Ready for First Day of School

I have been working hard for the past week to get my room ready for the kiddos to come back!  Here is what I have done with my room for this year:

I made new labels for the math tools.  Hopefully this will help to keep all of the manipulatives in order.

I also changed my word wall to black so that the words would stand out better.  

I hung up these inspirational posters in the reading area.  I got the two on the right from the Etsy shop 3 Bears Studio.

I am also trying something new to hold all of their things.  We have tables so the students have to put their folders and things somewhere.  I have tried using seat sacks and a container in the middle of the table.  But the seat sacks just end up a big paper mess and the buckets do too.  So I have 2 bookshelves at the end of 2 of my tables.  Each table has a shelf of stuff.  We will see how that goes this year.

I got the idea for my door from a poster on Pinterest and then used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out the pieces.

I had some extra birds and I knew I wanted to use twine with clothespins to hold the work so I came up with this bulletin board for outside the classroom.

And here is my comfortable reading area for the kids.  I got these chairs on sale at Target for $20 each.

Gearing up for school!

It looks like its that time again!  Trainings have started, school supplies are on sale, and its time to start thinking about the beginning of the school year.  What worked last year?  What needs to be changed?  One thing that I have consistently used for the past couple years is the Daily Five.  I love using this organization of my literacy block.  I have created a document that condenses the Daily Five for me into how I am going to introduce it over the first six weeks of school.  I find that it is easier to refer to this each week when planning rather than going back through the book each week.  I usually review the book at the beginning and make any changes to my document that I feel are needed.  So here it is in case it might help you too!

Got My Promethean Board

I finally had my Promethean Board installed in my classroom last week!!! I was so excited and surprised to walk into my room and see it hanging on my chalkboard. Unfortunately, I am not going to be able to go to a training until January! I was super bummed to hear that. I have started playing with it though and trying to figure out some things on my own. I have become very familiar with www.prometheanplanet.com though and have found several different lessons on there to use. I am really excited to sit down and play with the software to make my own lessons.

If you have any suggestions for other places to go for lessons with the Promethean Board, please leave a link :)