It's a Jungle in Here

Happy Labor Day Weekend! For many of us teachers, it's our final hurrah before we have to return to our classrooms to start a new school year on Tuesday. I, like many of my colleagues and teaching fellows across the state, have been busily preparing my classroom for the students' arrival on Tuesday.

The last two days have been spent attending a district-wide training for Direct Interactive Instruction (DII) - a new mandate throughout our district. I attended this two-day shindig with my special education colleagues and friends from across the district. I won't say much about the training...apart from it was almost a complete waste of my time and took away valuable time that I could have been using to do something productive for my classroom.

The training ended at 2:30 both today and yesterday and while my friends went home after the training, I dragged myself back to my classroom. I was on campus this evening until 6:00, and even then I wasn't done. (I'm returning to work 8 a.m. to noon tomorrow!)

However, my room is coming together nicely. I got all my bulletin boards set up - with the exception of my word wall and "Student of the Week" board - and they look pretty nice...even though they're missing student work! I organized, cleaned, rearranged, laminated, punched, and prepared materials I will need for next week.

This year, I decided to create (and hopefully maintain) a single classroom theme for the year. I got so tired last year spending entire afternoons and evenings ripping down butcher paper, putting new paper and borders up, and switching out bulletin boards. I figured having one cohesive theme throughout might cut down on that work load a bit (I will only have to change out the student work).

I scoured the Internet (and Pinterest) to find ideas I could use for my classroom. Here's what I came up with...tell me what you think!

Calendar Wall - Still a work in progress!

Front dry erase board

Behind my desk

Technology Center 

Writing portfolio wall 

This tree is a work in progress!

New flannel board 

"First, Then" - Pinterest Idea

My behavior management system 

Close-up

Another Pinterest idea... 

The dreaded time-out chair

As you can see, I have several things that are "in progress." I want to get more "jungle decor" into the room...I might work on that tomorrow. But overall, I don't think it looks half bad.

Thoughts?

Back to School

I'm back from New York! The week went by so fast, but I'm glad to be back in California (especially with all those horrific news stories that happened shortly after my departure). One of the first things I did when I got back from the East Coast was start putting together a thank you package for my cousin, who - along with his partner - were generous enough to let me stay with them for the duration of my trip.

Since both are big coffee and tea drinkers, I decided to include some DIY mugs in their package. I wanted something that would remind them of me back in California. Here's what I came up with:

These mugs are super easy to make. I got them from the dollar store and just took a Sharpie to them. I then baked them in the oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Easy mementos in minutes...hopefully the cousin will like them!

Anyway, I was immediately thrown back into the grind, as I'm behind in setting up my classroom. I went into my classroom the day after I got back from NJ/NY and worked for a few hours. I laminated quite a bit before my trip and, unfortunately, came back to the task of having to cut out all that laminating. Of the things I laminated, I had quite a bit of bulletin borders laminated - with scalloped edges. That in itself took up most of my time on Thursday and Friday. (Have you ever cut out scalloped bulletin borders before? It was excruciatingly long!)

I didn't finish all my cutting, so I brought much of it home with me this weekend and spent my Friday night cutting and snipping the borders, posters, and visuals to perfection.

I spent Saturday at Target, using the $50 gift card that was given to me from our front office staff (they were able to purchase the gift cards with the money from our School Cents fundraising). For those of you who don't know, Target is one of my favorite stores...so going in there is always pretty dangerous on my wallet. However, going in there for back-to-school is even more so...I seem to find tons of things I "need."

Here are some pictures of the loot I got for my classroom. My cat couldn't contain himself while I was taking the shots.

I absolutely adore Splat the Cat books and There Was an Old Lady... series.

One of the other things I did this weekend was go to Office Depot and have my custom lesson plan book created. I had made most of the pages that I wanted to include in the book, with the exception of the monthly calendar which I got from Faith, Home & Lovelies. It cost about $21 and that included extra pages for blog planning.

The girl at Office Depot was extremely patient with me while I tried to explain to her what I wanted. It took about an hour to copy and properly place the pages in the correct order. After it was bound, and the end product is beautiful! For about $20, I will do this every year if it means I can have a customized lesson plan book. Here are some pictures...

So tomorrow ushers in the final week of preparation before the kids come in next week. I will post pictures of my classroom as soon as I get things set up and bulletin boards up - hopefully tomorrow! Till then...

Empire State of Mind

I'm officially checked into my flight to New York for tomorrow morning, and I'm so excited! However,  my impending trip to New York means I'll be taking a short hiatus from Kinders First...at least for the next week. However, I will be back and in full-swing for the new school year next Thursday, as I head back into my classroom to finish setting everything up (more pictures to follow!)

Until then, I'll leave with you some shots from my last trip to NY in April...

Home Sweet Home

I finally got into my classroom today for the first time since leaving school back in June, and as much as I have enjoyed the time off, I was uber excited to be back in my element.

Before going into work, I stopped at the local teacher supply store and picked up some things so I could get started on my bulletin boards. I really tried to restrain myself! I managed to keep my teacher spending in check and only picked up some borders and bulletin board lettering.

I was nervous to get back into my classroom and see what kind of havoc the summer school class (that was taught in my classroom) wreaked on my room. But I'm glad to say it didn't look half bad. Granted, the custodians had already come in and cleaned the room...but all my things were left untouched, which I appreciated.

Most of my day was spent rearranging furniture and cleaning counter tops - there was so much dust! I also got rid of a couple pieces of furniture that were just taking up space in my room. Tomorrow I'm going to go back in and set up some of my bulletin boards. I'm trying a year-round "jungle/rain forest" theme this year. We'll see how that pans out...