Monday Made it #2

I am linking up with Tara again for 

And I am super excited about this one. See, I am moving into a new classroom next year. Three years of being in the trailer was enough. I am finally breaking free! Sadly...when my students helped me move some things into my new room, they saw it and said "OH.... we don't want you to move in here... this is disgusting!"

Well... when you have a bunch of third graders who have spent the year in a LITERALLY falling apart trailer telling you the new class is bad, you immediately start thinking about what you can do to make it better.

Step 1- come up with a theme- CHECK

Step 2- start making things to go with said theme. I have a notebook FULL of ideas and am slowly starting to make them for my classroom. 

My theme this year is...Pirates! But... I didn't want the typical all black and red pirate decor. So I went on the hunt for cute clipart. It took me over a week but I finally found something I liked. Since no one has created pirates in the colors I wanted, I am starting from scratch.

One of the first things I did was make a word wall title and letters.

(It dawned on me after seeing a friend's post that I didn't put the lowercase of each letter!! I have since fixed it for the file but I am not reprinting and laminating again.) This is hanging on my daughter's chalk wall for picture purposes. I have these letters (with the lowercase) and some letters with cute pirate clipart, but those aren't the ones I am using. Once the entire file is complete, I will be sure to share previews.

The next thing I decided was that I needed to redo my plastic drawers. Here are the before pictures...

(If you want to know HOW I use each of these, you will have to follow Pamela's blog for a guest post by me. It will be up on Friday.)

The white plastic was FILTHY. The ones with the subjects had pen all over them and the days of the week were just blah. And I didn't want white. So I got out my spray paint and went to town. Which ended with me having black spray paint all over my new manicure, my feet, and apparently my daughter's little blow up pool. Then I made new labels to match my theme and put them together...

Big difference right?! I liked them before because they served a fantastic purpose. But now.. now I LOVE them!!!

Be sure to check out all the posts that link up with Tara. I end up finding such good ideas for things I want to make!