I had a pretty productive Sunday. Got some housework done and lounged around with Alex for awhile. It was a pretty relaxing day. Alex was glued to the tube watching and it gave me a chance to get some stuff done. I have been thinking a lot about my blog and how much I miss getting blog posts in. I feel like I am constantly doing cooking new recipes and doing projects that I plan on blogging on, but I have been so exhausted by the time I get home. I have a hard time getting motivated to work on my blog. So tonight I made wings and came straight upstairs after dinner to get my post done! Here I am!
When Alex and I first started dating, we spent many nights at Buffalo Wild Wings because we both love chicken wings! Alex makes some killer wings on our Traeger Grill. If you have a Traeger and you haven’t ever smoked wings on it, do yourself a favor and try out this recipe. I think we have been to Buffalo Wild Wings less then 3 times since we started smoking our own wings at home. The ones we make are so much better, and even better FOR you as they are not fried in grease. Alex had me pick up some wings for dinner tonight. Since he was enjoying his Sunday football, I decided to take a stab at them and make my man some delicious wings! They were so easy and they were even Alex-approved!
Ingredients:
Chicken Wings
McCormick Grill Mates Pork Rub
Olive Oil
Frank’s Red Hot Wings Sauce
Salt & Pepper
Directions:
Turn on the Traeger to smoke with the lid open for 5 minutes. Then crank up the heat to 350˚ and preheat for 10-15 minutes. While the Traeger is smoking, rinse the wings in cold water.Pat the sings dry with paper towels.After all the wings are rinsed and dried, it is time to add some seasoning.I did not measure but I just gave the rub a generous shake over the wings and a drizzle of olive oil.After working in the rub and olive oil, I added a few cranks of sea salt & ground pepper. I tossed them around some more after that.Spread the wings out evenly directly on the rack. Smoke on 350˚ for 25 minutes.Smoke on the other side for about 10 more minutes or until the wings temp out at 165˚.This is the BEST wing sauce I have ever had! We keep a few bottles on hand!Give the wings a generous drizzle of wing sauce.This reminds me of good old Applebees! Put the lid on a shake that bad boy!Serve with some veggies and ranch! Super Yummy!
Fridays can tend to be a pretty crazy day for me at work. We usually have a language arts assessment of some sort, and this Friday we also had a math test! I try to make sure to squeeze and art project in on days like that to give my kiddos something fun to look forward to. I love art days! My school does not have an art program at the elementary level, which I feel is very important. Last year, my class did a musical called The Color Factory. It was the cutest program where they sang songs about colors and had little skits in between. I was surprised when my music teacher told me that some of the kids did not know how to mix colors! I couldn’t believe it! Once I thought about it, it made perfect sense because they do not get the opportunity to have classes with an art teacher. I made sure to squeeze a lesson on ROYGBIV to help them learn the colors of the rainbow. I am looking forward to doing that lesson again with my class this year!
This is the first art project we did at the beginning of the year. I found it on Pinterest. It seemed fitting since our school theme this year is Reach for the Stars. It was super easy and the kids loved it. We just traced our arm and hand and they colored them however they wanted
This week we got a chance to do coffee filter art! I love this project because they were able to use their imaginations to make their coffee filter into whatever their little hearts desired. We had planned on doing this project last week and I usually try to have an example made before we start so they can get a visual of what their final product will look like. Unfortunately, last week our test took longer than I had anticipated, so we had to push it until the next week.
My coffee filter art example.
This week they kept asking me when we were going to get a chance to do our art project. One of my sweet girls came up to me while we were waiting for buses one day this week and handed me a book from my classroom library titled What is Round? by Rebecca Kai Dotlich with photographs from Maria Ferrari. She thought we needed to read it to inspire our artwork! I made sure read this book before we got started. It started a great discussion before we got started.
This is the book that we read before we started our art project! It was a great way to get them started brainstorming on what they were going to make out of their coffee filter!
Materials:
coffee filters
markers
squirt bottle with water
glue
construction paper
Instructions:
Fold filter in half.Fold the filter into fourths.
Then fold into eighths and spray with water bottle generously on both sides.Start making a design on the filter with markers. Since the filter is wet, watch the color spread throughout!
Make sure to do the EXACT same pattern on the back. This will ensure that the marker bleeds through the entire filter.Open it up and viola! Instant artwork! Then comes the fun part! You get to decide what to make it into!Here is my class example that I did with the class on Friday. This one is much more colorful and turned into a beautiful hot air balloon!
Well it is that time again! Football season is finally upon us and just in time for a mailbox makeover! A few weeks ago, I went out to check the mail and let’s just say our mailbox has seen better days! We used to have a black plastic mailbox that rarely would shut and this time one of the hinges broke off.
It occurred to Alex and I that maybe it was time to bite the bullet and buy a new mailbox. This gave me the perfect opportunity to do something crafty with it! Alex loves his Huskers, so I wanted to find a mailbox that I could spray paint red and use white vinyl for the N. Alex decided a white mailbox with red vinyl would match their helmets, so that is what I did. I did not like the color of red that I could find, so I decided to use acrylic pain and use the vinyl as a stencil. This ended up being what I like to call a DIY “fail” as I let the paint dry before ripping off the stencil. Let’s just say I made a huge mess of it and ended the afternoon scrubbing the paint off in the sink. It came off pretty well and I decided after that hassle, the darker red vinyl would just have to work!
Ordinary white mailbox from Home Depot.Side viewI cut out two N’s and a strip for the top of the mailbox.
Things have been COMPLETELY nuts around here! I went back to work on August 1st. I have been so busy doing projects for my classroom and the year is just beginning. Plus my sister got married the weekend before school started so I have been super busy! I have a post coming soon with some pictures as well as a project that I worked on for her wedding, so be on the lookout!
This is my beautiful sister Heather and I on her wedding day! Congrats Heather and Paul! It was such a happy day!
We just finished our 3rd week of school! It is almost time for midterms! I cannot believe it! I started the year out with 28 kids and now have 27. This is WAY more than I am used to but I have a pretty good group! It is funny, every year gets easier but I find myself coming home completely exhausted. I think this year is going to be so much fun. I am introducing some new structure to my classroom to hold the kids more accountable.
Since things have been super crazy, I decided to highlight the top 5 makeover projects I worked on for my classroom this year. My room is a jungle theme and I thought I had everything decorated the way I wanted until Alex got me my Cricut for Christmas last year. I found myself redoing a lot of things that I had purchased from the store because I could make it more unique and EXACTLY the way I wanted it.
Here is a picture of my Cricut and the first card that I made with it! The possibilities are endless with this machine.
For those of you who are not aware of what a Cricut is, it is a die cut machine. The machine can cut paper, fabric, vinyl, etc. You buy cartridges for it and that is the shapes you can cut out. I use Cricut Craft Room on my computer to create my masterpieces. If you have a Cricut and only have played around with the machine itself, do yourself a favor and download the Craft Room design software. It allows you to use a virtual mat to create layers and use exact measurements. I will say that sometimes it is a bit finicky, but you can do so much more with it!
Makeover Project #1: Job Chart
My old job chart was called Happy Helpers that I purchased from the teacher store. There are 7 monkeys in the tree that have job titles on them. I was terrible about remembering to switch them out at the end of the week and the kids would always have to remind me. Each kid had a banana with their name on it that I clipped to the job for the week. The next week, I would put those bananas back in the basket and replace it with new ones. I did not really have much of a system to make sure each kid gets a chance to be line leader, door holder, etc. It just depended on who I pulled out of the basket.
My Old Job Chart
My old job chart…
My New & Improved Job Chart
This is my new job chart. It is set up so that the clips move down and around the chart each week so that they have a new job almost every week.
This job chart is a big part of my classroom structure. Each student has a clip with their name on it. They move down or over each week so that each student gets a chance to change jobs each week. Due to the high number of students I have this year, there are 2 jobs that more than one student will be one for a few weeks in a row. These are Clean-Up Crew and Vacation Crew. Otherwise, there is a boy and a girl on each job. I have found that not all kids can handle each job, so if I use teacher discretion to switch them around if needed. This year, our school has adapted an economics incentive plan using Cubs Bucks, which works out for this because as long as they do a good job on their duty, they get paid for their job each day. If I notice they are struggling to do their classroom job, they do not get paid. We are trying to teach the kids how to save their money up for certain privileges like eating with the principal or free time in the gym.
If you would like to download a free copy of my job chart, click the following link Classroom Jobs Owls. Please feel free to leave comments if you have additional questions about how this chart works!
Makeover Project #2: Classroom Library
This year, I finally coded and organized my classroom library! With the help of my fellow teammate, Mrs. Heather, we broke down the different genres that we have in our classroom down to 8 categories. This is something that we have been wanting to do, but just had not got around to it. In fact, we both took advantage of getting into our classrooms before we were required to, to make sure this got finished and ready so we would have time to do other things to get our rooms ready. I am so happy with the way they turned out.
My Old Classroom Library
I did have some organization as my tubs are labeled with the different genres, however this did not work very well. The kids would just toss books back into whatever bins they wanted because they did not know where they were supposed to go.
My New & Improved Classroom Library
Notice the tubs have labels with genres on them. Each genre is a different colored label which matches the colored dot in the corner of the book so the kids know what tub each book goes in!Here are the dot stickers that I used for my books from amazon.com. I purchased 7 of them and only opened a couple but I will have plenty for new books that I add over the years!This was before I labeled the bins, but notice the lime green dot in the righthand corner of the book? That tells the kids that it is a chapter book.I used ModPodge to stick the labels I created with my Cricut to each bin.After sticking the label to the bin, I always do a healthy coat of ModPodge to seal it in.I found the best tubs for my chapter books at the Dollar Tree!Here is a good picture of my library corner. I moved some stuff around and added a tree because I thought that was super necessary! I love having a fun place in my classroom for my kiddos to go relax and read! In the jungle nonetheless!
This system is working out wonderfully in my room! My classroom librarians are the kiddos responsible for making sure all returned books are in the right bins and keeping the library looking nice! I even made a bookmark to that I used to introduce the different categories in the library. The kids had a blast coloring the different genres and learning about our library.
Here is a free pdf of my Library Codes Color and Bookmarks. After we colored the bookmarks, I had them laminated and put ribbon at the top so they would last a long time!
Makeover Project #3: Operation More Color
Last year was the first year I really had my classroom the way I wanted…so I thought. I absolutely love the animal print that is all around my room. In fact, I had the cutest bulletin boarders that look like real animal fur. The problem was, the only thing that went with them as far as a background went was black. I need color in my life! So this year, I decided I wanted more colorful bulletin boards. I found the most amazing bulletin borders at U.S. Toy during their Teacher Appreciation Sale and they were just what I was looking for!
My Old Bulletin Boards
Here are my bulletin boards last year. I purchase letters from the teacher store as well that matched my boarders. It was cute, but I wanted something more fun!
My New & Improved Bulletin Boards
Notice the cute pennants that I cut out using my Cricut? That thing pays for itself when I don’t have to purchase punch out letters to go with it!Panoramic view…
In addition to the bulletin boards, I finally got some chairs recovered for my classroom. To see a tutorial on how to recover an old office chair click here.
I recovered a chair for my reading table to match my crates!So fun and cute!My neighbor had this chair sitting outside, so I text her and asked her if she was throwing it out. I wanted to cover it for my classroom if she was. She told me it was mine!I love how this chair turned out. I think it cleaned up well! It doesn’t even look like the same chair! Looks great with the matching curtains that my Grandma Bloesser whipped up for me my first year.
Makeover Project #4: Birthday Wall
Can you remember when you were in school, the teacher always had a board or poster with your birthday on it. The last few years I have used a cupcake set that I purchased at the teacher store.
My Old Birthday Wall
Each kiddo had their own candle that went on the birthday month cupcake.
My New & Improved Birthday Wall
This birthday wall is so much more fun! Notice I used some of the monkeys that I already had and used my Cricut to cut out the party hats and balloons for each month. I wrote all the class birthdays on their birthday month balloon. Does that palm tree look familiar? That used to be my job chart tree. I love repurposing!! This is one of the favorite makeovers by far!
Makeover #5: Word Wall
I wanted to have more bulletin boards this year, so I decided to move my language arts bulletin to a wall so I could free up a new spot for other bulletins.
My Old Word Wall
Notice the pocket chart on the bulletin in the back of the room? That is where I put vocabulary and spelling words for the week.Wild About Words is my new area to put vocabulary and spelling words. This freed up another space for more bulletin boards in my room!
I hope you enjoyed checking out my new & improved classroom! I am absolutely in love with the way everything turned out. I have had so many compliments on how exciting of a learning environment that I have created! It is such an inviting space and the kids absolutely love it!
