Monday Made-It and 1 week until Disney!!!!

I can't believe how fast time is flying by!  What am I talking about?  Of course I can!  Time off always zooms by faster!  Well here we are and I'm 1 week away from my Disney vacation (which I have been planning for like a year and a half.  What will I do now? lol) and on to the next Monday Made-It!

So with Disney being a week away that also means school is right around the corner so I have been trying to work more on that as well since I will be losing a week for a super fun vacation.  Once I get back I will start setting up my room (we're not allowed to start setting up our classrooms until Aug.).  I will have a week to do that because then the 19th starts teacher institute and then the 21st is the first day with kids.  I should be able to get everything done on time as since we don't have summer school or anything in our school I don't have to take everything down.  They tell us to, but it's just for cleaning purposes.  I clear or move anything where I want them to clean, and I leave up my bulletin boards and stuff.  This time I even left their baskets in their cubbies (I was trying to save myself time for when I came back).  Now enough of my yacking, onto last week!

Last Monday I got together with my team again to do some more grade level ordering to try to get some fabulous things from tpt to help us with common core, so that was fun and then I worked on school stuff.  I make kind of like my own version of a scope and sequence of our year that deals with reading, writing, science, & ss to give us a heads up of when to teach things.  I can't share that because it's on a very old print shop which is not on this computer.  

Tuesday was another Disney movie day.  This time it was Dumbo at my house for lunch, which none of the girls had ever seen before.  Now I don't know if you have noticed this yourself or not, but I have always found that kids sit and are so enthralled when it's a movie they haven't seen before.  It's the ones they have seen before that they don't always pay the best attention to (they've seen it a million times).  This held true again.  

We went with a circus theme for the food with this one as you can see from the menu.  Now the movie is one of the shorter ones.  Only 63 minutes.  I got to watch maybe 10 minutes of it with preparing the food for the girls and making the funnel cakes.  So I watched it myself later so I could be refreshed on it as I have not seen it in a long time.  Thank goodness for Netflix because we don't own that one.  

For their first craft the girls made Dumbo hats from the Disney Family Fun site.  

By the time it was time to do the coloring sheet, the movie was over, so I put in Lion King.  We weren't having that one as part of the countdown as there wasn't that much time and Brynn has seen it a ton of times, so I thought I'd just put it on to have it to watch while finishing all of our Dumbo activities.  Then the girls made paper plate Dumbo heads (my sister's idea) and they were so excited about them.  

We even put feathers for the trunks to hold.  I just drew out the ears and trunks on copy paper and the girls cut them out.  

I was watching Josie on Tuesday so she helped me work on some school stuff (while I watched Lion King 1 1/2.  Super cute movie!).  

I made these Class Jobs cards last year, but decided to change how I am going to use them so I hot glued them to ribbon and will be using green clothespins to change the jobs up every month.  

I got the lanyard at Dollar Tree and printed out 2 of these fabulous Ask Me!! tags, which you can download for free from here.  I thought 2 would be good to use around the classroom as extra support when I'm busy.  

We also made the silly straw Birthday Balloons that I made last year too with straws which I got from Dollar Tree.  So that was more things out of my To Get Ready folder on my computer.  

Wednesday I finished up our Disney shirts and dresses (one of Brynn's Grandmas made 2 sundresses which I had to iron on transfers too).  

These are the backs of the shirts.  This again was from that wonderful DISigner, Mandy.  We asked her to make these and I just printed them and ironed them on.  We thought they'd be cute to wear to Magic Kingdom when we go.  

Everything on the Disney to-do list is now done!  I think.  I'm pretty positive.  I have even packed everything I can pack so far.  Trying to be ready and not forget anything!  

Thursday was Finding Nemo movie night.  I went over earlier because my sister and I were making a present for my parents' anniversary, which is today!  I am 1 of 5 children (I'm number 4, Jodie is number 5).  All of my siblings have children.  We also all live within 30 - 45 minutes of each other so we're always getting together to celebrate something or someone so we made a birthday board for them.  

I used my cameo to cut out the letters and Jodie put them on (Shout out to Rowdy in Room 300 for her awesome Rowdy Swirl that I used for the black letters!!!).  Then I used white plastic tags and wrote the names, birthdays, and years everyone was born and hung them up month.  As you can see April is quite busy.  My dad and my 2 older sisters are in that month, along with of my brother-in-laws.  I color coded by family so my parents are one color, my eldest sister's family is another color, and so on.  I was very happy with how it turned out.  We celebrated on Saturday with dinner at their house and they loved it too!  I was going to make one for my class birthdays, but with the time it took (2 1/2 to 3hrs), I'm just going to print out posters like usual.  That will be much faster!  Maybe next summer...

Then we started our movie night.  

Jodie decided to make fish sticks for dinner and she made the coucous that we didn't end up eating for Aladdin.  Brynn said it looked like fish food, so we went with it.  lol  I made the Chocolate Wave Cake from the Coral Reef restaurant we will be going to.  

This time the craft was paper plate jelly fish to go with Marlin and Dory's adventure.  

For our 2nd activity, we played Go Fish!  

Friday I worked on more school stuff and got the following done:

Instead of Clock buddies I thought it would be fun to do what I called, iPartners.  My idea was based on the cell pals from here.  I had pinned the idea last summer and didn't get around to doing it and really wanted to do it for this year.  So I went back to it.  She even now has the printable on tpt that you can download for $1.50.  I just thought instead of making a flip cell phone, I'd do iPhones.  So I found an iPhone clipart on google images and inserted a text box to make the contacts (font is Rowdy Writing, which I LOVE).  I figured the student could cut it out glue it on their choice of colored paper to be like the iPhone case, and then glue the little tag I made that says iPartners on the back.  Then they could fill it in the same was as clock buddies.  We'll see how it goes.  

Then I used Christina Bainbridge's Bucket Filler Jar download to create one that would match my classroom using a popcorn/toffee jar that my mom gave me a while ago (being a teacher, she figured I would find a use for it).  This is really something I want to incorporate more of this year, so I loved the idea when the original RAK jar idea showed up on Monday Made-It and then again when Christina did it.  So thanks girls!!!  

Saturday I watched Josie again and we made a peach/raspberry pie to bring to my parents for dinner for their anniversary celebration.  They are married 46 years today!  

We used my mini heart cookie cutter to vent the pie.  http://4thgradefrolics.blogspot.com/2013/07/monday-made-it-july-29.html

More Disney fun and School Monday Made-It!

Well another busy, busy week, but I got a lot done.  Time to check in with 4th Grade Frolic's

So LAST Monday I was determined to get some school stuff done.  I organized my Common Core Resource binder and I finished two school projects and put some more on my to-do list.  

So my first school Made-It is my spin on the "How Are You Going Home Today" organizer.  I teach in a neighborhood school so 90% of my kids either get picked up or walk/ride their bike home.  I also teach in a K-8 building so with that many kids, we have different exits for the kids depending on how they are going home.  1 door is for walkers/car-riders, 1 room is where the little kids go to meet with their big siblings before they head home, one is the main entrance, another is the gym which is where K-4 students that are car riders get picked up from, and then there is the exit for the daycare and bus riders (for our 1 bus).  So my chart lets me know which door the child is going out so in case the office asks, I can tell them.  

I spray-painted some clothespins green that they will use.  I'm deciding on whether I want to use my label maker on the clothespins for their names (that's what I'm leaning towards) or if I want to use their numbers.  

The other Made-It I did was my take on the Homework Club that has been floating on Monday Made-It the last few weeks.  I used Tara's awesome numbers from her free download (Thank you Tara!!).  Now I do not have a problem with students turning in their homework.  Hopefully I won't this year either.  My grade does weekly homework packets, and my students do a great job turning them in.  Sometimes they are a day late, but still they get turned in.  What I have a bigger problem with  getting turned in, are their Monthly Reading Logs.  We have a school wide monthly reading program, The Wolves Reading Club, where the students win, almost like brag tags, for turning them in and they also get coupons to sporting events and restaurants.  I'm lucky if I get 50% of my class to participate and I even put it as part of their homework.  So, I took the Homework Club idea and made a title to go with the monthly reading club.  

Wolves Reading Club, Are YOU in it?  

So happy with how it turned out.  I hope it will motivate my students to do it.  The classes that get 100% participation even get to play the wii on a Smartboard.  That doesn't seem to motivate them, but hopefully this will and at least I'm rewarding the students for doing what they are supposed to do too.  

I was very happy with myself for getting those done.  I also finished the Tinker Bell tanks that my sister, niece, and I will be wearing when we head out to Disney in 13 days.  I did the iron-on transfer and bedazzled it for some pixie sparkle.  

Another check-off on the list.  

Tuesday was Mary Poppins lunch at my sister's house.  This week my sister didn't have either of the other girls during our movie days, so it was just Brynn with us.  

So we had tuna fish finger sandwiches with a salad and then I made some petit fours because we thought that sounded like it would go.  They were yummy.  

We did both activities after eating this time.  The first activity was chalk drawing, to be like Bert in the movie. 

Then we made a paper kite, "Let's go fly a kite, up to the highest height, let's go fly a kite and send it soaring."  

She was very excited to show it off.  lol  

It was around 90 out so then we went in the pool and later, out to dinner.  It was a fun day.  

Wednesday was even hotter with a heat index over 100, but we had already planned on the 3 of us going to Six Flags Great America with my brother and Josie, so we headed out there.  I used my free teacher ticket and my co-teacher gave me hers for Jodie to use.  Because it was so hot, there were not that many people there so we hardly had to wait in any lines.  We kept cool and hydrated and had a fun day.  

Thursday I started working on a new unit for my tpt store, but I haven't finished it yet.  I've been meaning to do it all summer, but hadn't gotten around to it.  It's about half-way done.  At least it's started!

Friday, Jodie and Brynn came over to my house for Peter Pan night.  

We started out with a treasure hunt with a map of my little townhouse area outside for Brynn to follow to find her treasure, Tinker Bell tattoos.  

Pointing to where to go on the map.  

She found it!  

Then we came in and watched the movie and had Pirate ship Pizzas with fruit kabob pirate swords.  

For dessert it was brownies disguised as an island.  

Then the next activity was tracing her shadow.  However, we were having a hard time seeing her shadow, so instead we had her lay down on black paper and traced her and cut it out.  Then my sister took this picture.  It was very cute.  

Saturday, got to do my monthly scrapbooking session with a friend.  I was happy because I was able to start my 2013 album and got through Easter scrapbooked.  My goal at the beginning of summer was to be caught up by Disney, but I don't think that's going to happen.  We'll see.  

Sunday I went out to breakfast with my parents and then Jodie came over to my house.  We did some Disney shopping of snacks and essentials and then we watched Oz the Great and Powerful while we made the last of the Disney hair bows.  

My sister made these.  I had asked for her to make one for me and after she did it, she thought it was so cute that she thought we should each have one.  You can find the tutorial for it here.  

This one was a team effort.  It's 3 layers.  I put each layer together and then she hot glued them together and added the longer ribbon and button.  This ones's for Brynn.  You can find the tutorial for this one here.  

So a lot done last week.  I have my to-do list of things for this week, we'll see if it gets longer!  Have a great day!  :)

http://4thgradefrolics.blogspot.com/2013/07/monday-made-it-72213-early.html

More Disney Monday Made-Its! :)

So I was so excited.  After looking at last week's Made-Its, I finally started working on some stuff for school!  I was like, Woohoo!!  I'm actually going to have a school Made-It to show you all.  Well some yucky family stuff went on at the end of the week and I didn't get them finished.  That just means that I will have them for you NEXT week!
So let's get started!

So Tuesday we had our Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs lunch at my house.  We went for a miniature foods theme (for the dwarfs, as we weren't going to make German food).  So I made little smokies in crescent rolls, pretzel bites, and miniature fresh veggie cups.  My sister made apple dumplings.  

Before the movie we had the girls make rock candy.  I thought it would go along with the dwarfs and their mining and the jewels they dig for.  It was a great concept and the girls had fun with it, but almost a week later and it's an epic fail.  lol  No candy forming at all.  Oh well.  We tried!  lol  

After lunch, my sister had come up with a magic mirror craft for the girls to do.  She wrapped cardboard ovals with aluminum foil and then the girls picked paper to glue them on to, cut around them, and decorated them.  

So it was a success and another movie down in our countdown.  

When we started planning our trip we were shown the DIS boards and a friend of my sister recommended the creative DISigners they have on there.  She recommended one named Mandy.  The DISigners will customize anything Disney you want, all for free.  She will design and post it and then you save it to your computer and print it out how you want.  Mandy made and customized invitations for my niece Brynn for our hotel and the restaurants we have character dining reservations for.  She also customized things for t-shirts we wanted to make, and Tinker Bell cards for the gifts that Tinker Bell will leave for Brynn for good behavior and sleeping habits at Disney.  So awesome!  It's amazing and really does spread the pixie dust and Disney Magic.  I was able to work on the DISigns for my shirts.  Just printed them out on t-shirt transfers cut them out, and ironed them on.  Here they are:

The Disney Princesses dressed as the villain from their movie.  Loved the idea!  I just had her put it in the word "Disney."  

Mickey word and image.  

This is actually the back of this tank.  On the front, in the lapel area, is a small Cinderella picture and my name.  

We have all tank tops since it's going to be so warm.  Didn't they turn out great?  And she'll customize them however you want!  I have others to do print out for Brynn and my sister.  So fun!  

I also found on the DIS boards about how people decorate their windows at Disney and found another creative DISigner, Lady B, through there that does the same type of things, but obviously she has different DISigns.  We had her customize some Mickey heads to display in our window.  

You can kind of see them laying there on my couch.  So I cut some ribbon to longer than what the window height is from what I read online.  They will be tied to suction cups and hung on the window to decorate it and make it easier to find our room.  So the one ready to go is Brynn's.  She requested Pocahontas so it has her picture in the middle and on one ear it says Brynn and the other says 2013.  Then I used my cameo to cut out the mickey heads and flowers.  I have a Cinderella head.  Jodie has a Tinker Bell head.  I just changed the colors of the flowers for each one.  The Pinocchio one is going to my sister's father-in-law.  I cut out stars instead of flowers for him.  Then there is a Mickey head that says Our 1st Disney Trip in the middle and the outline of the head is our trip details.  I made some silhouettes of Little Mermaid characters to go on the ribbon with that one since we'll be staying in the Little Mermaid rooms.  I also want to bring a strand of white Christmas lights to string up making it easier to find in the dark.  We're excited to do this and I know Brynn will love it too when she sees it.  :)

So Thursday was supposed to be our Aladdin dinner night.  We were going to have grilled chicken kabobs, cous-cous, and this jeweled jello cake (for the Cave of Wonders).  Well that's when the yucky family stuff went down and my sister and niece ended up coming over to my house.  There was no time to make the dinner and we didn't feel like eating it anyway.  Brynn and I still watched the movie as a distraction and also made Abu hats using red cups and construction paper.  

Gotta love how resilient kids are.  Smiling when it was not a smiley night. Such a pretty model.  :)

We did eat the dessert too, which was basically just 4 different colors of jello made and broken up into pieces (to look kind of like jewels) and then poured into a cake pan with clear jello poured on top to set it.  Then you frost it with cool whip.  They slept over at my house so the next day we did the coloring sheet and made felt magic carpets.  

 Decorating hers.  

The final product to show.  

Because of all of the craziness I did not make a menu and I didn't feel the need to make one afterwards because we didn't do it as normal anyway.  

Now things are settling down again.  We saw Monsters University Sunday afternoon.  Cute.  Loved seeing little Mike Wazowski.  We should hopefully get our 2 movie meals done as usual this week and I should get my school things done.  Hopefully I'll finish up the iron-ons for the others shirts as well.  

Hope all is well with everyone else.  Can't wait to get inspired!  :)

http://4thgradefrolics.blogspot.com/2013/07/monday-made-it-71513.html

A busy start to July!

Well I'm back again for Monday Made-it!  I may not be getting anything done for school yet (although I have ideas, thanks to you guys), but at least I'm blogging once a week!  lol

We'll start off with last Monday.  So with it being a busy week, we had our Disney Dinner Meal on Monday evening.  We had a Cars night.  Brynn had never seen the movie and really had no desire to as in her words, "It's a boy movie."  Now my sister and I already knew she felt this way so we kept playing up Sally in the movie.  lol  

We started with a game that was kind of like Bozo Buckets.  We put out 3 baskets and put a green circle, yellow circle, and red circle to make traffic light.  Then the girls had to throw bean bags in to each one.  It was quick with only 3 baskets, but still fun.  Then we got onto dinner and the movie.  My sister made individual meat loafs and used toothpicks to put carrots as the wheels so that they looked like cars.  We went for Route 66 diner food.  We then used the ideas of buying mini chocolate donuts to making Luigi's Leaning Tower of Tires and hot fudge sundaes for Mater's oil.  I then made Cozy Cone Motels out of orange paper for the girls to decorate and bought mini Cars matchbox cars to go into them to play with, which they loved.  

Brynn liked the movie, but it didn't hold her attention like the other movies usually do.  She was more antsy, but she did like Sally and Mater.  

Then Tuesday I went into school to meet with the rest of my team to work on common core planning for the fall.  We shared some stuff and seem to be good for first trimester at least.  We won't really know until we begin...

Wednesday we did an Alice in Wonderland lunch.  We did NOT do a tea party as the girls do not like tea (since we had them try some fruity iced tea during Beauty and the Beast).  We just went with the theme of the "Eat Me" "Drink Me" that Alice experiences.  

We started out with a game that you can print out from the Disney Go site.  You had to collect all of these treasures around Wonderland and end up with the Alice card, but NOT the Queen of Hearts card.  It was cute and easy for the girls to understand.  

Then we watched the movie and ate lunch.  I had made fun shaped pb&j sandwiches, Jodie made a fruit tray, we had juice boxes, and I made sugar cookies.  

It was good.  The girls were a little bit antsy during this movie too, but they had seen it before.  After eating the girls made construction paper flowers with faces on them to match the ones from the movie (no pics of that, sorry!).  

After lunch I hung out and Jodie and I made these Disney princess ribbons we had pinned ages ago that we wanted to make for Brynn to wear at Disney.  The directions given are for Cinderella, but we used them for Belle too, just changing up the colors.  For Ariel we used the directions for the head and part of the hair and body, but we winged the rest.  lol  

Here are ours.  We were happy with how they turned out.  We'll put a barrette through them or a headband.  Or even a safety pin to wear as a pin.  

So that was another thing checked off of our Disney to-do list!  We also got everything finalized and confirmed with the reservations.  Now just a warning on those ribbons, Cinderella took a long time to figure out how to get everything to work nicely, the other 2 went much quicker.  Small fingers help.  lol  

Then Thursday was the normal 4th of July cookout at my parents.  I made the dessert as usual.  

I called it a cheater pie, cause it's refrigerated pie crust and pie filling.  You can find the recipe here.  

Then Friday I finished up the Minnie Mouse head tank tops for my sister and myself.  I actually finished hers on Monday before I went over for dinner and I finished mine on Friday before my dinner plans.  

Hers is pink and mine is red to match the bows.  Red is my favorite color and it really feels Minnieish with the red and polka dots to me.  Happy with how it turned out.  Now this week I will work on the iron-on transfers.  

Saturday I spent the day working on the cupcakes for my niece Josie's birthday party.  I did cupcakes because we were having her party at a zoo and I thought that would be easier than a cake.  She was having a Barbie theme so I made Barbie cupcake liners and decorations using my cameo and scrapbooking supplies and I bought a mini Barbie dollar topper from amazon to use to make her cupcake more special.  

She requested strawberry cake with chocolate marshmallow frosting.  I just use boxed mixes and the frosting was the new Duncan Hines flavors you can mix in.  Ran out of the chocolate, but luckily I had bought some strawberry frosting too so that way it would match the Barbie topper so that got used too.  I sprinkled them with the leftover edible pearls I had from our Beauty and the Beast dessert.  She was very happy with them.  

Sunday was the big day, we packed up, and headed off to the zoo.  We had a great time picnicing.  Found some great tables under a big tree for shade.  She opened up her presents and then we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around.  The zoo we went to was a small zoo, but still tiring.  

So I had one crazy, busy week!  This week shouldn't be so bad.  I do of course have things going on almost every day, but they are more low key.  This week's Disney movies are Snow White and Aladdin.  

All right off I go!  Have a great week!  :)

http://4thgradefrolics.blogspot.com/2013/07/monday-made-it-july-8-and-giveawayd.html