November Currently and Monthly Made-it!

It's November!  How crazy!  October was hectic, as usual!  We'll see how this month goes!
I'm starting off this post with Farley's Currently for November:

Not much to explain for Listening.  I always do these once I'm in bed for the night so it's pretty quiet around here.  

I love my family so much and we are a very close bunch.  I'm one of 5 kids and my 4 siblings all have families and we live around each other and get together all of the time.  I'm very lucky.  So today I went to the circus with my eldest sister and her family and my younger sister and her daughter.  Fun time.  Let me share one of the pics I took:

So fun!

Thinking - So I follow Hip2Save on fb.  If you don't know about it, it's this great "couponing" site.  So the gal who runs it posted about this great Little People toy that amazon had on sale for $22.99.  Then a reader tip was that Target would price match and you could use the $10 off coupon that Hip2Save had posted a few days earlier.  So I went to Target and got a regularly $39.99 toy for $14 with my Red Card!  Woohoo!  I was very excited.  One present down for the holidays.  Couldn't pass up a deal like that!  Then I put away all of my Halloween decorations, printed out a whole bunch of center games for math, and went to my parents.  Then today was the circus, cutting and laminating all of the center games, grading papers, and updating my classroom website.  I got it all done!  Another big Woohoo!  And now I'm blogging!  

Wanting is pretty self-explanatory.  I have a great group but sometimes we can be a little chatty and not pay attention.  

Needing is also pretty self-explanatory.  I'm very happy with what I got done this weekend, but I never feel that accomplished during the week.  I would love to have 1 day every week where we didn't have students and I could get everything done then.  I would take longer school days so I could have that 1 day where I could get stuff done at school without running around like a crazy person.  

No onto the yummy pin.  I pin yummy things all of the time.  I have a dessert board, a cookies board, and holiday boards with yummy things.  This pin is one of the newest so I thought I would put it in:

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownie

I mean come on, does that not sound soooo good!  There is nothing in that title that I do not love so I had to pin it!!  

Okay so that is my Currently.  Now onto my Monthly Made-Its!  

http://4thgradefrolics.blogspot.com/2013/11/monday-made-it-november.html

So first things first, I pinned this really cute pumpkin sign from The Polka Dot Pavillion that I loved, but did not want to spend $50, so I thought I'll just make it.  So I headed over to Michaels to pick up a wooden pumpkin.  No go.  I found one I liked online, but it was a set of 6, so I said okay, I'll make them for my family too and give it to them at our yearly Trick-or-Treat party.  I had 1 extra left over so I made it for my friend Krista.  Hers is below.  

Now I just made the pumpkin.  She added it to her basket she keeps on her door.  All I did was get 11in. wooden pumpkin cut outs (6 for $19.50), painted them, used my Cameo and vinyl for the lettering, and some tulle for around the stem.  I texted everyone and told them they couldn't ask me why, but polka dots or chevron.  2 picked polka dots the rest were chevron. Painted it orange first and then added the yellow polka dots or chevron stripes.  I was very happy with how it turned out.  On mine I just put Happy Fall Y'all.  Krista jokingly told me she needs one now for every season.  lol  

To go along with the pumpkins, I made these cards:

I followed this video and used my cameo.  Very happy with how it turned out!  I also gave them to my teammates with a purple jar of candy that I cut out Trick-or-Treat in vinyl and added to it (forgot to take a picture of that).

On Friday, October 25 is when my school had their Halloween celebration.  The neighborhood does Trick-or-Treating on Sunday so starting last year we do it the Friday before.  Really love doing that.  This year my teammates and I dressed up as scarecrows.  

It was great because this cost me no money!  My teammate bought the raffia that we used as our straw (I used blue painters tape to tape it on the inside of my clothes and it was not itchy) and I had everything else, just turned it into a scarecrow costume.  Super fun and my kiddos loved it!  The pic above was taken at my parents house for the Trick-or-Treat party.  

Well that same night (Friday the 25th) I had Jodie and Brynn come over to my house for a Halloween themed dinner.  I made mummy dogs (but with sausage because oddly enough my niece doesn't like hot dogs), smiley face fries (thought it was like masks) and Halloween mac and cheese.  I also made witches brew drinks with lime sherbet, ginger ale, and lime concentrate with gummy worms as garnish. My sis got the pics of all of that.  I finished it off by making these stackable surprise cookies:

You just get the tube of sugar cookie dough, slice them into round cookies, bake them and then put one cookie down as your base, for the next cookie, cut a circle out of the middle, put it down, do the same to another cookie, and add a full cookie on top.  Before I put the cookie on top I filled it with Reese's Pieces.  Frosting is the glue holding all of the layers together.  Yummy!  

For my family's party on Sunday I made these:

They were green velvet cupcakes that I made to look like witches by using the cookies that have the hole in the middle and chocolate bottoms.  I just flipped it so the chocolate was on top and added a caramel kiss to the top.  Melted it a bit to stick to the cookie, added frosting and presto.  I thought green would be a nice touch to make them witchy with orange hair.  lol  Big hit.  :)

So those are all of my Made-its I did in October.  Can't wait to get some things done this month too!  

Fall Time

First, since I'm behind, here's my October Currently, thanks to Farley from Oh' Boy 4th Grade.  Click the pic below to join the linky.

Listening - had a busy morning, so just sitting blogging while my computer fan goes off, no other noise.  

Loving - spent the morning with my parents at a craft fair and am getting ready to busy circus tix to go with some siblings and nieces/nephew.  

Thinking -  about everything I have to do for school: conference goal sheets, art of the week project, grading...

Wanting - So conferences start this week and the only goal sheet I have done is for the conference I had early, this past Thursday.  The other 24 are waiting for me...

Needing - to get off the computer and get everything mentioned above done!  

Trick or Treat - A freebie is down below if you would like it!  :)

This is my favorite time of year.  I just love it!  I love the leaves turning colors.  I love that it's apple picking and pumpkin patch time.  I love the cooler weather.  I love that fun holidays are coming up: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  It's just the best.
We have been busy in my classroom with fall.  We have done the projects that I do pretty much every year: the build your own ice cream cone (for the first ice cream cone patent on September 22nd),

This pic is from last year, but it's the same idea.  Students build ice cream cones and then have to write about them.  

and also our fall tree craft with tissue paper.  

Students write about what they love about fall and make a fall tree (this pic is also from last year).  

We also did a great Johnny Appleseed activity from Mandy Gregory (Johnny Appleseed Common Core ELA Lesson and Craft).  

I read the students different books about Johnny Appleseed and then they watched the Disney Legends short about Johnny Appleseed.  I told them that they were going to be writing about Johnny before we did this, so they were going to need to pay attention so they would be able to think of things to write.  Then I gave them the great brainstorming web that's in her pack.  They wrote the main idea and then a fact in each apple.  Then they wrote up their little biographies and made Johnny Appleseed holding their paper.  The pics above show the wide range of abilities in my classroom.  I loved that it was a fun activity and it was very common core with having to write about what they learned.  

All of these are hanging up in the room for parents to see this week for conferences.  We do goal setting conferences so we always have them the week before Columbus Day, so we can have a 4-day weekend to recuperate.  The first 2 projects were part of the Art of the Week I do as one of the choices for Work on Writing for Daily 5.  They were optional.  This week I am going to have them do their first Have-To Art of the Week and we are going to do a Jack-o-lantern glyph.  I found a ton online and I liked components from a few of them so I made my own using the great ideas.  

I'm going to draw in the mouths before I copy it.  

Since the Art of the Week is part of Work on Writing, there is always a writing component with it.  This writing component is going to be a PUMPKIN acrostic poem that I do every year with my class.  I thought they would look good next to each other.  You can find tons of those online too.  I added the pictures for my class because I have a lot of LOW readers this year and I am hoping that it will help them.  I have to make my example today so they can see it.  My plan is to give each of them a copy of the direction paper and have them circle what is true for them.  Normally I wouldn't do this, I would just hang it up, but with this class, I think this will be better.  I'm also going to have them fill out the Pumpkin acrostic poem as we think of ideas for each letter too.  Again, normally I don't do that, we just brainstorm some ideas and when it's their turn for the art of the week, they write things down, but with this class, I'm going to help them along.  lol  

I'm joining up with Classroom Freebies Manic Monday to give the above to you for free if you would like it.  

Have a wonderful week!  :)