Monday Made-It {8.11.2014}

We start school relatively late in my district, but I've been seeing everyone's back to school posts and it really had me inspired this week so I have been crafting and creating like crazy!

I got this idea from Shanyn at Coffee, Kids and Compulsive lists {here}! I loved it because it's SO simple... one of those ideas where you wonder- why didn't I think of that?!

All of my popsicle sticks got a washi tape makeover! I got blue and green chevron washi tape at Michael's and wrapped the tops of the sticks. These are the sticks that go in a jar that I pull to pick names. If you notice in the top right picture, make your "seams" on one side so that you can write the students' names on the neater side.

But I didn't just make these because they were cute, there's a reason!

Step 1: All the names in a jar, washi tape up.
Step 2: Pull out a name.
Step 3: Put the name stick back in the jar, washi tape DOWN.
Step 4: NOW I know which names I've called and which names I haven't because I can tell which side the washi tape is on. Brilliant!

Since I got a whole set of popsicle sticks and washi tape, I continued using them to finally make an idea I've had for a while!

Team Name Generator!!!

I always, always, always have my students pick their team names whenever we're playing some sort of game in my class (and we play a lot of games). It makes them excited about the activity and gives them ownership of their group. HOWEVER, sometimes it takes a long time and a lot of the time it leads to bickering between students about what the team name should be.

Enter... team name generator.

I put one washi tape (blue chevron) on half the popsicle sticks and another color (green chevron) on the other half of my popsicle sticks. On the green popsicle sticks I wrote a bunch of adjectives (sparkly, angry, courageous, polka-dotted, purple, funky...) and on the blue I wrote nouns (penguins, unicorns, tigers, bears, eagles...)

Have each team pick one blue and one green popsicle stick and....

They've got their name! In this case, it was the cheerful sharks, ha!

I thought this could be fun, but it also reinforces adjectives and nouns. I'll be saying "Ok, pick an adjective...now a noun..." all year.

I also made a calendar display for my chevron-themed classroom this year:

It includes the months, days of the week and days 1-31 for you to display in your classroom. I had a calendar that I bought from a teaching store, but I lost the "31" number so then it looked ridiculous with my homemade non-matching 31 so I put this set together. Now if I lose a number, I can just reprint.

You can have this set too if you'd like! Hop on over to my TPT store.

You can also purchase all of my chevron-themed classroom sets in a brand-new bundle {here}.

Aside from chevron, I'm also obsessed with anchors and anything nautical. So, I also made a set of nautical binder covers! The set includes fifteen binder covers for all of your back-to-school organizational needs. Every year I say I'm going to be more organized so this was step ONE!