Pom-Pom Necklace

Last weekend, I saw Little Miss Momma's tutorial for this Pom-Pom necklace.

And I knew that I had to make it.

So, off I went to the craft store to pick up the materials.
Little Miss Momma really has much better instructions than I could give, but basically you...

Cut out lots of felt circles,

Scrunch them up,
(obviously, I'll never be a hand model!)

Glue them down to make these lovely things:

Arrange them and add a chain so that it looks like this:

And ta-da, you have made a fabulous necklace!

This is as good as it gets when you are trying to
take a picture of yourself through a mirror. :)

Teacher Talk- Organization

Abby @ Snyder Stories is hosting the first Teacher Talk Thursday today.

I meant to take some pictures at school today to go with the theme of organization, but in the rush of trying to get my report cards done, I forgot. So, here are some organization things from my classroom based on pictures I already had on my computer.

Nothing is really profound, but I always like seeing other classrooms, so I decided I'd go ahead and join in...

Two of my favorite things...
1) Mailboxes- My father-in-law was nice enough to make these for me, just the way I wanted them. Each student has their own box, but there are also extra boxes on the top for notebook paper, white paper, and extra copies of assignments. It works great!
2) On the right, you can see my kid's book boxes. They use these to store the books that they are reading and their writing notebooks. It makes for less mess in their desks and we can always find where they are!


This is my writing/math/craft center. The drawers store all of the math manipulatives that we use often- dice, counters, compasses, etc. The shelves below hold math game sheets. On the right, all of our decorative writing paper is stored and of course, you can see the craft supplies scattered around.

I'm not sure that I love my way of organizing books, but it works for now. Basically, each book is just sorted by the author's last name. I do like storing them in containers like this so that the students can flip through and see all of the books that we have.


Simple, yet a life-saver! My first year I struggled to find a place to put all the random schedules and papers that I needed to display for my kids to see. So, I just made them their own board. This year happened to be my ocean theme, so the board was titled, "Commotion in the Ocean." It has our hot lunch schedule, intermural schedules and anything else that the kids need to easily see. I just staple it up and let it be!

Thanks for the fun idea, Abby!

Happy UnBirthday To Me

Today was my birthday.  Not really.  My birthday is in June.  My sweet room moms wanted to throw me a birthday party.  Since my birthday is in the summer they were going to do it on my half-birthday, but that was over Christmas break, so today was the day.

It really was quite strange.  Some of my kids entered the room in the morning with birthday cards for me.  Which is very, very sweet, but also very strange when it is not your birthday!  I love to read notes that my students give me.  They are always so adorable and just plain nice. 

Some of the girls made me a few gifts:

 

Remember these!?  Seriously, the “Your the best teacher” must of taken forever to make!  (And apparently we have work on the difference between YOUR and YOU’RE)

And now for my favorite…

Yes, yes it is…a duck tape wallet!  A pink and teal duck tape wallet to be more exact. 

Look at the awesome cupcake cake!  When my kids saw the cake they asked me if I loved apples.  Yes, I love apples!  I’m sure that’s why they chose it. :)

I also got a ginormous card which was all signed by my class.  I love 4th graders!  One signed it “your BFF” and all my silly boys signed it with their made-up names so Larry, Bob and Mr. Bean all signed my card today. :)