Monday Made It!

I loved reading the Monday Made It posts last summer, so this summer I vowed it was going to try my hand at it myself and link up with Tara at 4th Grade Frolics..  Heaven knows I have plenty of projects/creations on my list of summer to dos, so I shouldn't have an issue coming up with ideas! ت

Without further ado my first Monday Made It for home are my garden brick books.  I have seen craft this on Pinterest and have been dying to make them.  We don't use our front door, so I thought my front steps would make an ideal outdoor "bookshelf".  It was the perfect craft to get me started for the summer.  I have decided that I need more books on my shelf so need to pick up some more bricks- thankfully my parents have a pile out back that are free for the taking! ت  

My school project was a MUCH larger task then the bricks, but thanks to the awesome tutorial by Kristen at Ladybug's Teacher Files on how to use PowerPoint to make printables, I was able to get the job done without pulling my hair out.

I have been using a Reader's -Writer's notebook with my students for the past several years.  I started out using folders with fasteners, then moved to 3-ring binders but neither really seemed to be the best fit. My plan for this summer was to compile all the different files I had on my computer for this notebook and send it to our area education agency to have it bound as a true spiral.  I am hoping that this simplified format will make it more user friendly for my students.  I had been plugging away with it using MS Word and it was going Ok until I made an error formatting some page and it messed up the whole document! I couldn't find the error and was ready to bawl! (I was up to 93 pages done)  So....I took a break from that and cruised through some of my favorite blogs where I came across Kristen's tutorials.  She saved me!  I was able to recreate the whole book in PPT and even added graphics to make it CUTE!  I finished up the whole thing this morning and love how it turned out.  Here's  a quick peek-tell me what you think.

Until next time...