Monday Made it, Owls, and Manic Monday Freebie!!

Whew... giveaway is over and I can get back to normal blogging!


I have finally, finally finished my teacher toolbox!  I'm so excited and pleased with how it turned out.  A big thanks to my hubby for painting it for me!


Big thanks to Elizabeth for taking the time to make these printable labels!!  I used the font Fabulous Drew - not sure who made it, but I love it!  Click on the link to download the font!

I have also been an owl fanatic lately... looking for owls to decorate my classroom.  I found a lot of realllly, realllllly cute owl goodies at mardel.com.  I discovered Mardel on pinterest believe it or not... saw a really cute hanging organizer and followed the link back.  I like to order from them because they are a Christian company - sells homeschool, Christian Education, and classroom supplies.  (I am not receiving anything for sharing, I'm just stating my own humble opinion!)

Here's what I've ordered:  (my order got messed up, but their customer service is awesome!!)

They have a ton more owl goodies, but I had to show restraint...hubs...grr! :)

I can't wait for them to get here!  

Anyways, the other part of my Monday Made it is to go along with my new reading program.    My school/district is implementing IDR (Individual Daily Reading) which is an uninterrupted block of time, appropriate for each grade level and then working up to 30 minutes daily.  Reminds me of part of the Daily 5, where you work up your stamina, etc.  Well, at my overwhelming training session last week, one of our literacy coaches suggested getting the resuable grocery bags (one for each kid) and have them go shopping for books as part of their morning routine so when IDR came up, they would be ready to go.  I liked the idea...I like anything to do with shopping (hahahaha) so I'm getting some bags and I've been making these tags to go on them.  Yes, they are time consuming to make, but I've enjoyed making them.  Realistically....if my school year is going to be so crazy and so unrealistically overwhelming, I'm at least going to have a pretty classroom to go crazy in.

So here they are!!

Aren't they darling?  They have each student's number on them so I can reuse them next year.  I'm going to tie and then sew the knots securely on each bag.  I'm thinking about putting a command hook on the back of each kid's chair for them to hang the bags.  I don't know how that will work...too heavy, tip the chairs, break the hooks??  Going to have some experimentin' to do!!

Link up with Tara for Monday Made it!

My Freebie for Manic Monday has to do with Word Study or Word Journeys by Kathy Ganske.  At the beginning of the year, midyear, and end of the year, I use these forms to assess my students to find their instructional level for spelling.  If you've used Words Their Way, this is a slight adaptation from the program.  The sheets my literacy coaches made were nice, but they were not user friendly to check.  These are much easier for the teachers to use.  My grade level use them and like them, so I thought I'd share with you.  We found some from another district, I can't find them online to give them credit, but these are for all 4 stages (LN, WW, SA, DR) and has both form A and B (Form A is beginning and end of year assessing, Form B for midyear).  

Hope you can use them!!

DSA form a and b