Permanent Mark-er!

Some people just leave a permanent mark on your life. In my last post I told you about how much I loved my long term sub position because of the students I got to spend my days with, but without my amazing co-workers, I know that my experience would not have been as meaningful. We shared, laughed, vented, and... did I mention we laughed?... A LOT this year! It's a wonderful feeling knowing you have a group of people to turn to that just get it! I know I will be a better teacher because of what they taught me this year. Hopefully you are lucky enough to have a support system to lean on at work as well.

So, how did I show them that I appreciated all their help this year? 

I made something with a pun, duh! 

I gave each teacher a set of three sharpies with this little note. I was also very excited for a chance to finally use my washi tape that I've been purchasing without a purpose (see Greg, I always figure out a way to use the things I buy)!

Whether you're a first year teacher, a student teacher, or a seasoned teacher that just wants to express their appreciation for their co-workers or mentors, you should grab this gift tag in my shop! This also fits sharpie thin pens and paint markers.

If you use this gift tag, I'd love to see your variation! 

Grab it here!

This Year Has Blown By...

get it? because bubbles... and a blow pop... and gum... hehe

Can you even believe that this school year is almost over? The year has definitely blown by quickly... even more quickly for me because my long term substitute position just ended last Friday. I can't say that I am excited about the position ending because I really miss my little first grade friends, especially since I was with them since September, but I can say that this position has made me a better teacher and has confirmed that I am meant to be in the classroom. Luckily I am tutoring in the same school, so I still get to see them!

So, although you are excited for the school year to come to an end, appreciate those little ones that you get to have in your class with you every day for just a bit longer!

I showed my appreciation for my little guys with these:

I wanted them to know how proud they have made me this year, but I couldn't do it without a pun (which the kids totally expect from me now)!

I originally went to Target to get the $1 boxes of chalk, but the store I went to was all out. I was racking my brain while I searched the racks in the dollar spot for another idea. I turned the corner and saw the brightly colored bubbles... 3 for $1... and the rest is history!

I like this idea better than my original idea, and it ended up being cheaper! If you'd like to make these for your students as well, you can purchase the gift bag labels in my teachers pay teachers store (just click the picture below)! I chose to add in the Blow Pop and the Double Bubble, ya know... to really get my pun point across, but it works with any of those items! I also used "gussett style 4" x 2" x 9" cello bags" from Amazon, but any clear gift bag in a similar size will work!

Don't worry, I didn't forget my wonderful co-workers that helped me make it through! Details about their punny gifts, coming soon!

Valentine's Day

In honor of Valentine's Day I am going to talk about a few things that I really love: decorating, crafting, and teaching!

If you follow my Instagram, you know that I decorate for every holiday! I have a buffet... a pseudo-mantle... to display my holiday decor. 

This is my Valentine's Day display... someday I will get around to posting my displays for each holiday! Most of the items I get are from places like Hobby Lobby, Homegoods, and Target.

There are also items that I make myself because I can't find what I want in the store... which leads me to second love... crafting! See those cupcakes on the fabulous cupcake tier? They are... FAKE! Seriously, they are made with foam and dry wall compound.

 If you want to make them yourself you will need:

1. Tins and Liners: Fill cupcake tins with paper liners.
2. Washers: Put one washer on the bottom of each cupcake liner.
3. Expanding Foam: Fill each cupcake liner with expanding foam about half way. The expanding foam is one time use. I was able to make 3 trays of 12 "cupcakes", for a total of 36. The foam will expand, much like cupcakes do in the oven when baked!
4. Dry: The "cupcakes" should be expanded and tack free after about 20 minutes. The instructions on the can says that the foram can be painted after 12-24 hours, I painted mine the next day.
5. Paint: Paint each "cupcake" in a tan or brown color to mimic vanilla and chocolate cake.
6. Frosting: Mix the dry wall compound with food coloring to make "frosting". I suggest using glass bowls because it washes off very easily. I didn't have brown food coloring, so I used paint to color the compound for chocolate, pink food coloring for the strawberry, and left the compound as is for vanilla (I made sure to purchase compound that was white, as opposed to a grey-ish color so it looked like vanilla). You want the consistency of the "frosting" to be like actual frosting, so add flour if it is too watery. 
7. Piping bag: Fill your piping bag with the "frosting" and pipe onto the cupcakes. If you get it to the consistency of actual frosting, it should stay in the shape you pipe.
8. Decorations: Sprinkle and add decorations onto the wet "frosting" so as it dries it will bond. Be careful with real sprinkles, the color may run if the "frosting" is too wet.

I made my cupcakes last year, and they still look great!

Speaking of making things... to let my students know how much I love teaching them, I made a special valentine for them. I found my inspiration in the Target dollar spot... well technically the $3 spot.

The valentines came like this:

I decided to make my own card to go with the donut erasers!

 

        

If you want to make the same valentines, you can find them in my Teachers Pay Teachers store here. 

So, what do you plan on doing for Valentine's Day? Have you made any crafts? Greg and I are going to go out the day after to take advantage of a 50% off bottle of wine deal, and I don't have school Monday or Tuesday! 

Whatever Will 'B', Will 'B'...

This summer has been a bit of an adventure for me. In this short summer,  I have learned a lot about life.  I have experienced the loss of a loved one, the birth of a few new best friends, and I made it to my {first} 29th birthday. This summer has given me time to reflect on how amazingly beautiful and heartbreaking life can be, and how lucky I am to be here. I have an education, a house, a wonderful family, an incredible boyfriend, and life long friends. I suppose, at my age, it is normal to start thinking about life. We are reaching so many different milestones... things we have dreamt about since childhood! I am so thankful to be reaching (or at least getting closer to) these milestones with a group of wonderful friends by my side. You've heard the song, "Que Sera, Sera"? Well, I am content in knowing that whatever will be, will be along with the people I care about the most!

In this post, I'd like to celebrate new life by talking about about a little "Baby B's" shower that I helped plan! My friend Maria is a pioneer of sorts, as she seems to be at the helm, leading us through these major life milestones! She was engaged and married first... and, most recently, she just had a baby on June 1st (I thought the baby may have had my birthday... June 28th... Maria did NOT like that prediction)!

When Maria told us she was pregnant there were tears of joy... and then when we found out she was having a girl... there were more tears, and squeals of excitement that we were truly having a "girl's lunch"!

How cute is this gender reveal scratch off card Maria gave us?!

Of course, I immediately began to think about Maria's shower, so we teamed up with her mom.  This brought us all back to high school when we would invite ourselves over Maria's house all the time! Maria mentioned she would want a Classic Winnie the Pooh theme. This is even more adorable because their last name begins with "B, and we referred to the baby as "Baby B" the whole pregnancy.  "B"s and Pooh Bear... perfect match! We painted these adorable "hunny" pots (got the idea here) ... and of course, there were plenty of laughs and snacks!

I was given pieces of wood from a friend that used them at her wedding. Kristen picked up the wood and then her husband made some cupcake tiers out of them (thank you for making my vision come to life!) I also glued tissue paper on branches to look like flower buds. I was going for a "100 Aker Wood" look.

Obsessed with Eeyore doing a headstand over there on the left!

I printed out Classic Pooh Bear characters onto white card stock and glued them onto toothpicks for simple decorations. I finally got to use my "grass" piping tip that Greg got me a while ago (after listening to me complain about how I couldn't make grass for my Truffula tree cupcakes for my Dr. Seuss themed kindergarten graduation... I make gift giving so easy for him). I found the edible bees at Walmart and piped some hives for them to sit upon (the frosting wasn't as thick as I would have liked it to be, so the hives weren't as tall).

 

 

For the centerpieces we kept it simple.  Framed quotes or images on the wood pieces, along with the "hunny" pots.

The favors were little jars of honey (Maria's mom's brilliant idea).  We topped the jar with bumblebee fabric and attached a tag with twine.  

 

I also created some games for guests to play at the table. Personally, I do not love shower games that require you to get up and do things. I like to chit chat! Maria also requested that we not play the "what's in the dirty diaper?" game or make anyone drink from baby bottles... not that I would have done that in the first place (ew)!

ugh, number 7 is supposed to be 'onesie', but I left out an 'e' on half of the cards... so 'noise' works!

Of course there were presents... and of course I wrapped mine in a super cute way ;)

 

Want to know what I got for Maria? Next blog post I'll have a wonderful baby shower DIY for you!

Here's a clue:

Any guesses?

Lights, Camera, Action!

So, I promised I'd update you guys on my kindergarten graduation... one month later, here it is!  Graduation was great... even though the kiddies did not sing as loudly as they did during practice... there were two break downs... and one "I'm not ready, call me to get my diploma last"! 

I made popcorn cupcakes, used popcorn containers I got at the dollar store for chips and snacks, rolled out a wrapping paper 'red carpet', and put their goodies in popcorn containers from the party store! The room looked really cute... cleaning everything up a few hours later... not so cute!

Sticking with movie theme for the upcoming school year, I made a great bundle that I just posted on Teachers Pay Teachers!! I am so excited because this is my biggest packet yet, and I worked really hard on it!

Seriously, I can't stop staring at it!

I've already cut out and laminated these for myself!

I am always looking for new ideas, so if you have any suggestions for products I should make I'd love to hear them!

Now, if you can help me find my first public school job in Connecticut, I will give you a packet FOR FREE! ;)

A Little Pomp, A Little Circumstance...

Pomp: "stately or splendid display; splendor; magnificence"... (mosey on over to dictionary.com and listen to the pronunciation of pomp, I can't get enough, she really puts the emphasis on the final "p")!  
  
There is definitely a lot of pomp in my life lately between my surprise graduation party and the graduation I am planning for my kindergarteners!  If you've never had a surprise party, you should definitely consider subliminally planting that idea in someone's head ASAP.  My boyfriend convinced me we could never afford a graduation party, but then got all of my family and friends together at my favorite bar, bar 140, and COMPLETELY surprised me... I cried!  There was even a bloody mary bar... and a giant cheese cake! It was such an awesome night!!  Good thing I had bought a graduation head band a few weeks earlier... (thinking back, I wondered why Greg didn't question that nonsense purchase, haha).

I may or may not have walked out of the bar with all the balloons... and they may or may not have gotten stuck in the fan... only for a second!

Now my focus is on my movie themed kindergarten graduation!  I wanted to show you the completely adorable self portraits my class did of themselves in their caps and gowns!! These are definitely worthy of being on the cover of the yearbook I am making!!

I will be finishing up the yearbook and getting my decorations together this week! Super stressed, but also super excited!! Updates soon!

Bunnies... All Day, Everyday

It's been all about bunnies since my trip to Walmart where I found Easter egg carrots (which led to many other purchases... picture me running through the Easter aisles throwing things into my cart... laughing a crazy teacher laugh... mwah haha)!  I knew they'd be perfect as a center for my students, and since we're working on addition and subtraction I went with that.  Here is the game I came up with!

 

Along with the carrot eggs (haha ew) I bought a bunny jacks game.  I wrote numbers on the feet of all the bunnies (1-8).  A bunny went into each carrot ( a little ironic, huh?) and the carrots went into a basket that looks like a picket fence with green Easter grass.  The kids had to pick 2 carrots and write the numbers on the bunnies in the boxes.  They used red bingo chips to help them add the numbers, and the answer was written on the last bunny.  The kids really liked it, it always makes me happy when they ask if they can do another worksheet.  I have a subtraction version that I haven't used in the classroom yet. 

Sticking with the bunny theme I made another addition game.  This one uses dice, or cards, and the students have to "build a bunny".  Each sum that they roll represents a bunny body part that they have to draw onto their bunny.   The student that gets each every number and completes their bunny first is the winner!

I am going to use this on Monday, so I'll let everyone know how it goes!  You  can always check out my TpT store!

Do you have any fun holiday activities that you're excited about?!

UPDATE!!
I used my "Build a Bunny" worksheet with my students! They turned out really cute!

Worksheet Wednesday: Plant Growth Observations

Spring has sprung... kinda... more like it's waking up slowly.  This is the time that classrooms will start units on plants.  My students did a science experiment with lima beans growing in bags, and a lot of them started to grow.  Instead of just throwing the plants out (like the curriculum said), we decided to plant them (having a boyfriend that works at Lowe's comes in handy... especially during our simple machines unit...).  I made a plant growth observation worksheet so that the students could track the growth of their beans.  So far they are great!  When we're done I plan to hang them in our science center.

 You can pick up this worksheet on Teachers pay Teachers!

 Do you have any planting plans?