Adorable Weiner Dog Non-Standard Measurement Activity

Non-Standard measurement is a vital building block for more specific measurement skills; however most published curriculums skim over this topic... dedicating only one or two lessons to this topic. I've created the fun and interactive center activity to allow students to practice their non-standard measurement skills using paper clips, unified cubes, or whatever item you have handy. I designed this center to be completed individually, with a partner, or with a small group and should require minimal teacher monitoring! Plus, there is a recording sheet to keep students accountable during the activity. I have used this adorable activity for several years in my classroom and my students absolutely love it! You can find this activity in my TeachersPayTeachers store!

Print the 12 weiner dog cards on cardstock and laminate for durability. Instruct students how to line up the paper clips or unified cubes at the nose of the weiner dog and measure to the end. Students record the number of paper clips or unified cubes on their recording sheets.

Happy measuring!

-Brittany

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Custom Tree

Step-by-step instructions to create your own Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Palm Tree

My Kindergarten students love the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin and John Archambault. It's catchy rhymes and silly letters bring the alphabet to life. Because my students love the story so much, I decided to them my classroom around the story. I decided to create a life size palm tree to place in the literacy corner in my classroom. I shared my idea with my colleague, Amelia, and she loved it! So two trees it was! 

What you'll need:

• 4'' Piece of PVC pipe cut to your desired height (mine was about 5')
• 2' x 2' Piece of wood (for the base)
• Green spray paint 
• 1 yard of a durable heavy brown fabric (I used a denim-like material)
• Hot glue gun
• 8-10 hot glue sticks

My fiance, Tom, is extremely handy. When I shared the idea with him he immediately began mapping out ideas. We decided to make the base of the tree out of a sturdy piece of wood and PVC pipe. Tom used "L" clips to hold the tree to the wood. I was expecting this to be a big project... but it only took him about 30 minutes to create both trees. I then used some extra spray paint I had lying around to paint the wood base green. 

Next, I cut strips of fabric into long strips about 8 inches wide. I then cut a triangular pattern into them to give the trees the look of a read palm tree. This took me a long time because I was being very thorough! I then began wrapping the strips around the palm tree while slowly moving down the PVC pipe. I would wrap a 5-6 inch section and then add several dots of hot glue. I used a lot of glue but I wanted the tree to be durable so that it could make through Kindergarten! :-) 

I continued doing this down the remainder of the PVC pipe until the entire pipe was covered. I then "fluffed" the little triangles so they stuck out to look like a real palm tree. 

When I initially had the idea to create the palm tree, I was planning to use a green umbrella with felt leaves cut out to create the top of tree. My colleague found these amazing leaves at IKEA for $14 each. Since we are planning on placing our trees in a corner of our classroom we only needed 2 apiece. 

I plan to put bean bags or big pillows under the tree for my kids to read under. Once I get the tree in my classroom I will post pictures. 

Thanks for reading! 

Southern-Style Welcome Baskets

Roughly 75% of the guests attending our wedding are traveling from 200+ miles away. My mother and I decided creating welcome baskets with some Tennessee favorites would be a great way to welcome our out-of-town guests.  We plan to leave them at the hotel(s) and have the hotel staff either place them in the guest rooms or hand them to them at check in. I did a little research and located several sweets that would work well in our Southern-themed basket. Here are the items we decided on including in our basket:

• Local guides and tourist attraction information (I stopped at the Tennessee welcome center and picked up several stacks of these for free)
• Bottled Water
• Coke
• Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey or Jack Daniels Gentleman's Jack
• Moon Pie
• GooGoo Cluster
• Peppermint
• Tissues

I also created a pamphlet that lists the contact information for immediate family members and the wedding planner as well as driving directions from the hotel to the ceremony and reception site. I also listed several nearby restaurants and fun information about the items we placed in the basket. 

We purchased the materials to make 17 baskets. 

17 Wicker baskets	$17
16 Bottled Cokes	$8
24 Pack of Bottled Water	$4
24 Moon Pies	$9
18 GooGoo Clusters	$9
1 pkg peppermints	$2
18 pack tissues	$2
17 Bottles of Jack Daniels	$50
Tourist Guides	FREE

The total price per basket was less that $6! This is an excellent way to welcome out of town guests and thank them for attending our wedding. 

Cheap Save-the-Dates

How to get cute and simple Save-the-Dates without the high price tag

Tom and I were thoroughly in love with our engagement photos! We used Making Memories Portraits in Fort Myers, Florida. Jenny, owner & photographer, was wonderful and made us feel really comfortable throughout the process. 

Some of our favorite shots...

We knew we wanted to include one of our engagement pictures in our Save-the-Date to give the guests the hint that our wedding would be outdoors and laid back. I began researching different places to make Save-the-Dates and was surprised by the high prices! I originally wanted to do some type of magnet that people could place on their refrigerator. The cheapest magnet I could find was about $2. Since we were planning on 80 save-the-dates, it would $160 plus shipping. I could NOT justify paying that for save-the-dates. I began looking around on various printing websites such as staples.com, cvs.com, etc and eventually found that vistaprint.com offered the best prices. 

Since we were mailing out several save-the-dates, we decided we could save money by sending postcards. I spent days looking through the vistaprint.com's selection of postcards. I finally decided on a style called "Modern Monogram." It allowed me to customize the colors to fit our wedding. I spent a few hours customizing the postcard to ensure that everything was perfect. With vistaprint.com you need to triple-check your work. They do not check for spelling errors,etc. so how you submit the project is exactly what you will get. 

I ended up ordering 100 Save the Dates on sturdy paper for $32! Yes, only $32. It was my first time using vistaprint.com, so I qualified for discount and then had a coupon code for an additional $5 off. Overall, we were extremely happy with how they turned out! 

Custom DIY Wedding Invites: A Step-by-Step Guide

A Step-by-Step Guide 

In this post I show you how to create your own custom wedding-invites and monogram. Creating your own invitations is a time consuming process, but in the end they look like high-end invites for 1/2 the cost. I began several months out so that I would not feel rushed. I was able to do one or two pieces a week and not feel overwhelmed by the task. My amazing fiance also helped with several aspects of the process (mostly the grunt work). :-) 

Materials

• A quality printer
• Microsoft Publisher (Word or Powerpoint could also be used)
• Cardstock & Pocketfolds (see "What to Order" below)
• Ribbon

Tools

• Scissors
• Paper Cutter
• Glue ( I used a self-adhesive tape applied with a roll on dispenser)

What to Order

I had done some research and found that I did not like how any of the DIY pocket folds looked. (They all looked a little cheap to me.) I found a website called CardsandPockets.com that offered pre-made pocketfolds for invites at a very good price. I ordered:

• 60 Rectangolo Style Pocketfolds in Aquamarine
• 60 A7 Size Envelopes with European Flap (for mailing)
• 60 RSVP Envelopes with European Flap
• 60 Invitation Mats in Brown
• 150 Monogram Squares in Brown
• 75 Pre-Cut Blank Invitations
• 200 Pre-Cut Enclosures
• 100 Belly Bands in Brown

The Process

• I began by creating my monogram in publisher. I found it easiest to create the monogram in Microsoft Publisher because I could easily manipulate the sizes and colors. Once I got the monogram the way I wanted it, I used ALT + PRNT SCRN to make a copy of the page. I then pasted this page into paint and cropped the image so that I had a .jpeg of my monogram that could easily be copied and pasted throughout my invites, programs, etc. I sized the monograms to be exactly 2-inch squares and printed 150 on the cardstock (12 per page). I then cropped each monogram (very carefully) and mounted them to the brown monogram squares. Because I was being very OCD throughout the entire process, this step took me a few days.

• Next, I chose to focus on creating the invitation center in Microsoft Publisher. I was not very familiar with Publisher, so this took a few days of editing to get it perfect. Once I got my center invite the way I wanted it, I printed it to ensure that my accent ribbon and monogram would fit. After printing 60 invites on the pre-cut blank invites, I mounted them to the brown invitation mat using the roll-on tape. I then cut strips of ribbon and glued them to the invites and attached a monogram on top. 

• After I completed the center portion of the invite, I mounted each of these to the center of the pocket fold. I then began the tedious task of creating the inserts. It took me several days to create them and edit them to be the exact sizes that I wanted. Eventually I had to call-in reinforcements (my wonderful fiance) to help me edit and print them. I created all 3 inserts in a 6 3/4 x 3 1/4 template and then cropped them to my specifications. 
• Insert 1: 6 3/4 x 3 3/4
• Insert 2: 6 3/4 x 3 1/4
• Insert 3: 6 3/4 x 2 3/4
• Since our wedding is an out-of-town wedding, I wanted to include a lot of information for our guests. One insert listed driving directions to the ceremony and reception site. The middle insert listed accommodations ($-$$$) for our guests along with booking information. The final insert listed our website for guests to find addition about registries, attire, etc. My wonderful fiance then cropped each of these and placed them in the pocket of the invitation. 
• I then worked on the RSVP cards. We chose to keep them simple and printed them on the pre-cut enclosures we purchased. I then placed them with pre-addressed RSVP envelopes and tucked them on top of the inserts. 

• Finally, I attached the brown belly band and a final monogram to add a final touch to my invites. 

• I then addressed each of them and got them ready for mailing. It cost 66 cents for each domestic-mailed invite and $1.10 for each invite mailed to Canada. 

Overall, making the invitations took me about 4 weeks start-to-finish working on them 2-3 nights per week. During that time our dining room table was covered with paper, glue, etc. Although it was tedious at times, I found it fun to create my own invitations. I think this is definitely an option for couples looking to have custom invites that provide a lot of information without paying the high-price for printed invites. I would be happy to share my templates and answer any questions you may have about the process. Feel free to contact me at the e-mail listed in the contact info. 

Best of luck creating your custom invites!

***The original idea for these custom DIY wedding invites from "nicksknack" blog on Project Wedding. She has some awesome step-by-step how-to's on her Project Wedding Blog at:  http://www.projectwedding.com/wedding-ideas/diy-wedding-challenge-semi-diy-pocket-fold-invitations.