Welcome back folks!
Today I'm linking up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics to share my Monday Made It. Read on to find out what I've been working on.
Every year, I always have a handful of students that need a little extra guidance in using
proper spacing in their writing. Last summer, I
painstakingly stupidly hand-painted a set of 30 adorable Spaceman Sticks. (I wish I had taken a picture of them!) They took quiet a good amount of time to complete but I was SO pleased with how they turned out that I honestly didn't think too much about the amount of time that I had invested in them! As it turned out, these Spacemen proved to be such a great tool for all
of my students to have access to during the school year. I let my kids keep them in their pencil boxes all year long so they would never have an excuse for incorrect spacing in any of their writing and they worked like a charm!
Fast forward to the end of the year and they were (not surprisingly) in pretty bad shape. Worn and chipped (maybe well-loved is a better word?) they certainly showed their age in just one year's use. Despite their wear, my kids loved using them and I couldn't bear to take them back from them so I just let them keep them and made a note to make more this summer.
While I really did love my old ones, when I really thought about it, the time it took me to hand-paint each one was just not practical or a smart use of my time. I couldn't in good conscience invest that much time again this summer. I still wanted my kids to have these tools next year but I needed a faster way of creating them. In response to this need, I set to work on designing a more efficient set of Spaceman Sticks:
This time, I sketched the little spaceman by hand ONE time, traced him digitally ONE time, and then used this graphic to create a template of 12 strips that I could print out over and over again. This was definitely WAY more efficient than my efforts last summer! Seriously, I don't know why I didn't do this last year! Haha! Oh well... In any case, I'm SO jazzed about how these new ones turned out and they really were pretty easy to assemble. From printing to completion it probably took me about 2.5 hours to make 36 of them. Keep in mind that this time frame also includes the "waiting/drying time" during which I was also working on other things so it really took me even less time! (I'm not even going to tell you how much time I spent hand painting my sticks last year...)
What follows is the assembly process in case you are curious about how they came together:
1. After printing out the template out on full sheet label paper, I used my paper cutter to cut out the strips and then attached the strips to jumbo craft sticks.
I opted to print them on full sheet label paper instead of plain printer paper. The label paper really helped streamline the process and made it less messy than it could have been if I had just used plain paper and glue.
2. After applying the strips to the jumbo craft sticks, I used scissors to trim the excess around the edges. (You could also take it a step further and use sandpaper to neatly file the paper down but I realized that step a little too late!)
3. Next I brushed on a thin coat of Mod Podge over the front of the stick.
4. When the Mod Podge dried, I went outside (for proper ventilation) and applied 3 coats of Glossy Acrylic Sealer. You have to wait a few minutes between coats but according to the can, it's more effective to do 3 thin coats rather than one heavy coat. Also, before spraying anything, I always like to put whatever I'm spraying into a box lid. It keeps the mess a little more contained and makes it easy to transport it all too.
After all was said and done, these were obviously a LOT less labor intensive than individually painting each one. I still love my hand-painted ones, but happily these are equally as cute and a heck of a lot easier to make. Most importantly, they will be equally effective in helping my new class this year and I won't have any regrets about letting my kids hold on to them at the end of the year since I know how easy they are to make.
After making the sticks, I decided to put together a little packet to complement them. This mini-packet is in my shop and is on sale for the next 48 hours.
The mini-packet includes:
- the Spaceman Stick templates
- assembly directions
- anchor chart
- 2 practice pages
- printable certificates
Here's a preview of some of what you'll find inside:
I wanted to make this packet a little bit more than just a Spaceman template so I designed a matching anchor chart that can be displayed in the classroom as a gentle reminder. There are also two practice sheets for students to complete. The practice sheets include a few sentences that are written with incorrect spacing (some places have too much spacing, some places there is not enough). They can rewrite the sentences with correct spacing and use the Spaceman Sticks to help them do it! I also added a blank writing sheet that has an editing checklist at the bottom. The checklist includes: capital letters at the start of each sentence, ending punctuation and of course, spaces between each word! Finally, I have included a page with printable certificates that can be awarded to students who master the convention of proper spacing! If this sounds like something you could use in your classroom, head on over to my shop while it's still on sale!
You can click directly on the preview picture or right
here to go see it in my TPT shop.
Alright friends, that's all I've got for you today. Thanks so much for reading! Be sure to head over to 4th Grade Frolics to check out what all the other Monday Made-it linkers have been up to today!
