Monday Made It! Problem solving, Positivity, and Planning

It’s “Monday Made It” again and this week I had a ton of fun!  Thanks to Fourth Grade Frolics, as always, for the link up!

So…to get things started, I tackled a project that I came up with about 3 months ago and simply didn’t have time to execute!  I always INTEND to send home positive notes to my students when they accomplish something, if I see someone doing something kind, and so on.  I do it sporadically but then don’t ever remember who I have sent notes to and who I have not. So…
First I found this awesome phone message book that is a carbon copy book–solved my problem of keeping track of who got notes.  ALSO–the top copies are post its so they can be stuck right into students’ assignment books!  WINNING!
200 notes per book…so that one book could provide me with 8 notes per student!
Typical phone message forms…but I  thought I could spice them up a bit…
I made some mini “badges” of sayings…
Mounted them on colored paper backgrounds…

…stuck them over the boring “message” message!
…and tried it out!  The white copy will get stuck in their assignment notebooks to take home…and I get the yellow copy to remember what I said!
OK…on to the more “crafty”  project–although it was really a simple one.  I have a problem in that I tend to bring beverages into my office while I work and am constantly setting them down on notebooks, scrap paper, etc to keep the condensation off my desk.  Rather than steal a coaster from the living room, I decided to make my own!  I just used Powerpoint to make a collage of some of my favorite baseball pics of my son…

Then I mounted the printout on a few layers of cardstock and laminated it!  So easy!

Finally…I did finish my next set of math games that I can’t WAIT to use during math workshop next year.  I want to get enough sets made of some of my games that students can check them out to play at home!  Thanks to a young friend for helping me test them and tweak them!

That’s all for this week of Monday Made It…hoping for something more dramatic next week–but we shall see! Make sure to check out all the other great ideas linked up by clicking on the logo at the top of the post–and stop back on Tuesday for “Texts on Tuesdays” where I am posting about a great professional book you might want to check out!

Meg