Make It Monday and Currently (a little late)

Alright, I'll give you all a little fair warning... this might be a bit of a lengthy post. After all, Make It Mondays are only once a month now so I have to put a month's worth of "Make Its" into one post!

 

 

 

Listening: My girls are absolutely obsessed with the Disney Channel right now so that's about all they watch when the TV is actually on and, of course, they are hard of hearing and love to argue so they like to keep it nice and loud so they can hear it no matter where they are in the house ;)

 

Loving: Our school district does a modified year round schedule so, although we only get 6 weeks off in the summer, we get 2 weeks in the fall, winter, and spring. Not bad when you live in the desert and it's nicer in the fall anyway!

 

Thinking: Of course being the OCD type of person I am, I cannot fully enjoy break unless my house is clean, lesson planning for the next 3 weeks is done, groceries are bought, bills paid... you get the point. So, although I am on break, I'm kind of not...

 

Wanting: Being on break you would think I would be very well-rested... Not with 2 little girls in the house. We purposely let them stay up past their bed time during break with the hopes that they will sleep in. Nope! They still get up at the same time and then they're just cranky all day. *sigh* You would think we would learn!

 

Needing: Like I said, I have lots of things to get done and my break is half over. However, unless the task requires me to sit in front of the computer and search for cute craft/teaching ideas on Pinterest, it's not going to get done unless I get a serious dose of motivation some time soon!

 

Trick or Treat: I know this is probably a pretty obvious trick but I just discovered it recently and it has proven to be a HUGE lifesaver so far! I, like so many teachers out there, have an extensive collection of teacher resource books. Ones like "Sight Word Mini-Books" and "Math Card Games". Resources that would be wonderful to use in my classroom. And what do I do with them? The books sit on a bookshelf making it look like I use them and am a super awesome teacher when, in fact, they haven't ever been opened more than once when I looked at them in the store. They were bought with good intent but then, once it came time to plan my lessons, seemed like a huge waste of time to leaf through a hundred teacher books for one activity that was suitable. My solution? I took all my spare time over the past few weeks, looked through and marked any appropriate activities, and made copies of them. Then I took said copies and actually sorted them into the file folders that house all my resources for each unit. This way, if I come across an activity that reviews numbers 1-10, I am able to put it in with the rest of my Fall activities since that's when we'll be reviewing 1-10. Once I go to plan that unit, I'll have the activity already in the file and won't have to search through a stack of teacher books! Makes my planning so much easier and now I can bless one of my fellow teacher with a big stack of teacher books!!

 

 

 

Now for a few Monday Make It items. I stumbled upon a new method of knitting that is much faster than regular knitting and doesn't require anything but yarn and your fingers. In fact, it's much faster than regular knitting too! It's called "finger knitting" and I am addicted. I started making these scarves and fell in love instantly! Plus, I made cute little clips that can be used as an accent on the scarf or as a clip in the wearer's hair! The best part is that they can be looped 2 or three times for an adult or loop it an extra time to fit a child!

 

Green and purple

 

Gray and gold with a gold bow

 

Bow clip

 

Back of bow clip

 

Purple blue and gray with bow

 

Purple blue and gray bow

 

Back of bow

 

Maroon and gold

 

These are all available in my Etsy shop!

 

After all, fall is finally here!!

 

Plus, I am bound and determined to use Lite Brites in my classroom so I decided to make a set of papers with uppercase and lowercase letters on them so I could use them in small group centers. Now to just invest in the Lite Brites!

 

Have fun!

 

 

Katie