Monday Made It. . . Classroom Organization

I know it's Saturday, but I'm FINALLY posting my Monday Made-It!! (My excuse is that it was my first week of school last week!) Thank goodness Tara at 4th Grade Frolics kept open this Linky all week! Lol!

My first Made-It is my (mostly) math manipulatives shelves and bins. 20+ years ago, one of my wonderful and talented classroom dads built these two wooden shelves on wheels, made to fit exactly under my classroom window!! At that time, I was doing a pull-out Gifted & Talented program where parent volunteers came daily, and wheeled the shelves outside my room. (I had cafeteria style table & benches outside.) The shelves were built to fit Rubbermaid dishpans & in each dishpan were activities based on Bloom's Taxonomy levels and Gardner's multiple intelligences. At that time, I labeled everything with those adhesive name tags. So all these years later, it was definitely time for a freshening up!! With help from students, they painted the shelves (true. . . they're a tad bit thick & gloppy, but I LOVE the bright & happy teal color!!)
My next Made-It are all the ADORABLE labels I printed!! I did not make them, but Megan at I Teach, What's Your Superpower did!! You can purchase them here. Everything looks so organized and cheery!! I used them to label the computers, our TEAM numbers (classroom management), the manipulatives & supply boxes, and the buckets. A few of you had asked about the buckets: students use them to add positive affirmations and compliments to classmates. Read the book Have You Filled Your Bucket Today? A Guide to Daily Happiness for Kids by Carol McCloud to your class. It's an awesome picture book about the power of positive words & "filling" each other up, rather than "emptying" others' buckets. You can download your copy of the sign here.  I'm sorry I don't know who drew the darling picture of the happy bucket; please let me know if it is you so I can give you the proper credit! I ordered the brightly colored buckets from Oriental Trading.
My third Made-It are signs and phrases around my room, on walls & whiteboards. I love to collect motivational sayings and I wanted my students to be surrounded in print-rich environment, not only of their own work, but of inspirational quotes. This first set of pictures are vinyl sayings from Vinyl Disorder. I have searched gazillions of websites and have ordered from a couple others before. Vinyl Disorder BY FAR has the best prices; they were quick to deliver and have easy to adhere wall quotes. I highly recommend them!!
 I had read on Pinterest that you could also use a Cricut machine to print out your own. I thought I'd start small with a few words, so luckily my fabulously talented cousin, Robyn had a Cricut (& I admit  she pretty much did it for me!!) I couldn't find vinyl, so we used black contact paper & then I just peeled off the backing & adhered to my whiteboards!! (We also made one said that says Schedule).
My 4th Made-It actually happened by accident. As I went back to my classroom to start setting up, I began opening cupboards & pulling things out. Waaaaaay in back of one, I found a stack of folded material. When I shook it out, they were seat covers I had sewed about 20 years ago!! (I must have moved them from school to school!!) Back then, I was a little crazier (with no children of my own) and actually sewed various colored seat covers for EACH student's chair!! The room (& school) was very shabby & run-down so I sewed the seat covers to brighten it up. I had forgotten about them, until I pulled these out!! I had let each kiddo take home their own seat cover, so I only had 2 pink ones left. I decided to designate them as computer chair covers this year & sewed 2 more teal ones to match the new room colors. Now my computer chairs won't mysteriously disappear!!
The other 2 covers in the top picture are computer chair covers I had sewn (and then drawn & hand painted!!) when I used to be in room 5 at my previous school (over 10 years ago!). So I gave them to my favorite room 5 teacher in my current school. She was happy! :)
And lastly, my 5th Made-It is a VERY simple: "Ask 3 before me" sign. As part of my classroom management, students must ask 3 others their question before they may ask me. Inevitably, their peers can answer their question (because I've usually already given the answer!!) You can download your copy here.
Whew! Okay, that's it for now; gotta get back to actual curricular planning! :) Have a great weekend!

7 comments

  1. Looks amazing!!!! You go girl!!!

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  2. Hi Kathie,

    I saw your comment on my post about IFTTT and wanted to make sure I gave you all the information I know! :) I replied to your comment via e-mail and posted the answer on my blog, but I wanted to make sure you were able to read it, so I'm posting here, too. :)

    -----

    I was really intimidated to create my own recipes at first (and couldn't think of anything because I was so overwhelmed), so I found that browsing the "popular recipes" list helped a lot. :)

    To trigger something to post on your Facebook fan page instead of your regular page, just click "Facebook pages" instead of the regular "Facebook" option. {Side note: you can also set it to post in one of your Facebook groups! Handy!} After you connect your Facebook account to IFTTT and give IFTTT the appropriate permissions, you'll see a list of all the FB pages you manage. Just select the one you want to post to and follow the "next" prompts on the screen to finish your recipe.

    Hope that helps! :)

    ~Mrs. K. from The Teacher Garden Blog

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