WORDLE

The more you read...

Hello again. Man this summer has flown by!!! I've been working in my room almost everyday and its finally getting close to being finished. The Hubs and I were able to escape to Gulf Shores for a week, our first vacation in almost 3 years so I'm looking forward to next summer when I don't have to worry about painting and everything again....hopefully...and have a nice relaxing summer break!

Since I don't have everything set up exactly how I want it just yet and I'm still waiting on a few items to come in, I haven't really taken that many pictures. I did however finish our class library yesterday, well the decorations for it, so I thought I would give you guys a sneak peek. It's by far my favorite part of the room right now.

Isn't it adorable? I kept seeing all these circle trees on Pinterest and knew I wanted to do something similar but I couldn't find a bulletin board set that I liked so I searched google images until I found a tree I liked. Luckily, my room had an old projector in it that came in handy. After I printed the image on transparency paper I cast the image on the wall and then painted it with some brown paint that was already in the room! The READ part is actually wooden letters that I painted and attached with hot glue and sticky tack so I'm hoping they stay put. The teacher before me used hot glue on all of her posters and seeing that they were probably up for around 4 years and I still had trouble getting them off the wall I think I'll be ok, fingers crossed that don't fall on a kiddo reading!

You'll notice my baskets are empty right now. I'm in the process of sorting through the books I have (which sadly isn't very many) and I plan to attach these book bin labels that I found through Pinterest. I was lucky to receive a few books from the other Kindergarten teachers but I'm still pretty low on supply. My mom has books in her classroom that I will be inheriting next year when she retires but my little darlings in this years bunch will still need something to look at in the library station!!! I've been researching how to find cheap books and it occurred to me yesterday to check out the goodwill store in my town. I found 3 hardback books for $.59 each then went to the goodwill a few towns away and got 15 hardback books for $.69 ea! So I got 18 books for a little over $12! Can't beat that...and one of them was even on my Amazon wish list for $7!

I was soooo excited to find this hardback book in wonderful shape for $.59! I plan to read it the first week of school! 

I also found a website that lists booksales in your area. www.booksalefinder.com There is one close to where I live starting this Friday and the children's books will be $.50 ea!!! Can't wait! I'll try to post if I get anything good! 

If you know of anywhere else to look please leave a comment below. Hope everyone is having a great summer! Relax a little for me! ;)

Starting to Feel Real Real!

Hey everyone. So I've been teaching 10 little Kindergarteners this summer and I'm really enjoying it. What's really fun is we all get to eat together at the same time so the teachers all seat down to gab a little. I think we are all in agreement that a 4 day school week all year round would be sooo much better for everyone involved and we would be willing to stay an hour or so longer each day to make it happen.....a bunch of wishing thinking going on!

Anyway, I've been using another teacher's room for our summer class but I found out this past week which room I'm going to be in next year and started working right away after the kids left each day. The room I have was empty all last year so all of the lovely broken pieces of furniture found their way inside, isn't it funny how that seems to happen!

View from the doorway. You can't see all the other furniture to the left but it's there, it's everywhere!

The teacher that was in there the year before retired so I've been combing through the things she left behind and trying to decide on a theme for next year. She had a Texas, western theme and although I am a Texas girl and proud of it, I don't really like the color scheme. 

The western wall, cute but had to go.

The room right now feels really dark to me so I'm wanting to brighten it up with light and vibrant colors. I think I'm going to paint the wall you first see at the door a bright, turquoise blue and the other 3 a pale grey since they are an awful shade of yellow, musty, beige right now. I've got my work cut out for me but the excitement of having my very own first classroom is energizing!

I hope to post more room pictures soon when I've made more progress. I'm off to Dollar Tree and Walmart for supplies! :) 

Teacher's Toolbox...Just Need a Teacher's Desk Now!

Hello blog land...Alas I have returned to you after a very busy and crazy end of year schedule that has only become busier since the kiddos left last week. I signed up to teach summer school this year and was selected a few weeks ago to have the Kindergarten class. I'm having a grand time with my 9 sometimes 10, when they all show up, little darlings and can tell this is going to be great experience for next year....Oh yeah, I forgot to mention...I recently was hired as the new Kindergarten teacher at my school!!!! YIPPPEEE...HAPPY DANCE!! Yeah I literally did a little happy dance in front of my principal but after 2 years of trying to get a teaching job there I think she understood! lol

So that leads me to searching through numerous resources for lots of classroom ideas for next year. If it weren't for pinterest and my dear mother, who herself is a Kindergarten teacher and will be retiring next year after 30 years in education, I would be lost! I actually found this idea for a teacher toolbox many months ago on pinterest here from Create Teach Share and had hoped to make one for next year and now that I know I will be teaching, I set off for all the supplies.

I found the Stack-On 22 drawer toolbox at Home Depot for $16.92. It's a little cheaper at Lowe's, but I liked the gray better than the dark blue so I payed the extra $.50 for this one. Then I headed off to Hobby Lobby who had their single sheets of scrapbook paper on sale for 50% off SCORE, and searched and searched....and searched....yeah seriously my mom can attest to the fact that I probably went back and forth, pulling various combos of paper off the shelf and putting it back for eternity about an hour....I know I know, what crazy person takes an hour to pick out 4 pieces of decorative paper...guilty crazy person here.

I kept going back and forth on should I try to find paper that would match my classroom decor?! Paper that was BRIGHT and BOLD?!?! Maybe I needed to go to Michael's Craft store and see what they had?!?!?!...After a look from my mom I knew the later was not an option...so I finally settled on this really cute cloud paper and a matching shimmery blue (truthfully, I also bought a few different designs so I could fret over it a little more at home before my mother left me at Hobby Lobby to walk home). Anyway, I think it turned out super cute and will work great since I am Mrs. Cloud :) so it's personalized! You can get the template and font for the drawers from the link I posted earlier. I just cut my paper down to 8.5 x 11 and printed right onto the scrapbook paper, then cut the words out and used doublesided tape to stick it to each drawer. I decided to change a few of the drawer names that will better suit my needs...most importantly the bottom middle drawer! ;) You can download the font here.

Toolbox is all ready, just need a desk to put it on.

Hope y'all are enjoying your summer! I'll post more school idea finds soon!


Toodles! Mrs. Cloud :)  

Ants Go Marching

So, I've been trying to come up with creative ways to help our students master their letters and a few that are already working on Kindergarten sight words. We've been talking about insects at school for the last 2 weeks and the lead teacher I work with is allowing me to do a few lessons to get more experience, before hopefully securing a teaching spot next year. Well, I found a cute game on Pinterest and I set out to the Dollar Tree to find the supplies I needed. I don't know about you guys but I could probably spend hours in that place looking at everything. I know the stuff is cheaply made but I don't want to spend and arm and a leg on school stuff, so I'm all about the Dollar stores.

Anyway, since summertime is around the corner they were already selling picnic supplies and the wheels started turning in this noggin' of mine on a clever way to cutesify our game and also make it more realistic. So here is what I came up with.

Ant Swat

Isn't is precious? I will say they shockingly didn't have any flyswatters but I found a 3/$1 pack at Dollar General. The table cloth was $1 and I printed the ants off on cardstock I already had. You can't beat $2 on a educational game that I know my kids are going to LOVE! Oh and I thought the tablecloth was going to be a big square but I clearly didn't read the dimensions since it's actually a huge rectangle one. I just folded it in half and it should still be plenty big for our crew. I printed sight words on the ants shown and I also did upper and lowercase letters. I plan on using this game during small group times so I can use the cards that will work best for each group, depending on their current level.

*We are about to study honeybees this week so I'm thinking about making a beehive version of this but we'll see how they react to this game first! Don't you just love Pinterest? :)

It Looks Brand New!

Hello there blog land! I am back and enjoying a nice break from school and moving! Yes we finally got to move into our new home a few weeks ago and we are loving it. I still have a lot of organizing to do but my life has been so busy lately I haven't had the desire to clean when I get home. I think in my last post I was talking about trying to get a job working in PreK and I did get hired. I'm having so much fun with our 4 and 5 year olds and getting so much experience. Fingers crossed I'll be in my own classroom next year and ready to go!

I wanted to share a few pictures with you guys that I took during our remodeling phase. Since this house was owned by a family member and lots of family members have lived in it over the years I thought we had some pictures saved of what it looked like before but I guess my computer lost them so I only really have pictures of the kitchen. My husband and I did all the work ourselves with a little help from our parents but we were amazed at what a little paint can do to change a home.

While I loved the DIY process because this is our first home and we learned so much I will say I hope I never have to sand a cabinet again in my life! lol It took a lot of work because they were so dark but the end result was worth it. Also, on the websites I read they said to use oil-based paint but we were already using this latex based on everything and I wanted it to match so we just used the same thing on everything in the house. So far we haven't had any issues but it may start to chip or peel over time. I figured, as long as I don't have to sand the whole thing down again I can deal with a few touch ups! :)

 I'll try to get some more before and afters posted if I can find them. Hope you all have a blessed day! :)

Before ( We are messy painters! )

After ( Isn't it pretty! )

Before (Yucky brown!)

After (Fresh, clean white!)

A Place for Pillows?

Hello...it's me...yes I'm still alive. I can't believe it's been a month since my last post. Things have been busy around these parts. As I've mentioned before, the Hubs and I are in the process of purchasing our first home. It has been a long, long process but I'm happy with how it is looking which makes all the hard work worth while. I'm trying to remember to take before and after pictures to post on here along with a few DIY projects for y'all.

Speaking of DIY, I came across a clever post on pinterest that tells you how to take an ordinary placemat and turn it into a decorative pillow. I never would've thought to do this on my own!!! So this afternoon while shopping with my mom at Pier 1, I came across these adorable placemats on clearance and I knew exactly what to do with them.

I don't know about you guys but I pretty much love everything inside Pier 1 except for the prices. It's safe to say I don't pick something up unless it has a red clearance tag on it and even then I wince sometimes about the amount on the sticker and carefully place the item back on the shelf before I break it. (On a sidenote, I did actually break something there once but they were nice enough to not make me pay for it...pheww!) Anywho, I stumbled upon these guys and they were marked down to $1.88 so I thought what the hay but...when I went to checkout they rang up $.98! HAPPY DANCE!!! Is it just me or does anyone else fall more in love with an item when it rings up for less at the register?! :)

After a quick trip to Hobby Lobby for filler and matching thread it was time to get to work. Taking a seam ripper, I carefully opened up about a 3 inch part in the seam on one side of my mat. I would post a picture of what it looked like by my evil phone decided it didn't want to save that photo for you guys. I discovered that the thread I saw on the outside was really for decoration and there was an inner seam that I had to rip open as well. Begin filling your placemat to your desired fullness making sure to push the polyfil into the corners. Once it's as full as you like use a running stitch to close your pillow up and your down. 

That's it! Two new pillows for under $5 each! Pretty cool huh? Especially for those of you like me who really don't know how to sew...it's like someone else has down all the hard work for you! The hardest part for me will be finding a place for my new pillows since we don't have any living room furniture yet....