Picture Day

I finally took pictures of my classroom. It's changed a little bit since the beginning. For one, I had to move everything that I could to a high shelf, so there's not much clutter on the tables, which although I like the lack of clutter, I HATE that my high shelves are packed and every two seconds I have to reach up and pull stuff down for the class to use. Also, as kids started coming in, I realized some things weren't placed super practically, so I changed it. Flexibility... it's a huge part of teaching.

I don't know how well I can line up the pictures and the dialogue, but I'll try. And sorry, blogger used to rotate the pictures for me, but this time it decided to keep them sideways.

It took until right up to the beginning of school to get my name up above my door. At the beginning of summer, I looked every day to see if it was up there. It never was, and I kind of forgot about it. But, the day it went up (once I noticed), I was so excited. It was really fun seeing my name up there :o)

Unfortunately I waited one day too long to take pictures of my room. My precious little angel of a student decided that I was for sure NOT his favorite person on Friday. So when he left the classroom, he thought it would be a great idea to pull a paper curly-q off the door and rip it up in the hallway. It doesn't make a huge difference in the decor, but it did add an extra special something, and now the "swinging into" and "2nd grade" aren't connected.

We all know, my classroom is a rain forest theme, so I have vines hanging down for the ceiling, and the blue ribbon is supposed to look like rain (and it did stand out more before I decided to hang the vines and "moss").

Every classroom needs a word wall, where high frequency words that students oober need to learn to spell go up. I turned mine into the "waterfall words" wall. Unfortunately the waterfall I made didn't fit into the laminating machine, so I had to cut it in half and then stick the two pieces up. So lame, but by time I realized it didn't fit (I thought it would work to angle it), it was already in.

I was so happy when I finally found a tree to put up in my room. I knew I wanted to do "Banana Birthdays" but I was so scared I would have to make my own tree because for all the hunting I was doing, I wasn't coming up with any trees. I eventually found this one and I'm going to have to say that it turned out pretty well.

To introduce students to the class, we did a thing called "King or Queen for a Day." They took a crown and a bag home. They decorated their crown and brought in 5 objects to share with the class. We sang a song about okapis (ha ha, I'm so proud that I squeezed the okapi into it all :o) and they got their picture taken. I now have a wall with the members of the class up on it. It's nice, gives them ownership of the classroom, and helps everyone remember each others' names. Oh, that lime green board is the daily schedule. I really need to be better at changing that on days when we have PE and Library, or on Mondays where we have a shorter day. Yeah, I'll get on that one.

The math corner is also where we do calendar in the morning. The easel easel is a useful spot where we can do whatever. Mostly it's language stuff, but today I used it for a friendship lesson, it's also where we have class meetings. It's just a spot where they go when their seats aren't working for them, and I need them to be closer to me, and less distracted. And, had I not had such a curious student in my classroom, there would be centers set up on those desks and tables. But for now, it works that I hide the centers until center time, and then I bring them out and set them on the table. That way works too.

The sink area has a hippo to designate the "wash station." Then the monkeys were a last minute throw in because I realized it would probably be a good idea to post the colors, since all the other teachers were :o)

The reading area is one of the most exciting parts of my classroom for me. Mostly that's because I inherited so many books!!! Oh my freaking gracious that was helpful :o) Although it was a ton of work to organize them and label them and all that jazz, I was glad that I had a lot to go through, and it was good because it gave me a chance to look through all the books I have. And it was a good thing too, because there were several books that I had to take out. Case in point, "The Stupids Die" yeah, didn't want that one in there. That's not teaching the students how to treat other people well. Oh, and the snake thing was no picnic. Unfortunately I struck out at the stores. All summer, and not a single large snake anywhere. I finally found snake paper and made my own, but it was too curly. I had to wrap it around the vine, but that wasn't too smooth of a process either. Anyway, I finally got it all up, and I'm pretty proud of my reading area now.

This last picture is just a picture of my front board. Up above I have the alphabet (inherited from Pennie), then I have the doubles, the white board with the date and a pattern of the day, and then underneath the board I made a little grassy area where the students love to read.

So that's it. That's my room. It's nothing so incredible, but I like it. Today was the 22nd day of school, and I can say that I for sure feel like the teacher. It is my room, my class, and although I know I'm not doing everything exactly right, I'm doing the best I can, and I don't think I'm really screwing anything up that badly :o)