Teacher Down-Time

What do you do to relax when you get a break from teaching? I know that it helps me a lot to do activities that have nothing to do with teaching sometimes. This helps me to recharge and I have more energy to give to my students when I return to work.

This Thanksgiving Break, when I was not with family and eating turkey, I worked on creating a playroom for my grandson in our house.

I love crafting and painting, so this was really fun for me. This room had been my son's room and then it was my craft room. We are now in the process of creating a "She Shed" in a shed outside for my craft room since we decided to make a playroom for Benjamin.

Here are some pictures:

I am planning to cover the top 3 shelves on the left with fabric to hide those bins. I still need to add cars to the black "road".

My husband was a drag racer for years, so I am going to add pictures of his race cars on the black "drag strip" on this wall. I also need to add the "B" to the alphabet. The larger letters in the alphabet are for the first initials of the people in our family.

Here are some close-up pictures of the word BEN in the room. I got this idea from Pinterest (of course):

These letters are about 18 inches tall. They are from Hobby Lobby ($3.50 each).

I cut up white stickers for the roads.

Then, I used hot glue to attach the cars. I used Command velcro to hang them on the wall.

I hope everyone got some time to relax this holiday break.

Wednesday Whimsy and a Freebie

We went to Oregon in June to visit my family and introduce my grandson, Benjamin, to that side of the family.

I took this picture in my father's backyard. He was born and raised in Florida and enjoys collecting flamingos to remind him of Florida. He also grows bamboo, like he had at his father's house in Florida. So, Ben enjoyed playing among the bamboo and flamingos and I caught him with this picture.

This picture makes me smile. Ben is so fun and whimsical!

I have been slowly working on things for my new classroom and theme. I am going to do a Sports theme. I made banners for my bulletin boards: Math, Science, and Social Studies. I bought black and white striped banners at Target on clearance ($2 each). I created letters with circles around them to attach to each banner piece. Here is how they look:

I did mine in blue and orange letters (for the Gators). If you like the letters, here is a freebie with the letters and circles around them. The letters are in black here.