Gettin' lampy with it!

I'm sure its happened to you....the domino effect.  I wanted to bring a lamp into school that was too small for the space and that my younger brother knocks over every time he visits.  Well that led to a trip to Goodwill to get a new lamp {or two}. 

My colleague Susan Findlay at Edu-Bits has lamps all over her room.  It's so warm and lovely.  I had to copy her.  So far I have one lamp at school with hopes to get more over the summer.  Here is the little charm:

I think it adds a little ambience to the room that was very needed!  I can't wait to add more.


So back to the domino effect, I {accidentally} bought two lamps from Goodwill that I knew needed some TLC.  I love a project as you may have found out. 

So here were the lamps:

They were just a bit rough!  I spray painted each.  Notice that the white lamp retained some of its natural state.  I just taped over the nice silver part.  Next up was the shades.  They were just a bit dingy and slightly yellowed.  I took fabric from another project and cut it out to fit the shade and sprayed on a little craft spray.  It looks 100 times better.

The other lamp (white)  I decided to go a little funkier.  First I tried fabric but it wasn't right.  Then I had the inspired idea to use ribbon.  The shade is tapered so the ribbon started straight vertically and ended with a diagonal.  I personally like the diagonal side. 

So I am absoultely loving my new lamps....success!


Now on to a little education :)
Although I loved my centers chart, it keep falling off my concrete walls.  I started thinking that maybe it didn't need to take up so much space because its just organizational not informational.  I wanted to still use our clothes pins, same centers and I wanted it to be magnetic.  Here is what I created:

The centers are the same. They still do several things, but I have them trained so well that they don't need to be told what to do. Just love that!  Maybe in the fall I will have to print out a directions sheet for each center.  It's something to think about.

I also made one for my intern:

Here is a copy of the centers for you!  Owl Centers

Our word work has become a review of skills learned so far.  My intern and I decided to pull out an old favorite.  You will need a cookie sheet, a top and the documents below.  The students spin the top, whichever word the top lands on is read out loud and then chanted (remember those word wall chant?).  We created four documents, one for each table and they are rotated one per day.  On Wednesdays we do College Words.  The kids LOVE this time of the day, which is a quick 10-15 minute window.

Word Work patterns

  

Word Wall Chants

College Words 1