Flower Power!

I just had to get these inflatable flowers from Oriental Trading. They are perfect for our "Peace, Love, Learning" theme. I already had the "Groovy 'peaces' (pieces) of Artwork" display up, and this year I decided to add the flowers. I hope they stay looking good all year!

Inflatable flowers, you are what has been missing from my life! :p

Little Classroom Decorations

These are some car decorations I made from glitter foam. I did everything with our die cuts. I glued the tiny pieces to the bigger pieces. I'm super proud of them.

This is a during and after shot of a poster I colored. I found the poster on Pinterest. They are from Doodle Art Alley, I think.

New Bulletin Board

Here is my new bulletin board for student artwork. Our theme is "Wild about Learning" again so this year I did "Sssensational Artwork". I bought snake border and colorful plush snakes. I also die cut the big letters and the green snakes. Last year I did  "Paws and Take a Look at our Artwork" with paw prints and animal print border. That was fun too. I think this will be even better. It's something different to look at anyway!

Classroom Decorations for Classroom 2!

Here are the decorations for my other school. Our theme again is "Wild About Learning" I love this theme as well! There are many fun animal prints to use and lots of safari/jungle sayings. These are all old pictures from last year but a lot of it will stay the same. The wall just outside my room says "let your imagination run wild".  This is one of the places where I display artwork. My friend (our music teacher) and I made different kinds of animals for each wall. Mine has the leopard. We all have our names next to our doors and safari hat. The tiger is an inflatable animal. One of the other teachers contributed all of these inflatable animals and they really look great. Lining the bottom of the wall all the way down our hallway is grass that we got at Mardel. It really makes it look cool, especially since we did the whole hallway like that. The borders and letters came from Mardel as well and the paw prints are from Oriental Trading.

The lion below is one of the animals that my friend and I made last year. We also made the big trees out of butcher paper. Those took a long time but were worth it in the end :)

 One of my favorite parts about the wall with the lion is my "Be the most brilliant color in the box" sign. It came from Hobby Lobby. I think it would look great next to some melted crayon art, if I have time to make one ! :)

Classroom Decorations for Classroom 1!

Both of my schools are keeping the same theme so not only do I get to save some money on decorations, I still get to use most of the same stuff I got last year! I had some amazing finds last year at Garden Ridge for our "Peace, Love, Learning" theme for one of my schools. All of their kids stuff was 75% off ! Lucky for me that it was on sale and that I get to use it all again. I really like this theme because it is colorful and fun. Plus there are a lot of things you can do for it: peace signs, flowers, butterflies, lava lamps, tie dye, etc.

 The big screen with the peace sign on it was originally $50. I got it for $12.50!

 The red peace sign breaks into two pieces for bookends but I just leave it together. It sits in front of my computer. The purple pencil holder is really handy for keeping all of my dry erase markers and it's the perfect size to sit on the board. I think the purple thing ended up being about a dollar.

 I post messages on here sometimes but I mostly wanted it because it was a butterfly :)

Another cute peace sign that was $2

Now here is something that I made. It was also very inexpensive to make. Each year I make curtains for the inside of my classroom to go along with our theme. Last year I made these tie dye curtains.

I was so happy with the way they turned out and they still make me smile :) They were very easy to make. I want to start by saying I do not own a sewing machine. So I really didn't do a lot to "make" these.
I started with my super cute tie dye fabric that I got from Hobby Lobby:

Then I used the iron on hem tape along the edges to make a hem. This sticky hem tape is awesome. Another teacher told me about it my first year and I use it all the time.

 I ironed it on all the way around, and then I used Velcro squares at the top to make a pocket for the curtain
rod to go through.

Next I glued on purple pom poms with tacky glue.

 I found this purple pom pom trim on clearance at Hobby Lobby.

 Finally I used these peace sign pins I got at Hobby Lobby (on clearance!) and I pinned one on each curtain in the middle.

 

Here's hoping that all of my decorations last another year!

summer project for my classroom

This is something I've wanted to make for a long time. Isn't it so sad when you have to throw away a ruined brush? I am constantly getting on to my students about washing their brushes. They do a pretty good job but I am always left with some dead brushes. To prove my point and to recycle the brushes, I've made this ruined brushes painting/collage. The saddest part is that I still have leftover ruined brushes that wouldn't fit! I guess I should have bought a bigger canvas! 

Rest in peace, good paintbrushes!

New Desk Decoration

I just made a new decoration for the front of my desk. I'm very excited to replace whatever's on there now. :) 

The way I made this was simple: I bought a 4 pack of mini black canvases (did you know they come in black?) and painted the letters with white acrylic paint. Then after it dried, I painted purple glitter paint over it. I hot glued magnets to the back of each square so it will be easy to put on the front of my desk or move around anywhere. The best part is that most of these items were on clearance. I added the peace sign in the middle (another clearance item) because our theme is "peace, love, learning" ;)