Monday Made It - Being Practical (and a Freebie)

It's Monday Made It!  Linking up with Tara to share what I've been up to lately.

This past weekend was lovely - other than the youngest being sick.  I had a debate going on between my laminator and my Kindle - both wanted me to spend time with them.  The laminator won for a bit, until I ran out of laminating pouches - then my Kindle was happy.

I know!  The horror of running out of laminating pouches!  I rushed over to Amazon to get an order pronto... and saw that on May 8th (my birthday) I ordered 5 boxes of laminating pouches - which means since then I've gone through all 500 (plus the random ones I had around).  That's a lot of laminating...

I think I have an addiction.

I also completed a bunch of random gotta-do-it-soon projects for school.  Not super crafty - just needed to get them done.

Onto the projects:

*Last year I used those crafting boxes for my ear buds - which was fine, but the cords didn't stay wrapped (since 9 and 10 year olds have a hard time wrapping anything into little spaces) and only having 2 boxes caused a traffic jam when it was time to get them out - so this year I'm switching to the baggie method.

My husband detangled the mess of cords and separated them out into individual sandwich baggies (this was after they were all thoroughly cleaned).  Then I stuck numbered name tags on them.  Easy.  They are going to be able to keep them at their tables.

*I laminated a bunch (before I ran out of pouches).  Back in the spring, I received the 4th grade Common Core Resources (which includes an activity for each math and ELA standard) because I gave it a shout out on the blog.  I wanted to print it, but it was 853 pages long.  Color ink was too much (going to run over $300) through district printing, so they printed it all in B/W for $24.  Much better deal though not as cute!  I mainly wanted all those resources at my fingertips though, so I dealt with it.

Anyway, my summer project was taking each standard, sorting it into file folders, and then laminating the games of each standard - before I stuck it into my standard activity sorters at school.  I am almost done!  Just need 5-8 business days for my pouches to show up...

*I also spent time on the computer updating my class webpage with my new BTSN packet, and changed out all of the Unit 5 stuff back to Unit 1.  I'm sending out my welcome postcards soon to my new students - and it says to go check the webpage for more information on supplies and our year together.  Had to get that done!

*Then I went over to Spelling City and updated my list there too - last year I started using the site in Unit 2 - kinda important to add Unit 1 to the mix.

*Last night I made up my goldfish welcome bags.  I found my last 4 remaining laminating pouches (tucked under some card stock) and turned my bookmarks from last year into smaller rectangles - 9 per page.  Why is the text in blue?  Because I'm also out of black ink.  Have the other colors - but not black...  Anyhow, because of the encouragement of some nice teachers over on Instagram, I made up similar sheets for Preschool - 5th grade.  They are free over on TPT.

  There was other stuff - but you probably already saw my classroom with all the pictures I took this past week.  It's been quite the week of organizing and cleaning and more organizing.  2 days left of summer...

Have a great day!