My First Bulletin Boards!

These past few weeks have been CRAZY! I have been working at high speed to get my classroom cleared out, set up, decorated, and ready for students, and it has been quite the task. I never realized how much work teachers put in to set up their rooms! I have a new level of respect for those veteran teachers who have been doing this for all those years. 

From what I heard around my school, my classroom had previously been used as storage for roughly two years. I kick myself now for not taking a photo when I first walked in; the room was halfway full with boxes, old teachers' (broken) desks, full sets of old curriculum from most grade levels, 9 filing cabinets, 8 metal bookshelves, a counter that had been taken off of a wall... and so on and so forth. You get the picture right? I think I was so overwhelmed when I walked in that I couldn't even consider grabbing that camera. Here are a few pictures from after I had cleaned out over half of what was in there:

I couldn't even walk to this side of the room when I first got there!

I can't express how huge of an improvement this was from when I first walked in. Thankfully, my strong and amazing husband came in just to help me move things out. There was WAY too much for me to do by myself. Once those boxes in the pictures got moved out by the custodial staff, I got started on organizing, setting up the furniture where I wanted it, and getting stuff up on the walls. Here are a few after pictures:

Big change, right? Since I run a Resource room, I will have different groups of students coming and going through the day. Setting up so that I have four different areas for groups with different set ups, I felt I could meet my students' needs. Once I got this layout figured out, I was able to decide where I could put "bulletin boards." I say "bulletin boards" with quotes because there aren't actually any bulletin boards in my room. I ended up using paper stapled to a wall with borders stapled around it. Each classroom on my campus has adopted a university to represent, and I was lucky enough to be able to choose my alma mater, CSU Sacramento. The colors are green and gold/yellow. Can you tell?

I really wanted my bulletin boards to be as interactive as possible. What's the point of having the boards if they will just hang on the wall and the kids never have any reason to go to them regularly? Some boards, such as my No Excuses University board, don't meet this standard for me. I couldn't figure out a way to make this one work, but most others do. 

My Classroom Classifieds board. The kids can apply for jobs in my classroom and earn a salary of King's Gold. King's Gold is my classroom incentive system that kids can use to buy vouchers. I'll be creating a post about that later. :-) Anyway, the kids fill out an application that describes why they are the best for the job. I just did this for the first time this past Friday, and the kids were SO EXCITED to apply for a job! I think I will have to add more jobs!

My Student Spotlight board. I was so happy to find a title for this board that goes with my polka dot decorations! I can't wait to start hanging up student work and building more confidence in my room!

My Class Policies! I definitely borrowed the acronym from Pinterest! The kids come in and read it chorally with me at the beginning of the day, and we refer to it when issues arise in the room. It's nice because most issues in the classroom can fall into one of these categories.

Another interactive board! There is so much velcro on this board, it's crazy! Each polka dot can be moved to the black square, where we highlight the character trait of the month. We will work on a class definition to post in the big yellow box. We have lessons that revolve around character traits, and the kids refer back to the board regularly. The borders are made out of plastic tablecloths from the Dollar Tree. $4 for this board!

My school is in the No Excuses University (NEU) network, so each classroom has an NEU board. With my time crunch, I couldn't really figure out a way to make this board interactive. You win some you lose some, right? I was at least able to incorporate my university, Sac State!

My Sac State board. The university board is another requirement of NEU, and I was happy to make it! I love this one because it's right by my door. When I have the kids line up to leave, they all end up standing there looking up at the pictures and brochures. I love spreading the word of what a great school Sac State is!

There's a mini tour of my (unfinished) classroom. Thankfully, it's functioning now that I have students coming in to attend class periods. I will post more as a update more in my room! I am just so grateful and excited to be in this school, classroom, and with these students!

Wedding Creations!

My brother, Michael, and my now sister-in-law got married at the end of July! I was asked to contribute some of my craftiness and make a "Just Married" sign to hang at the reception and on their honeymoon at Reggae on the River. Naturally, they asked that the colors be black, red, yellow, and green. I got to use my amazing Cricut (which my brothers bought for me a few years ago) to make each letter!

I printed a border on green paper to help cut out the scalloped edge, and used double-sided tape to stick on the letters and black background. Definitely not the most secure, but I got them laminated to make them more secure and durable for Reggae on the River. I punched holes in the top two corners, tied the letters together with fishing line, then with yellow ribbon to make it look prettier. I think it was a success!

While I had a decent amount of time to put this sign together, there was a hiccup with another component of the wedding. Ashley (my sister-in-law) has ALWAYS wanted to wear a wreath in her hair. She had ordered one on Etsy, but it didn't arrive on time for her to bring it to the wedding (they live in southern CA, and met/got married in Humboldt.) So two days before the wedding, which is when I got up to Humboldt, Ashley asked me if I could make one for their wedding on Wednesday. The next morning, I went to Dollar Tree and Michael's to get any materials I could use. Surprisingly, a lot of what I could use, I found at Dollar Tree! I was super pumped! I still needed a few more things, which added up at Michael's, but definitely worth it to have quality materials!

I got back to the hotel room and got to work. I had to cut the pip berries off of the pre-made wreath I bought, cut the flowers off, and cut small twigs to wrap. My hands were definitely bruised from using scissors to cut through so much wire! After several hours of weaving, hot gluing, and re-evaluating, I ended up with my finished product! Luckily, Ashley loved it!

I got to put it on her while she was getting ready.

During their beautiful ceremony in the redwoods.

From the front! I wanted to make sure it was more "twiggy," than flowery, as per the bride's request, which makes it a little difficult to see in the picture on her brown hair.

From the side! You can see the twigs a little better here. I wove them together to make it look as realistic as possible. The twigs really were just wrapped wire from the pip berry wreath I bought, but they did the job.

From the back! I hot glued a long ribbon to the side of each end, then wrapped ribbon around the ends to make it look more polished. I love the green against her hair!

Graduation Stoles

As mentioned previously, I GRADUATED! I am so happy to complete that chapter of my life! This post comes with a story, though. It goes a little something like this:

I was meeting with one of my professors to review my final portfolio at Sac State. We were discussing graduation, and...
Professor: I always have a hard time finding my students in the crowd.
Me: I can imagine. Everyone is wearing the same thing, and there are hundreds of us!
Professor: It would be nice if your cohort got together and had matching sashes or something. I always mention it to students before they graduate, but no one ever has time for it.
Me: That would be nice. It would help family see their person, too.
Professor: Well Wendy, I'm giving you the job then. Make yourselves visible to me at graduation.

Instead of saying, "You know, I'm not sure how much time I have, or if people will be into that," naturally I said, "Yeah! I think I could do that!"

Fast forward to my last classes, where I make an announcement to the whole class that I am thinking about making stoles (and ordering honor cords, but that's a whole different story!) Next thing I knew, I had 16 stoles to make in just a few weeks. One thing to keep in mind is that, while I have a sewing machine, I had never actually used the sewing machine. Nor have I used a pattern. Nor do I have a kitchen table at the moment on which to learn to use the sewing machine to make 16 stoles in 2 weeks. Yikes! I always seem to get myself into these situations!

Fast forward again to graduation, and I have completed stoles for everyone who ordered one, as well as a few extras for those special professors who have been with the cohort through our time in the credential program.

 I made a pattern out of cardboard to cut half of each stole. This pattern was based on the stole being about 80" long. I eye-balled the angle to the point at the end of either side. I sewed each half stole inside out with roughly a half-inch seam allowance. Once I had two halves, I turned them right-side-out and sewed along the middle in the back. These stoles definitely did not come out perfect. One of the ways in which they weren't perfect is in how they lied on the back of the neck. They didn't stay flat, but I felt this wasn't absolutely necessary to fix, since I barely knew what I was doing anyway. :-) This meant that the only visible seam was along the middle of the back.

                                                  With my amazing husband after graduation!

My cohort of fellow teachers. So happy with how our matching stoles looked in the end!

                          ;Wendy;

Bug-Themed Nursery Wall Hangings and Mobile

--> I made this project nearly 2 years ago for my first (and currently, only) niece Nora. Her nursery had a bug theme, and I wanted to make a few things to help make her room more exciting.

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--> Each canvas was 8"X10" (I think?) I painted each first and cut the bugs out of felt. It definitely took some finagling to get the bugs just right, but I was so happy with them once I was done! I hot glued a piece of ribbon onto the back to hang each canvas from. While the wall hangings took quite a bit of effort, they were really fun to make and gave me a bit of artistic freedom (although the size of the snail in comparison to his shell has been a long debated topic in my home.)

--> The mobile, on the other hand, required a LOT of cutting. I cut out each bug that is hanging from that, and let me tell you, my hand was SORE from those scissors! I took two embroidery hoops (one bigger than the other) and spray painted them silver. I connected them with fishing line so that the smaller hoop hung about 6" centered above the larger hoop. I then poked a small hole through the center of each bug. I can't remember exactly, but I either used a tack or a small nail to make sure the hole didn't get too big. I threaded a piece of fishing line through the hole and tied it around a bead to hold the bug in place. The lengths of fishing line varied to keep the placement random as far as how far below the hoops the bugs hang. As you may notice, there are also flowers on some lines. For those, I threaded the line through the flower first, tied on a bead to keep the flower in place, and then followed the previously described steps to keep a bug on the line as well.

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I remember going to see Nora and watching her stare up at the mobile. Definitely made all the cutting worth it!

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 The wall hangings are still in her room (after moving from one end of California to the other), and now that she's almost 2 years old, Nora says "Hi!" to the bugs on many days. I'm glad to know my niece will see these and think back fondly on her childhood room with all of the childhood-y memories that she will start saving in the next few years.

                           ;Wendy;