Classroom Tour 2012-2013

As sad as I am to see it go, Summer is officially over.  On Wednesday, we started school.  I really enjoyed my summer.  I read 11 novels, including the 50 Shades Trilogy twice.  I also rewatched all 10 seasons of "Friends", which is my all-time favorite TV series.  The husband and I also went to Branson for five days with his brother and sister-in-law.  It was a nice, short mini-vacation.  I also spent lots of time with friends and got tons of stuff made for my new first grade classroom.  Over the summer I also became a seller on Teachers Pay Teachers and love it.

I thought I would post some pictures of my new classroom, as I love to see how other people set up their rooms.  Here is what I came back to find in my room:

I started to work in my classroom in mid-July.  I was going in for a few hours in the afternoons, following some professional development classes that I had been taking.  Mark McLeud (sp) was by far the best presenter that I have ever seen, speaking on Classroom Management and Motivating the Unmotivated.  His big push was creating an emotional bank account with your students and making deposits with them before you start to make withdrawls, otherwise they will shut down on you.  Here are some pictures of what my classroom looks like now that I am done, or as done as your room ever can be!

Here is the view looking left from my classroom door.  To the left is the only storage I have in those cabinets and the students' cubbies.  On the  black shelf to the left is all of my math manipulatives.  The trapezoid table houses my Poetry Station.  The big long shelf to the left holds my classroom library.

This is looking more to the right from my classroom door. In the far corner are my two student computers and my puzzle/game shelf.  Those boxes are our new FOSS science curriculum.  My guided reading table is in the middle and my teacher desk to the right.  I have my students in groups of 4 or 5 for Kagan groupings.  I am going to use community supplies, using the caddies in the middle of the desk groups.

This is a view from the back of my room looking forward.  Again you see my desk area.  In front of that is my Listening Station and my White Board.  We are getting Promethean boards sometime this year.....On the floor in front of the board is my Big Book Station.

This is looking right from the back corner.  You will see my Writing Station at the table and the cabinet/cubbies.

This is the now-clean area that is my desk.  My document camera is on the filing cabinet, as well as my Mobi.  Behind my desk I keep my fridge and microwave and all of my teacher materials.  The pixie stick balloons are courtesy of Pinterest.



Here is a glimpse into my new first grade classroom.  I will post more pictures explaining my Literacy and Math Workstations areas of the room soon.  More posts will follow about my classroom library, Word Wall, and cabinet contents.  I hope that everyone enjoyed their summer and are having fun setting up for your first days of school!

Mini Tubs

This year I am chaning my decor to polka dots and my colors to pink, purple, blue, and green.  I am super excited about all of the fun things that I have found so far!  While at the Dollar General the other day (Family Dollar also has these), I stumbled upon these mini tubs.  I thought that they would work great for things like drawing classroom numbers from.  So I busted out my Cricut and some vinyl and made some letters.  This was my first adventure using vinyl and it wasn't too bad. 

Here are the before pictures of the mini tubs:

Here is my vinyl post-cutting:

As you can see, I cut the letters too big the first time.  Oh, well!  The font used is Simply Sweet.

Here are the finished tubs:

I plan on putting these on top of a shelf at the front of my classroom.  In the numbers tub is a class set of numbers. When I want to randomly pick a student, I pull the number out of the tub.  Each student is assigned a number.  You can get the numbers that I use HERE.  In the voices tub, I have cards with different types of voices to use.  I like to use these when we are doing rote counting or something like that to change it up.  You can get those cards HERE. The Brain Breaks tub contains simple motions/activities to get the students up and moving for a few moments during looooong lessons.  You can get those ideas HERE.

Classroom Jobs

Inspired by all of the super creative sellers out there on TPT, I was inspired to try it out myself and create Classroom Jobs for my new polka dot themed classroom.  I am going to print these out, glue them onto library pockets, and laminate.  I use popsicle sticks with their names on the end to rotate my jobs, which I will do weekly. 

Here is what I came up with:

 I also did a version using primary colors:

Here Goes!

Hello Everyone!

I want to start off by welcoming you to my very first blog and my very first blog post.  I will tell you a little bit about myself.  I just completed my 3rd year of teaching, one year of which was in a self-contained behavior Kindergarten classroom and the last two years were in at At-Risk Preschool classroom in the elementary school.  This next year I am moving to 1st grade....and I couldn't be more excited about it!!!!

I live in Topeka, Kansas with my wonderful husband and 3 Daschunds (Buster, Rocky, and Mason).  When I am not at school or doing school things I like to read for pleasure, go swimming and fishing, scrapbook, make cards, hang out with my BFF, play with my nephew (Graham-a-ham-ham), and organize :)  Here is us on our anniversary:

When it comes to school and my classroom, I am one of the most organized teachers that I know. I love for things to be in tubs and labeled for easy identification and location when I need it. I also love to have things out for the students to axcess, such as manipulatives and an extensive classroom library. I am a believer in making the students be accountable for the classroom as well, which is where the endless labels come into play for me. I label the tub and then the shelf where the tub goes, so that there is no confusion about where things should be put back.

As well as starting to blog, I have also just started a Teachers Pay Teachers store.  You can check out my 2 things I have made so far.  You can find my store by clicking here.Hopefully, there will be many more projects to come before going back to school at the end of July to start setting up my new classroom.  The past two years have been owl and frog themes and this year is POLKA DOTS (Thanks to Erica Bohrer's great packet I found on here blog and her TPT store).  You can find that here.

My goal with this blog is to share my ideas about education and organization and hopefully inspire other teachers.  I have loved finding blogs and getting great ideas, so I thought that I would share mine.  Thanks for visiting and I hope to have many more posts to come!