Another Hard Day and Monday Made It...

Hello all!  I am so excited to be linking back up with Tara over at 4th Grade Frolics for her Monday Made It!  It has been some weeks since I linked up, but happy to be back!  There was so much to post on this Monday Made It.  Let's just say that I have not only been making, cutting and laminating like crazy this past week, but I have been finishing up my eLearning courses. (Is it wrong to be elated about almost being finished with these course?  Great information, time consuming) And I am still not finished.  I am drained, but know that my hard work is going to be so worth it!  Okay, so I am going to post two Made Its.  I remember seeing a Made it Post by Tara and she had functional and Cutesy.  So I will share my functional first.

My school has adopted the Envision Common Core for our math series this year.  I am so excited about using this textbook... I am not sure how the other Envisions were, but I love this one.  It has so much and I love it so much (I think I already said that).  So I am really working towards making my boards interactive.  We can thank Daily 5 and CRAFT (check out Ladybug Teacher Files for her rendition of CAFE)!  So I set out to make some interactive boards for my students.  I wanted some catchy vocab terms and thought that I could make that on my own....and I did, so here is a view of a few of my Vocab words that coincide with envision.

I will putting this up on TPT store soon.  I am not finished with them yet and the entire pack includes the common core standards, domains, clusters, and vocabulary for fourth grade math.

My next Monday Made It is my Cutesy one.  Okay, so I purchased these fantastic blue bins from Lakeshore.  I loved my bins and I use them to house my different teacher editions that I am currently using.  (Come on teachers, you know that our teacher editions are plentiful...which is another reason I love Envision, folder like teacher editions.)  I love my bins and couldn't part with them just because they didn't match my color scheme this year....  Take a look:

I didn't take a picture of my bins before hand, but found the ones I purchased on Lakeshore websites.

So I set out to transform the blab blue bins to fantastic black and white them bins.  The materials I used: a glue gun, patterned duck tape (black and white zebra stripe), and black paper.  Yes, that is all!  Here are my steps:

1. I lined the edges of the bins with the pattern duck tape (front, back, and sides)
2. I measured and cut the paper to fit the bins
3. hot glued the paper to the bins (inside and out)
4. And Viola...DONE!

And the finished product:

               

                                              

Sorry the pictures are a little dark....Hope you can see the creations.

The task was fairly simple and I love how they turned out...and they look great. I didn't line the bottom of the storage bins because I didn't see the purpose and the materials in the bins will cover them up.

After all the training, I am excited to share some of the things I created for 7 Habits for free.  I will discuss and share on a later post.  Probably after I finish up this eLearning.  LOL! Be sure to stop by 4th Grade Frolics to check out the other wonderful Monday Made Its!   Happy Creating!

So This Crazy Journey Begins....With an Intro and TWO FREEBIES!

Hello all...I am so excited, I can hardly stand it.  So for the first month of my summer vacation, I have been blog stalking.  And when I say blog stalking...I mean it.  I never knew all of the great resources out there for teacher that others are willing to share.  Now I know that you may be thinking, "What, you don't share?"  I share all the time with a few of my undergrad classmates, my co-workers and even with teacher I meet at workshops.  And it hit me that maybe I should expand my sharing (mom always said it was nice to share) to others, as well as connect and learn in the process.  So here's the blog.  It's a win, win!

Now I am not perfect by any means.  I am still learning, but throughout my first year (which was last year), I learned so much.  It was an up and down roller coaster.   I work at a Title I school where over 90% of our students are on free lunch.  Now I am not saying this to get your pity....I LOVE IT!  I wouldn't be anywhere else right now and I MEAN THAT!  I love when my students learn and want to be more than what they see around them and that makes all the added stress worthwhile.  This is my second year and I am so EXCITED.  More excited than my first year...maybe because last year I was stressing...first year teacher jitters!  Well, I am excited about sharing many ideas and resources.  I have completely transformed my teaching style this year, well not completely...but I will be implementing workshops in every subject I teach.  It is so much work planning and preparing for these workshops, but I know my students will gain more from it.  So stick around for that.

So I wanted to start off by sharing two wonderful freebies with you all out here in blog world.  The first on is the mania we call BOGGLE.  I created this because I couldn't find one that matched my color scheme.  So dots and colors had to be made.  :-)  With this freebie you get the title, two recording sheets, letters and blank sheets.  Enjoy.  To grab this, just click the picture below.

Boggle Mania

My next freebie, I so cannot take credit for.  This game was actually adapted from the ever great math game floating around, "Math It UP!". (check out the creator Live, Laugh, and Love to Learn).  I wanted to do this game, but wanted to use it with more basic math skills and not have to change out the title every time.  So, I made interchangeable header cards and gave the game a general name, "Math It UP!"  So now I can just change the header for the skill I want my students to work on.  This game includes title, four headers (addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division), numbers cards (1-99), blank cards, and recording sheet.  To grab this game, just click on the picture below.

Math It Up!

 Hope you enjoy both of the games and be sure to follow my blog.  I have many ideas to share and can't wait to share them with you!  And don't forget to Button Up! (grab my button)