A little DIY!

So I was thinking...craft projects are such a good way to de-stress, and I needed that break this summer! My classroom got new cabinets this summer so I wasn't allowed into my room until about a week or so before school started. So after I got back from the Philippines, I had some extra time on my hand and needed to focus on something other than school. I moved into an apartment when I got back and started the adventure of living by myself. I worked hard to make my apartment feel like home and wanted to share a few fun projects! 

I searched pinterest for a fun coffee table and came upon this pin.

 I loved the idea but decided I wanted mine to be a little bit bigger. So I headed to Michaels and bought six of these wooden crates. They are only about $14 and did you know Michaels honors Hobby Lobby's 40% off coupons. This thrifty crafter loved the good deal. 

I took a couple of days to sand and stain these crates before combining them into a fabulous table. I used Miniwax Jacobean stain to give the perfect color. I used 1 inch screws to connect the 6 crates together into the design shown below. 

I added a rectangle frame to the bottom made out of 2x4 for durability, then added 4 furniture legs from Lowes. Ta Da, what do you think??

 My next project was a photo wall. I had frames from previous projects and display to use. They all started with a coat of spray paint primer. I matched the colors in my throw pillows to give the room more color. After painting the frames I laid out the frames in the design I found suitable. I placed them on a layer of newspaper and traced around each frame. 

 After measuring and marking the hanger of each frame I taped the paper to the wall making sure it was level and centered. Then I simply placed a nail in each marking. After removing the paper, I hung the frames on the wall. 

 I loved how it turned out! Now I just need to add the pictures of my precious Filipino kiddos. 

Back to School I Go! A Look at my Room!

School's back and I am done with day 2. Only 178 more to go!! Just kidding, I am so excited about this upcoming year. I've already gotten some chances to share my faith through some great books and our All About Me time. The Lord has blessed me with a great job and a chance to mold young minds. I hope that I can share God's love to them daily and to the parents. 

I had a fantastic time in the Philippines this summer and was not ready to get back, but after meeting my new 15 kiddos I am reminded how much I love my job! I have some precious new friends, and was excited to show them my classroom over the past few days. This summer all the classes on my hallway got new cabinets. We had to take EVERYTHING out of our room, so when I came back in July I got to change up my classroom a little bit. See what you think! 

 I added my three metal shelves to my classroom library in order to make a more secluded reading area.

 New reading area, meant new book box labels. I made these with some fun, free fonts and graphics. I have my books divided by genres, characters, and guided reading levels. 

 Meet the teacher was on the Tuesday before school started and I was just "BUBBLING" to meet all my new friends! 

I found this great box rack at the local thrift store for $7!! I added it to my math section to hold all of the manipulatives! I am going to use the clear cart for Math games/centers and the three drawer cart for extra math storage.  

Making their debut are my new cabinets on top and cubbies on the bottom! I am also starting using book baskets this year. I'll store them all on this back counter! The cubbies hold all of my ELA and Math games as well as craft supplies.  

Calendar is not part of first grade Common Core, but I still enjoy doing it daily so I kept this board up and added my big bookshelf in front to display unit books. My favorites are ready to share this month: You are Special and Because I Love You by Max Lucado, First Day Jitters, The Giving Tree,  and Berenstain Bears Go To School! 

 This fun pinterest idea was made possible by my find at Tuesday Morning! Although I did find out that you can find them at Really Good Stuff!! They are dry erase marker ready and we will use them for making words as well as math problems. 

I moved my job chart closer to my table this year, so I would always know which helper I needed to call. I made the name tags out of paint chips. I cut them using the paper cutter and just wrote their names on top. They are hanging on 3M hooks. 

 Another Pinterest idea was this fun Birthday hanger. The one I saw was made of wood but I just used cardboard and foam! I think it will also be a fun way to talk about graphs too! 

Last, but certainly not least, I got RID of my FILING CABINET! I was really nervous at first, because of the amount that can be stored in these cabinets, but I love how the shelf turned out. I put everything in binders. For the items that wouldn't fit in a binder I put them in hanging files inside the plastic crates on the left wall. 

I hope everyone else has had a great start to school, I can't wait to share all the fun activities we are working on!! 

~Miss A 

New City, New School...It's About Time for a Post!

Well, I'm behind on posting but better late than never. Tomorrow we will be starting week 5 in first grade! My goodness! It flies by doesn't it? Since my last post I have finished up my classroom and taught 5 weeks of school so here is a quick but long wrap up of the last month!.

Welcome to Miss Anderson's Acrobats

Classroom Reveal!

New Additions:

1. Juggling Jobs

2. Math Board and Focus Wall

3. Clownin' Around Board for "All About Me" and 

3 Rings of Writing Board

 1. Words an Elephant would Never Forget and Family "Trees"

2. I LOVE my new door hanger painted by a sweet friend!

1. I found this cute saying online for our outside bulletin board "No LION, this is great work!"

2. Very proud of my circus tent doorway

3. Classroom, libraries, desks ready for Meet the Teacher and our Class Seal of Approval (where we earn our compliments)

 Auburn Football has started and we are currently 3-0! I got to see a great friend at the first game and the sis at this past week.

Week 33 and she's looking gorgeous! I can't wait to start spoiling my sweet niece!

With the craziness of the beginning of school and the start of another graduate school term I've turned to crafting to relieve some stress. 

 of the "10,000 Reasons" is one of my favorite songs so I took the familiar verse of Psalm 103 and made a burlap canvas this past week. 

 Boosterthon (our school fundraiser) is back. 

Here we are having FUN in our FUN shirts!

We had our first birthday last week! Oh how I LOVE birthdays! The lucky boy got the whole first grade to sing to him!!

Hope you all have a great week!

~Rachel 

Five for Friday 4.3

Good morning to all!

I am relaxing this morning from my lovely couch as our school is out today for our Weather Day! I skipped last week but I am back for a 2 week edition of FIVE FOR FRIDAY!! Thanks to Kacey for this great adventure.

 1. Last weekend my Sunday school class had a fun get together full of great food and fun games. While I stayed away from the ping pong tournament, we did end the night playing Apples to Apples and little ole me WON! It was a great way to end a long school week.

2 & 3. Last week was teacher appreciation week so I am loaded up on all of my favorite things. I will be eating candy for a while before this stash diminishes and my house now is home to about 4 bouquets of flowers. Seeing that I don't have a green thumb I am proud to announce that they are still blooming strong. Don't you wish every week was teacher appreciation week! It's like Christmas in the Spring.

4. Yesterday we took our first grade field trip. It was a beautiful day(unlike today's pouring rain) and we got to visit CiCi's pizza, the fire station, library and ended our day with lunch in the park. At Cici's we got to tour the restaurant and then make our own pizzas! It was a huge hit! The kids had a great time and I can't wait to see if they are still talking about it on Monday!

4.5 We ended our time unit and jumped right into graphing in math. We had a blast collecting data and then compiled it all into a big graphing poster. We used the long sheets of construction paper to display our data, tally charts, pictographs, and bar graphs. We called it 'bookless' math because we didn't open our book all week! In my opinion that is always the best math! 

We took our test this Monday and I loved seeing their Performance Task answers. They had to create 2 graphs and formulate a question. Who is your favorite singer was a popular one, which was surprising because we didn't use that one during the week! 'Talor' Swift was much more popular than Justin 'Beber' winning 9-1. My favorite was when I was a choice. I sing all the time in the classroom but I will be honest I am not good ha! However, to this precious one I could beat out Taylor Swift! Another one of mine listed 'uncle cracker' as an option. I really wanted to ask "How do you even know who he is??" 

5. I made a string art cross and few weeks back and decided to create some other fun things this past week. This time I made the state of Alabama with a heart over Auburn! War Eagle! The string is orange which is even more fitting. I can make any state with a heart over any place so check them out on my Etsy shop!

Happy Weekend!

Rachel 

Five for Friday 1.4

I love getting to spend my Fridays reviewing the week with this fun linky party! Here is my week in review! 

1. The week started off very relaxing with a day off on Monday. I spent my weekend doing absolutely nothing but catching up on some much needed rest and some movies! RedBox is the best invention for movie lovers everywhere!

2. I got an order for 2 of my crosses for a lady who is having twin girls this week! Twice the fun! Here is the beginning stages of one of them. You can check out my other crosses here!

3. My week started off nice and relaxing but honestly after Monday it was a long and stressful week with a few frustrations. So I took out my frustrations with crafting, baking, and the gym. Here are the yummy cupcakes I made for the 100th day of school! Someone asked me if I put 100 sprinkles on each one, and boy do I wish I would have thought about that; however, I resorted to the simple task for just rolling the cupcake in a bowl of sprinkles! 

4. Have I mentioned that I LOVE teaching math? because it's my favorite. On Wednesday, we made these fun counting mats for counting our 100 things. My kids brought in some interesting things for the 100th day. We had marshmallows, lemon drops, pasta shells, gum balls, and silly bands! However, the most popular counter choice was pennies! The 100th day was fun, we took 100 steps, and counted 100 things, then we rolled dice to 100 and ended it with graphing 100 things!

5. In February I am working on a Christian retreat for young adult girls and the workers give out agape to the girls so this week I decided to make some. Agape means love and there is nothing better than God's love for us. I found a great deal on highlighters from Office Max and thought they were a great reminder of how God is the HIGHLIGHT of our day! 

"You are my lamp, O Lord; the Lord turns 

my darkness into light." 

2 Samuel 22:29

~ Rachel 

Coffee Table Debut

So I have lived in my little humble abode/townhouse for 528 days and went 524 days without a coffee table. When I first moved in I really wanted to go find one at a vintage shop or thrift store and then refinish it but well it took a while for this idea to come to fruition. Finally this past weekend I had had enough of sitting all my stuff on the floor in front of the couch. Trying to find places to finish crafts and such. After a fun lunch with a friend I headed out to the local thrift shop. You see I have been here before and for the past year and a half I have always walked through the furniture section searching for a table I might like, and until this past Saturday I hadn't found one in the 'ole teacher budget. (Has anyone noticed that prices at thrift stores have been on the rise?)

Anyway, I found this beauty there and thought for $14.98 even if change my mind in six months, it's a steal! So the with the help of a worker there we loaded it into the back seat of my car and away I went with a Saturday afternoon project.

The scalloped siding matches some of my other furniture so I thought it was a good fit. However, we had an issue. One of the railings was missing, which wasn't too upsetting because I feel like it would look more like a dinner tray with two railings than a coffee table haha. 

So the demo began, boy would my daddy be proud. I pulled out the sandpaper, hammer, screwdriver and even the wood filler to fill in the holes.

I started with the hammer and pried off the broken side and then realized; it was screwed in. So to prevent any damage I unscrewed the other side and began the long and tedious process of sanding. Sanding led to paint and paint led to a second coat. I still need to seal it so I can place glasses and such on it but what do you think??

I have LOVED having it this past week and as you can see I already have books placed all over it! 

Happy Friday!!! Check back in tomorrow for Five for Friday!

~Rachel 

Five for Friday!

Love this idea for a recap of my week! Linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching, a fabulous website for teachers!

1. I got to spend the weekend with some awesome family members. My dad's whole side(25 of us minus 2) came to spend Christmas in AL so the 3rd generation decided to create a family tree for our gift to my Grandmomma. We used all of our 'pinky' prints to make the leaves. I think it was a hit! What do you think?

2. I headed back to Auburn on Monday and got to spend the evening with some great friends from my Sunday School class. We played Mexican Train Dominos and had a blast. It's becoming one of my new favorite games!

3. I got my new planner(from Target)! Have I mentioned that I love getting a new planner and adding all of the birthdays in and special events?Because I do! I already have one wedding in there as well as all the birthdays!  My mom has had this one hidden in her Santa stash since October and I have waited very patiently to use it!

 4. I spent the day before work started strolling the aisles of Hobby Lobby and Home Depot and crafted this fun string and nail art cross! Check out my Etsy shop!

5. A funny school story!

The kids came back to school yesterday and we had a very fun day. Today we were having our Morning meeting and one little girl told me that for Christmas she got a BB gun. I casually asked "Oh, is it a Red Rider BB Gun?" She replied yes and two of my little boys almost in unison said:

"You'll shoot your eye out!" 

Ha! I love it, my firsties know A Christmas Story. 

Happy Friday!

~Rachel 

Starting the year right!

Happy New Year to all! I hope everyone had a joyous holiday season, sadly our break is over, well at least for me it is. Meetings all day yesterday and the kiddos rolled into my room at 7:15 this morning! We had a great day and are very excited about tomorrow as we welcome a new student into room A9!

I can not wait to see what this new year has in store! Here are the siblings and myself as we celebrated Christmas and the birth of the greatest gift we've been given!

We are a pretty fun group if I say so myself!

The holidays were a great time to relax and spend quality time with the fam. I returned to Auburn to celebrate the New Year with some fun friends and then went from snoozing in in the mornings to back to 5:30 wake up calls; but I have to admit I missed the kiddos! 

Here is a photo from our Polar Express PJ day! I let them take off their shoes for the whole day and they loved it. One of my friends FJ said "Ahh, now this is the life!" Funny how the little things are huge to them!

  
I had one day in Auburn before the meetings commenced for professional development so I searched Pinterest for a project! I found this on a friends board and knew I wanted to recreate. I chose a cross instead of a heart but here are some photos of the project!

Check it out in the Etsy shop soon! 

Hope you all have a great start back into the work week. 

~Rachel