Classroom Makeover Progress

I have to say, I was probably more ready for summer break than anyone else. My husband had the paper chain countdown going and I had every intention of skipping out of school on the last day without looking back. I did have a whole bag of math centers laminated to cut and assemble, but other than that it was going to be a summer of lazing and "me" time. Then my principal told me in the last few hours of school on that final day that our classroom would be moving next door. 

It put me into total back-to-school mode in order to get out of my current room so the new teacher can move in. You might have read about my color scheme debate last week. I'm back to report that I have made some decisions. I just couldn't do all the boards the same. It just felt too plain to me with all the space I have to cover. However, I am sticking with the same color scheme and borders to tie it all together instead of having each board look different like they have in the past. 

Soooo.... bright polka dots are in! I'll be painting purple, blue, and green boards with the orange as an accent color for words, labels, and page borders. I'm going to stick with our Furry Friends monsters in the hallway and a few touches in the room so the students have some characters to identify our room with too. I'm making new curtains out of this fabric and will be covering our bench and skirting our table with coordinating fabric.

I'm thinking I'll use a solid border under a printed border for each of the boards. The tags will be for our coat rack and behavior board. I'll play around with it some more once my husband can help me get the bulletin boards painted next week.

I'm also getting a lot of use out of my new Silhouette Cameo cutter. I've made all new bulletin board letters. How cute are these?





I definitely didn't put this much thought into coordinating our room before. As I updated boards and decorations throughout the years, I'd usually just worked on one board at a time without thinking about how they all fit together. I definitely think this will make our room feel even more pulled together and cozy. The updates have also kept me excited to be doing all this work when I had planned to be laying in the hammock with a good book, haha. ;) 


Are you out of school yet? If so, how are you spending all of your glorious free time? If not, how many more days do you have?

Watermark Tutorial

Several people have emailed me or left questions here on my blog about how to watermark their images. I decided to make a quick post with some of the tricks I've figured out along the way. 

If you think you don't need a watermark, I'd encourage you to think about it a little more. I recommend watermarking your pictures for a couple reasons. First, pictures and ideas are "borrowed" all of the time on the internet. By watermarking your images, you're easily able to claim your work. Other than marking your territory (haha), watermarks can also help the people who find your great idea get back to you to find out more. How many times have you seen a great idea on Pinterest, but clicked on it only to find the link was broken or incorrect? With a watermark, people will more easily be able to find you.

Okay, now for the good stuff. I made my watermark in Photoshop Elements and saved it as its own file. This means I can just copy and paste my watermark on top of my other pictures. Sometimes I simply use my blog button the way it is, but other times I don't want it to stand out so much. That's where the watermark feature comes in handy. To make it semi-transparent, you'll want to use the layer options to adjust the opacity. I promise it's really easy! Here's how you do it:
     1. Open your image in PSE.
    
     2. On the right side of your screen, find the Layer tab. If you have it closed, you might have to click the arrow to open it so you can see the options.

    
     3. Adjust the opacity % to fade your image and make it transparent. Mine is 37%, but it will change depending on the colors of your image.

    
    4. Save your file under a new name so you don't replace your original image.
     
    5. To use your new watermark, just drag and drop it over your existing pictures. You do this by opening multiple files at the same time (your original and the watermark). With the original image open on the top screen, grab the watermark from below and drag it up onto your picture. I try to put my watermark in a place that doesn't interfere with the original image, but also in a place that can't easily be cropped out. In this example picture of Lily, I put it in the top left corner. Right above her back would have been another good option.

     6. If you want to use text instead of an image, the process is exactly the same. Instead of starting with your original image/button, just start with a text box. You still change the opacity the same way.


If you don't have PSE, you can obtain similar results in other photo software and even in Word. You can effectively fade your image by adjusting the contrast and brightness. Your image won't be see-through, but it will still be less noticeable. Here's a screenshot that shows the process in Microsoft Picture It! at 100% brightness.

If you get stuck, let me know and I can make you one from an image you've chosen. It just takes a few minutes and I'm happy to help keep your fabulous ideas and pictures connected to their awesome source-- you!

A New Twist on Math, Geography, and State Facts

Have you heard of geocaching? My husband and I started a couple summers ago and have had a lot of fun with it. In case it's new to you, here's the definition from the official website, "Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location." They are hidden all over public places. Chances are you walk by one every day and don't even know it! Geocaching has been a fun (and sometimes challenging!) activity that my husband and I can do together with our dogs. The drives through the country can be really pretty, and it's led us to discover some new places too.

Here's where the educational part comes in. I decided to hide a travel bug in a cache near our school. Travel bugs are just what they sound like; little metal dog tags with serial numbers that people move around as they geocache. If you find a travel bug, you log it on the website before moving it to a new location. This keeps going and you're able to watch the little bug move through the state, country, and even world. I bought a travel bug and gave it the goal to visit all 50 states. I also requested that people add a fact about the city/state where the bug was placed when the log its location. This reminded me of the popular post card/Great American Mail Race activities, but with a twist.

I'm releasing our bug this weekend so it can get a head start during the active summer months. When school resumes in August, we'll track it as a class. I plan to map its path, calculate distances, plot coordinates, etc. in math while learning geography and state facts too. I'm hoping this will be a fun project that will continue for several years until the bug makes its way back home again. I'm also hoping it might encourage a few students to try geocaching with their families too. It's a great way to get in some family time, physical activity, and learning too!

Here's a video and link to the official website if you want to give it a try!

Let's Talk About Classroom Decor

Okay, teacher friends, I need your input! My principal approached me on the way to lunch today to let me know that my classroom will be our new kindergarten room next year (eek!) and that I will need to move. It was a total surprise. I knew we needed an extra kindergarten room next year and the speculations were flying about where it would go, but my room never entered the discussions. I sincerely don't mind moving and am so thankful to be staying in third grade, but it's a total bummer to find out in the last few hours of school. I already had my August calendar up, that's just the kind of planner I am. So... I guess you know what I'll be doing for several days in the next few weeks. That's where you come in. I'm so torn about my bulletin boards!

The other classroom has the exact same layout as mine, so I planned to move everything over and put it exactly where it is in my current room. I just redid everything last Christmas and am really happy with the layout, board information, etc. but the bulletin boards desperately need repainted in the new classroom. That's where my indecision comes into play. I have my current bulletin boards in different colors with different borders. I love how put together School Girl Style's layouts look though and was thinking about picking one paint color and using the same border everywhere. Part of me is afraid that won't feel as fun, interesting, or inviting though. 

Here are pictures of our current room. I know I want the ones on each side of the chalkboard to match next year since they mirror each other, but should they all match? Should I stick with purple, blue, and green? What do you do in your rooms? Do all of your boards match? What do you think are the pros/cons?

Let's chat, either here in the comments or over on my Facebook page. Bonus points for pictures of your rooms!

Schools Out For Summer!

Okay, not really. Tomorrow is our teacher day, but that doesn't count. =)  I said goodbye to all my kiddos today and sent them off into the world as fourth graders. Keeping with school tradition, many of the teachers lined up down the center of our bus lane and did cartwheels before the buses pulled out. What can I say? I love my job, but I love summer too!

In addition to science day on Monday, on Tuesday we wrapped the year up with pages this super cute memory book I found from Cara Carroll on TpT for free. Woo! I printed the pages two to a page to reduce copies. We also opened the time capsules we made at the beginning of the year and had a yearbook signing party too. Students who didn't purchase yearbooks used the memory book so everyone had something to collect signatures on. I won another version of a memory book from Third Grade Love's giveaway (psst, she's giving it away to everyone now so you can click over there to grab it) so I combined my favorite pages from both books. It was nice to have something fun, yet focused, to do right at the end of the year. :)

Today we ended the year with our annual field day. At our school, the sixth graders are group leaders who take your class around to all the different events and teachers sign up for shifts to run the games. It's always so fun for me to see my former third grade kiddos in charge of my current ones. I have to admit that it brings me a little bit of joy to see the sixth graders get somewhat frustrated when they have to be in charge of an excited group of little ones who want to run around and have fun all day. A little payback, if you will. =) I think it's great for them to see things from a teacher's perspective and hope it makes them listen and follow directions a little closer when they return to their role as a student at the end of the day.

Overall, it was a great last few days with our Summer Reading Challenge Kick Off, Science Day, and Poetry Anthology Wrap-up too. How do you celebrate the end of the year? Join these linky parties to share your great ideas.

PS- I uploaded another set of freebie frames, this time in primary colors.

Gifts for Teachers

I wanted to share a couple gifts I put together for some of my coworkers this week. I think these are pretty cute end of the year gifts, but they'd be great for teacher appreciation week or even a student teacher too.

First up... an orange-themed present for an upcoming summer birthday. The teacher next door loves orange. Can you tell? =) She also likes to sew and seemed to appreciate some of the items I've shown her that I made on my new embroidery machine. I decided to make her a fun summer bag. I think it'll work great on vacation, around town, or even to carry papers in next school year. I paired the bag with a cute idea I saw on Pinterest and made her a pencil bouquet bucket too. I used foam flowers stuck over pencil erasers and then pushed them down into a piece of styrofoam. I also added yellow and orange star post-it notes and coordinating memo pad. I topped it off with a happy sunshine piece of wood art from Hobby Lobby that I hot glued onto a magnet. I think it looks cheerful. 

Second up... I'm pretty proud of this one ya'll! ;)  My poor teaching assistant (who is awesome by the way!) has been cutting and laminating math centers for me this past week or so. I'm trying to get them ready for next year and she's been gracious enough to help in her downtime during the day as school wraps up. I knew I wanted to get her a gift card to her favorite restaurant to treat her family to a meal out, but I also wanted to get her something school related for her classroom next year (fingers crossed she finds a job!). I decided to get her the crafty scissors because 1) we use them all the time in my classroom and 2) it would be kind of funny because I'm pretty sure she doesn't want to look at another pair of scissors after all the cutting she did last week. Well... I had to make the present look fun so I decided to put it in a basket too. I turned a few of the scissors sideways so they could hold the card. Not to toot my own horn, but I think it turned out pretty cute. What has been your favorite teacher gift?

Finally, as an end of the year gift for YOU, I put some new freebie frames in my TpT store. I'm working on making others to complete the set, so stay tuned for those! Here's a sneak peek. They are so cute!

Science Day!

The last few days of school can be complete chaos if you don't have a plan. A few teachers I know have compared it to herding cats. ;) I really do try to keep our last few days educational, but mixing up the routines is crucial and adding additional hands-on activities always helps too. This is where our annual third grade science day comes in. Reserved for the last few days of school each year, it's a day of messy science fun.


This event takes place outside, which makes cleaning up spills really easy. We divide our students into two large groups. One of the groups begins the day in a kickball tournament while the other group participates in Science Day. Halfway through, we switch. The students participating in Science Day rotate through centers, creating a science experiment at each one. All students take home "samples" from the experiment and a recipe sheet to make the experiments at home too. 


All of the ingredients are pretty inexpensive and we usually get almost everything we need donated by parents. In addition to supplies, Science Day requires volunteers for each station. We usually use our classroom assistants and remediation support staff, but parents would make great leaders too.


You can find all kinds of great recipes online, but here's a copy of ours. If you're using a mac and having trouble with the download, you can try these tips. Alternately, you can just grab the plain word copy. Same recipes, just not as cute. ;) Do you have any great recipes to add?

Do You Use Poetry Anthologies?

I just love, love, love working with poetry. I have had so much fun seeing how everyone used my Writing a Poem a Day Poetry Pack that I wanted to share another poetry idea with you. It just might be something you want to try with your class next year. Even if you don't want to try them, keep reading to snag an end-of-the-year poem freebie for your students.


For the past several years, I've been creating poetry anthologies with my students. We use simple paper books made of computer paper with a card stock cover. Ours are just a few dollars each, but you could also make your own or have your students use spiral notebooks too. The books aren't nearly as important as the ideas students put inside them!

The anthologies are broken into four sections: Poems about Me, Poems from Friends, Poem Connections, and Poems by Me. Each section has a different purpose, with the first three sections used for studying published poems. Students don't actually write their own poems until they reach the fourth section. In our room, we do poetry Fridays and end the week with our anthologies. I usually teach each section in isolation and practice it a few times before moving on to the next section. After all sections have been taught, students are free to choose which section they'll work in each Friday. I allow my students to use some of their poems from our Writing a Poem a Day unit in their anthology.


If you're looking for a way to make poetry fun while also working with figurative language, mood, inferences, poetic devices, and more, I highly recommend trying poetry anthologies with your class next year. You can grab a copy of my poetry anthology directions pretty cheap over at my TpT store if you don't want to make your own. Here's a free poster I use in our classroom that goes with it.

And now for the freebie... here's a cute poem that I give my students as the last one in their Poems from Friends section. Even if you don't use anthologies, it makes a great goodbye gift for your kiddos. 

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