Goodbye to Ugly Floral

The ugly floral bench.

When I moved into my first apartment before my junior year at Pacific, I didn't have very much furniture. Like most people moving into their first apartment, I had little to no furniture. Other than my bedroom furniture I only had a kitchen table and a recliner. My roommate only had her bed. The first week in our new place, we decided to have some friends over. In the midst of our get together, someone knocked on the door. We were so used to being in the dorms that we figured someone was going to complain that we were being too loud! However, to my surprise, a man was standing at the door holding this ugly floral bench. He stared at me for a second then said, "I noticed you guys just moved in, and I was wondering if you needed some more furniture. Do you want this bench?" That is the story of how I came to own the ugly floral bench. I had it for around two years before I even thought about fixing it up. It sat by my front door, hiding my shoes underneath it. Last summer, I was only working part-time so I had some extra time on my hands. For some time I had been unhappy with how our strange, mismatched, hand-me-down furniture looked. I was grateful to have furniture, but it sure wasn't pretty. After some searching on the HGTV website, and a few other sites, I figured I could give the bench a makeover. I set off to a few stores and grabbed my supplies. Here's how I gave my bench a makeover:

  Supplies:

          

•  Staple gun and staples (electric or manual)
• Home decor fabric (I bought a half yard but used slightly less)
• Primer (either spray paint or traditional is fine)
• Paint (either spray paint or traditional is fine)
• Paintbrush, if you are not using spray paint
• Sandpaper, sanding block, or an electric sander
• A tarp
• Protective face mask (to protect from debris and/or fumes)
• A screw driver
• Ziploc bags
• Iron/ironing board. 

I apologize that there are not pictures for each of the instructions, but I completed this project last summer. 

1. Flip over the bench and locate your screws that attach the seat to the wooden frame. (This should have been my first step, but I decided to sand first and it was more difficult.) Unscrew every screw you find, and place the screw safely into a Ziploc baggie. Keep these in a safe place! There might also be glue attaching your seat to your frame, but you should be able to take the two pieces apart quite easily. 
2. Sand your frame until you can not see anymore of the shiny finish. Use a medium grit sandpaper first, then sand the frame again with a fine grit sandpaper. It doesn't have to be perfect. You are just wanting to create a smooth base for your primer and paint to stick to. 
3. Lay out your tarp, and place your frame on top of it. If you are using spray paint look around and make sure that there is nothing around you that could be ruined by spray paint flecks, because they will probably happen (especially if you are outside.) 
4. Prime the bench using either your paint or spray paint. Try to do an even coat, especially if you are using spray paint. Walk away, and let it dry.
5. Repeat Step 4 with the paint color of your choice. Let it dry completely before your next coat. My bench needed two complete coats, and one or two touch-ups since I bumped it while it was drying. 
6. Either after painting or while waiting for your coats to dry, get out your seat, fabric, and staple gun. 
7. Your fabric should already be washed and dried. You should also iron it. Lay your fabric out onto your work space, right side down. Place the top side or your seat onto the fabric. If your fabric has stripes or some other pattern, make sure that it is straight. It would be such a shame if you finished the project and your fabric looked crooked!
• Note: I did not choose to remove the floral fabric. If you would like to then go for it! Be warned that you may need to add more padding or batting if you find the originals to be ruined. 
8. Once your seat is placed where you want it, you are ready to staple. I started in the middle of my seat on one of the long sides. This seemed to work quite well. Pull your fabric over the edge and onto the bottom of the seat. The fabric should be taut, but not too tight. Again, you do not want to mess up your beautiful pattern. When you are satisfied with how it feels, put a staple in there! Continue this process until you have completed one of the long sides of the seat. Stop stapling about 1 inch from each of the ends. 
9. Next, repeat the fabric pulling and stapling process on the other long side. Trust me, if you do the  short sides next it will be more difficult to make pretty corners. 
10. Repeat the fabric pulling and stapling on each of the short sides of the seat. Again, stop stapling about 1 inch from each of the ends. 
11. Now it's time for the corners! These can be tricky, so take your time. Pinch the fabric together, and pull it down onto the seat. At this point I looked at the top of the seat to see if I liked how the corner looked. When I was happy with how the fabric was laying, I stapled it. Staple the corners a few more times to make sure it looks just how you want it. Repeat on the remaining three corners. Now your picture should look like the one below.

The completed re-upholstery. I love this fabric. 

  12.  Now find that Ziploc bag of screws that you put somewhere safe. Attach your seat to your frame. 

  13.  Take pictures! You've officially re-upholstered something :)

Before: The lovely floral upholstery
and the wood after sanding.

After: The finished project! Much better! 

I Love 5th Grade

          I had a marvelous day last Thursday. That's right people, I was with 27 fifth graders all day and it was MARVELOUS. Was my day perfect? Of course not, but it was a great day. My mentor teacher and I decided that I would be doing the math lesson for the day, we would be working on story problems. So I sat down at the desk next to the Promethean board (it's similar to a Smartboard) and read over my lesson plan notes. I was waiting for the students to start coming in and starting their morning routine. The next thing I knew, I was surrounded by nearly half of the students. "Ms. Preston how old are you?" Next came the guesses. 19? 21? 30? One of the boys jokingly threw out the number 45. I asked him if I looked 45, and he very wisely said no! Why the sudden interest with my age? Well I only get to see these kiddos twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In order to stay connected to them I write them a note on the whiteboard at the end of each day so they will see it the next morning. Usually, I'll tell them that I assigned new classroom jobs and will let them know the next time I will see them. But on Tuesday afternoon, I had nothing to write to them. I wasn't going to change classroom jobs until Thursday, but I really wanted to leave them a note. Suddenly, I got the idea to give them a trivia question. I was trying to think about something fun to ask them and I decided to ask them a question about me. So I wrote on the board, "Question...how old is Ms. Preston?" I couldn't believe how excited they were! A simple question written on a whiteboard was all I needed to stay connected to them while I was unable to be in their classroom. I didn't want to tell them the answer so I told them the year I was born, 1989. I didn't plan it this way, but telling them the year I was born actually helped me teach my math lesson.
         Math lessons always start with Mental Math. Usually Mental Math involves a quick round of basic multiplication problems. Today Mental Math asked for numbers to be expanded. So if the number was 203.68 the students needed to write 203.68= 200 + 3 + 0.6 + 0.08  Getting through the nine Mental Math problems today was pretty brutal. The students had worked with expanding numbers earlier in the week, but today it was as if they had completely forgot. Using the Promethean board, I drew names and asked four students to each solve a problem for me. One by one they came up to the board and attempted to complete the problems. All of the children were unsure of themselves, no one seemed very eager to solve the problem, which typically isn't an issue. Mental Math was taking much too long and the children didn't seem to be getting much out of it, so I decided to have us solve the last five problems together. This went more smoothly, but still was fairly rough. We had to go over place values because that definitely seemed like a point of confusion. By the time we were working on the last two problems the students seemed more confident in themselves. Thinking about it, I wonder if the purpose of expanding numbers doesn't make sense to them. It is kind of an odd concept if you think about it.
        Finally, we made it to the math lesson. During my math lesson we talked about true and false number sentences, and variables. It was the first time the students had worked with variables. This is where the year I was born comes in. I realized I hadn't thought of a way to explain a variable. Oy vey! Then I remembered that when I only gave them the year I was born, I had set up a way to solve for a variable. After telling the class what I variable was, I explained...."When I told you what year I was born you figured out how old I was. How?" They explained that they knew if the subtracted 1989 from 2012 they would know my age. So I wrote 2012 - 1989 on the board. We then talked about how the number we found would be my age. I added in the variable on the board so my problem read 2012 - 1989 = t   I realized almost immediately that I should have used a to represent age, but I didn't want to cause confusion so I stuck with t. We talked about how t= Ms. Preston's age therefore our solution is    t = 23. During this last minute example I also mentioned how important it was to find the necessary information when trying to solve story problems We moved to the example problem in the book and practiced it together. The students had to find the numbers needed to solve the problem, write an open number sentence, find the solution, and find the answer. The students completed the next two problems on their own before we worked them out together on the board. This went much better than the Mental Math. The students seemed more confident during this time then they had earlier. The lesson lasted much longer than I had anticipated, but when I expressed this concern to my mentor teacher she told me that the kids were moving very slowly today. That helped.
        In the midst of this slightly chaotic math lesson, the principal walked in with a man I had never seen before. The principal stops by the classroom every now and then, and I find her very approachable. But, this WAS the first time she had seen me teach. Hard as it was, I tried to continue my lesson without directly acknowledging her as I was concerned about losing the focus of the students. It felt awkward to not acknowledge her, but I was trying to set an example for the kids. Once I completed math I walked the students to recess and headed towards the staff room for a quick personal trip. On my way I ran into the principal and the man. We stopped to chat for a minute, and both the principal and man said how excited they were that they got to see me teach. Then the man gave me a compliment that  made me beam. "You looked so comfortable when you were up there," he told me. Oh happy day! I actually looked like I belong at the front of a classroom. As you can imagine, I was thrilled to have been given such a compliment.
        After recess the children got to work on their Daily 5. During Daily 5 each student gets to choose up to five things to work on, depending on how much time we have that day. The options include working on their spelling, finishing their stories, playing math games, reading to a partner, playing math games on an iPod, or reading quietly to themselves. I got to spend some one-on-one time with two students day while we played math games together, and it was more insightful than I expected. First I played a math multiplication game called Top-It with a girl whom I view as shy. She taught me how to play Top-It. Each person draws two cards from a pile of special cards. Then, they must multiply the numbers on their cards. Whoever has the highest answer wins that round. While playing Top-It with her, I think I talked to her the most I have so far. In fact, I had never realized she had a lisp, because she typically doesn't talk much. She was slow to state her answer, I could see her counting the numbers in her head making sure she had the correct answer before she said it out loud. We only spent 15 minutes together, but I learned more about her during that game than I had in the past few weeks. I wish I could get this one-on-one time with every one of my students. Perhaps I'll try to make that a goal throughout my year.
       My mentor teacher and I had planned on completing the first science project of the year today, but unfortunately time was against us. Instead I led the science lesson on drawing conclusions; they had talked about research, observations, and hypotheses the previous day. We finished the chapter by talking about drawing conclusions, and then answered some questions regarding the entire chapter. We came to a question about how scientists and regular people use these strategies to solve everyday problems. I read it and thought about it....I hadn't really had an opportunity to look over the lesson before we worked on it. Suddenly, a light bulb popped into my head. No, really! I explained the example of a light bulb being burnt out. We talked about how if the light bulb in your bedroom was burnt out, you might make hypotheses about what the problem was and how you would fix it. You would complete "research" by going to the breaker box and flipping the switch, then go back to your bedroom and complete an "observation" about what happened. If the light bulb still didn't work then we would be another hypothesis, and complete more research by putting in a new light bulb. Then we would observe what happened when the new light bulb was put in (in my example the light now worked.) Finally we would draw conclusions about what we had just done and observed. I was pretty pleased with how this example worked out. It seemed to be a more concrete idea that the children had experienced. I am definitely excited to start doing more science and experiments with them!
      The last thing lesson I did for the day was vocabulary. It was the first time the class had done vocabulary, so I'm glad I got to be there so I wouldn't be lost in the future. The vocabulary comes from the Language Arts books. So the day before they read the story, they work on the vocabulary that they will find in the story. We use the Promethean board, and the children write in their vocabulary dictionary. They write the word, the definition, and then draw a picture that will help them remember the word. I really like that they have to draw a picture! That wasn't something I remembered doing during my own education, but I would create a picture in my head to help me remember new words. The concept totally makes sense to me, and the kids seem to like it. After vocabulary it was time to go home. It was a long day, but it was a wonderful day.
    Oh....remember how I said I put some trivia on the board for the kids so they will remember me on the days I can't be there? Well, the next day was their picture day so I wrote, "What did Ms. Preston wear for her 5th grade picture? Smile big!" Not going to lie, I was pretty happy that I thought of it. I'm bringing the picture on my next day so they can all giggle at how I looked.

The note I left my kiddos.

My 5th grade school picture.
Don't judge, it was 1999.

     
   The more time I spend with these kids, the more I know that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. I am loving every moment of my student teaching! Even when I come across issues or difficulties, my days at the elementary are spectacular. Teaching is what I'm meant to do. I love 5th grade.