Why did I wait till now????

As I begin to think about the end of my first year of teaching, I ask myself..."Why didn't I start a blog at the beginning of the year and chart my first year of teaching!" It wasn't until recently that I started to take pictures of the things I was creating for my classroom. You see I am a HUGE fan of Pinterest! I find something on there to get my creative juices flowing, tweak it a little and create something with my own twist! Other teachers would ask me (knowing my Pinterest addiction) "Did you find that on Pinterest?" I would respond with no, I got that on "Manterest"! (Mandy and Pinterest combined) They would say oh well if you put that on Pinterest, you would get lots of Pins! With that idea in mind, I decided I would blog about the ideas I would come across and create to share with others and see what would end up on Pinterest!

So, with that I will give you my FIRST "manterest" idea!

Yesterday was our 4th grade field trip to the State House. MAN! I didn't know how much a field trip could wear you out! We had a great time and I am SO thankful to all of the parents who volunteered to go! The parents were amazing! They were chaperons of a small group of children. Their were so many chaperons that the teachers didn't have a group of students and we could tour at our leisure! That was nice! I wanted to do something special for the parents who volunteered in my room so I went to my creative source PINTEREST! I searched "thank you gifts" where I found a picture of a little gift using EXTRA gum. With that, my juices were a flowin! Here is what I created!

I cut some hands from our school die-cut machine and purchased each of my parent volunteers a package of EXTRA gum. On each hand I printed "Thank You for your EXTRA hand on our field trip!" (I kind of have this thing for a play on words!) I gave them to each of my students to take home to their parents and I think the students were just as excited to give them to their parents as I was to make them for their parents! The parents went out of their way to re-arrange their daily schedules and come with us so the least I could do was give them a small token of appreciation!