By Our Powers Combined...Pickles and Ketchups Unite!

I want to say a BIG 'thank you!' to some of my bloggy friends who had nothing but positive and kind words for me in regards to the trials and tribulations that teachers, especially first year teachers, face as they take their first leap of faith to try to establish themselves in the teaching world... thanks to your kind words and loads upon loads of prayers (especially on my part) I should be getting called in either this week or next week to sign my paperwork to teach this coming school year.  That I am aware of, there are 2 teaching positions available at the school (Kindergarten and 2nd Grade... my *preference* is 2nd, so hopefully they place me there) but nonetheless I will be in my FIRST classroom and experiencing my FIRST year teaching Elementary!!! I am "to infinity and beyond" excited!!! So, be on the lookout as I post the rest of this summer and upcoming school year.  I might even need to revamp my site to match!

Anywho, in other news... as I stated in a previous post, this is definitely turning into a "Pinterest Summer".  I gotta start getting the ball rolling (especially now that I have a job sorry I just love saying that it is still very surreal that after all my hard work I am going to have my very own classroom!) and going into overdrive making all of the amazing things that y'all have posted on the internet to get my classroom ready.  This is going to be overwhelming, stressful, blissful, exciting, nerve-wracking and any other adjective you could name to describe my excitement and nervousness all at the same time!

Sorry, I guess I ramble a lot... but on to the post for today.  Pickles and Ketchup! So, I am sure that many of you have seen this amazing idea online and I traced it back to Callie over at Teach-a-Roo.  She offers it as a freebie {so go and print them out HERE if you like the idea for your classroom}.  Below is my version of her fabulous idea... maybe it will give you some inspiration to create your own, just as Teach-a-Roo inspired me! :) So, here's the low-down on what this is... basically, on Fridays you put these up on your board and you or the students can come up and write their names themselves under the appropriate heading and if they have no missing/incomplete work they go under the "pickles" heading {which means they can 'pick' from various options (depending on what choices you want to offer for them) like: games, tubs, stations or activities that they can complete while the "ketchups" catch up (pun intended! Ha!) on whatever work they need to finish! Genius I tell you... just genius!

Here's the original that has been making appearances all over Pinterest...

And here is my version... I used the Cricut: Accent Essentials cartridge to do the cutout of the frame on some pink and green design paper cardstock that I had lying around; then I pulled out a pencil and a sheet of red and green paper and got to drawing my ketchup bottle {didn't like any online} and pickle {again, didn't like any clipart online} and then made the headings and labels on microsoft word using the font MTF Cutie Patootie, which can be downloaded HERE  for free-99! {P.S. while you're on her site, browse around cause there are some super-duper-ooper cute fonts that are also free on her site}.  Now all that's left is to laminate these babies and attach some adhesive magnet to the back of each and they will be ready to make their debut in my FIRST classroom!!!

Happy Pinning!