Checking Things Off of the To-Do List!

I've been busy today "creating" things for my classroom!  

These are my turn-in bins for classwork, homework, and notes from home.  I got the plastic tubs from Target out of the Dollar Spot butttttttttttt they were $2.50 each.  I wanted to do yellow letters originally because our school colors are purple and yellow but I couldn't find yellow stickers at JoAnn's.  It's hard to see in the picture but I used yellow permanent marker to put polka dots on and outline the letters.

I also got these cute cardboard tubs out of the Dollar Spot at Target and printed my own labels.  I used Mod Podge to attach the labels to the boxes.  I'll be using these to keep my pencils organized as I quickly found that pencils are the bane of many teachers' existence!  I think I had a pretty good system for pencil management last year with my 2nd graders.  I didn't let the kids sharpen their own pencil unless they had a personal sharpener in their desk.  I made sure that I had at least 20 sharpened pencils each morning.  In order to get a new pencil, kids either had to put a dull pencil in the "unsharpened" cup or throw away a pencil that was too short to write with.  They weren't allowed to keep more than 3 pencils at their desk or else I dubbed them "pencil hoarders!"  I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to approach this with my 5th graders but it will definitely be a similar system.

The "no name" clothespin board has been floating around Pinterest.  This is my version.  I'm not super crazy about it.  I think it might be too much yellow.  I might add some white polka dots or something to help break it up.  This was a pretty simple and cheap project.  It cost about $3 or $4 in supplies from JoAnn's.   (BTW, I buy gift cards to JoAnn's and Staples at Giant Eagle to earn Fuel Perks!)

The last thing I did today was create these cute printables based some ideas I got from Pinterest.  I use Power Point to create PDF files as it is much more user friendly than Word.  The files are going to be posted in my Teacher's Notebook store for free!  I bought the black frames from the dollar store.  I think this will help add uniformity to my classroom.

I'm also working on a cute incentive for class discussions.  I bought glow bracelets at the dollar store (5/$1) and I'm going to put little flags on them that say "What a Bright Idea!  Thanks for Sharing!"  I also want to make an organizer out of a cereal box for putting my absent folders in but I didn't have a cereal box like I thought I did!  What have you been working on?