Getting There

 

Whew! What a crazy couple of weeks I've had. I've been in my classroom a lot, and just this week I'm starting to see some things come together enough to take some pictures. This post is going to have a lot of pictures, and believe it or not, I'm not even ready for my classroom tour yet. Cray cray.

First up is the area of the classroom where students should visit after they've been absent and they need to collect their assignments.

Last year was the first time I used the calendar method of posting daily assignments, and it is definitely a keeper. Like many of the things in my classroom, I've lifted this idea from other teachers. My absolute favorite thing to do is to troll other teachers' classrooms to get ideas. It's like Pinterest in real life.

Each class has it's own calendar, but I also have files directly under the calendars where students can find assignments that they have missed. I try not to keep much more than a week back of assignments, because I don't want to encourage extremely tardy assignments. Students can still make older assignments up, but they have to see me before or after school to get those assignments.

The other thing I keep in this Assignment File is my teacher copy of the Interactive Math Notebook. That way students can get their notes caught up as well. It's important that they have the information, and they are graded on it, regardless of whether or not they were present.

This was one of those quick, but extremely gratifying Pinterest inspired projects. It pretty much speaks for itself.

This is another Pinterest inspired project that seriously makes my heart go pitter patter. I have my crayons sorted by color on the left, and my colored pencils on the right.

I wanted to do this for a couple reasons. The first is because it's just so pretty and that just makes me happy. The second is because the kids take so ding dang long trying to find their colors, that there always seems to be a traffic jam at the colors. I can almost feel my blood pressure escalating on days when we are pressed for time.

Um, every day.

I had to go to two different Walmarts to find enough drawers to do both my crayons and colored pencils. I'm sorry if there are none left for you. If you go to look for them, there are 3-drawer versions and 5-drawer versions. If you want to do the rainbow, you'll want to get the 5-drawer versions.

The teachers at my school have been busy completing Pinterest inspired projects for their classrooms all summer, and just this week we've been at school at the same time and we squeal over the things we've done. I can't tell you how many times we've squealed "I saw that on Pinterest!" It's pretty funny.

I sorted my markers too, but since they don't get smaller with use like the pencils and crayons do, I opted for the cheaper route of spray painted tin cans within a basket.

I've been a little label happy this summer too. I used the template from Ladybug's Teacher Files for these particular beauties. They are free, by the way. Follow the link on her blog name to go to them. I printed mine on colored card stock. 

I made a bunch of these in Power Point with the Circle Shape tool and my favorite font of the moment, Sketch Rockwell.

Same deal with these, but on a smaller scale.

These trays are where students turn assignments in. Would you look at that dust?!!!

It's like my house that I've been neglecting all summer, because yuck. I loathe dusting. It's so pointless.

That's a lot of labels there. I was obsessing over how I was going to indicate which period was on each shelf, and I came up with this idea. I sure hope it holds up.

I cut a little rectangle out of the labels that was just large enough to slide one side of a binder clip through. Then I just clipped the label to the shelf with a tinsy little piece of a poster strip to the inside of the underside of the binder clip so that the label would sit at a ninety degree angle to the shelf. 

Whew! Run on sentence. I think that sentence needs a comma or two, but I'm not sure where exactly. Pretend it's perfect.

Anyway, the poster strip piece was on account of my OCD freakishness could not handle wonkily askew labels. I know my limits.

This is just a little step back view from that corner section.

And the other side. Surely you've noticed stray cords and such in my pictures. Let me explain. The part of my classroom that I'm not showing you yet looks like it's been hit by a tornado. Trust me, my neighbor teacher, Betsy, has exclaimed several times this week that my room looks like it's been hit by a tornado.

I'm not really a tidy worker. It always gets scary bad before it gets better. That's because when I unpack I just drag everything out into the middle of the room and then bounce around, ping pong like, working on things. It takes forever to accomplish anything because I keep getting distracted and half finishing things.

Still trying to figure out how to make that ADD work for me.

If I could just concentrate.

I started my bulletin boards on Monday. I got this hair brained idea that I was going to use fleece to cover my bulletin boards. Well, I was at school until 9:00 Monday night because the fleece was just a little too thick for the cheapness of my bulletin boards, and my staples kept sproinging off the board. You probably don't want to hear this, but I had staples in my underthings when I got undressed that night. Not cool.

Anyway, it's a good thing there were no kids around because I was whaling on my stapler like I angry eyebrow my students not to do. It was so bad that I thought maybe my stapler was broken, so I went to Staples to buy a new Stapler (ha ha, that's funny).

And it was not my stapler dang it! It's my stupid bulletin boards. 

And I guess it's okay that I have two staplers now because I'm sure I'm just going to break one of them anyway. They just don't make staplers like they used to.

Or do they? Were staplers ever awesome? I've never owned an awesome stapler before. Well, except for my electric one. I actually have an electric stapler so the kids don't have to touch my staplers. If they touch, they break.

Anyway, since I'm going off on a tangent already, let me just finish telling you about my electric stapler. It's awesome. I have to angry eyebrow instruct the kids on the proper use of the electric stapler every year, telling them that they cannot play with it, it's a privilege, blah, blah, blah, and I better not ever hear them using two staples in a row or else they're going to be paying me a nickel for each wasted staple. Because they're so expensive and I only make ten cents a day.

You see, I know boys, and electric staplers can sound like a machine gun if you repeatedly put a piece of paper under the sensor to see how fast they can staple. Don't ask me how I know, I just know.

After that ordeal, it took me another three days to get around to finishing the boards.

This board went right back up because it's one of those things that I repeat until I'm blue in the face. Now I just point and sigh. Not really, but I can if ever I'm that weary.

I know Anne Alagna, an internet stranger, is going to give me crap about the unbalanced look of this board, but I just wanted it done at this point and I was tired of fighting with the sproinging staples.

Deal with it, Anne.

If it gives you any comfort, I completely stapled the pads of each of my index fingers. Completely. As in I had to pry the staples out with pliers, and I felt the flesh squeakily, reluctantly give way like a raw steak.

Too bad I don't teach science, right? Kids love that stuff.

Maybe I can recreate it for a special lesson. I just have to find the math in it. I know it's there, it's everywhere.

This board is near and dear to my heart because I super big, pink puffy heart LOVE Divisibility Rules. They save lives, man.

I should probably be kicked out of the Bulletin Board Club for this one. I totally popped out a bulletin board kit and slapped the whole shebang up there Willy Nilly. You can tell, can't you?

Super Skillz I have. I know.

That's it for now. I'm delirious with exhaustion. My plan, although you should never hold me to it because of that time-space continuum deficiency I have, is to get back on here Sunday evening, or Monday-ish, to share with you the progress of my vinyl white board grid.

Pinspired Again

Blast Pinterest! I tell you, my life was a lot simpler before it came into my life. I'm obsessed with checking in to see what's new, and once I click in, I can't leave until I get to the bottom of the pin page. 

In spite of my addiction, I have managed to try a couple of my pins.

Here's the first one.

Crackle Bookshelves by crazy shelves.blogspot.com

I came across this amazing bookshelf on Pinterest and it led me down the rabbit hole. I'm not lying. This was a pin that led to nowhere, and because I had to have it, I spent long minutes of my life trying to resuscitate it proper onto my Pinboard. Thanks to Google, finally I met with success.

But alas, I was not able to recreate this magic you see before you.

My skillz fell short.

I started with this unsuspecting little magnet board, which I love, but it has outgrown its intended use.

When I went back to work four years ago, I created this magnet board to keep the girls' schedules straight when I knew I would be forever and perpetually discombobulated. 

The magnet board worked like a charm too. I'm really sad to see it go, but since we're no longer using it, I decided to redo it, with the pinspiration above, and use it in my classroom.

Not exactly what I was going for. Here's what I think I did wrong. First of all, I was supposed to use latex paint for my colors, and I used acrylic paint. I was lazy and I didn't want to go out and buy six different colors of latex paint because, you know, money.

Since my paint wasn't latex, you can see the ridges where the colors meet up and it's not at all like it's supposed to look like. 

Which is this. Swoon.

What a letdown.

So I declare my attempt at recreating this pin a flop. A Pinflop.

Not to be foiled, I decided to approach the project another way. Since I knew I wasn't going to invest in vast amounts of gorgeous paint, I decided to sand down just the top surface of the frame to get rid of the ridges. 

Next I applied a very thick coat of Valspar's Weathered Crackle Glaze for round two.

After an hour, I applied a nice thick coat of a red latex paint. The trick with the Crackle Glaze is that you need a thick coat of paint over the top of it, but it cannot be overworked. If you try to brush it on the same spot more than once, it rolls off and makes a mess. Through trial and error, I learned to load up my brush and sort of roll the paint on thick in one stroke.

I really like how it turned out, even though it didn't live up to my initial Pinspiration vision.

I'm especially glad that I left the edges the way they were, so I have some of the bright colors coming through.

Those areas were small enough that you can't really see the flaws from my first go at it.

I guess the other thing I didn't mention was that I also turned the magnetic board into a chalkboard as well. It was my first time using chalkboard paint, and it was pretty easy to use. I'll definitely use it again.

I first tried the Crackle Glaze on this bookcase that I posted about last week. I learned a lot about how to use the Crackle Glaze on this project, so it's not the best example of the cool effect that's possible with the glaze.

I practiced some more with this little table that my computer tower and printer at school sit on.

I feel so special now with matchy matchy furniture in my classroom.

I even improved on my crackle skillz.

I also get Pinspiration in parenting techniques. There are quite a few examples of different kids wearing this shirt on Pinterest.

Imagine my unbridled glee when my girls began arguing like Cockfighting Parrots earlier this week. Here, finally, is my opportunity to whip out the Getting Along Shirt.

Many tears were shed (by Zoe Bug), many pictures were taken (by me), and many buttons were pushed (by Stinkerbell).

Zoe, with a tear stained and red face blowing snot, yelled "She won't cooperate! She's just flopping around like an extra appendage and she won't let me get my chores done!"

"Well, Sweetie, she kind of is an extra appendage. If you want to get out of the shirt, you have to work together and be pleasant with one another."

The tragic part is that Stinkerbell enjoyed every minute of it. She had Zoe captive for a button pushing extravaganza.

I think there will be therapy. Karma will get me in the Nursing Home one day, I know it. 

Pinterest Inspired Project #1

Yes, I totally numbered this post. I feel a need to justify the amount of time I spend on that cursed website, and I'm going to do that by keeping track of the things I actually do that are inspired by Pinterest Eye Candy.

And I have to ask, are there others like myself who pin and never go back to look at their Pin boards? When I'm pinning, my goal is to get to the bottom of the Pinterest page, and I cannot be distracted by following pins because then how would I ever find my place again? I might miss something.

Pinterest has become another compulsive obsession for me, because I needed another one.

Anyway, the picture you see above is something I made from a pin I found that I could not stop thinking about, and I had to put together immediately, before it got buried in my pin boards never to be looked at again. 

Actually it did get lost. Ironically, it was lost on my Organizing pin board. Like I couldn't even find the ding dang Organizing board. I must organize my Pin Boards.

These squirrells in my head must get their shots. I struggle to complete a cohesive thought. 

Anyway, again, FOCUS. This is the original pin, from Simply Organized, and it solves a problem that I've been ignoring for a long time.

You see, I like to pull recipes out of foodie magazines, and my method of organizing those recipes awaiting their turn in the kitchen was an unattractive mess.

I suppose I've seen worse, but this system wasn't inspiring me to try recipes.

I tweaked the original idea slightly to accommodate my own freakish need for symmetry.

Let me explain. The original idea uses only the left and middle tabbed folders since the right tab cannot be seen in the magazine file.

It makes perfect sense, but OMG, what will I do when I have all those right tabbed folders that cannot be used because I must use them left, middle, right, left, middle, right?!!

It was giving me heart palpitations, I'm telling you. No to worry though, because I had this hanging file looking thing, just laying around, not being used.

Is is laying or lying? I used to know when I had to teach grammar, but it's all so pointless, I can't be bothered to remember the rule. Something about setting and placing I think. Pretend I used it right, okay Grammar Police? I know you're watching.

Anyway, it's not really a hanging file, it's a Medium Multi-Purpose Bin from the Container Store, and it really wasn't being used, so this project was basically free. Well, except for the cute file folders that I did have to buy. I didn't have a complete set of folders that went left, middle, right, and I couldn't deal with that. My psyche is so fragile.

By using this bin, I was able to use the left, middle, and right tabbed folders, thereby keeping my Symmetry Twitch from rearing its ugly head. And I could buy cute folders too.

Win-win.

And here's my Dirty Secret. Yes, I know I have lots, but this is the Secret of the Day. It's my magazines yet to be read pile. As in I haven't even begun to pull recipes out of them yet.

Gasp! I know.

It's gotten to the point where I can't even hide it anymore. I measured it because a picture is not always worth 1,000 words. It measures 18 inches, and as you can see, it was starting to slide because it's so monstrous.

I need help.