Drum roll please.....

Meet the teacher is COMPLETE. 

I am so excited that meet the teacher is over! I hate saying that, but there was SO much anticipation I am just glad to hopefully get one good nights sleep before the stress of 1st day of school begins! On a more positive note... I had SUCH a great turn out tonight! I am SO thrilled to be at such a wonderful school, with wonderful co-workers, serving such a great community.

I figured I would combine my meet the teacher post and my classroom tour post as I am expecting I might fall off the face of the earth for a few days. So here it goes... (I am probably way more excited to share with all of you, than you are to see it!) 

Let's face it... If you don't have your own kids you have to spoil someone elses! Right?!!? I didn't go too crazy but I HAD to do something! I have become obsessed with water bottle labels! As much as I knew a soda goes so much better with popcorn, I just could not bring myself to purchase the soda for the little kiddos, so water it is! I found these wonderful labels on TPT for FREE!! 

That's it for "special" meet the teacher goodies. 

Let's face it... Being a perfectionist just somehow comes with being a teacher. Right?! I finally had to "put my foot down" and STOP with the classroom decorating. It definitely is not as decorated as I had imagined. But unfortunately... the two things that you never get enough of with teaching: TIME AND MONEY.  So I finally had to stop...

BEFORE...

 

 AFTER....

When you first walk in my door our classroom meeting area & library is to your right (with this AWESOME futon I got for $20 at a garage sale. Thanks McFarlane family!) and to my left I have a TON of cabinets. Since I only have one wall of bulletin board space I had to utilize my cabinets! I know I said I was DONE, but I am secretly waiting till payday to buy these WICKED CUTE chevron throw pillows to add to our futon!

Here I have our class jobs, our clip chart (with consequences posted), our whole brain teaching rules, and how I get home cards. Just for meet the teacher night I had this roller cart there to house the bus information sheets. The random things that I have stored at the top of my cabinets are such an eye sore! Tomorrow I am hoping to tackle those!

CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS STORAGE?! I AM IN HEAVEN! This year I went to labeling all of my cabinets. That way I do not have to leave little notes all over when I have subs. Everything is easy to find for the kiddos, myself, and any guests in our room. 

We have our "Super improver wall" which correlates with our behavior clip chart. I also have the whole brain teaching cards up too!

On the long cabinet to the right is where I will post our student of the week posters!  I think I will turn the pink bulletin board into our writing board.

This is the view from the library/class meeting area. I REALLY wanted to do groups of four, but it just did not work with the space. I am still trying to figure out how I can utilize the Kagan mats from my previous post with this seating arrangement.

I LOVE SMARTBOARDS!!! I am so excited to be at a school with a smartboard! I truly missed having one last year.

I saw this idea to label the computers from another blogger (I can't remember who!) and I LOVED it! It adds a bit of color to the front of the room and it will be easy for computer assignments during Daily 5.

 This is our math wall. I will wait until school starts to post fun anchor charts and other cool resources! I am still deciding if I want to utilize this wall for math vocabulary or incorporate math words into our word wall.

This is our reading wall with our CAFE headers and Daily 5 rotations. To the right of our reading wall is our word wall and then our student work wall.

Arn't those lamps fun!? My mom slaved away over them last year. Unfortunately this one is a little lop sided, but it is so cute! She made them out of coffee filters.

This is my "work area" I parted with my teacher desk as I wanted to get rid of my corners and dedicate as much of the space as I could to my kiddos. Since I will have aides in my classroom this will mainly be used for them to work with small groups.

Our library/meeting area. I am SO excited about this part of our room and was one of the favorite parts of our classroom at meet the teacher. P.S. Several kiddos asked if I lived here... Since i have a "bed" here! Ha! I am proud to say that we have over 700 books in our library with a variety of levels! :) They are all scanned into our classroom library system. The students will log on to the computer to scan their book out. This took me FOREVER but I am so excited at how it turned out.

Over the summer my wonderful family and friends helped me fun a Donors Choose product. In a few weeks we will have a brand new easel to add to our meeting area. I CANNOT wait!

This is our Daily 5 reading and math center. One book case will hold all of our math manipulatives for our daily 5 rotations and the other will hold our reading manipulatives for daily 5. I can't wait to add cute labels!


I hope you enjoyed the tour!!! Good luck to all teachers starting another year!!! Isn't this Ecard too cute? I wish this was the case!!