Monday Made it: Gearing up for the school year

Happy Monday to you! This week I have a lot in store for you and am excited to hear your feedback and share this with you! It has been a busy week, but it was also a lot of fun! I am excited to use these things in the classroom this year! Let's get down to business;) I'm linking up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics again for another Made it Monday. Prepare yourself, this will be a long post! My most favorite thing is at the end!

First up: reading center phones! These babies are great for students to read to themselves to hear the sounds and words they are pronouncing. This is a great speech therapy skill to use for students because they can hear themselves like they are talking in their own ear. Now, I must confess, although this was on my list to make this summer, a dear friend offered to make them for me. Isn't that so sweet? All I did was buy the DUCT tape for her and she put these together:] She did an awesome job and I am so grateful for her! Did I mention the DUCT tape is grape scented?! AWESOME.

She was able to make a set of 25

Also this week, I added Word Wall Headers with bright colors and chevron! These turned out so cute and I am very excited to add these to my word wall. This set also includes the letters "WORD WALL" for the top of your focus wall! These are now posted in my TpT store! Store name: Kayla Coutouzis

To match the word wall decor, I also added focus wall decor! These cover the subject areas for the tops of your bulletin boards. HOW CUTE RIGHT?! I am so happy with how these turned out! If you are interested, you can also find these in my store!

As I am gearing up for the new year, I realized I needed a welcome banner! I decided to make one to match my classroom decor. CHEVRON of course! Check this out:)

I am in love with this -at word family mini book bundle! At the beginning of the year, my students always review these and I love that I made them interactive! Super fun and just recently uploaded to my store! Here's a preview!

My vocabulary wall is going to be kickin' this year with these back to school emotions posters! There are lots of emotions with pictures which are perfect for visual learners, ESL students, and beginning writers! For more information, check my TpT store.

Last, but certainly not least..my favorite creation this week. One that took me longer than any of the others! I am so so so so excited to use this in my classroom! 

This is a set of word cards that are perfect for your writing center! Each card has a specific theme with matching pictures and words. You can put them in sheet protectors and place them in a binder or you could laminate them and put them on a ring. 

One thing that will help when having these is that my students won't have to come up to my reading table to ask how to spell a word. Most likely what they are trying to spell is in these sheets! More information about what is included is in my store!

On a side note--I guess you could add this as a "made it" because I MADE IT into the store…..These are some smokin' hot deals this week! Look!

SHARPIES. MY FAV. Pretty much can make any teacher go crazy, right? 0.25 cents AGAIN at Office Max/Office Depot! Hurry in to get your deal because last time this sale went on, they were wiped clean in a couple of days! Sale just started yesterday!

This is the sale I had been waiting for all summer long! .10 composition notebooks! I was so happy the other morning when I saw this. I have 2 sets of Language Arts classes because we are blocked (yes, even in first grade!) I teach reading/writing/spelling-(the language arts) to 2 different sets of classes while my partner does math/science. Last year their writing journals (spirals) completely fell apart with the perforation. I told myself composition was the way to go. Because I needed 50 of them, I still thought .50 was a steep price to pay. When I saw this deal, my husband thought I was crazy. He drove all around town to different locations with me just to get my 50 notebooks:) Of course he did a separate transaction to help me reach this. BOOM all of these for $5.00. WHAT A STEAL! Isn't my hubby so sweet? I think I'll keep him;)

Don't Forget: Today starts the Back to School Sale on TpT! Using Code BTS14 you can get up to 28% off:) My whole store is on sale just for you! Have fun!:)

WHEW. Thank you for letting me share all of my hard work and excitements with you! Let me know what you think. Sorry for such a long post, it has definitely been a busy week for me and I have been a creating MACHINE! I am sorry for the overwhelming TpT items, I know this linkup is not to advertise, but if you are not following my store and because it is such an awesome sale day, I wanted to make you aware of what has been added to my store just in time for the big sale! Have a great week!:)

Check out what other teachers are making back up at the linkup!

Monday Made-it: TpT Products and Banners

Happy Monday, y'all! This week has been a fun, yet productive one! I have seen so many good ideas and reading lots of blog posts:) I'm linking up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics this week for Monday Made it! I am so excited to share with you what I have been up to this week! Let's dive on in, shall we?!

I created my very first Teachers Pay Teachers Product this week and I am very excited about it! This is a freebie in my TpT store:) I decided that I wanted to brighten up my classroom this year and in doing so, I wanted a fun, cute, and bright word wall. Well have I got the thing for you! I have created word wall headers that are framed in bright colors for you to print out and use on your word wall. I did all 26 letters of the alphabet (obviously) and in each header is a capital and lowercase letter. You can print them out, laminate them, and keep them as they are, or you can do what I am going to do and place them on the tops of black construction paper to laminate so the colors really pop! The colors include pink, orange, purple, green, light blue, and yellow. These colors follow a pattern throughout the whole alphabet. Here is a preview of what the headers look like!

If you are interested in this Freebie, head on over to my TpT store by clicking here! Don't forget to leave some love and feedback. I love to read what people write:)  You can also show my little store some newly opened love by following me on Tpt. 

I have been finally getting more followers on Bloglovin', Instagram, and Facebook and I am so thankful for my followers already. All of you look so wonderful and I cannot wait to connect and make friendships with you!

I pulled a late-nighter last night and finished up my second product on TpT! I had so much fun making the first one, I think I may be addicted:) I am also excited to share this one with you! Last year, I had so much trouble keeping track of which sight words my students had mastered. I have two sets of classes as a reading teacher which is close to 50 kids! I kept an updated sight word checklist as well as attempted to do a filing system for mastered sight words, however, the keep up on this task was very difficult. Browsing around, I began to see sight word books that each student could have and they placed a sticker on each word they could say without hesitating too long. I am a strong believer in pushing sight words because if a student can read them fluently, this will help them with their reading fluency, comprehension, and everything else will follow! I saw versions that were great, but I wanted to focus primarily on Dolch sight words. I began to create a sight word sticker book for this year's bundles of joy! 

There are 8 pages of sight words for a total of all 220 Dolch sight words for your students to master! I am so happy about these because they are mobile, which means I can send them home for extra practice. I don't know about you, but my first graders will do pretty much anything for a sticker. This method has been classroom tested and it works wonders! Students are not driven to learn and take charge of their learning. This has really allowed my students to increase their reading fluency and all around has helped them become better readers and writers. I am so much more organized as each student has one and keeps it in their book bag! This is now available at my TpT store:) Here is the link again.

I also was able to make a name banner for my classroom this week! As you can see, my name looks very difficult for anyone to pronounce, let alone first graders! They are always asking how to spell my name and it is required we have our names posted above our white boards. I thought this would be a way to add a fun pop of color in a cute way! I have yet to put it together with the cute purple ribbon because I want to laminate it first:)
All I did was picked up some cute patterned paper from Michaels, cut, and free handed my name on with marker. Super simple way to add a splash of color in your room! I'm excited to see it hanging up!
More pictures to come when my classroom is all set up!

Stay tuned next week for my next Made-it projects!
P.s= for those of you wondering, my last name is pronounced (CUH-TOO-ZIS) It's greek and I blame my husband!

Check out the other Monday Made It Projects over at 4th Grade Frolics Page and have a great week:)

Bargains, Books, and Bold Creations

It's FRIDAY! You know what that means. Of course, another linky party with Doodle Bugs Teaching!

I am going to start off with some celebrations that I would love to share with you! As most of you probably know or will come to find out, this is only my 7th blog post and I am VERY new to this whole blogging thing. I have come a long way already and I have learned so much. I still have so much to learn and I probably stalk a lot of you searching for answers or to see how something is done. That's not creepy…right?! I have done a fair amount of googling to find answers and almost every time I am comforted because as I search my question in Google, someone has usually already asked it. Been there done that right? Well hey, you have to start somewhere right? Speaking of starting somewhere…..

This week I created my first product for Teachers Pay Teachers. It literally took me all day to finish. Part of the reason was because I was figuring out my newly downloaded Office for Mac. I am fairly familiar with Powerpoint, however, not on a Mac, and not such a new version. I am also such a perfectionist that it takes me twice as long to do something as someone else! I won't go too much into detail about the product, but I will show you the cover page!

Didn't it turn out just adorable?! OMGOODNESS. If you only knew how long that took me. I will say that doing the credits page was actually quite frightening to me because I wanted to make sure that I gave everyone credit for each thing I used and each person has a different TOU. I hope I did this correctly and that I don't end up in jail somehow because of a copyright infringement of some sort. Eek.  You can find this FREEBIE in my TpT store: Click here to view my newest free product.  Maybe you can show my store some love because last time I checked I had a whopping 0 followers. Like I mentioned before, I will be doing a mini feature of this product on my Monday Made It linky post so I won't talk too much about it now!

It's also beginning to be that time of the year again when all of the school supplies and teacher things are put out. It's so bittersweet because we all know what's about to happen…but I won't mention that either! However, it's sweet too because it is such great stuff. You know you are truly a teacher when you get excited, twiddle your thumbs, and feel your heart beat racing because you are excited to see all of the cute classroom things. You always can spot the teachers in those aisles! I was so excited about my haul this week at Target Dollar Spot. Look at all this neat stuff! I got 5 dry erase pockets with an option for interchanging sheets, printables, sight words, you name it. SO VERSATILE. and guess what. only $1 EACH! Talk about a steal! You also see pictured 2 pocket charts that can also be used for many things. I also got birthday bookmarks, birthday stickers, name plates/sentence strips, alphabet bingo, and a super cute flag banner border for bulletin boards! In the last picture is also something I was very excited about. What you see pictured looks like a full sized board, however, these are thin dry erase word strips and each pack contained 4. I purchased a whole class set to do word study lessons as a group or to place in a center. I was excited about all of this great stuff, and I was even more excited that each thing was only ONE DOLLAR! *Cue a happy dance*

I have started a new journey in a book this week. So far I am very intrigued. 

I was inspired to read this after I saw the trailer in the movie theater. This gives me motivation to finish it before the movie comes out! I'm only a few chapters in but what I also like about this is that is is a series:)

This stuff saved my life! Okay, maybe not literally, but I feel like it did! We have been having problems with small spiders under our couches and in the bathrooms. I don't care how small the spider is, a spider is a spider okay?! TERRIFYING. It all started in the Fall when for some odd reason, Texas decided that it wanted it's turn to be freezing cold! Well, the little, tiny sugar ants did not like that and found their way up our pipes and into our bathrooms and into our house. Well what eats those little buggers but SPIDERS. So after finally getting rid of our ant problem and it becoming warmer outside, low and behold, we still have tiny little spiders that like to bring rollie polies from outside to lay dead under our couches. YUCK. Well of course stumbling upon Pinterest and looking for natural remedies instead of those scary bottles of pest control which say they cause cancer…I found the solution! Peppermint oil! I'm sure there is a more elaborate ratio of how much water: peppermint oil mixture to use online, however, I used my nose and my eyes to figure out a mixture. I bought a small spray bottle and put in probably a teaspoon of peppermint oil into it first. Then, I added a little bit of water at a time and sniffed it to make sure it was still really potent. After shaking it up just a tad, I went to town spraying every inch of the bottoms of my furniture. I also took a paper towel and spread it over my baseboards. The smell of peppermint was very strong, but it also smelled so fresh and clean. The best part of all, it has been 2-3 weeks and I have yet to see a spider or any rollie pollies.

Chicken Broccoli Almond Casserole

This is what's for dinner tonight! Super excited and it's a fan favorite of my husband. It's super simple to make.  This is not my photo credit, I pulled it off of the internet!

Ingredients:

* 3-4 Chicken breasts 

*1 bag frozen broccoli

*Veganaise (similar to mayonnaise but healthier)

*Chopped raw Almonds

*Butter (1/2 stick)

*All purpose Seasoning

*Salt

*Pepper

First, bake your chicken and cut it up into chunks. Spread it around in a baking pan and add your frozen broccoli, mixing it to be even. Use a spoon and plop Veganaise around the pan (enough to where the chicken and broccoli is covered) Use one 1/2 stick of butter and cut it up to even disperse around the pan. Sprinkle the chopped almonds on top so they are making up the top layer. Sprinkle your seasoning on top and place it in the oven. I usually let it cook for 40-45 Minutes, depending upon how soft or crunchy you like things. You can also check to see if it is done earlier than that by just eyeballing it. 

Make sure to check out what else people have done this past week back at the linky!