Back to School!!

Hey everyone!! It's been a little while since we last posted, and I bet you can guess why! Yep, that's right...school started and we have been crazy busy! 

We wanted to share with you our forms that we used for back to school night! We absolutely LOVE anything simple that keeps us organized. That's exactly what these forms are! They can all be found in our TPT store. We used 4 forms...

1. Student Information Sheet: outlines all the important information we need about our students. 

2. Flip Book: we included our contact info, homework info, supply list, our daily schedule and class policies. We LOVE this flip book because it includes a ton of info all in one simple book!

3. Parent 3-2-1 Form: This form asks parents to tell us 3 words that best describe their child, 2 things we should know about their child, and one goal they have for their child this year. 

4. Volunteer in Our Class Form: This is a great way for parents to select what days, times and projects they are available to do! 

These 4 forms kept our back to school night super simple and were LOW PREP! 

Here they are:

Visit our TPT store to download these forms! 

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us at keclassworks@gmail.com. 

Check back soon for our BIG CLASSROOM REVEALS!!! 

-KE Class-Works

EXTREME Classroom Makeover- Rug

    We just love how our classrooms are coming together! It has been a lot of fun decorating and adding that personal spin to our rooms.  There definitely have been a lot of IKEA purchases and bargain shopping around town and online.  

     One item I (Emily) have been looking for to add to my black with bright colors classroom theme was a colorful rug! I have seen a few floating around on Pinterest and other blogs. I FINALLY read where someone said they found this bright neon chevron rug at Big Lots. I was so excited!! I got I my car right away and drove to Big Lots. Of course what did I find? Big Lots was CLOSED! FOREVER! So I did a simple google search for the next closest one. It was 45 minutes away. Of course that one was closed down forever too! I had to have this rug though! It would be perfect with my theme and add that extra pop of bright colors in my reading corner next to a black bench. I convinced my husband to go on a road trip and drive 4 hours to where there were 5 different big lots within 45 minutes of each other.  It was my birthday that week so he couldn't say no 😀.  I searched all of those stores and NEVER found the rug I wanted!! 

     I was determined to have a rug that was chevron with bright colors! I continued by search for the rug online, but no luck. Then I came across several blogs that talked about painting the rug to the color you want. I figured I was already pairing basically everything in my room this year so one more thing would be fine!

     This project took about 6 hours from start to finish. I found a rug on Overstock.com for a fairly good price (about $40). 

Here is the rug before painting.

     I went to the craft store and bought acrylic paint and fabric medium. 

     I used two bottles for each color of acrylic paint and two bottles of the fabric medium. I mixed two parts paint to one part fabric medium and mixed it together.  Then I used a regular paint brush to paint 

    I painted one chevron line at a time. 

Here is my finished rug!

It will be perfect for my reading Corning!! Check back soon for pictures of our classrooms all finished!

Thanks for following! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to comment below or email us at keclassworks@gmail.com!

-Kassidy & Emily

Extreme Classroom Makeover- The Walls!

     It's crazy how fast the summer flies by! Especially when you are trying to get your classroom all set up and ready to go for your new students.  Setting up a classroom can be a lot of work! As teachers, we spend so much of your time in our classroom that it's great to add a personal touch to make your room your very own.  Adding your own style can really help set up the right environment to make a successful year.

     So if you don't absolutely love something in your classroom then why not change it, right? This summer we did an EXTREME classroom makeover.  We painted cupboards, tables, storage containers, easels, anything you can think of we probably painted it to give it a new fresh look. You can check out our other blog posts to read about the other paint adventures we did.  With lots of paint and man hours you can completely transform any area!  So let's talk about those lovely school walls!

     In our classrooms we have cinder block (our school is pretty old). There are layers after layers of paint on these walls. At some point, which can be seen where the paint chipped and the under colors show through, we had green walls, blue walls, maybe even yellow walls?  Then we ended with some form of a tan.  It was not a color that went with either classrooms decor.  

     WARNING! If you do not have at least a week to paint the walls or a lot of extra helpers save this project for another summer!  We spent about a full week of painting with both classrooms.  

     The first step is to find out what color paint you want.  Home Depot created a really cool app that can be used with your iPhone and the camera.  You can choose from different color swatches of paint and see what it would look like on an entire wall!  The app is called Project Color and can be found in the App Store.  

     We chose to buy the cheapest paint since it was going onto cinder block and we are teachers! 

     This particular brand was at Home Depot.  Emily tinted hers a grayish white to paint on all 3 walls, as well as, a gray gallon for an accent on the 4th wall.  Kassidy did a vibrant white on all 4 walls with pops of turquoise as the accent color.  It took a gallon of paint per wall.

     Now it is time to get the supplies! Be prepared to buy lots of roller brush pads!  We went through a lot because it was easier to do that then rinse them out and make a mess all over our new counter tops and sink.  

 

     A small paint brush will be needed to do the edge work.  

     The most time consuming part of the project was taping off!! We used Blue Painters tape. We taped EVERYTHING off! Such as: white boards, base boards, ceiling, cupboards, light switches, electrical outlets, etc.  It was a lot of taping that's for sure!

  Once all the taping is done you are ready to paint! 

   Funny story moment! After we finished taping and started painting in our rooms we found this tiny hole in Kassidy's classroom above where her desk normally goes.

     We have been saying to our Principal for years we would like to take down the wall in between our classrooms and put in one of those folding walls.  Oh my goodness it went ALL the way through to Emily's.  It's a start! 

     No that eyeball in the hole is NOT photoshopped! It is Kassidy's eye! We sure had a good laugh.

    Now back to painting... Like we previously said this project takes a lot of time!  We did two coats of paint on all the walls.  But once we were finished it was such a great feeling.  A simple new coat of paint can really give a new fresh feel to your classroom!

     Here is a sneak peak of the almost finished rooms!  They are starting to really come together!

     Emily's room with the new white wall.  

   Emily's gray accent wall. 

     Kassidy's front wall painted white.

Thanks for visiting! Keep checking back for more upcoming projects and our finished classrooms!

-Kassidy and Emily

Chalkboard Tabletops!

We have been SO excited to share our favorite Classroom Makeover project that we've done this year!...Our CHALKBOARD TABLETOPS! We started out with all of our tables being a boring wood color like this:

These are the supplies we used:

We first primed all of our tables. (We had our primer tinted to a dark gray, and did two coats to ensure full coverage.) It dried pretty quick! We put one coat of primer on all of the tables (about 8) in one of our rooms, and then did the same in the other room. By the time we got back to the tables in the first room, they were ready for the second coat!

After the second coat was dry, we applied the first coat of Chalkboard Paint. It goes on pretty thin at first, so we ended up doing 3 coats of the chalkboard paint on each table. Just like we did for the primer, after we applied one coat to all of the tables in one room, we would go to the next room and do the same. We went back and forth between rooms to apply the next coat. For 8 tables, we used about a can and a half of the chalkboard paint all together. (It is about $10 a can at Lowes.) Great deal huh?! Another nice thing about painting these table tops was that we didn't have to do any dreaded prep work like taping! Here are what our tables looked like with 3 coats of chalkboard paint applied:

We wanted to add our own personal touch to add some color and cuteness to our tables that coordinated with our rooms, so we did this:

Emily used bright colored Duct Tape around the edges of her tables. She got the duct tape at a variety of stores including Walmart, Michael's Arts and Crafts, and Lowes. They turned out super cute huh? Note: Duct Tape Brand is the ONLY tape that will stick to the tables!

Kassidy used this acrylic paint in the color "Ocean Breeze" for the dots around the horseshoe tables, and a white acrylic paint in the same brand for the student tables. She used a round sponge brush to apply the dots. (She used the largest size sponge in the pack). The paint is from Michael's Arts and Crafts, and the sponges are from Walmart.

 

Our chalkboard tables are by far our FAVORITE project we have done this summer! We are really happy with how they turned out, and we think the students will have SO MUCH FUN writing on them this year! We will be sure to post our students doing activities with our new chalkboard tables this year. You can use them for practically anything...a quick quiz, handwriting practice, as a reward, you name it! We just LOVE projects that are simple, functional, and of course cute! This project fits into all of these categories!

 If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to comment below or email us at keclassworks@gmail.com. We'd be happy to help in any way!

Thanks for visiting! Keep checking back for more upcoming projects!

-Kassidy and Emily

Extreme Makeover Classroom Edition...THE COUNTERS!

Hey everyone! We hope you are getting some good ideas from our posts so far! Today we are talking about our classroom countertop makeover! (We know you already got a sneak peak of them in the pictures from our last post, but here are the deets!) Check out the before and after! Can you say MAJOR TRANSFORMATION?! We LOVE how they turned out!

Last year's makeover project was our chalkboard cupboards, and because we ran out of time to do our countertops, we had a little Halloween color scheme going on with our cute black cupboards and ORANGE counter tops! Ew! So...you better bet those bad boys were our first project this summer! If your countertops are needing some extra lovin' like ours:

Go to your local Lowes or HomeDepot and get the following supplies: 

This is the paint that we purchased for about $20 at Lowes. It is tintable to 16 different colors. We chose the "Light Ash" shade for ours. This Countertop Paint is SUPER durable, and you don't even have to do a primer before! We did 2 coats on our countertops to ensure full coverage.

We also purchased our rollers, trays, and roller covers at Lowes (they came in a little set for less than $6!) We also got some extra roller covers, which did come in handy!

AND...although this paint is AMAZING, it is SOOO potent! (No exaggeration...you could smell our rooms all throughout the school!) To prevent becoming high as a kite, you will need one (or more) of these:

Here are more pictures of the final product:

Keep checking back to see our next big step towards our "EXTREME MAKEOVER...CLASSROOM EDITION!" 

Thanks for following! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to comment below or email us at keclassworks@gmail.com!

-Kassidy & Emily

Classroom Cupboard Makeover!

     It is time to talk about getting your classroom ready for the school year!  Whether you have been teaching for what seems like a life time, this is your first year or you land some where in between it is always fun to decorate and style your classroom.  Of course we love making our classroom look like our own!  Face it, we practically live at the school for nine months!  So we need to make it as warm and inviting and functional as possible.  But, what do you do with a room that is at least 30 years old and have colors that you don't love or match your decor?! Of course paint!! The first thing we are going to tackle are those "lovely" cupboards.  You know that blue that was popular in the 70's? That's what the color of our cupboards was! Oh man it was awful.  So we thought about what we wanted to use our cupboards for first.  We have seen a lot of people tape different things on the cupboards or use it to tape the words for their word wall.  If you use the good kind of tape, the one that stays up all year long, it almost always leaves a sticky residue that never fully comes off.  If you try to use masking tape you'll end up constantly trying to put it back up. The struggle is endless! 

    

     So why not be able to just write directly on your cupboards?! The perfect solution is to paint chalk board paint on the cupboards!! The paint covers up the nasty color and it gives a lot of additional space to quickly write words or leave different messages for your class to read.  Of course you are going to want to ask permission from your principal or district since the paint is permanent. 

     

Just look how cute these chalkboard cupboards turned out!

     The first thing to do is to buy the paint.  We went to Lowes and bought the Valspar brand of interior all purpose latex primer.  It cost just under $12. We used one can of primer to do all the cupboards (the inside too).  We highly recommend tinting the primer since leaving it white was harder to cover.  We just asked them to tint it as dark as they possibly could which made it gray.   Then we purchased the Lowes Valspar brand of black chalkboard paint.  It cost just under $10 a can. 

     We bought 3 cans of the chalkboard paint, but used about 2 1/2 cans total.  It was nice to have just that little extra for touch ups. 

  

     After you have purchased all your paint and paint brushes (we rolled our paint on with the roller brush and foam brush pictured above) you can start to tape off different parts of the wall in order to not get any paint on things that don't need to be painted.  Now you are ready to paint!  We painted two coats of primer.  We waited about 2-4 hours in between coats.  We were also doing two classrooms at one time.

     After the primer is dry (we waited 24 hours on ours) you can start to paint with the chalkboard paint! We painted three coats of the chalkboard paint.  And again we waited about 2-4 hours in between coats.  Then we let it dry for about 24 hours.

    Now you have fabulous cupboards that look amazing and you can write on them!! So fun in a classroom!  Look how amazing our before and after of our cupboards are!

Look how fun and fabulous it looks to write on the cupboards to leave cute little messages for your students!

     Be sure to check back soon on how to paint the counter tops and to see what else we will be painting this summer!

-Kassidy & Emily

Follow Us!

Hey everyone! Just because we are just SO excited for the start of our new blog, we want to do a GIVEAWAY! All you have to do is:

1. Follow our blog. (Enter your email address under "Subscribe" on the sidebar) *PLEASE CHECK YOUR JUNK FOLDER IN YOUR EMAIL TO COMPLETE SUBSCRIPTION TO THE BLOG.*

2. Visit our TPT store KE Class-Works TPT

3. Browse the store and select an item $3.00 or less that you would like for FREE! Yes, you read that right...FREE!

4. Email us at keclassworks@gmail.com and let us know which item from our store you would like sent to you for FREE!

That's it! Simple enough right? Ready...set...go!