Five for Friday: A Week ALREADY?!

Has it seriously been another week?? How?! Where did the time go?

This week was certainly an interesting one. We had our PBS assembly which was super confusing for my kinders but they loved it. It was the week after a 3 day weekend which meant that Tuesday was like the first day of school again... AND I got sick today. I will be fighting a cold for a little while, but thank goodness I only had to make it through one day and now I have the weekend to recuperate!

I'm starting off my post with a personal item: I miss my little brother!

My brother and I are very close. He is only 10 months younger than I am and we have never been more than an hour's drive away from each other our entire lives! Well, my brother made a huge life-changing decision a few months ago and it finally came to fruition. My older brother lives in Nevada and my younger brother Joey decided he needed a change and would move to Nevada as well.... Have I mentioned that I live in Florida? It was a very emotional (but exciting!) day. Selfishly, though, I miss him...

My older brother Stephen (right) flew in to help Joey (left) with his drive. My mom and I are the shorties...

Here they are! Ready to go! And apparently Kerby the beagle is a very good traveler and is also ready for a new adventure!

Flashback time!

And here's us being silly at my wedding reception!

I miss him terribly but I am SO PROUD of him for making such a big decision. He needs a change and I hope he finds what he's looking for in a new place. Plus, now my vacations can be to Las Vegas!

Alright, back to school stuff. Teaching kindergarten, I use tables in my room and not desks, which does pose a problem with storing and organizing the kids' supplies. I am also in a portable where storage is always an issue. I was given these chair pockets by a retiring teacher and I LOVE them. What do you use if you don't use desks?

We have their school folder with their workbook pages in it and the clothespin has their name and lunch number written on it for when we go to the cafeteria. We call it their lunch clip. This child is obviously very particular as to how he likes his chair pocket set up. I didn't even tell him to put his lunch clip like that. What a smartie.

We whipped out the watercolors the other day! It was so fun!! A class set of watercolor paints was donated to my classroom this year (some used, some new) and I couldn't wait to use them.

We read "Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes" and talked about color words. Then I found a free printable (I can't remember where! UGH! I feel so bad!). Instead of plain old coloring, we painted his shoes!

It also really helped that his shoes turn white again but they are wet at the end of the story. The kids just "painted" on some water on the last set! We wrote our color words in later but I snagged this picture beforehand.

We are learning about the five senses in science right now and we've really been enjoying it! We even had a popcorn party! Food for all of your senses! The fun part (and I wish I had pictures) was when I used an air popper to pop it. To prevent all the kids from getting up out of their seats to see, I put the whole thing up on the document camera real big on the screen. It was certainly interesting. One popped out and scared me when it hit my hand and I let out a little shriek, which was then followed by the whole class screaming. It was hilarious... and delicious... and the kids had a blast.

I made these little "awards" for each kiddo with some popcorn die cuts I got at a teacher supply store. They thought it was so cool.

I have a couple of new products up in my store that haven't had their moment in the spotlight here on my blog, so I'll use my number 5 section to show them off! I am excited about both of them as they were both products requested that I make by colleagues. They are happy and so am I! Click the images to go to the links.

These are really cool. Each side of the cube has a reflection question geared towards math, such as "Are there any other ways you can solve this problem?" or "Did someone else solve this problem differently? How?" It makes reflection a little more fun and interactive. There are 4 different cubes with a total of 24 questions AND a blank cube with editable text for you to make your own!

A co-worker of mine liked my teacher toolbox but couldn't quite find something that she liked for her own to match her color scheme. I decided to make one for her and love the result. I actually kind of like it more than my own......

Thanks for reading, ya'll! Have a great and well deserved relaxing weekend!

Pirates and Polka Dots

In addition to there being an awesome sale coming up, my new Pirates and Polka Dots Classroom Theme Pack is posted and if HALF OFF for 24 hours! So make it easy on yourself this year and download the set for your room! There are tons of photos from my classroom and step by step instructions on how to create and use the printables.

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!