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Burlap Pencil Banner Tutorial, My Face.... book (that is), AND MY FIRST GIVEAWAY!!!!!

Hello Friends,

I begin back at work in about a week. That means that I have one.more.week to relax. This marks the end of summer and I'm in mourning. Yes, I will be wearing black this next week... while I set up my classroom.... in 1000 degrees weather. I don't even care. I'm wearing black because I want everyone to know that it's a crime, A CRIME to start school so early when you know all the kids (and me, too) will be looking longingly out of the classroom window daydreaming of swimming, beach days, and sleeping in. It really is hard to go back to school in the first week of August. By the time Fall rolls around, we are basically BEGGING for a break and CRAWLING towards Christmas vacation.... and that's just the teachers! Ha!

Before I get to the tutorial, I want to share with you some exciting news that has a bit to do with it! My blog FINALLY has a Facebook page!! YAY!!! I knoooow, I'm probably behind the times here, but I went back and forth deciding if I was responsible enough to have a Facebook page for Lights, Camera, Teach. After talking to a few of my TPT friends, it seems like that was the way to go.  SOOOOOO to celebrate, I will be doing my FIRST EVAH GIVEAWAY, awaaaay, waaaaay ((echo, echo, echo)).  You won't want to miss what I'm giving away... TRUST ME! :)  Can you guess the connection between the tutorial and the giveaway? Read on dear friends!

Today I want to share with you something that I've seen floating around Pinterest. Ahhhh, Pinterest. It's a love/hate relationship. You see, I begin looking at all these fantastic ideas in the beginning of summer and start pinning like a mad woman! "I'm gonna be SO awesome this summer!!!!!!" I says to myself.  THEN by the time when school is about to start, I'm feeling pretty loserish <---- (red underline tells me that it's not a word, BUT it IS because I just made it up right now!).  You know the feeling. The one that tells you you stink because you didn't do everything you pinned?? OR if you did take on a project, it didn't come out the way the picture shows. Sheesh! Talk about false advertising! I should have known that 2 wooden pallets and a box of mason jars could NOT make my daughter a cute playhouse! Ha! And...AND... I believe that Pinterest is enabling me to continue in my hoarding ways. Hello, my name is Angela and I'm a virtual hoarder. OK, we can now move on.

I did take on a project that I felt that I couldn't screw up could do fairly easy. I want to share it with you here since I don't think you could screw it up, either. And if you do, then you probably shouldn't be doing ANY projects. Kidding...KID-DING!!!!

I made this A-DOR-A-BLE banner for my writing wall!



Here is how I did it:

I got this burlap roll from Hobby Lobby.  I didn't want to be cutting a lot so the width was perfect. Remember? EA-SY is what I need.


I got this twine from Lowe's.



I used regular tempera paint: Yellow, black, red, and white. I didn't have pink on hand for the eraser part so I mixed the red and white and it came out great! If you have pink then you can use that instead.


I wanted my pencils kinda big (9.5"x4.5") since it was going to be the header for my writing wall. You can adjust the size if you want but this tutorial is for my size.

I rolled out the burlap and measured at 10.5" (I'm leaving an inch to fold over).


Cut....


Then fold length-wise... or like I say in my classroom "hot dog style",


Measure 3". You are making the "point" of the pencil.


Cut...



Unfold.


You will need to make a fold over for the twine to go through. Measure 1" on the straight side.


Fold...

 Ok, so I'm going to jump WAAAAAY ahead here in my pictures because my camera ran out of batteries and I just COULD.NOT.WAIT to finish this cute banner! So I painted it and let it dry while my camera charged. We are all pretty smart. I'm sure we can figure out what I did here. If not, I will explain and pray for you. :)

I used a sponge brush to paint the pencils. I felt that it gave me the width that I needed. I got these at Michael's (wooden handle). I bought some Dollar Store cheapies (red handle) and they were so flimsy. NO BUENO.

1. I painted the yellow first
2.Then I painted the eraser and left a small space before I got to the yellow.
3. Waited a bit for it to dry. (cue Jeopardy music). It does dry pretty quickly. Maybe 15-20 mins? Go eat some chocolate and come back.
4. I painted the black line then the lead of the pencil.

After they all dried (It was late so I went to sleep and continued the next day), I used a thin paintbrush and painted the letters.




All done! Wait for it to dry.

Still waiting...


After it's all dried, flip it over and put your twine inside the fold.


Hot glue that baby! *TIP* Make sure you glue closer to the edge so that your string has room to move. Don't ask me how I came up with that tip. :/


Press.... Don't burn yourself like I did.  !!*#!*##!!!!  All for the sake of a stinkin' picture! I took one for the team. :)


VOILA! Oh goodness... PLEASE excuse my mess on the floor! BUT it's such a cute picture of the banner that you shouldn't be looking down there anyways! I have 3 kids. I'm tired. It's messy. Don't judge me.


 My models...


They work for Oreo cookies. I pay well.


If you don't have time to make these, or don't want to.... I have a solution!!!  Remember my NEW Facebook page I was telling you about? Or did you scroll down and not read anything I wrote until you hit the tutorial??? SHAME.ON.YOU! Hehe. I do that, too. :)

Soooo... you want this but don't want to/have time to make it? Head on over to my BRAND NEW Facebook page {here} to enter to WIN. You AND your friend can win one! All you have to do is tag a friend who you think would want one and "Like" me..... because I like you and it makes me feel good when people like me, too. :)  

Enjoy the rest of your summer!

Blessings,

In The Air Tonight

Hi All!

Alrighty.... I'm not trying to be redundant or anything but I was thinking about my last post and how it really bothered me. You know, the one about my In The Air Tonight unit?? The problem about that post that really got me was that since our family went on a road trip and did not fly anywhere, all my pictures were of my On The Road Again resource. That bugged me. For one thing, I'm a mama myself and I want/need to see these pages put into action so I know whether I'd want to purchase it or not.  SOOOOO... I had to do something about it right when we got home from our trip.

Enter child labor here.....

Don't you just love children? They are such great workers when you bribe them? Hehe.

I printed out pages of my In the Air Tonight  resource and took it out in the backyard where they were playing. I sat them down and told them that they were going to do a couple fun activities and that they were gonna smile pretty, dang it,  so that I can take a nice picture. When they saw the binder, they knew what it was since it looked similar to the On The Road Again unit. They were excited to work on it since they saw me creating the packet on my computer. My two older boys even gave me some wonderful ideas for the resource!



Here is my sweet Karis (3) holding up her pink binder! She loves pink!!




This is my Joshua (7). His binder is white. I think it looks so clean. :) See how happy he is? It's amazing how offering candy this unit makes them so happy. LOL
.



This is what I did to organize the folder. I LOVE this because it really is LITTLE to NO PREP at all! And trust me, I NEED that in this season of my life!!!

All you need is a 3 ring binder, a dry erase marker, a paper clip, a die, a pencil/pen, and an old sock as the eraser. These are things that I'm sure you can find laying around the house. I told ya... LITTLE to NO PREP!! I wasn't lying friends!!! I did buy the zipper mesh pencil keeper at the dollar store. Karis got the purple one and I bought the boys a green one.  Then I put most pages in a sheet protector so that you can PRINT IT ONCE AND USE IT FOREVER!!!   Love that!





There are 2 different airplane themed word searches.

The mazes were a HIT in my road trip unit so I knew that I had to create more for this unit. There are 9 mazes total with 3 levels for each maze. Each level is listed on the top left hand corner of the page. See it there? Good. :)  I LOVE LOVE that if my kids made a mistake, they could just erase it because of the plastic sleeves.

"Ah Yessssss!!!" My Joshua is SO proud to complete level 1 and move onto the next level.


My kids LOVED this one! These games were created to keep them quiet on the plane. They can have fun WHILE staying quiet. No media needed. :)



First game.... Hold It! They took a deep breath in to see who could hold it the longest. My kids are *pretty* competitive so I was waiting to see who would pass out first before they lost. I'm serious here.
Still holding......

My son Joshua has some pretty big lungs so he won the gold. He was more than happy to write his name next to the gold medal. :)

Next game? The Stare Down! (Da- Da- DAHHHHHH!!!!)
Karis (3) though very sweet can give off some mean stares. It must be a girl thang. Yup, she went the longest without blinking.

Then it was Hand War...



After all was said and done, it was time for the closing ceremonies. You write the name of the winner in each podium and draw them in their medals. Here Joshua wrote his name a bit messy so he used the sock to erase and rewrite. Did I tell you how much I LOVE sheet protectors??? 

Here is Plingo! Get it? Plane Bingo? Yea... I just made that up on the fly. I know.. I'm pretty creative. Let me know if you need anything named. LOL. All you need is a pen/pencil, a paper clip, and some fingers.

My 3yr old felt so grown up because she was able to play this game. Because she just had to match the pictures, she was able to be included in this game.



So happy!!!




The One Minute Madness is probably one of my favorite parts of this packet. My boys helped me come up with some of the games. All you need is a die and a cute little patootie rolling it. You cannot borrow mine. Although cute, she can be very moody at times.




Shake-a, shake-a, THROW!!!




You can play the One Minute Madness 2 ways. If you don't have a die, no worries. Just pick what challenge you want to do or go in order. My kids loved rolling the die to see what challenge they had to take on. 

So #6 it is!

My boys competed with each other while Karis offered moral support. 

 SO cute! I love to see them working together...especially when they are having fun. :)

They were excited to play Mile High Match Up. They got pretty competitive here but I had to remind them... It's just a game folks!! I guess I can't blame them. Their parents are insanely kinda competitive, too. 

Here are the cards. I printed them on card stock for durability and so that you could not see through them. My kids laid them all out and took a good look at them to see where everything was. I gave them 10 seconds to work their photographic memory. 

Then they flipped all the cards over.



Of course, ladies first.

No match...


BUT look at that ADORABLE pout pout face! She *might* have made that face because the boys were cheering that she didn't get a match. No mercy, I tell ya! 


Joshua's next...

YES!!! Match!




Gotta show it!


Then Isaac...

He did his victory shake. But then Karis got sad. So they *might* have helped her out a bit.



YAY!!!! MATCH!!
 HAPPY HAPPY Girl!!!

I put all the cards in a little zippy and put it in the pencil zipper pouch.


I put the Making Words paper in the front pocket. There are 3 different pages.


Here is my Isaac doing one. I loved that he multiplied to find his points. Then he added them all up.  He was able to practice some math and spelling skills!!! YAY!!!!

This is Joshua (7). He chose to do the other Making Words page.

That smile alone makes him a winner in my book!!!

I love it when he finds new words within words. We talked about how larger words are just made up of smaller words.

I was actually impressed that Joshua decided to skip count to find his total points. YAY for math!!!





I didn't get to highlight every page in this resource but I'm sure you get the idea. I really do love this unit because my kids love it! They are my testers! I figure that if they're not having fun with it, then other kids won't. I was so delighted to see that this unit and my other one was KID TESTED and APPROVED!!!

Hope that you enjoy the rest of your summer. I begin back at work teaching a 2/3 combo in the first week of August. It's a crime!!!

Anyways, thanks for reading along and scrolling through tons of pictures!

Happy Travels Friends!!!

Blessings,