Bunting!

Remember the picture I posted a few weeks back (ok, a month ago) with the fabric?  Well, I made something for my classroom with it!  

Bunting!

Here is the bunting in my book nook.

And there is also some over my word wall.

I also made a bunting for my doorway.  It says "Welcome to 1st grade!"  I think it's adorable.  I think it will probably stay up all year.  Maybe.

So what do you think?  I love it!

Classroom reveal

This is the bulletin board outside of my classroom.  The sun is made of a tablecloth from the dollar store, and the flowers are made of tissue paper.

Each of my tables has one of these cute table caddies.  I have a green, blue, yellow and red table.

My CAFE board.  One of these days, it won't be empty!

 I needed another bookshelf, and I found one in the hallway.  I painted it green, and covered the back of it with contact paper.  It looks so much better than the basic brown it was before!

 I made these pom pom flowers from tissue paper along with one of the Kingergarten teachers.  I love them!

My mom made this curtain for the bottom of my TV cart and for my games shelf.  Helps hide some of the clutter! 

My newly recovered homework folder bin!

My "I Can" board.  The caddies on top of the student mailboxes hold supplies for poetry journals.  The 3 whiteboards are for word wall words.  I have 3 sets of words for 3 groups of students (high, medium and low).

My reading table, supplies, math supplies, I Can chart.  The doorway is behind that teal shelf beside my table.

My reading table.  Usually my bag and purse aren't sitting on the table. :-) 

The view of the room from the corner opposite the door.

The view of my room from the door.

Math bins.  Student book boxes will go underneath this shelf.  I built the shelf myself since I had nowhere to put their book boxes!

View from the carpet. 

"Bucket Fillers" and helper chart.  Each student's name is on an insect cutout.

Daily schedule.  It's not in the correct order, and there are no times, because I've already had to change my schedule.  

I'm trying this new method out for holding poetry, science and math notebooks.

Calendar chart, phonics dance, and MY NEW RUG!  Yay Donors Choose!

New rug! :-)  I love that each student has their own square.  (Well, kind of... it has 20 squares, and I am over my cap of 20, so 5 students have to sit in 1 of the rows.) 

So that is my classroom, as of a few days before school began.  I've already managed to move a few things around, so I may have to update with some new pictures later.

Hope you enjoyed looking around my classroom!

Currently...

This is the first time I've ever done one of these, and since I've completely slacked off doing any sort of blogging lately, I figured I should post SOMETHING.  Not that there is anybody reading, but, whatever...

I have been so grateful for this 3 day weekend!  I was so exhausted on Friday I came home, didn't even eat dinner, and passed out on my couch.  I woke up, went to bed, and woke up at 10am the next day.  I had some sinus crap (ears, stuffy nose, etc...) that, as usual, has progressed to my lungs.  Ugh.  I have been drugging the crap out of myself with Zyrtec, Mucinex and Sudafed.  Even used some Vicks last night, but nothing seems to help.  It's going to be a long week.  I'm trying to decide if I should call my doctor about it but I'm sure he'll want me to come in...  and we all know teachers don't have time for that!

Hope everybody has a great week!

Back to School Shopping

So my school doesn't start until August 21st, and teachers go back around August 17th, but I am still thinking about going back to school! I've even started doing some back to school shopping, even though I really don't need much this year. I'm really excited for that. :-) I was moved to a new grade level and a new classroom last year, so I decided on a theme last year and I'm going to stick with it again this year. Regardless, I can always spend money on my classroom, so I've bought a few things this summer that I'm excited about, and thought I'd share them with you!

My first stop was Meijer. While I actually stopped there for dog treats, I came across these cute butterfly placemats for $1 each and couldn't pass them up! I thought I could use them for placemats during math games so the dice wouldn't make such a loud noise on the tables. Or maybe as some sort of wall decoration. I haven't decided yet, but aren't they cute?

Then I went to the dollar store. I was inspired by another blogger who mentioned that they went to the dollar store and found those foam counting blocks. She mentioned using them as dice, or for word work, and I thought it was a great idea! So I bought 4 packs, just in case.

I also bought some subtraction reproducibles, which are subtraction worksheets (for homework) that are black and white. I just wish they had addition! (I'll just have to try another Dollar Tree!) I loved the giant money too- I can definitely use that in first grade!


This is a page from the reproducibles packet. Though it's supposed to be about subtraction, there were also a few pages about money and fractions!


Blue striped paper and green polka dotted paper. I haven't decided how I will use these yet, but I have a few ideas in my head! Possibly as backgrounds for student work or something?



Butterfly cutouts- I will use these to make number puzzles. For example, I can write a the number, then different ways to represent that number (tally marks, number sentences, etc...) and the kids can put the puzzles together. I have flowers at school that I can use for this too!



I took a class this summer that was all about parent engagement and involvement, specifically in literacy. We had to write an "Action Plan", and mine involved inviting parents in for Morning Meeting. I thought I could use these as the invitations for the students to write their note to their parents on.



I bought these 2 items at Hobby Lobby. The butterfly is a corkboard which goes with my "garden" classroom theme. The pink box is a toolbox.


You never know when you'll need tools in 1st grade! Seriously, my classroom has the worst placed, world's smallest bulletin boards ever. So I took a tablecloth and hung it on the wall and made my own! However, it is really difficult to hang stuff in the drywall, so I wanted a hammer to make it easier to hammer the tacks holding up my calendar pieces into the wall. The pink makes my eyes bleed a bit, but it was really cheap so I guess I'll put up with the pink.



The last thing I've bought for my classroom this year are these labels for my books. They are from VistaPrint, when they had 140 free labels in June. They are so cute! I'm just waiting for VistaPrint to have another sale like this so I can get some more!

I wanted to get matching postcards to send to my students at the beginning of the year, but you can only buy a minimum of 100. Since I have no more than 20 kids, that's 5 years of postcards- and there is no guarantee I will be in 1st grade for 5 years! I considered just putting "A Note from your Teacher" or "Welcome to Ms. B's class" on them instead. If I put "A Note from your Teacher", I could use them for positive postcards as well as welcome postcards. I am waiting for a sale on those too, so I guess I have a while to think about it!


So that's my shopping so far this year! Not very exciting, but it's still early! What have you purchased for the new school year?


Thanks for reading!


Erica

First post

Hello, everyone!  My name is Erica, and I'm a first grade teacher.  This is my 5th year teaching.  I've taught 3  years in Kindergarten, and now I'm a first grade teacher.  This is my second year of 1st grade.  I guess you can say I'm joining the blogging world, even though I have another blog for my "real life."  :-)

My classroom theme for the past year (and this upcoming year, because I like it and I'm lazy) is a garden, thus the garden theme of my blog.  I'm really creative, ha ha ha.  I wanted to share some pictures of classrooms that inspired me, but I don't know how to link to Pinterest and have it show a picture.  I'm not in the mood to figure it out right now.  So... I'm not.  If anybody would like to help me out here, I'd like to know how to do 2 things:

1.  Link to Pinterest so it shows a picture and links to my board.  I swear, I've seen people do this!  I imagine I probably have to put the picture in my blog, then link it, but I was hoping there was an easier way so I can be lazy. :-)

2.  Link to Google Docs and show the preview of the document.  Though I don't have a lot, I do have a few things I'd like to share!  Maybe somebody else would find them useful?

Any help would be appreciated!

-Erica