My First Monday Made It!

Hey! I'm linking up with 4th Grade Frolics for my first Monday Made It post! Are you as excited as I am? I thought so. I will probably mess this link up, but I'll give it a try anyway. So I inherited this lovely paper sorter with my classroom 13 years ago from a teacher who was retiring after 30+ years of teaching, so who knows how old this thing is....

Yep it's super ugly, BUT here's the thing, it's just right for sorting my handouts for the week on my desk, so it has been sitting on my desk like this all these years. Yes seriously. Well, after wishing I could find something as useful, but way cuter, the lightbulb finally went off and I realized the key to making anything cuter: SPRAY PAINT! I know, genius. So, here's the big reveal:

I loved how it turned out so much I even made some chalkboard labels with the days of the week to go on the side. Now I don't have to be embarrassed every time I have a sub that has to get the daily handouts out of this. And the best part of all? I already had all of the spray paint from another project so it didn't cost me a dime. Love a win-win! 

Okay, I made it through my first link up post (well it remains to be seen if I'll actually be able to link this post up.....) Go check out all of the awesome ideas here:

Heather

Hello!

Hello and welcome! My name is Heather and I will begin my 13th year teaching third grade this fall and it will be 18th year teaching....YIKES where did the time go?!? Since I have been teaching third grade for so long and with my youngest in third grade this fall, it feels like "3rd grade is my life!" I am a mom of three great kids that are getting too big too fast, a wife, a blog stalker and Pinterest addict, and now a blogger! 

I decided to create this blog because I have gotten so many wonderful ideas from so many fabulous teachers over the years (starting with the amazing Beth Newingham whose site I found  about 7 years ago and totally rocked my world!) and I wanted to have a way to give a "shout out" to some of them and maybe be able to share an idea or two of my own. When I say I am a "blog stalker" that is the sad truth. I follow so many awesome teacher blogs, Pinterest and Facebook pages, but I tend to keep my comments to myself instead of posting them, so this will (hopefully) force me to come out of the shadows and post some comments, ideas, etc. 

My grade level is departmentalized at my school and I will be teaching reading, language arts and social studies this year. In all my years teaching, this will be my first year teaching social studies, so that will be interesting! My district has mandated Daily 5 so that is the reading framework I use, but I also have gotten invaluable reading workshop knowledge from Melissa at Inspire Me ASAP. If you have not read her guided reading posts, go right now! She is definitely a guided reading guru and her resources are worth every penny! The other teacher who helped me make it through some of the new common core standards last year was Ashleigh from Ashleigh's Education  Journey. I have all of her noun, verb adjective/adverb, prefix/suffix (and more I'm sure I can't think of right now) packs and they are the best and I so glad I used her language arts morning work because my students would not have done as well as they did on our state testing. Again worth every penny and now she is starting to make some guided reading packs that take you step by step through the school year and I can't wait to check those out as well. And just for the record none of these ladies have any idea who I am (#blogstalker) these are my own personal opinions.

There are lots more awesome blogs I follow that will give shout outs to soon and hopefully my blog will be much cuter soon with a new blog design and a blog roll to highlight the blogs I follow...stay tuned and please visit again soon!


Heather