Here are some things I've made this week.
First up - Open House
We have Open House before school starts as a way to meet the students and parents. We start school on a Friday this year, and our open house is the Thursday right before. I LOVE it because I love setting up the classroom: cleaning, organizing, decorating, labeling! I also love laying out their folders and picking out the snacks! I'm such a
Here are the snacks I'm serving.
(this is the original photo I pinned) |
I made these a couple of days ago and I L-O-V-E them!
(original pinned from here) |
Check out the original pin and look at her website. She has a LOT of great stuff for a robot themed classroom. My class theme isn't robots, but I couldn't pass these up. They are too cute!
Next - Organization
There are lots of these on Pinterest and on teacher blogs, so I'm just one in a million making one of these. I believe that the one I linked to in the caption below is the original poster. I made this to organize all those odds-and-ends we have in our classrooms!
(original pined from here) |
I was able to finally get in my classroom on Saturday, so I went in for several hours and
I didn't have any more of the bulletin board border and the school supply store was out, but I have leftover scrapbook paper from the pages I'm using to make pennants that are going to hang in my classroom. I figured that would still all tie in together, so I just used that. I cut the scrapbook paper into the right size - 4 1/2 " x 2 1/8" - and I added labels that were 1" high that I just created in a Word document.
(If you do it that way, be sure that you set your paper layout to have 0" borders on all 4 sides. Then create a table, 9 rows and 2 columns, center your text, set the height of each row to 1", and you're good to go!)
Last, but not least, the Olympics
Here's how I feel about the Olympics overall = eh. They're okay. I like gymnastics and diving. I've never really spent time in my life getting excited long before the Olympics start, or blocking out time to watch all the different sports, or learning about Olympians and their records. I just never did that growing up. I'm definitely a "Go USA!" person, but I haven't ever been super-stoked about them coming on TV.
Until I got married.
My hubby and his mom are HUGE Olympic
During our first year of marriage, I made the mistake of trying to watch something on TV that wasn't the Olympics. Whoopsie. I won't do that again! ;)
After 6 years of marriage, I've decided - if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. So I decided to throw an Olympics Opening Ceremony party this year.
I found these from several places and modified to suit our needs.
Above, we have our Olympic torches! The original website I saw had popcorn, but I thought Doritos made more realistic looking flames. Plus, my hubby and son love them some Doritos. (Who am I kidding? I do too.)
Above, we have the Olympic Ring appetizers. Note that each item in each ring correlates with the color of the actual ring. (Sort of.) Top - blueberries, chocolate chips, and raspberries. The original one had olives (not a fan). I like to put chocolate chips in the center of the raspberries, so that's why I went with chocolate chips. If you are a realist, you could have dark chocolate chips. Bottom - Doritos and green grapes. Another purpose for that bag of Doritos (yeah, I know they're more orange). The original post had guacamole for the green. Also not a fan. You just have to suit this to the tastes of your family and party guests.
Above, these are just sugar cookies with vanilla icing and M&Ms. These were FABULOUS!
My son decided that we needed decorations about 15 minutes before our guests started arriving. Let me say that I made the decision to do this on Wednesday evening, and the Opening Ceremonies were on Friday evening. We had a busy Thursday and Friday, so this was going to be low-key. We had out our American flags, but Ashton thought we needed something else. Of course, he did. ;)
I grabbed my scrapbook paper, scissors, ruler, markers, and my new circle cutter, and had these made in about 10 minutes They aren't perfect, but they sure will do! I used double-sided tape to stick them to the door frames. (I LOVE double-sided tape.) We want to leave them up for the duration of the Olympics, but when I take them down, I will laminate them and attach them to a ribbon so we can use them for future Olympics, Fourth of July, Veteran's Day, whatever.
We start school on the 10th, and the Closing Ceremonies are on the 12th, so I'm thinking about doing something with my students on the Monday, the 13th. Maybe something easy like the torches or the cookies? Might be fun!
Leave us a comment! What are you preparing for Open House? What is your favorite part of the Olympics?