Monday Made it: Sit Spots for $5

Linking up for Monday Made it this morning... 

I am sure you have seen this Pinteresting product floating around!

From what I gather these things are absolutely amazing. Truly they are not priced terribly either so if you have 35 kids and can spare $70 you should definitely stop reading this post and go buy some! Haha. Just click here to visit their site. You can also click the pin below to read a great post by Teacher to the Core.

Now I have wayyyy too many kids each year and move ins and outs like nobody's biz so I created my own. At the dollar tree they have all sorts of placemats. You could even use those little foam colored pieces that come like 20 in a pack and make them for less than 5 bucks. And if they are ruined at the end of the year no big woop, am I right!? I had to buy 8 placemats to be safe. 

To get started I used a pen, scissors,  placemats, 

and the lid to an oatmeal container. 

 Step 1: Use the round object to draw circles on the backside of each placemat. 

Sit Spots has all sorts of different shapes and colors. 

If you want to make your own unique shapes you could trace anything. 

So if your classroom theme is ocean you could find a cutesy whale shape to trace. 

 Step 2: Cut them out. 

 Step 3: I created these sticky labels with numbers. 

You can download the template here. I used Avery labels 5160. 

Click here for the editable Word version and here for the PDF

Step 4:

I had some velcro too so I put a little piece on the back of each. 

Now I can stick them to the carpet or linoleum floor. 

Once each is placed where I want it I can move each circle as frequently as I want. 

So if student #24 won't stop talking to student #25 no worries.

 I will just swap student #15 and #24. Problema solved!

 Here is my little model. 

These are set up on my living room floor since it is mid-July 

and I am so not ready to start going back yet!

I also made these cutesy little pencil cans. 

Target has these little chalkboard cans in the dollar spot. 

If you don't have chalkboard markers you MUST pick some up! 

There are some crazy amazing Monday Made It's this week. I already added 5 gazzilion to my to do list! Go check em' out. 

Feeling like the world's most organized teacher right about now!

Have you ever drooled longingly over an Erin Condren planner? If you’ve seen one I’m sure your answer is “duh”! They are just so beautiful, and wonderful and organized... ahhhh bliss. I can not bring myself to buy one though. I just can’t. 

If you are the same I have just what you’re looking for. This is my all in one teacher spiral. It cost me a total of $9.98! Yup, thats right, less than 10 bucks!

I purchased Haley O’Connor’s of My Silly Firsties Editable Teacher Binder. Folks, this thing is beyond amazing!! 

I am not a huge fan of binders though. I want to pack around as little as possible and I want every single thing I need at my fingertips so this is the solution. I used Haley’s teacher binder and edited all the pieces so that they are exactly what I need. I printed out every part I wanted and put it all in order. Then I took it to Kinko’s and had them spiral bind it for me. They charged me $3.98 and Haley’s Editable Teacher Binder is only $6.00. This is by far the best purchase I have ever made. And, I can use it year after year too!

The proof is in the pictures. 

Haley has several colored cover options. I made my own, printed it on cardstock and laminated for durability. This is the only piece that I laminated. 

There are always loose papers and because I don't like binders I needed to find a way to add pockets. Kinkos cut a folder in half for me and I placed them where I wanted before they added the spiral. I chose to put one in the front and the back. You can add more pockets too. I will have to decide if I need more later. :) 

I printed all of the covers/sections on cardstock to make it easy to flip 

through and find the section I need. 

In the planning section I have monthly calendars in color, a year long plan (my own, and yes I have a copy for you :)  Just click HERE for the editable year long plan. I also have my planning pages but Haley has editable versions that are wonderful too. I already had mine done and that's the only reason I used it. 

I use an online gradebook, but I like to have rosters and checklists

 to keep track of other things so I have a section for this too. 

You could easily add you entire grade book to this spiral and create sections too!

Oh and one of my favorite things, Haley includes a cutesy-pie typed version of the CCSS for all grades. I added these to my planning section for easy access while planning. 

I have to have a section for To-Do Lists and Notes!

This is my last section but a must!

So that's it. I might have even skipped a few parts. This thing is pretty big, but the spiral keeps it nice and condensed. In LOVE! It's times like these that I am especially thankful for everyone out there creating products for teachers. Sorry for all of the dark pictures, Haley's preview shows so much more. 

DIY Character Canvas Paintings

For this week's project I made Character Canvas Paintings. Now, before you stop reading and think it looks too difficult read on because I am not artsy fartsy at all so if I can get this done anyone can. This has been my favorite Made it Monday project! I hope you all love it as much as I do and find time to make a few for your classroom.

Materials:

Painting Canvases- I bought mine at Michael's Craft Store on Sale in a 10 pack for $10

Acrylic Paint

Directions:

1. Google pictures of your favorite book characters. Try to stick with simple pictures that do not have too much detail and focus mostly upon the main character. 

2. Once I had my characters picked out I then put each picture on my document camera and projected the picture onto my blank canvas. 

3. Use a pencil to trace the outline and details of your picture onto your canvas

4. Once you have all of the pictures penciled on to your canvases you are ready to paint

5. Use the acrylic paint and various size paint brushes to paint your characters. This part takes time and patience but I was able to complete all 6 of my characters in about 3 hours. (The toddler was at his Grammies! Otherwise I would not have been so brave and it probably would have taken me 10 hours).

I also made this no sew banner to go above the windows in my classroom. Click on the picture below to get the template. I printed the triangles on card stock, cut them, stapled them to ribbon at each corner and VOILA..... banner hung!

Click the picture to get your template!

Monday Made It!!

So I am going to go ahead and cheat a little, well kinda, I made this before Monday :)

Watch this video to see how it works!! Visit my TPT Store to get this for yourself!

Monday Made It and an Award!

This has been all over so nothing too new here but still adorbs and certainly post worthy. BTW my goal in my room this year has been no extra furniture at all. I mean no keeping furniture if there is any possible way to get rid of it. So that goes to show that I felt like this was worth making a new piece of furniture.

I already had the baskets and just wasn't sure what I would do with them. I also had the fabric left from what I used from my stool. See post here! The crates were $3.48 at target. I had a board in my garage from a broken shelf. I guess all that moving was good for something. The foam pad I used was also left over. See, my hubs is quite happy that I am getting rid of all this ecess stuff in our garage for all of my projects.... thank youuuuu Made it Monday!

See... Happy Hubs! 

And.... my Pinspiration came from....

In other news I was also nominated by Teacher Talk for the Versatile Blogger Award! Wooo Hooo! Thank you Tammi!

As acceptance of this award I would like to:

1. Say thank you to Tammi for gifting me with this award!

2. Encourage you to please visit her at Teacher Talk

3. Give you 7 randoms about myself because I just know how much you love hearing random junk about me, haha, I kid I kid!

Random #1 I believe myself to have the strangest sleeping position of any person alive and my son sleeps the exact same way. I feel like it is impossible to actually describe how we sleep. 

Random #2  I bite my nails :( I have tried so many times to stop and some days are better than others.

Random #3 Up until about a year ago I was hands down the most terrible cook of all time. I specifically remember Josh choking down several dinners just to keep me from crying.

Random #4 I have always always wanted to teach. My family still talks about how I would force my brothers and sisters to sign an actual contract to play school on Saturday from the hours of 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. (they always violated the contract!!!)

Random #5  I rarely watch TV unless the hubs has sports on and I am in the room but when I do it is hours and hours of nonsense reality T.V.

Random #6 I had this habit of saying "I refuse to do ______" and then less than 2 min. later saying "Okay, I'll do it" In reality when I said I refuse I knew I was going to do it all along.

Random #7 The only reason I enjoy staff meeting is so I can giggle and catch up with my darling teaching partner, Danni. She actually makes me look forward to it! Just love that girl!!

*Note: must take pictures of me and my team this year! :) 

4. For this award I would like to nominate...

Okay Okay that is all I am doing because there are so many teachers who have won this award and even some of the ones I have chosen may have, so yeah! :) 

Now to make this the longest post of all time I have some classroom pictures for you from day 2 of my summer work!

This is currently my desk

Will be math area with Daily 5 math choices, manipulatives and math board

Group area and little sitting area 

Shelf will all of my teacher books. My goal was to get them all on one shelf... barely 

Will be writing bulletin board and writing table

Word work area 

The library is coming along nicely

More library... I have too many books ugh

Mailboxes, had to get creative trying to make 36 of them