Back To School Night!

Well, it's arrived. Back to school night. One of my favorite nights of the year. The kids are excited or nervous or couldn't care less. They are adorable and I have a non-stop smile for two hours plastered on my face.
I was just glad my classroom was ready. I started to panic around noon. I took on a few too many projects this summer, especially with the fact that I was gone for one month.
This year, I had different steps for the parents to follow. Even with that addition, many steps were skipped. Oh well. I guess I'm doing packets next year.

28 of my darling 30 students showed up. They were impressed I knew their names. I was impressed with how different they looked from their 4th grade picture.
I love my parents this year. I even had a mom that came in and said something like, "I have had the crappiest parents to work with before this year, but these are some amazing parents!"
Many of my former students made a guest appearance. Lots of hugs (and a guilty happy when a mom teared up and said last year was the best year for her child and she wishes her son could have me again).
I cannot wait until tomorrow. Those adorable children are my kids for nine months. I'll love, scold, cry for, pray for, struggle with, admire, worry about, and nurture those kids.

Here's to the best year yet.

What my classroom looked like two weeks ago:

What my classroom looked like at 3:30 today:

Suitcases for their back to school presents with a bag of pretzels and a foam airplane inside.

The vice-principal gave me this awesome map today.

You'll never know how messy it is behind the emerald curtain. (Okay. There are actually just power cords for the Chromebooks and large bins.)

I incorporated our school's theme this year (airplanes) into my hot air balloon theme. Hey, it fits pretty nicely. I love my new arrow sign outside my classroom.

One of the projects I took on was to make airport signs for the entire school. My favorite are the drinking fountain and bathroom signs. I love them. (Look closely.)

Cupcakes!

Good morning, folks.
Last week, I was proud of myself for making lots of fun classroom supplies. They are waxing the floors of my school and I have not been in my classroom in quite a while. That meant I had more time to research and slowly walk around Dollar Tree to try to find inspiration for my classroom.
I have already posted about several things including
monster bookmarks,

the birthday box,

and I even posted about an awesome find I discovered at my Dollar Tree for crayon containers.

Today, you get a look at my students' back to school present. (Part of it.) You see, I decided a few weeks ago that I wanted to bring in this next school year with a bang. Our open house night is the evening before school starts and I really wanted to get students excited about this next year. I decided to treat it as a party. Students will be welcomed with an awesome sign, be directed around the classroom with more adorable signs, and then collect a "treat" as they leave. What is the stereotypical party dessert? Cupcakes!
I had so many allergies last year (gluten, dairy, every type of nut) that I knew these babies would not be real cupcakes. (Besides, we cannot make any food item we want to give our kiddos and I don't really want to buy them a cheap cupcake from a grocery store or spend big bucks on delicious cupcakes from a bakery.)
Meet my faux cupcake complete with a candle.

Mmmm. The idea came from inspiration while at a dollar store. I had seen many cute fake cupcakes, but they looked messy or difficult or expensive to make. These ones cost about fifty-eight cents (I had everything except for the bowls and ramekins already).

Ingredients:
1 small prep bowl (the ones at the store came four for a dollar)
1 plastic ramekin type bowl (I bought these at the dollar store as well in a three-pack, but I can't find a link for them)

3 Zots
Colorful ruffle ribbon
Hot glue
M&Ms (or other small treat)

Directions:
1. I like to start making cupcakes beginning with the frosting, don't you? Begin by gluing the ruffle ribbon onto the prep bowl. (You could also paint the glass or just leave it. Either would look great. Or, for those glitter lovers out there, you could paint it with glitter paint. Super cute.)

2. Fill the cupcake (plastic ramekin) with desired treat. I used M&Ms because I happened to have some.

3. Place some Zots on the lip of the ramekin and firmly place the prep bowl on it. You could also place some hot glue dots onto the glass lid, wait a few seconds, and then press it onto the plastic bowl.

4. Celebrate!

An alternate step 4 is to add a candle. Fake candles are super easy to make also.
You need cute straws (I used striped paper straws) and yellow tissue paper.

Cut the straws to whatever candle length you would like. (My cupcakes are going on a cupcake stand eventually, so I wanted short candles, but super long candles would look great this week for the 4th of July.)

Just place two small squares of tissue paper on top of each other.

For the next step, I pushed the straw into the center so that I could twist it like so...

Finally, I dabbed a bit of hot glue in the straw and stuck the twist side into the straw.

You can just add that to the top of your cupcake! The day of our open house, I will probably add a dab of hot glue, but today I used another Zot to adhere it to the cupcake and it worked perfectly.

Cupcake a la candle. Perfect for bringing in a new year.

Linking up

Monster Bookmarks: A back to school present

Last year, as a first year teacher, I rehearsed and went over the detail of every minute of the first week of school. I had plans, backup plans, and emergency plans. I read books and talked to expert teachers and thought I had considered everything. That is, until the students had their first silent read. A chorus of voices inquired about bookmarks. Bookmarks? Growing up, I had always used a scrap of paper, the flap of the book, or any other nearby object that was flat and small.
With the speed of an ocelot, I grabbed my paper cutter and made mincemeat of some colored paper.
This story has obviously stuck with me and this year, I made them some real bookmarks.

Meet, the monster bookmark.

He's adorable, lovable, and practical. I bought the pattern from the Silhouette Shop here and made a few modifications.

First off, I think that if you make a monster just like the one the picture shows, he just looks depressed.

See what I mean? Sad little depressed monster. I might change my attitude about reading if this unhappy dude was there to greet me every time I grabbed a book.

I also added a dotted line on the folds to make folding easier.

In total, 39 mosters were born today.

36 of those were for my students and 3 were made with some of my nephews in mind. This picture was taken when I had assembled the bodies of all the monsters. 12 pieces of your favorite scrapbook paper can make a lot of cute mosters.

These are three of my favorites. Mmmm. I love paper.

These are just one of the things I am giving to my students in a couple of months, but I am terribly excited about them.

Back to School Present for Students part 1

On August 20, I am going to be a nervous little wreck. August 20th is the day before school starts and more importantly, Open House night. I have been trying to find the perfect back to school presents I can give to my students. I had the hardest time finding something that I didn't think was cheesy or something the students would just throw away or forget about as soon as they got home from Open House night.

I was cleaning out my craft room the other day and found some red felt fortune cookies I made for my husband on Valentines Day and suddenly an idea clicked in my head.

Fortune cookies are a perfect idea! No They are fast to make and extremely inexpensive. All you need is felt, matching 3/8" ribbon, wire, and glue.

Here is how it's done:

I took a cute little plastic cup from Ikea and managed to fit ten circles on each piece of felt. (Yes. There are only 9 circles on the piece below but I fit ten on all the others.) These fortune cookies were a little small especially compared to the ones I made for my husband but any size will do.

Next you get to cut all the circles out. Like so.

For wire, I used what I had: floral wire. Measure it so it is about a centimeter smaller than the diameter of the circle.

Like so.

Cut out all the wire you need.

Now you get to cut out the ribbon. The ribbon makes it so it looks nicer and makes the glue hold it better.

Glue the ribbon down with the wire right in the middle.

Now you just have to bend it. Bend the wire so that it forms a loose V shape. (The arch shape you see on the bottom of a fortune cookie.) Then just flip the felt so that it creates a perfect fortune cookie shape.
Slip in a fortune on a small slip of paper and you're all set!

You can just put them in a plastic bag (you know, the ones that come 100 for a couple bucks) or you can spend 50 cents more per student and buy the baby Chinese take out containers to put the fortune cookies in.

It makes the gift look extra cute.

For the fortune, you can put something cute like "You will do well in school this year." But I think I will give them extra points on an assignment or an extra punch on their punch card. Something like that.

Stay tuned for part 2 of the back to school presents I am giving my students this year.

Do you give your students back to school presents? What is it going to be this year?