TpT Seller Challenge Week 3

Hi everyone! I'm linking up again wit Third in Hollywood, Peppy Zesty Teacherista, Teach Create Motivate, and Sparkling in Second for the TpT Seller Challenge! This week's challenge was all about making your masterpiece.

This challenge was the perfect motivation to finish I product I started working on at the end of the school year. As you can probably tell, I love cupakes. My room is cupcake theme. Next year I'm gonna kick it up a notch and go with a new color scheme that still includes cupcakes.

Voila! My first classroom decor bundle is born! I can't wait to start the printing/laminating/decorating frenzy in August. Classroom decoration is one of my FAVORITE parts of back to school.

I have yet to meet a cupcake I didn't like! This week's challenge has motivated me to branch out and try new things with my products. Don't forget to link up if you haven't already. You can check out the decor bundle in my store.

My Truth Monday..and Random Monday Happenings

I'm linking up with Denise from Sunny Days again to share some of my favorite apps. I have a list of apps that I love just for me and some I love for the classroom. 

My hands down favorite app for the classroom is Educreations. It's a free iPad app and website where you can create lessons to share. What I love about the iPad version is the ability to see students working. 

Here's an example of one mini's lesson during model drawing.

My personal favorite app is Candy Crush. I both love and hate the game.

Make sure to link up and share your own favorites!

Moving on to my oops of the day; I accidentally knocked over Clara Cupcake! She was sitting in front of our Boggle board pretty as can be until right before recess.

I opened the top drawer of the cart for a marker and when I closed it, BAM! Poor Clara Cupcake fell over face down into a basket. There was a collective gasp of shock and awe in the room. I felt so horrible! I knew I had to come up with something quickly; I didn't want our elf face down in a basket all afternoon. Quickly I left the room and thankfully my mentor teacher was subbing today in a class literally steps from mine. I explained my dilemma and went back to my room. After a minute I made a dramatic phone call to Santa's office desperately asking what should be done. Santa's solution was to allow only me to pick up Clara C. and return her. I carefully returned her to her resting place for the day. Our school day passed by without any further elf oopsies.

I had another student and a coworker give me cupcake ornaments today! Our class tree is getting full. At this point I've bought less than half of the cupcake ornaments on the tree. The majority are gifts I've received since teaching.

The final countdown until break begins! So much to do in so little time, and I have yet to finish Christmas shopping. 

Five for Friday

I promise y'all I'll get posts up on the right days! This week was full of lots of learning and unexpected treats! Here's my link up for this week's Five for Friday.

 The minis played Roll-A-Turkey this week in learning stations.

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I love observing what strategies minis use to play this game. You can grab a freebie for yourself thanks to Little Giraffes.

I got to take a limo ride to Chuck E. Cheese for lunch Friday! We had so much fun dancing and singing on the way. I'm glad I got to go and share the experience with two minis from my class.

Teachers enjoyed some downtime and pizza while students played games. I wonder how much running I"ll have to do to burn off the pizza? I don't think I want to know; ignorance is bliss in this situation!

Our classroom pencil sharpener died a couple of weeks ago, and I've had to sharpen pencils in a buddy teacher's room. We now have a nice, new pencil sharpener to use!

I'm not ashamed to admit I ooh'ed and ahh'ed when I took it out of the box Friday afternoon.

I was invited to attend the Rowlett Chamber Luncheon this past Wednesday. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures for fear I would look like a creeper with no manners, but I did snap a picture of my name tag! 

At the luncheon, I briefly met a fabulous lady who owns a cupcake bakery in town. Brendal's has all sorts of delicious cupcakes. She gave us a stack of free cupcake cards for staff at our school. Some people didn't want theirs so guess who they brought them to? Hooray I'm ready for a cheat days so I can go get my cupcakes! 

I'm thinking I need to invest in a camera for blogging instead of taking pics with my phone or iPad. Maybe I'll be a crazy Black Friday shopper this year and buy one. Keyword maybe. You know some of those Black Friday people go crazy! Happy Saturday everyone!

My Classroom

My oh my teaching isn't for the faint of heart! Two days in and it's all a rush right now. I finally was able to get my classroom organized enough to take some pictures today!

I originally had my sign in set up inside the classroom in front of the calendar for supply drop off last week. I looked around my hallway and decided I liked the area set up outside the classroom much better.

Our school wide them this year is stars. Silly me I forgot to get a picture of the entire bulletin board, bleh! Instead of using traditional letters I used the monogram art from Schoolgirl Style. 

The view directly from the door. 

I decided to get rid of my desk this year. I have no regrets in doing so it's freed up valuable learning space for my students. Ignore the messy table but note my fabulous new Vera Bradley teacher bag which I've discovered holds a TON! I can't wait to use it when I travel.

I got these adorable free printables from Sweet Rose Studio. I'm still finding a new home for some of the junk sitting on top of my cabinets and shelves. I was originally going to make cupcake liner poms for each group but to be honest I just got lazy and didn't want to do it. :) 

Our calendar area.

On the first day we went over class rules and expectations which become a contract. We discuss what a contract is and possible consequences for not keeping your promise. Everyone signs their name and this is displayed all year.

Boggle cupcake style! Freebie letters from an amazing seller on TPT.

Supplies used the most in our class easily accessible for students. I jazzed up this shelf with wrapping paper, Mod Podge, and ribbon.This shelf used to be just a "cutesy" holding area but I wanted to make it more functional and have a purpose.

I'm excited to try Noggle this year! To start I'm going to have my students do simple two digit addition then work up to higher sums as the year goes on.

Sweet Treats is a class favorite already! Our class goal is to earn 10 compliments for a sweet treat as a reward! 

These hand signals have been working great so far. After modeling and practicing these with students they starting to use them saving so much time with no interruptions. 

Part of our class library. I was on a mission all summer break to find the perfect baskets. Slowly but surely all of them will be the nice new purple I found at Dollar Tree. 

Our class guinea pig, Ricky Bobby. He has the easy job of sleeping and eating. 

I may be obsessed with this cupcake duct tape I found at Michaels.

I created these cupcake themed writing process posters as a power point in Google Drive. 

Gone Missing

This break certainly has been keeping me busy! My goodness where has the time gone? June flew by so quickly. I've neglected my blog stalking for too long now and need to catch up. Now that I'm finally settled in my new place I can sit back, relax, and breathe again.
This past weekend was jam packed with moving and getting organized. God bless professional movers! I couldn't have done moving all on my own. Moving is such a pain, am I right? I'm not finished with it all and have no intention of rushing and wearing myself out. It's amazing how much junk you can collect in a small amount of time!

 It's hard to decide what to keep and what to throw away. This was what my storage unit looked like before it was filled completely. Note to self: Do not visit here alone at night, the lighting isn't the best.

Look at my adorable new key! I couldn't resist picking this up at Wal-Mart.

Sunday I got to catch up with a friend at lunch. I had a not so sneaky/very obvious reason for picking our lunch location; it just happened to be across the street from Sprinkles. 

My all time favorite red velvet and lemon blueberry. Mmm mm good y'all! 

I'm going to give myself one hour for blog catch up, then it's off to the grocery store I promise. Let's see how well I keep to this plan....

Cupcake Poms

Welcome to my first blog post! Tissue poms are popping up in classrooms everywhere right now. I was feeling crafty and decided to do something unique with this concept, so I turned to Google and did a search for cupcake pom poms. Within seconds I had tons of adorable images filling my laptop screen. I loved the easy to follow directions found at Fun Favors and decided to take the plunge. I headed to Michael's with my teacher badge in hand (hello 15% everyday teacher discount) and purchased a 6 inch Styrofoam ball for practice. There's always cupcake liners in my kitchen so I didn't need any of those.

Eventually the pom will hang from my classroom ceiling so I marked and secured a spot with a paper clip. I took extra care with the cupcake liners so they wouldn't tear. My manicure made that sometimes difficult. Slowly but surely the ball started to get covered.

For my practice ball I decided on two different types of cupcake liners. After an hour, a burnt index finger, and watching Bravo my little project was finally complete!

After taking this picture I filled in that awkward space at the bottom with one more liner. Voila all finished! I'll get started on a few more of these soon so each group in my classroom has one above their area.