Mas Rusli

I absolutely love my Cricut. It is the most amazing thing to ever be invented. Besides a self loading and unloading dishwasher. Does that exist? Somebody needs to get on that. Anyway, to put it simply the Cricut is a die cutting machine. (But it is SOOOOOOOO much MORE than that!!!) Before this came about, we used something that looked like this or this  which required hand cranking and lots of time.  Thank goodness the lovely people at Provo Craft developed the Cricut. It does it for you!! You just stick the paper on the mat and the machine cuts it out. Here is a great video about the Cricut Expression.  from YouTube. So I had a brainstorm this summer about my classroom. I really wanted to do a rainbow color theme with a black background. I looked everywhere for some ABCs that had a black background that didn't require me to spend exorbitant amounts of money on black ink in my printer. Okay, so extra exorbitant amounts of money more so than I already do. I found some ado...

I wanted to tell you about a contest going on right now for teachers everywhere! Astrobrights is sponsoring a classroom contest where they will choose one winner per state who will receive Astrobrights paper to help #colorizeyourclassroom. I've used this terrific paper to make my new classroom alphabet cards. It is wonderful paper that works beautifully with my Cricut.  This alphabet came out so cute!! Took up my entire living room making it, but totally worth it!! Here is the finished product on the wall in my classroom.  I'm using the paper in other parts of my classroom like the daily numbers, CAFE Bookmark Goal Tracker, and for other decorations, but I'll have more on that later, too!!  Click on the link here or on the Colorize Your Classroom picture above for more information. Make sure you follow Astrobrights on Twitter and like their Facebook page for some more awesome ideas from teachers everywhere.  Thanks!  Jessica

Michaels Arts and Crafts had a 50% off coupon for one item for today only so I totally went out the second the opened and bought this!! I LOVE IT!! Xyron creative station is amazing and super simple to use. Makes creating classroom decor a breeze.  More on what I'm making later. Check it out on their website and go and get you one!! Happy crafting!! Jessica

So it's that time of year again!! Time to get organized for school!! In the past I have tried to have one teacher binder that I kept everything in. Problem with that is, It got too cluttered and unorganized - yes that's possible. Everything was in it, it was 3 inches thick, and jammed full of so much stuff that it was difficult to retrieve things when I needed them. I had generic dividers labeled things like "School Information", "Class Information", "Data", and "Other". If I needed something school related, I had to search through that section flipping every page just to learn that I had filed it under Other. So inefficient.  Then I went for the multi binder approach. This has been such a better way to organize life!! Everything has a specific binder and I can always find things!! But I still streamlined it - Only 8 binders work for me (technically 9, but one is my sub binder so I only use that if I need a sub). But some teachers may fin...