It's Beginning to Look A lot Like the First Day!

You know where I was on the last day of summer...at school! =) It may sound crazy to non-teachers but I know my teacher friends understand. As much as I love the kiddos there is something about working in the classroom when they aren't there that is so satisfying. I have to admit I really like going in the summer because I have exclusive rights to the laminator, color copier, and die cuts- no waiting in lines for me! It doesn't hurt either that during the summer I can still wake up sans alarm clock, sit and cuddle with my kitty for a few hours, and roll into school around noon during the summer. Oh well- back to the grind next week!

I wanted to give y'all a peek of what I've been up to this week. While I didn't do a whole lot of changes overall but I did a complete organization overhaul and added a few new Pinterest inspired touches! Let me know what you think!

My new classroom quilt- I will admit the main purpose of this display is to hide the one brick on the wall that is inexplicably a different color than all the rest. However it also serves the dual purpose of showing off my kiddos super star work. I'm planning on putting student names in the upper part of each square and then there will be space to place a 9.5x11 piece of work (landscape oriented) on the bottom section!

Wondering how to use all those word cards I posted yesterday? This is what I'm doing with mine. I've decided to do my calendar time completely on the SMART board but I still wanted my kids to have a reference place to look for days of the week, months, colors, etc.

My finished Behavior Bees- aren't they fun? I'm thinking we'll review them each time we leave our classroom.

From the left: the first board features our schedule (see cards in yesterday's post!), job board, lunch menu, and specials calendar. The second section of the board is our workstation rotation chart- It's the Debbie Diller one from Really Good Stuff. One side is the math work stations and the other is Literacy Work Stations. The 3rd board is my Common Core Standards board. I bought Deanna Jump's standards (super cute!).

A closer look! The board on the far right I'm going to use for giving instructions for group projects.

Not a great picture but this is my listening center organization inside my teacher easel. Each bin has a walkman, headphones, and an instructions sheet (check it out in yesterday's post). Children choose tapes and books from the pocket chart on the back of the easel.

I'm so proud of my focus wall! I've been looking to do this for awhile and I'm just tickled with how it turned out. The sections are: Days of School, Poetry focus, Read Aloud, Teacher Helper, Movement cards (from Kid's Yoga Deck), Math words, Class behavior, Data (I use the clipboard math activities from Lakeshore), mystery bag, name game, word family, and star words. Whew- that's a lot of stuff! I'm so excited to put it to use this year!

My newly organized math shelf. The bins on the bottom I will use for math workstations. In the small drawers on the top shelf I placed math game materials: dice, spinners, game pieces, timers, etc.

Supply bins are a constant struggle for me. We'll see how this idea from Pinterest goes! Anyone have a fool proof way of keeping supplies in their proper places?

Check out what I found at the Dollar Store today: Parts of speech cards and a pack of 4 spinners! Score!

I have a super busy weekend ahead: Antiques Road Show (long story but I'm so excited!) in the morning, Mom's b-day celebration, and sister's baby shower on Sunday! I'm hoping to still get some school things done though while my creative juices are flowing. What are you working on in these final days before the kiddos?

Happy Weekend!
Jessie