Teachers Pay Teachers Back to School Sale

I am participating in the TpT Back to School Sale! Click below to go to my store and save 20% on all my products starting tomorrow morning!!!

**I just got back from our family vacation yesterday and start school on Monday (no kiddos) then Tuesday with kiddos!  So be sure to check back soon to see how the first week went!

A Few More Pics of My Room....

I spent a few more hours at school again today. And with the help of my daughter I erased several things off my to-do list!

But first-as promised a picture of my hanging names! Love them!

Also got to label my math station tubs/drawers. I only did 6 last year with students working in small groups. I decided I like partners much better so that's why so many tubs!
















We cleaned up and straightened up my poetry station. I was hanging "later in the year" poems on those top hooks and my daughter asked..."how are they going to reach those?". I literally laughed out loud! Never a dull moment.

I actually did this the other day, but I organized all those zillion manipulatives/games for my stations into supply tubs. It might actually be easier to find things this year!

The before and after of a project right up my daughters alley! Duct tape table for word work station. (I took the legs home to spray paint. For some reason the blue does nothing for me!)

And today was labeling day-labels for writing tub, graded papers, intervention tub, student files, closet hooks, mailboxes and lunch chart. Yikes! That was a lot of labels. Some I did numbers so I shouldn't have to redo next year, but others were student names. I am waiting til the day before school starts to adhere many of them. I hate when I gain/lose students those few days before school starts-always messes with abc order!

And finally a pic of student book baskets-including their number and 2 clips to check out books from the classroom library.

Oh-I cannot forget a big thanks to Molly for cleaning out/organizing my indoor recess games! That was a task I was avoiding for sure!

One more day in my room and I should be good to go! Yeah!

What I've Been Up To.... A Peek into my Classroom

The beginning of the 2012-2013 school year is creeping up on me....I have less than 2 weeks until a brand new set of firsties greet me at my door!  Ahhh!  I am so excited to meet them, but need to finish getting ready.  I still have a family vacation to fit in as well so I have been busy setting up, as well as cleaning my room.  I decided that I am a packrat when it comes to school stuff...you never know when I might need that!

One thing I got done was an overhaul on my classroom library with some new jungle themed book basket labels.  Maybe someday I'll paint all those baskets so they match like so many creative teachers out there!  I put stickers on my books with a matching sticker on the basket label so the kiddos have a better chance at putting their books away correctly.  I decided to go a step further with using clips this year with their number on them to also help.  When they get a book they will put a clip on that basket.  They only get two clips at the beginning of the year so this will also slow down the "hogging" of favorite books!

Another thing I accomplished was to figure out a way to display those core standards without using a whole bunch of velcro.  I found Deanna Jump's file of the first grade standards and decided hers would be alot easier than me making them, but I didn't want to display them the way she suggested-only because I am a cheap skate and am always trying to figure out how to do things/get things for free or fairly cheap.  Anyways, she suggests velcro-well as you all know velcro is expensive.  So this is what I came up with:

As you can see I have an odd space to the left of my projector screen-which worked perfect for this.  I made some subject headers Jungle Themed of course, printed on cardstock and laminated.  I also laminated all of the 1st grade common core standards.  Then I punched a hole on either end of the cards.  (Even the subjects in case they need to changed out.)  I then used small ended thumbtacks to "hang" my standards on.  Here's a closer (a bit blurry) view:

Another project (besides cleaning, cleaning, and cleaning) that I do every year is mere decoration.  I make hanging names to greet all of students on the first day of school.  They usually stay up for 3 weeks before they begin to drive me crazy.  I punch out letters for each child's name from the ellison machine, staple them together, punch a whole on the top and then hang from my ceiling.  The students usually can't wait for them to come down either because they want to hang them up in their own rooms at home!

{Picture of names hanging in my room COMING SOON!}

I also worked on pulling my Jungle Books back together and organizing student math tool kits.  Pictures and info to come soon.....I have a list of things to do as I head in tomorrow to finish up a bunch of little things.

First three people to leave a comment can get a copy of my Jungle Themed Book Box labels for FREE!  (Also available at my TpT store if you aren't one of the first three!) Be sure to leave your email address!