Hall Pass Sign

I finished my hall pass chart.  I usually use a lanyard with my passes.  But my boys last year...I just gotta say I don't know what they did to that thing, but it is beyond repair.  I saw on Pinterest, as I'm sure you did, the cute hall pass signs that people have been making.  I decided to jump on the sign and mini clothespin bandwagon.

So here is how we made mine (we meaning my son and I).  First I bought the wooden star from Hobby Lobby.  It is thin enough so that I can clip the pins right to it.

We painted it yellow.

Then I wrote on it and put polka dot stickers on it to match my room decor.  I also hung a polka dot ribbon so that I can hang it up in my classroom.

The clothespins I Mod Podged, glitter, and Mod Podged again.  The glitter is staying on!  Love that idea.  Thank you to who ever figured that one out.  I used two blue for boys and two green for girls.  I also made a few extras, just in case.

And finally here is my completed sign. What do you think?  Didn't it turn out cute?  And no more bathroom germs!  YEAH!!

Smartbead Freebie

I had a different post on here earlier, but I am having a lot of trouble with Blogger tonight.  So I'm sorry.  I wanted to get my freebie back up quickly, though. 

I'm sure you have seen the Smartbeads ideas and the buttons on Pinterest.  Well I couldn't decide how I wanted to incorporate these two ideas into one.  What I've probably finally decided on is to use a little bit of both ideas.  When a student does well on a test, they will earn the necklace with the red owl cutout to put on it.  I will also send home the little cards telling their parents that they earned Smartbeads today.

Then every time they do well on a test, they will earn one of the white owl cutouts to attach to their necklace.  I've decided this would be a great way to show the student's their successes in our classroom.  By the end of the year they will have a whole bunch of owls on their necklace.  What do you think?

If you click on the picture, you can get me owl as a freebie. 

Attendance

Hi everyone!  How do you take attendance?  I’ve seen some teachers use pocket charts with cards for the students and some just call student names.  I have used the pocket chart method when I had a lot of wall space.  I don’t have a lot of wall space in my current classroom. 

The way I always take attendance is by using clothespins.  I write the names on a clip.  The clips are clipped to a basket that I have, one for boys and one for girls.  One of my classroom jobs is Attendance Clerk.  They need to tell me who’s clip is still up and they need to put all the clips back up for me at the end of the day.  It is an easy way for me to see who is not here.  This really works, but I want to try something different.

So this year I’m going to try something new.  I went to JoAnn Fabrics (yes again!) and was walking around with my shopping buddy, my son.  We were looking for something that I could use for attendance.  I was going to use the cookie sheet idea I’ve seen on Pinterest.  But cookie sheets are all of a sudden hard to find by me and I couldn’t find a cookbook stand anywhere!



We were walking around and I ran into these.  They are metal and have a stand attached so they stand up.   

I tried showing the back of it so you
could see how they stand up.

Cool, right?!  I got one in blue and one in green (my usual stand by colors).  They also had pink.  They were kinda expensive ($10 each), but I had a coupon for JoAnn's and one for Michaels and then used my teacher discount!  YEAH!

 Then I bought these little bubble magnets.  I was going to make the ones I’ve seen with glass beads, but these were sitting there already done!  I wrote numbers on them with Sharpie marker so that I can reuse them each year.

    

Then I printed the cute owl signs.  One says “Whoooo is here today?” and the other one says “Whooo is  absent today?”  The students will take their magnet off the absent sign in the morning and attach it to the here today sign.  I will still use my Attendance Clerk to check the magnets each morning and to put them back on the chart at the end of the day.  I put polka dotted ribbon in the holes to match the colors.  I put green ribbon in the blue one and blue ribbon in the green one.

         

Here is how they look with a few of
the button magnets on them

             

What do you think?  Are they “owl”tastic???

Tracey J

Monday Made It

Hello everyone!  I had a couple of days off to celebrate my son’s 7^th birthday.  We were lucky.  He had a pool party at our house.  It started raining 10 minutes after the last child was picked up.  Couldn’t have been any luckier, huh??
So today I'm linking up with Tara for the Monday Made It linky party. 




Click here to go to her site (LOTS of great ideas today!) 
http://4thgradefrolics.blogspot.com/

I’m going to share a couple things I’ve been working on.  First up are my crate seats.  I wanted my seats to be sturdy so that they would last.  I asked my dad’s advice on this one since building and cabinets is what he does.  I asked his advice and the next day he comes in with 8 of them done and ready to be padded!  He made these VERY sturdy.  He put the squares in the corner so that the top would sit on the crate so I could open it easily.  The tops don’t just sit inside the crate; it sits on the lip of the crate to lift up.  I can’t believe how well made these turned out…thanks Dad!  

Then I went to JoAnn Fabrics to find the material.  This was a group project as my mom, my son, and I all argued about which fabric we should use.  We found this print, and luckily….we all agreed!  It has a black background with polka dots.  This pattern I knew would go with any theme I used.  I went to Target to but black crates.  This also will match any color scheme I use.  Once again my parents save the day.  I mentioned to my mom that I need to figure out how to put fabric on these and she said she would show me how.  The next day in walk 8 completed seats.  My parents rock!

 

Sorry about the red crate.  I already took the black ones to school to drop them off.  I am really proud of how well these were made.  I’ll have them for a looooong time!

The next project I did was my “Don’t Forget” board.  Here is a picture of what it looked like before.  Yes, that is a chicken!  Its a chicken on the top and a chalkboard on the bottom.  It was 80% off at JoAnn’s and I couldn’t pass that up.  I mean it wound up being like $3.00 with the discount and the teacher discount.

  

My son and I brought it home and painted it blue.  I’ve created a monster with him.  He wanted to paint it blue and green.  He wanted the green to be an accent color.  Wow!  Can you tell he and I have been doing a lot of projects this summer!!!!  After we painted it blue, we decided (okay he decided) that the blue was the perfect color and we didn't need the green.

We then added some fun dot stickers to give it some color.  It is a chalkboard, so I can write on it and erase it easily.  Yes, my school still has chalkboards, so I still use a lot of chalk.  I will hang it by the door.  I think it turned out cute.  And he is so proud of it and can't wait to hang it up in my classroom.

And the last thing is not something I made…it is something I bought.  If you teach third grade or higher and you have to teach cells, check these out. 

I got them at Dollar Tree.  Part of my first unit is teaching plant and animal cells.  This is hard for my kiddos.  I have them label cells so they have the parts, but it is always black and white. I don’t have a color printer at school.  I also review, play games, label the parts, etc…but come test time they still struggle.   Can you believe this find??  There are 24 sheets in the pack.  I bought three years worth, just in case they don’t have them again.  So excited over a cell?  Boy am I a teacher!

Have a great Monday and tomorrow I’ll be sharing a vocabulary project I do.

Tracey J

Monday Made It

Happy Monday Made It!  I am linking up with Tara for my first Monday Made It Linky. 

Monday Made It

I originally found these ideas on Pinterest, of course so here are the original ones from Pinterest.

  

The first one I will use for an exit strategy.  I will add a question at the top on some days where the children will have to add a sticky note on their student number to answer the question.  Like a reading strategy (name a trait that describes the main character) or a math question (show a number in expanded form).  Other days I will leave it open so the children can add anything they learned during the day.  I did a star theme since my school’s mascot is the All Stars. 

The second one I did was my Wonder Wall. I think it turned out cute.  I use a lot of polka dots in my classroom.  Found this border at WalMart for 88 cents!  I will use this for the students to put these up that they are wondering about.  This will help me see if I still have questions about a topic after I taught it.

I also made a really cute mystery themed clip chart.  It’s further down my blog… 

Happy Monday everyone-

Tracey

Tabletop Pocket Charts

I had to order my son the Toad from Mario for an early birthday present on Amazon.  And you know when you order something, you can’t just order one thing.  It would cost too much in shipping, right?  So I ordered a tabletop pocket chart from Learning Resources.  I didn’t really see the measurements because it said tabletop so I thought small enough to sit on a tabletop…and it was only $15.00.

Then a couple days later, my husband needed a new battery for his computer.  I have the Amazon account, so he asked me to order for him.  Well, once again, you can’t just order one thing…think of the shipping costs.  So I ordered another one of the tabletop pocket charts.  I thought since I have 3 tables in my room that would work out great.  And it was still only $15.00

So I get this HUGE box from Amazon.  I know it is not my son’s stuffed Toad from Mario because he is only 6 inches tall.  I know it’s not my husband’s battery because it’s not that big.  My son and I open the box that we could both fit into.  And what’s in the box???  Two HUGE tabletop pocket charts.  I mean look at the size of these.  And for $15.00???  Really??

    

Isn’t it awesome??  I just measured them and they are 20 inches tall and 24 inches wide.  They are too big for the small trapezoid tables in my room but I’ll use one for my rectangle table and I don’t know what for the other one. 

It’s so wonderful when you HAVE TO shop at it works out for the better! 

Happy shopping everyone! 

Tracey