monthly materials madness. {freebie}

So I went up to my sweet little preschool the other day to do a bit of project collecting - seeing which bulletin boards needed re-covering, what needed to be organized {shocker}, what needed new labels {double shocker} - you know the drill. Truthfully, even with all of my furniture haphazardly shoved into one half of my room while the floors were being waxed, the room was looking pretty good! I was starting to get super excited! That is, until I found this:

Innocent little drawer system, right?  From what I can tell, this was the previous teacher's main storage system for all of her curricular materials for the year. I had to hand it to her - it was labeled by month and looked fairly "put together". To the naked eye, it seemed like a sweet, little filing cabinet that was full of preschool goodness.

Minor problem: the drawers didn't open. And this is why:

Serioulsy?! Once I finally managed to get the stinking drawer open, stuff literally popped out all over the place! Turkey tracers, ocean border, leaf cutouts, apple books. I mean...

For about .085 seconds, I was wigging out. How in the free world was I supposed to use this stuff?! But then, I realized that I had absolutely zero reason to be wigged - this was CLEARLY a divinely inspired opportunity to use binders....and labels....and envelopes....THANK YOU, JESUS!

So, for the next 8 hours (yes, 8 hours), I went through each and every drawer, pulling out every single tracer, cornucopia, and Easter egg, grouping all of the items that were alike and all of the items used for monthly and seasonal projects. Eventually, I had manila envelopes full of project materials, monthly di-cuts, etc. all grouped by month. Oh, the angels are about to start singing!

Once grouped by month and labeled with sticky notes, I then started creating monthly binder and spine covers and cute labels for each envelope {duh}. After labeling the envelopes and placing them in their respective monthly binders, the angels were singing a full-on Hallelujah chorus!

And no binder is complete without a good spine label!

So that I can pull them quickly and easily from their shelf in my classroom!

Thank you, Lord, for fabulous reasons to organize and label!

Not wanting y'all to miss out on the organizing fun, I have uploaded my binder and spine covers to TPT for you to download FOR FREE!

All of the months have a themed cover and a spine label!

So get on out there and find a tragically hopeless filing cabinet in need of a little labeling TLC, y'all! 

easy as 1, 2, 3. {number poster freebie}

Oops, I did it again, y'all. I made more posters for the classroom and I'm not even sad about it. Sorry I'm not sorry. I started off with the alphabet and digraph posters...

...and the "sound board" phonics posters...

Not wanting the numbers in our little nuggets' worlds to get the raw end of the deal, I decided to throw them a bone and made them into posters as well!

The number posters show all numbers from 0-20 in numbers (duh), words, pictures, and represented on a ten-frame. Odd and even numbers are also differentiated on the ten-frames with blue dots for the odd numbers and pink dots for the even numbers!

And you want to know the best part? All of this numerical cute-ness can be yours for FREE! Yes that's right, free. As a little "Christmas in July" present for you, these little nuggets get to come to your room and mine for absolutely nothing. 

Who's ready to get printing and laminating?! This girl. Go grab your posters and come join the laminating fiesta!

eye candy.

Holy bloggy face lift, Batman! I am beyond thrilled to unveil the newly designed and newly fabulous elementary organization! A humongous, ginormous thank you to Ashley at Ashley Ella Designs! I think we can all agree this girl's got skillz to pay the billz. She is a fellow teacher-by-day (blog-design-superhero-by-night) and also runs a completely adorable blog that you should probably add to your blog roll. Because it's fab, that's why.

As you can tell, I'm still working on editing and populating all of my new pages, but I just HAD to let you join in the celebratory unveiling of the new digs!

So, while there's nothing to read on any of my new pages, you can just go and gaze at the sweet sweet nectar of Ashley's work. I promise I'll have something for you to read on those pretty pages soon.

Thanks again, Ashley! This little blogger owes you big time!

hook-ed on pa-honics.

Is it just me, or is everyone and their mom...and dog...and rotten, red-headed, older brother making alphabet posters for the classroom? Well, I suppose we must add a beefy brunette blogger to that list because I, too, have drunk the kool-aid and made a packet of alphabet and phonics posters.

I decided to make a set of alphabet posters with colorful, rainbow-patterned backgrounds:

...as well as 10 consonant digraph/trigraph posters that include the digraphs/trigraphs: ch, ck, dge, kn, ph, sh, tch, th, wh, and wr!

My alphabet posters and consonant digraph/trigraph posters are combined into one pack on TPT! Click here to purchase your own set!

I also made a set of phonogram {vowel combination} posters! These posters are smaller than the alphabet posters and are meant to be hung in columns under their color-coordinated header! For example, all of the ways to spell the pink, long /a/ sounds will go under the pink, long /a/ header...

...all of the ways to spell the long /e/ sound will go under the long /e/ header...

...and so forth! The phonograms included in this pack are: a_e, ai, ar, au, aw, ay, ea, ee, e_e, er, ew, ie, i_e, igh, ir, oa, oe, o_e, oi, oo, or, ow, oy, u_e, ur, and y. In the cases where one vowel combination can "say" two things, both pronunciations are represented (i.e. I have included "ea" as in "eat" as well as "ea" as in "head").

I feel that these phonograms are an ESSENTIAL tool for early readers, writers, and spellers! My kids were constantly looking up at our "Sound Board" to find the sound they needed if they were trying to spell a word or to help them dissect a word when reading. Our Sound Board was right next to our Word Wall (you get a peek of it here)...

...so all of our phonics and word helpers were in the same place!

My phonogram {vowel combination} posters may be purchased in my TPT store as well!

If you would prefer to have BOTH the alphabet/consonant digraph AND the phonogram posters, you may purchase both sets in a bundle here for $1.00 less than buying them separately! Yes, ONE WHOLE DOLLAR!

girl in the tree house. {office revamp, part two}

Now that the desk and storage areas of our office are complete, we needed a little zhushing {technical term} in the lighting and seating departments. We have overhead lighting in this room, but I did want to have a lamp on the desk as well. As far as seating goes, the Mr. had a fabulously masculine, leather executive chair in the office before, but I wanted to have a pair of less-machismo chairs for both of our work spaces. Not wanting to break the budget, I did a bit of shopping around our abode and found these:

The chairs were actually painted by my mom years ago {MOTY} and had been living in my classroom as my desk and carpet chairs. Their bright, happy patterns were perfect for a happy classroom, but not so ideal for a strapping husband's office chair. Now the lamp...oh the lamp....stop being so jealous of our lamp. Stop! This little treasure was one that came with the Mr. when I said "I do." This guy was purchased by Mr. Spouse when he was still Mr. Bachelor from one of those "buy the whole room" deals from Rooms to Go, or a store like that...and he was a TREASURE. Needless to say, all three of these pieces needed a little up-cycling if they were going to work in our office.

For the chairs, I decided to go with a high gloss white to keep the office nice and light, so I used a sander to take off the high gloss top coat from the chairs.

I then used Rustoleum's Gloss White along with some Penetrol to help reduce brush marks...

...and even after one coat, they were looking much more office-friendly.

I applied two more thin coats of the Gloss White to both chairs, let them dry for about 24 hours, and then placed them in the office where they now look all shiny and fabulous!

As for the lamp, I decided that a little spray paint and a new lampshade could do wonders for this guy. So, I taped off the cord and the sockets...

...and gave him a couple of thin coats with the same Rustoleum Gloss Gold I used on the file cabinet's hardware and Ikea shelves!

Oh, what a little gold can do for even the most depraved!

Check out how that chevron pattern on the base now completely pops! 

Lurvely. For the shade, my mom saved the day again by sharing a little secret with me: Lamps Plus. They have these fabulously classic, white, linen shades for only $25! Holy interior deliciousness, Batman!

So with his new paint job and his new hat, this little guy might have a chance of sticking around after all {no thanks to Rooms to Go}.

What I'm most thrilled about is that I only had to buy paint and a lamp shade to get two new chairs and a new metallic-chiq lamp for our office!

I would say, the girl in the tree house invasion is now complete.