Happy Labor Day!

 Today I am going to try to take it easy and relax... well I did say try. Tomorrow will be the FIRST day for my new kinders and I don't even know how many are on my roll yet. The first time I saw my roll I had 9 (and I only sent 9 letters out) but then I got a chance to peek at my roll and I had 13... so I guess I will find out how many are there tomorrow.
 I know I said I would try to take pictures of my classroom when I was finished but of course I am still not done. I know, they come tomorrow but the building is open early in the morning. So I will get myself to bed early and then get up early to prepare my room for my class. The only thing really that is left is to find places for all my containers and put them out of sight/ out of mind. But I do have some teasers, things that add color to my room and that are complete enough to show to others. I do apologize in advance for the poor lighting.

Bulletin Board says "Leap and Swing into Room 105!" I don't know if I should add my frogs in there for leap too. But the monkeys are holding up the letters for "Swing"

We are doing Student of the Month in our school and since we also talk about citizenship in social studies I thought to maybe display the students who earn student of the month here at our front door. 

Our reading board which will have the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom letters that we study. And a listing of other words we learn. The cards at the bottom are our station cards which will be located on the wall next to this board. 

This is our Math Work Stations board. I feel as if I am missing so much more on this board. After this picture was taken I did staple a number line at the bottom. What else should go there besides the station cards and students (those are coming)?

These are my helpers (sorry for the lighting). I have one helper for each student up to 20 jobs. I got the jungle background for another teacher blog, if this is yours please let me know so I can give you credit. If you click on the picture you can get a better view of the classroom jobs as well as the monkey magnets. I found a guy, Dereck West, earlier in the summer who makes inexpensive ($12) number magnets  up to 36 which you can tell him what you want on them. I got a set of jungle numbers, monkeys, colored bears, black/red bears. You can email him (located on his page) and tell him what you were thinking of and he will send you back an example until you are completely satisfied with them. I bought a few sets so I could have my kids use them in patterning and number order.

I gave these cute bags to my team. I got the template from Mrs. Gilchrist's Class, check out her post and she was even willing to give me the not flipped version so I could do it on dark fabric. Inside the bags I made sure to include printed and laminated ideas/activities that I found from other teacher bloggers. So THANK YOU teacher bloggers for creating and posting your wonderful ideas!! My team greatly appreciated them!

So after all the craziness of the first week passes me by hopefully I will be back on here like regular. I hope everyone who will be starting tomorrow has a WONDERFUL first day. And for those who have been going strong for a while, I hope you have a GREAT day tomorrow. And to everyone have a AWESOME week!:)

Before I Forget...

  I just realized something today.I don't think I ever showed you what I received from zazzle.com. Oh I absolutely love it and I have already tried to use it. I love zazzle.com and if you have never been then you should go because you can design your own projects or use the templates given to you. I decided to use the templates but add myself to each notebook I bought. I bought my notebooks during one of their many percent off sales, this one happened to be $8 off each notebook. Sweet. Currently they are having a sale of 15% off ALL PRODUCTS so hurry over and see what you can find!!

 

This is the front of my Kindergarten Rocks notebook that I plan on using as my school notebook. If you click on the picture you can see the way it looked originally. 

 

Here is the back of my Kindergarten Rocks notebook. On the template it left the back side blank where you could add your own quote. It is hard to read but it says "A teacher takes a hand, opens a mind, and touches a heart~Author Unknown". It was one of the quotes I found online. 

 

Oh and when I saw this notebook I just had to have it even though I didn't know what I was going to use it for. But I did find a use for it... all my Girl Scout stuff I seem to be collecting. Isn't he cute?;)

And these notebooks are AWESOME because they come with DOUBLE inside pockets. And you get to choose whether you want the inside of your notebook to be white or black and I chose black. 

 I also went to my classroom for the first time... even though I have been trying to get in there all summer this was the first time all my stuff was there too. I didn't take any pictures of what it looks like because I didn't really do much, just cleaned. Who knew how dirty a classroom really can get? And since it is my new room I thought a heavy duty clean was in order. Yeah the custodians only mop and wax our floors, maybe clean our windows and doors, bathrooms, but that is it. We have to do all the nook and cranny stuff. 

 

View to the left of my back door

 

View from my back door (back to front)

 

View from the back looking to the right side

 

Picture of my windows near my back door

 

View from my front door looking towards the other side of the room. And woo hoo, we get a bathroom in our room. I haven't had one since I student taught in kindergarten (3 years ago).

I will try to add pictures of my room as I get in there on Wednesday and am able to move things around. I felt  overwhelmed today because over break I had planned out where all my furniture was going to go but then when I got in there today I didn't think it all was going to fit plus house all the things I bought too. But when I got home and took the time to work it all out (before my brain exploded) I felt better about my room. And with me trying to put in a math area (last year everything was under a table and I just pulled it out when I needed it) and a reading area (our reading program has TONS of stuff we need to house for the whole year. But I don't know if you noticed but I do have storage on the tops of my cubbies (yay) because the storage at the sink is so tight and nothing big could fit in there. And like I told my colleagues we could always but stuff in the bathroom...

  Tomorrow is the LAST DAY to enter in my giveaway. Giveaway ends at 10pm EST. Remember to join the linky party, it gives you 2 entries for the giveaway. Share in my love in reading and try to win the prizes. Good luck to you! My hope is to have the winners announced before bed tomorrow but we shall see if it goes into my birthday hours... 

See ya, Desiree