have a couple of the products in my store wishlisted. Now's the time, people! Snag 'em while they're cheap!!!

So, here's how this works. I post and discuss the 2 most wishlisted items in my store. Then I post and discuss one of the items in MY OWN wishlist! Here we go!

The number one most wishlisted item in my store is.... DRUMROLL PLEASE...

Not only is this the most wishlisted item in my store, but it is my number 1 best seller AND Kelly over at Sweet Sounds of Kindergarten recently did a product swap with me and reviewed this bundle! If you'd like to see it in use, here's the link to her post about it: Sweet Sounds of Kindergarten.

This pack is a little unusual for me, as right now I currently teach kindergarten. However, I made this bundle as I was teaching a theater class with a superhero theme and we did a LOT of writing and character development. I took the resources I made and adapted them for a general classroom's use. If you are one of the many who have it on their wishlist, it will be 20% off on Monday and Tuesday and combined with the TPTCYBER coupon code at the end... should make for a pretty sweet deal!

And the number two most wishlisted item in my store is my FAVORITE THING EVER:

I have become pretty much obsessed with pirates this year. Not sure why, but I ran with it. This bundle has everything I have created for my OWN classroom. The items in this bundle are seriously kid tested and teacher approved. There are real photos of final products and step by step instructions on how to make some pretty sweet classroom setups. I know it is late in the year for classroom decor packs, but if you have this on your wishlist, it will be VERY inexpensive on Monday and Tuesday.

Here are some previous blog posts of me setting up my classroom with the use of the items in this bundle. The preview on TpT also has a lot of images to check out before buying.

I Finally Made a Teacher Toolbox

Word Wall is UP!

Let's See Your Classrooms! Monday Made It!

And now, something on MY wishlist!

This pack is made by United Teaching and I used her worksheets in October for Halloween and my kids LOVED them! I use these no-prep sheets for morning work and there's enough variety in them to keep the kids excited to get their morning work done. As simple as these are, they were a life saver in October and since I didn't buy the November/Thanksgiving pack, my kids will be excited to see these again in the winter. Also, can you say CUTE?!

So there ya have it, folks! Can you tell I'm excited for this sale??

DON'T FORGET TO USE THE CODE AT CHECKOUT!!!

TPTCYBER

What's on YOUR wishlist?

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!