Sunday, September 1, 2013

Classroom Tour 2013-14

Happy Labor Day Weekend!
Who has two thumbs and is excited to have a 3-day weekend? THIS GIRL! ;o) .......I know, I know...it's totally corny, but I'm in a corny kinda mood for some reason.
I think I mentioned this in a previous post, but just in case I didn't...I moved classrooms this summer. It is my 3rd time moving in 7 years, so I felt a teeny bit prepared to make the move. Although even the mere thought of moving all of my CRAP wonderful array of teaching tools makes me cringe and have major anxiety every time. I have that teacher hoarding gene where when someone is giving their old stuff away, I can't stand the thought of it being thrown away, and I take it thinking that I can find something to do with it later on down the road. It's a great way to inherit great stuff, but it's also a way to accumulate as much stuff as a 30 year retiring teacher!!! With lots and lots of help from my assistant and the custodians, we packed every last pattern block and book away and moved it across campus to my beautiful new-to-me room in the kindergarten building! Home at last!! :o)

We went with a color scheme this year: aquaish, lime green, and black. I ordered all of our borders to coordinate as well as, well, just about everything else. I'm digging it so far. I think it adds a calmness to the craziness of kindergarten! ;o)

Feeling a little silly about it now, but I made sure to take my yearly night before kindergarten photos of our room and then didn't get a chance to blog. That was 2 weeks ago. So, without further ado, I give you our 2013-14 kindergarten classroom...

Okay, pretend like you walk into the kindergarten building. There is a large center room with all of our blue cubbies. The three kindergarten classrooms open up from this center room. When you walk up to my room, there is a little alcove (my assistant and I joked that it is our foyer and we were going to put her desk out there so she could act as our secretary). Here is our alcove with a storage armoire, entry table, and our owl tree...


 Then as you walk in our official front door, straight ahead is this view:
(The curtains were my August project and turned out better than I thought they would! I'll post about them a little later...) All of this furniture was in the old room, but this rug was left behind! Love!!!


If you stay standing at the door and turn left, you get this view:
(student tables and my teacher area in the back...LOVING my storage!!)


Better angle:


New behavior chart:
(I made the green thing on top and the color cards, classroom rules are from another teacher...linked in my last post)



STILL standing at the front door, turn right, and here's what you'll see:
(Remember my last post and the brownie points? That's them along with a few other great Pinterest finds like the labels and class motto)


Loved how this turned out! I simply typed up the words "teacher helper," etc. and glued them to the pink paper. One of our K teachers had the letters for Helpers and is letting me use them.


View of my assistant's desk and the art center. MORE FABULOUS STORAGE!


More curtains...and my wonderful parking spot outside: about 10 steps from the back door! 
{Spoiled Rotten}


View from my teacher area:


Grandma's rocking chair and my updated calendar meeting area:


Future word study/writing center in the little alcove in our room:
{Definitely needed the curtains so we can close them when other children are playing on the playground during center time!!!}


Computer/Listening Center:
{I think I'm going to switch this with the word study/writing center so we can utilize this bulletin board a little better}




So that was the set up two weeks ago...this is an updated picture from Friday. We put up the word wall and the alphabet cards that go with our reading series. Also, the blinds in our room only go down that far, so the sun shines in our eyes first thing in the morning on the carpet. Did some switching around and trying the rocking chair on the other side of the room. HOWEVER, I do not like my back to the front door, so I need to find a solution fast!

New arrangement:


New word wall and some student work:



Do you have a suggestion on what I should do with the big windows in the morning? I'm thinking about asking for another set of blinds to put on the bottom of the window.

Thanks for checking out our room! Hope your school year is going well so far! :o)

...be at peace, and all will be well...