My First Monday Made It Linky

So I am a huge fan of Monday Made It hosted by 4th Grade Frolics. I watched it for many ideas last year and am hoping to find many more ideas this summer. I finally have decided to jump on the bandwagon and will be linking up with them this week! Heres to hoping my projects inspire others as they have inspired me! *Fingers crossed*

If you are not familiar with Monday Made It, head on over to 4th Grade Frolics and see all of the great ideas linked up each Monday in the summer and one Monday a month during the school year!

Now on to my Monday Made It. 

Monday Made It #1:

Okay so this was more of an organized with my new finds, but still linking it up. My kiddos love using the puff balls to spell out words for Work With Words in Daily 5. I had them in boring old baggies this past year and they seemed to always put them up full of air. I was at Dollar Tree and found these great pouches that are breathable (meaning no more bags of air) plus they seem a lot sturdier. So I decided this is how I am going to store my puff balls now. Next trip to Dollar Tree will result in me buying MANY more of these because I have so many ideas! I love that store!

Monday Made It #2/#3:
On the previous mentioned trip to Dollar Tree I also found these wonderful Alphabet tracing cards in both capital and lower case letters. I bought two sets of each and put them all in one pouch. I am also adding this to my Work With Words Section. The kiddos can use the cards to spell the words they are practicing.

 I also found foam sheets of letters both in capital and lower case letters. These were perforated and meant to be torn apart, but I decided to take heavy duty scissors and cut them apart instead (much quicker I might add).

The foam letters got me inspired to get plain foam sheets and make my own so I am sure that will be popping up on a Monday Made It soon!

Monday Made It #4/#5:

Another confession I have to make is that I am addicted to Pinterest. I spend hours on end pinning items and finding ideas for my classroom/house/life. One pin I came across awhile ago was to have a file folder for each standard and to collect the resources you use in it. I decided to get three prong folders and page protectors for my version. I have purchased the Third Grade Common Core Workbook from Core Common Standards. I printed off all of the standard sheets to be the front page of each folder. I also printed off the resources for each standard and put them in the second sheet protector. There are three other sheet protector to hold any other resources or notes I use to teach the standard. I will soon be making cute labels for the front of the folder and will share when those are created.

As I am sure you can tell from above I am a Daily 5 believer. I started Daily 5 in the middle of the year last year and fell in love with it. I am incorporating it from Day 1 this year. One thing I decided to create for my Daily 5 is the Word Journals for my students. It is a three prong folder containing two pages for each letter of the alphabet. They will record words that they have trouble spelling that way they can refer to it when they are stuck. After the alphabet pages I have added a copy of each week's spelling and vocabulary words. They tend to take those lists home after they get them on Monday morning and forget them so now they have a copy with them at school. Plus on Fridays they can look ahead and start working on the next week's words. Once again I will be making cute labels for these and will post when they are done.

Monday Made It #6:

Wow I didn't realize how busy I was this week. Okay I did realize it, but looking back I can't believe I actually accomplished all of this while still having a life...haha!

Moving on...this is my Bathroom Tickets jar. I had major issues with students going to the bathroom constantly this past year. I decided I had to put a stop to it. On one of my many Pinterest adventures I came across a pin that linked back to this Soaring Through Second. I modified the idea to meet my needs of my class. For the remainder of the year I gave each student a ticket each morning. They were responsible for putting their name on it and keeping track of it. If they had to go to the bathroom during the day they had to give me the ticket back. If they had already used their ticket once they had to owe me recess time. The best part was at the end of the day they got to put their ticket in a bucket. Every Friday I would draw out a name or two and those students got to choose from an assortment of Dollar Tree goodies. So I created this little goody for next year. I bought three packs of tickets from Dollar Tree and tore them all apart. I then put them in the cookie jar that I found at Walmart. Then I had these adorable letters that I found at JoAnn Fabrics. I added the name to the side and the front says TAKE ONE. This is the container to store all the tickets waiting to be dispensed out to the students.

Side Note: Yes I realize my letters are crooked, but I just could not get those darn boogers to go on straight; they were much too flimsy!

And there you have it...my first Link up! Now I am off to do some more blog stalking! My favorite summer past time!