Bulletin Boards

The school I am student teaching at has been really pushing to showcase each grade's goals to the school as a way to motivate students. Since the forth grade needed a new bulletin board, we decided to incorporate our class goals with our curriculum, Nebraska history and the Oregon Trail along with trails in general that went across Nebraska onto a bulletin board. This is our board:

These are where our goals are now and we will change them and move the wagon as we achieve more and more. 

1st Grade stuck with the school's theme of learning targets. I love this idea!

This is a closer image of how they did it. 

2nd Grade is by far my favorite! As a schools, we work to be Hartley Heros, students and staff who are safe, caring, respectful and responsible. Each month they have an assembly and announce that month's Hartley Hero in each grade. The students love it and its a great way to motivate students to be all of these things every day. 

This is the school wide Hartley Hero Bulletin Board with second grade's.

Each time the grade increases their percentage, more lights are added to the buildings. If you look close you'll see that the super heroes are photos of the teachers who teach these students. 

3rd grade went with a road theme. It is very cute.

ELL also made a bulletin board but because they have so many different age groups and abilities it doesn't showcase their goals. 

Fourth grade just finished up with State Writing. In celebration of finishing and in anticipation of parent teacher conferences, we displayed their stories in our hallway like this. The colored paper is just colored paper folded in half with their story stapled inside.  

Valentines

With Valentines day just a few weeks away I decided to share my classic Valentines Day gift I've used with my practicum classes in the past. In my school district, candy and food are highly discouraged so I found this ideas a few years ago and have gone with it ever since. The kids love them!

The first one I did I found at this website. It's a simple butterfly template that I printed on pink card stock and then cut slits into. I used crayons in the slits one year and lip gloss the other. Both were a big hit!

For the boys, I used this website. I've printed the jar template onto both blue and brown card stock and both look fine. I went to Dollar Tree and found packages of plastic bugs that I glued on using a glue gun. A little caution when buying the packages, there are a one or two in each bag that aren't bugs so you may need to buy a few more than you think.

Photo from http://www.dandee-designs.com/2012/02/love-bug-valentines.html

If you have younger students, K-2 this will be a hit! This year I have a much older class of fourth graders so I will have to come up with a new or variation of this idea. Let me know if you have any ideas!

It's Been Awhile

It's been awhile since I've blogged but I was inspired today at a tech convention in Aurora, Nebraska. In this conference we talked about how as adults whenever we seek to find information we look to Google, YouTube or some form of social media for answers; but someone has to share these things so why not have it be us. In the past I have uploaded a few of my projects showing others how to make things  but I did it completely anonymously. This time around I am going to try to share not only what I've made but also what I am learning along the way. I am doing this as a teaching tool for others but hopefully also to learn from myself. I'll be reflecting on what I'm learning and how. Wish me luck!

Thank You Gift Buckets

I went shopping today for the rest of my thank you gift. I think it turned out awesome!



I made it to Walmart where I found the buckets and silly straws. Then I went to dollar tree and found lots of fun things to fill it with. I found a beach ball, finger paints, bubbles, chalk, popsicles,  popcorn and bags to put it in, and sunglasses. I also added those sponge balls I made.  All together this cost only $15.

Here's another thing I've been working on. I am in a practicum right now and need a thank you for my cooperating teacher. We decided to get her a little something to do with her two sons over the summer.

I found these really cute sponge balls on Pinterest and I thought I'd try them out. They were SUPER EASY!!

I went to Dollar Tree and found a pack of 10 sponges.

Then I cut them in half once, and then again (four pieces per sponge).

Then I grouped 6 pieces together like this. 

And put a zip tie around them. 

Then pull it tight. You want it tight enough that the sponges will stay together but if you go too tight the sponges will break. 

Last I cut off the extras. 

This project was super easy! I made 6 sponge balls and even had one sponge left over. These will be fun this summer when it's hot! Not bad for $1!!! 

Chairs

I haven't been on here in way too long! To be honest  I forgot that I had it!

I thought I'd upload a couple projects that we have been working on lately.

First our chairs here is a few pictures of them in the making...

This is what they looked like before. 

After taking off the vinyl that was there before. We found this! Wish we would have known this before!! This would have looked much better!

But we went to Hobby Lobby before taking anything off and bought some very cute Chevron fabric.

Here are some pictures of what we've done so far! :) We've took off the old and covered our chairs with this new fabric.

Since we had extra, we cover a few 12 inch by 12 inch pieces of Styrofoam with the rest and it turned out pretty cute!

Vinyl Record Picture Frame

In a couple weeks I am going with my boyfriend to Colorado for Christmas with his family. Sounds fun right? Yes, but there is a small problem. I haven't mentioned this before but I am in college. As many of you know, college students don't have a lot of money. And so I need to be creative in my gift giving. I have to get presents, not only for him but for his parents, sister, and grandparents. For my next couple of posts I will share what I got each of them and how I did each of his families gifts for a very low price. 

I wanted to get them each something that I thought they would enjoy and something that I put some effort into to make unique to them. His grandparents LOVE records and I knew I wanted to make something with vinyl records for them for Christmas.                              

So my first stop was Goodwill where I found records for 99 cents! 

Next I had to come up with an idea and so I started searching the web where I found a website where you could buy picture frames made out of vinyl records. In an effort to save money, we decided to make our own. With some help from my boyfriend, we placed masking tape the size that we wanted and began cutting it with an exacto knife. This proved to be a lot harder than we thought. The record is very hard and doesn't cut easily so we tried several techniques to cut it. First we heated the knife and began cutting it. This worked okay but it was very hard to keep the knife hot enough long enough to do anything so we tried heating the record with a lighter and cut it while the vinyl was nice and moldable. This also worked but is very time consuming. The record is sometimes too flexible and stretches rather than cutting clean. This week we will be experimenting with different techinques to find the best way to cut it. (If you have an idea, feel free to comment!! :) We could use a little help!) 

This is the backside of our record. Although the cutting isn't the best and our last corner is still in tact, I have no doubt that with a little more cutting (and maybe a little better cutting strategy) we will have a wonderful vinyl record picture frame that they will love!