I found two cheap picture frames that another teacher was throwing away (*gasp!*) and turned them into great additions to my desk!
A piece of scrap paper - in neon pink of course - turns one of the frames into a cute whiteboard. Instead of wasting tons of sticky notes, I just use a dry-erase marker to make notes to myself.
A printout of my student names turns the second frame into a dry-erase class list.
I can cross out names as students hand in assignments, answer questions, etc. When I'm done, I can just erase and start over!
The best part about this project? It literally took 5 minutes to make . . . and now I'm thinking of other uses for cheap picture frames.
Okay, I'm going to brag for a moment. I have the coolest class shirts EVER!
I had the opportunity to take a screenprinting class at Confratute which is a week-long workshop at UCONN for gifted and talented education. I'm actually a graduate student at UCONN and taking Confratute is part of my graduate program. Since I was signed up for a multitude of academic strands where I was learning so much information to help me become a better teacher, I wanted to balance my time with an art class. During the week of class, we learned different styles of screenprinting and I made this screen myself. I'm so excited that I get to use the screen over and over again for years to come!
I created the screen to incorporate important words and themes that we embody all year long in our classroom. It was a fun challenge to put these words together in a cohesive design. Even if you don't have a screenprinting screen, you can come up with a class logo and make iron-on transfers. You could also make a stencil or use puffy fabric paint.
I almost forgot to mention that we even did the tie dye ourselves!
Mrs. Touponce's tie dye tips:
get your shirts WET before twisting and tying
use squirt bottles to get the dye deep into the shirt creases
never use more than three colors per shirt (unless you want brown)
if you want things to be even and neat, have students direct where YOU squirt the dye
let your shirts sit AT LEAST overnight for the brightest colors
wear old clothes (and shoes) on the tie dye day
do the project outside
I can say that my last two tips are given from experience! I didn't know when we would have a chance to tie dye our shirts this past year so I ended up wearing a dress to school that day (fail). We also had to do this project indoors because it was raining outside. Not a good combination! I was so nervous, I was sweating. But they came out great! Plus, our carpet was stain-free.
Here is how to set your shirt up for the spiral pattern we used:
