Ranting and Raving :/

Warning! This is a rant! I'm so sorry to purge on here. I usually try to be so upbeat and positive but I just have to get this out!

What a crazy week and we've only been back for two days!!!! So far this week we were sent our new lesson plans. They are crazy! I have been working on them for two hours now and I'm not even half way done! Yikes! Does anybody else have lesson plans that take this long? I feel like I'm back in college writing out 15 page plans all over again! Yikes! We were also told last week that due to the fact that we were forced to add and extra hour and half onto the day and people need to get paid that we are not getting any math supplies this year. But we can photo copy anything/as much as we want. With that being said, we were also told that we are only being given one ream of paper a month. Hmmmmmm! 

This week we were informed that also due to people needing to get paid for all of this extra time we have no money left for our grade levels to order supplies. Bye bye pencils, paper, markers, etc. To top it all off nobody ordered any lamination for the machine so we can't laminate anything :(

YIKES!!!! WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?!?!?!?

First Week

Well we've been in school for a little over a week now. Lots has happened! This year our district decided we needed a longer school year (Started on Aug. 21) and a longer school day (7:45-3:30)! Not only has the time been a "wonderful" help in kicking off the school year it's been close to 90 degrees outside every day! My kiddos are melting by the end of the day! Which means they're also whinny and not willing to do much of anything including play. It's so sad to watch them in the afternoons! On a brighter note....my kids, in the morning, are wonderful! They love to listen to stories, follow directions as much as one can hope for, and they are super funny....shhhhhh don't tell them that! We've done one listening activity that was cut and paste. I know, I know. I hate them too! But I needed to see if they were able to use scissors and didn't want to find out in the middle of a big, wonderful, fun project. Anyways, they did great! They cut wonderfully annnnnnd there were no scraps of paper on the floor!!!! My custodian didn't believe me when I told him we used scissors today! 

With all the busy beginning of the year happenings I wasn't able to post! But I did set up my own TPT account! So exciting I know! I have my first product posted! It's not as bright and colorful as I had hoped but it's still my FIRST PRODUCT! Now I just need to learn how to create my own backgrounds, clip art, and fonts! It seems kinda hard but I'm determined to figure it out! Please go check out my first product! http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Backpack-signs-852301

I'd like to thank Miss Stanford for her backgrounds and tutorials on how to create products. Please make sure to check out her blog! It is fabulous! You can find her blog here! 

I'd also like to thank Michelle from Well, Michelle?!?! for linking me up with multiple tutorials!  Including to Ms. Fultz's tutorial on how to lock PDFs. So helpful! You can find the tutorials here!

Classroom Set-Up

After a week of hard work my room is finally ready for my new firsties!!! 


This is what you see when you enter my room! I love my room this year! It's a zoo theme!!! The things hanging from the ceiling are monkeys!!! 

  

If you turn to the right as you walk in you'll see my birthday "board". The fire department hates loves me! Silly five foot rule! How does one not utilize this amazing wall space? Anyways, the "board" is almost done. I just need to add the student's cupcakes with their birthdays on them!

Here's a close-up of my library! I'm a little OCD about the library and I bought the labeling system from reallygoodstuff.com to help keep the library in order. 

Don't you love the bare tree? Each time we read a book we'll be adding a leaf to the tree. By the end of the year it'll be so very full!!! Here's a picture of the other side of my library....my section! I found the chair cushion at the Home Depot the other day! I was so excited!!!

Just behind my chair is where my students keep their belongings. There's not enough space on the hooks for the kids to keep backpacks and coats so they also have these wonderful backpack bins to toss their bags in. No big deal, right, since the bags always end up on the floor anyways!

On the other side of the library is my new listening center! Last year our schedule didn't allow us time for literacy centers so my listening center was completely underutilized! This year I made certain to make it a very special place!

 This is the view from the other side of the classroom!

As you move around the room a bit more you'll see my little corner of the room! I love they way my "personal" space turned out! 

The kiddos come tomorrow and this is the first thing they'll see when they walk in!

Time to hit the hay.... it'll be a very exhausting busy day tomorrow!

Birthday Pencils

It's been a whole week and my classroom is almost done :)

Last year I was hired one week before school started and didn't have a chance to go through what was in the room. I foolishly thought I'd stay after school one day and see what was there. Ha! That never happened. I decided to use my last week of summer break (so sad) to go through the room. I trashed so many old things! I feel so much better about starting this year!

Tomorrow we go back and have our teacher welcome ceremonies and all of the paperwork stuff we need to take care of. Then we get some time in our rooms. My classroom is so close to being done and ready for the kiddos to arrive! Tomorrow afternoon I should also be getting my "official" class list. Official in quotes because there's always those students who register on the first day and just show up at your door. Tons of fun! Tomorrow I'll also be taking pictures of my classroom to post! I'm super excited about my set up this year!

Today I finished my birthday balloons for the kiddos! Last year I used printed birthday balloons and attached them to crazy straws! They were much like the ones on pinterest using pixi sticks.  This year, thanks to Crayons and Curls, they look like this!!! 

 

I attached them to color changing birthday pencils from smilemakers.com

I think the kiddos are really going to like them :)

Setting Up!

Today I headed into set my classroom! What a mess!!! Desks were piled up in the middle of the room! Shelves were moved all over the room! Rugs were piled up on top of stuff....correction, rugs that weren't mine! Crazy Crazy Crazy!!!!

Here are some photos so you can assess the damage!

This is what I walked into!!!

Then I walked to the other side of the room and thought WOW! My room looks so big!!!

That's when I noticed the shelves with a different teacher's rug!!!! Yikes! I better find out who it belongs to!!!

After a few hours of work and some not so choice words (evil wonderful computers) my room now looks like this!!! Not so big any more :(

All of my furniture is set up....now I just need to go through everything and organize it a bit better. Right now I have books and math supplies strewn all over the place!!! That'll be tomorrow's task!

A Time For Firsts

As a first year teacher I have stumbled upon the wonderful world of blogs!!! I just love going to other teacher's blogs to get ideas for my classroom. As a first year teacher of first graders I was a little overwhelmed by the fabulous things I see other teachers creating. As my first year progressed I realized I'm just as creative as these teachers, I just need to figure out how to use the right programs. So the first step to figuring it all out was to create my first blog!!! And here it is....with my first post! This summer I plan to sit down and figure out how to create amazing lessons for TPT. Hopefully the summer will open up a bit more time for me to do so. Wow, that was quite a lot of firsts! Now for my first good-bye!