All desks are in!

This will probably be my shortest post ever. Over the weekend, I completed the rest of the shelving for my desks. Today I got to put them in the room & I am now obsessed! I love how it makes the desks look finished!

I even decided to call my groups "Spot 1" & "Spot 2" etc.  If you look at the black shelves you can sort of see the spots! :)

Please excuse the not finished bulletin boards and the whiteboard that won't clean :-/ I've seen several board cleaning Pinterest ideas, but does anyone have one that works REALLY well?!? I'd love the help!!

Vacation or School... hmm

I am so excited to get the year started with the way my classroom is starting to shape up... but I'm also SO ready to finally go on my vacation!! The countdown is ON... for both! :)

Today was a sad-ish day for me. Last year was my first year and there were only 2 fifth grade teachers at our school.  My teaching partner and I became great friends and we worked SO well together.  This year we had to add a new 5th grade teacher to our team and I was excited to start the year with the new team of the three of us.  Today I found out that my other teaching partner will be moving to a different position in our school! :(  I'm sad to add another new 5th grade teacher to the mix! (it may be a little selfish, but I just LOVED working with her!) ...It is also so strange to only be a 2nd year teacher and now I'm the "veteran" on our grade level... How does that happen!?

ANYWAY. I had more pictures of my room to show!! I am LOVING it!  I can't wait to have a post with the reveal of every inch of my room! :)

I have to give credit to my awesome mom for this stool! She took my nasty ugly old looking brown stool, as well as a cooler treasure chest for my goodies and made it them both into something SUPER awesome to match my room! 

In a previous post, I showed pictures of the creation of a black shelf "thing"... It took a few days to get it right, but I finally got the shelf to work in my room the way I wanted it to! Originally, the shelf was WAY too tall, so I had to take it back home and saw off the legs to make it work.

The shelf (which I still need to make 4 more of) will go in between all of my groups to hold supplies.  If you are interested in seeing the post of how this shelf came about, CLICK HERE.

Here is what the shelf will look like with the desks. The desks will now hold the most important math manipulatives and the students individual whiteboards/markers/erasers.  Yay for no more wasted time getting the supplies I use everyday!! :)

This is what the shelf looks like when two of the side desks are pulled away.

Now... off to make 4 more!

Sneak Peek

I worked in the classroom for 6 hours today. Yes... 6 hours! I'm crazy, I know.  I will be heading out on vacation for the week that most people would be getting back into their classrooms, so I want my room to be perfect before I leave!

So here is a sneak peek of what was done today!  

This is the start of my "Reading Spot".   I have more I want to add to the walls soon.  The two crates with pillows on top are just that! I will admit, I am NOT a seamstress.  At All.  I took pillows from Walmart and threaded them through the pillow and holes in the crate -- Voila! Easy/hassle free seats for students!

I think I might make a rule that the students have to hug the ladybug pillow while sitting in the big chair! ;) Hey I teach 5th graders, they'd get a kick out of it!! :)

This is a picture I put together with the DipTic App on my phone -- I love these collages, so here is the sneak peak of most of what was done today!

PS: Yes, I'm demonstrating the hugging of the ladybug! ;)

I haven't finished the desks yet... the shelves from my last post were too tall, have to saw off the legs a little and try again. TOMORROW! :)

Addicted to Pinterest.

I am officially addicted to Pinterest.  I was previously addicted to looking at the pictures and thinking to myself "yeah, I could do that..." BUT lately, I've been putting the pictures that I love into action! Today's idea came from Booky4First:

The direct link to the idea is here... Booky4First (totally stealing her idea -- it is brilliant.)

As I've said in previous posts, I will be teaching just math this year and I want to make sure that my students' time is not wasted in spending 5-10 minutes getting their whiteboards and/or getting their other manipulatives. So this project has begun.  

The pictures below are the process of creating this shelf.  It really only consists of 6 pieces of plywood screwed together (thank you to a different Pinterest post for making this concept easier!)  The first shelf only ended up costing about $11 total! We had wooden pallets laying around and took the top and two cross bars from that pallet and the two legs were 1 x 6 pieces of wood from Lowe's.  Very cheap and easy to make!

These shelves will go between desks in each group where I will be able to rest their supplies! Yay classroom management!  I will have to make sure to post the after picture once the it is positioned in the room.  ((If it works out like I am hoping!!))

Just after putting it together, before sanding...

During the painting session (excuse my hair -- if you know the south, you know it is HUMID in the summer, and my hair wasn't taking it...)

AFTER... Now, I just have to make about 4 or 5 more...  Can't wait to put these in the classroom!

What a mess...

I feel like this is supposed to happen before the room is complete, but my classroom looks like a tornado went through it.  See what I mean.....

I have realized that I get going on one project, get distracted and move on to something else.  Not a great habit to have! 

I spent a few hours yesterday and today just doing random projects in the room.  Here are pictures of my progress thus far.

This is one of my groups -- I will only be teaching math this year, so I want my groups to be able to have more manipulatives at their finger tips this year.  You can't see it in this picture, but each group will have a crate beside their group with their own individual white boards in order to eliminate the wasted time getting the boards passed out.

I will have to get a better picture of my "One Minute Until Dismissal Checklist", but this is what I have for now.  I found this idea on Pinterest and made it my own to go with my class. :) LOVE IT! 

Progress!

This was just too cute not to post.  I've been working more in the classroom - doing a few hours at a time, not to over do it. 

As I posted before, I have completely redone the library in my classroom (and I am still working on it). The labels for each bin looked better than I could have even imagined.  

If you live in my area and you're trying to get red bins at the local Dollar Tree -- I'm sorry, I have taken them all. :)

The math manipulatives shelf is on its way!! :)

Not a normal Saturday night.

Today has been one of those not so normal days.  Rain all day and the oh-so-addicting Zimmerman Trial.  I've been sucked into watching this "trial" all day... not really a trial, more of the anticipation of whether the jury will make a decision or not.  I have always said that if I was not a teacher, I would be a private investigator - trials like this only prove that to me even more.  However, I would never in a million years give up my teaching position! :)

As the jury deliberates on into the night... and the rain continues, I have no desire to venture out into the crazy Charleston city (where it floods anytime it rains).  So here I sit at home on a Saturday night wondering what to make of my time.  

Then it hits me, I have had a project sitting in a room for MONTHS waiting on me to complete.  Yes, MONTHS. I have had these two very large bags of tennis balls since September.  I am not lucky enough to have carpet in my classroom... all day long I hear the "screech" of the chairs sliding along the floor making the worst sound ever.  However, the thought of cutting a million tennis balls has been the last thing on my list.  Unit now.

I have successfully cut half of the tennis balls in one of the bags.  Yes, only half of one.  BUT, that's progress! :)

And of course.. No project would be complete without the disruption of my 9 month old kitten. She wanted to help?

Just for next year!

First post!

As I am entering my second year of teaching, I want to make everything perfect for the next school year.  This past year my classroom was a MESS (and I put emphasis on the mess for a reason).  Throughout the entire year, I was not pleased with my setup and was constantly changing everything.   I changed desk arrangements, wall decorations and even my desk placement.  I blame this all on the fact that I signed my contract the week before school started... and started with nothing.  Not complaining! :)

This year will be different.  We got out of school in early June, so I decided to take that month off.  Now it is July and I am in full swing in my classroom, changing ALL of the things I did not like last year.  This year will be the year of the perfect classroom (for me).

At a recent conference, I had to opportunity to attend a class in which the 2012-2013 National Teacher of the Year, Rebecca Mieliwocki, taught.  The idea behind the hour long session was to get an idea of what works in the classroom.  One idea being to name your classroom.  The kids love it, you are able to say, "Alright, let's head back to "The Spot"! So that's what I did.  Welcome to 'The Spot'.

I have started with painting.... not the walls, but the furniture.  I wanted a red, black and white room (like a ladybug), but this was hard to do with BRIGHT blue and brown furniture.... Here is the transformation of my math manipulatives shelf.  I was so excited about getting rid of the blue, that I did forget the before picture.  Here is a picture of the during and the after.

After painting, I wanted to add some "life" to my inherited ugly book shelf.  I did that by throwing out the old and getting two completely new book shelves.  After putting together the first shelf backwards, I gave up for the day and continued the next day with the rest... I have to say. I love the new!  It is not finished (I want to add really cute ladybug labels, which I will get to this week). Here is the start of this project.  It is not perfect, but it is light years away from where I started.

I am so excited to finish this classroom and to show you what it will be...