8 Days of Summer

Congratulations to ALL of the athletes at the Olympic Games!

August already?  Well, I am working on accomplishing all of the goals I've set for the remaining days of summer.  I already have four bags for Goodwill, so reorganizing is going well.  I am probably annoying people by posting every day for the last three days, but one of my goals was to catch up on my blog.   So, my apologies for overposting.  And I went in to school again the other night.  I worked on my class library, put labels on notebooks and folders, passed out books, and did some cleaning.  Do they really think we can get everything we need to get done in three days that are packed with meetings?  Crazy!

One thing I've been working on for my superhero themed classroom is an idea for a skyline.  I bought a black trifold, but was reluctant to actually start cutting on it.   Then Sam's daughter-in-law, Megan, told me about a shower curtain they got from Target with a skyline on it.  So I got one and cut it down for my front window.

Okay, so now I had half a shower curtain.  What am I going to do with that???  Our kindergarteners have a habit of peering into our back door to see what's going on in first grade.  Many times they even start knocking on it while we are working.  Needless to say, this is quite distracting for six and seven year olds.  So, I decided to cut the shower curtain panel in half and attach it to the top and bottom halves of the door to minimize some of these distractions.  Finally, Megan (smart girl!) gave me the idea of adding a searchlight signal (think Batman!).  I used a die-cut of a paw for our school mascot...leopards, attached it to some yellow cellophane, then placed it as though it was coming from one of the buildings (rediscovering in the process that cellophane is really hard to cut!).

Front window

Close-up view

Back door

Back to the trifold.  I decided that since I had it, I might as well give it a try.  I started to sketch a (horrible) skyline and was becoming incredibly frustrated, when Sam brought me a piece of paper.  He had quickly drawn a perfect skyline!  I knew marrying a comicbook geek would come in handy!  He knocked it out in no time, all I had to do was add a few windows.  I am going to use it when I call students to my table, and I don't want them peeking at each other's papers!  I've been thinking about using it as a backdrop for their first day pictures as well. 

I also found a Paris cityscape in the wall decor section of Target, but haven't decided whether or not to use it.  Too much?  Maybe so...