What a week…
We don’t know about you guys, but we are T-Minus 9 hours and 8 minutes from the first school bell of the year, and we can hardly wait. We’re so excited to meet our new batch of fantastic first graders, but we’re totally nervous too. It doesn’t seem to matter how long we’ve been teaching, we always get the first day jitters. Do you get nervous for the first day? Typically, Christy’s brain is so full of ideas tonight, she crashes. Tammy on the other hand, sits with a brain so full that she n.e.v.e.r.s.l.e.e.p.s. the night before school. So, what to do…Well, blog of course!
We know you are all crazed at the moment and we do not want to waste any of your precious time. Unless you too are burning the midnight oil? Well then ~ slap on your Cozy, fire up the chamomile and let’s DO this! 🙂
Somewhere back in the time, during this thing called “summer”, we recall having some crazy idea about redoing our entire classroom. Call it a Pinterest curse or summer boredom, but this was just the beginning of what we bit off…
We had plans. B-I-G plans.
We did not count the hours. We do not care to know. We had a wonderful time hanging out together, creating, sharing, planning, and validating each other’s crazy ideas and running with them. That’s what teacher friends are for!
Here’s a quick view of the results…
Welcome to Our Classroom
So, we obviously went with the blue, green, and white tones, but we do vaguely remember blogging something about, “We both agree everything doesn’t have to be matchy-matchy.”. Hmmmm, yeah…Kinda knew we’d blow that one after the lanterns. But, we have to say this is the first time we’ve ever stuck with a specific color scheme and it actually made things super focused. We are now official pros at scouring every dollar spot, discount store, and garage sales galore with only 3 things in mind ~ Blue, Green, White…Blue, Green, White. It has been way easier than we thought!
Front of Room ~ Student Mailboxes, Whale of the Week Board, Character Counts Board…All waiting to be filled! Any bets on how long this white table cloth will stay white? And, we’re not talking about the kids. Our money is on coffee spill by Day 5…It can be bleached, and it was free…We do live dangerously…
Look at all these books. It’s going to be a busy year!
Here’s the view from the side of our classroom. Closest is our Reading Meeting Area, then Work Wall, Message Center, and sink area. We are piloting Treasures Reading by MacMillan/McGraw Hill the first 6 weeks of the school year. We are excited to try it out, but can we be completely honest here? We are really mostly excited that the little readers which arrived in the 30 (yes, t-h-i-r-t-y) boxes were blue and green! They are really just meant to live on these shelves. AND, the display box they came in literally fits with 1/2 inch to spare. Our inner Perfectionist squealed with delight! So, we’re really hoping to absolutely LOVE this program for it’s instructional value, but if it came down to voting on colors…SOLD!
Of all the things we cut, glued, stapled (with our new favorite one finger friend!), printed or prepped, this is our favorite.
We know what you Eagle Eyes are checking out…And, no we’re not crazy! Yes, we stuck a few right over the doors. And, yes we use these cupboards all.the.time.
With the increase of class sizes these past few years, we’ve had to extend our board around the sides of the cupboard and let’s just face it…Nobody really likes to sit in the middle back seat with their feet on the hump. Right? Plus, how do you pick which ones get the boot? It’s too hard and we’re sure a few eyes have noticed how that “looks”…Why is my child on the side? Really…not a conversation worth our time having. So, we wanted to figure out a way to display them all on the front of our cupboards. And, though it looks as if we’ve created a problem. We did not.
Wanna know our secret?
We’ll
fill you in as the school year gets underway…
Sorry, we totally went Ryan Seacrest on you there…
You’ll have to wait until after the commercial…again.
Anyone else hate the suspense?
So, the only thing missing besides one fully rested teacher and a little less jittery stomach is a classroom full of kids ready to learn! We had the pleasure of meeting a few of them today at our school’s End of Summer Social, and we both called each other this evening and squealed with delight. We are already in love and really hope we did not just jinx ourselves by claiming it’s going to be a great year!
