Monday Made It

I have been working on a few projects here and there over the last week. Starting ESY/Summer School really cut down on my work time. I am finally able to get back into my room today and while I was packing up all the things that have been living in our dining room, I came across a few random projects that needed to be finished up so they could go with the first load to school. Monday Made It with 4th Grade Frolics came at a perfect time. Here are a couple of projects I have been working on the last few days.

I decided that my classroom needed a "teacher toolbox" to organize all of the things in our room. We have a million of random buckets and holders around the room holding different materials. With all of the people that use the supplies in the room, my paras and I can never find anything. I figured it would put everything in one place and hopefully reduce the amount of clutter on the shelves in my room. My classroom is split into a couple of different rooms, so I ended up making two of them to have in two of the spaces. I had a hard time deciding on the drawer numbers and ended up deciding on an 18 drawer chest that I got at Lowe's. The hardest step for me was making the labels, it took me some time to decide what 18 things I wanted to store in it. I figured if the 18 I picked didn't work for me I could always change it. I was a little bummed when I printed out my labels that the dark blue and the teal did not turn out how they looked on my computer. They look almost exactly the same, but I think it still looks pretty cute.

My other project came to me a couple of weeks ago when I was in Target. Everything in the "Dollar Spot" was on clearance for 50-70% off and I came across little clear plastic frames for .30 cents. I wasn't really sure what I would use them for and I kept looking at the bins. It came to me as I was shopping that I could use the frames as mini wipe boards in my groups. I like to play different games with my students that require them to write down their answer to the question on wipe boards and we share our answers at once. I figured these would be perfect for that. Students would be able to move the frames around and position them so they could hide their answers from others. I also like the idea of them being small, because there isn't extra room for them to draw and it doesn't take up a lot of the room when we are all at the table. It is also nice because I am able to fit them all in a small basket with erasers (make-up pads from the dollar store- they work perfect)and markers.

When I first started this project my plan was to just cut out paper for the background to make sure the marker would be easy to see and read. Once I started thinking about it, I was a little worried that my students would pull the paper out. I had bought some colored masking tape at Office Max and wasn't sure what I was going to do with it. I thought this would be the perfect project to use it for. I taped up the two sides of the frame so the paper could not be pulled out and it looked a little unfinished, so I taped all for sides. I am really happy with how they turned out and am excited to try them out with my kiddos.

Head over to 4th Grade Frolics to check out this weeks projects. There are so many great ideas being posted and I keep finding more and more things to make :)

Happy Monday!