Classroom Update

2 weeks from today my summer will be officially over. I can't believe it. Summer has flown by. I know some of you have already started back to school. I have been working in my room a couple of days a week for the past few weeks. Our building is closed today and tomorrow and then next week I won't be able to get into my room. So it makes me a little nervous. I don't know why. I've gotten a lot done. Next week we have a Staff Retreat for 2 days and then Wednesday we're leaving for a last hurrah before school starts. My family is heading to Charleston. I'm so excited. We haven't been on a family vacation in over 6 years and I can't wait to hit the beach with my sweet niece. Plus I love the Charleston area. It will be a great way to end the summer. (I have brought some projects to work on. I need to sort through my math manipulatives that came with our math series so I can actually use them.)
Anyway, I worked for a while yesterday and got some things put on the walls which always makes me feel like the classroom is coming together.

This is my Monday Made it. I made the pennant banner that is hanging at the top. I followed the tutorial on Abby's blog The Inspired Apple. (check out her instructions here.) I used scrapbook paper to cut out the letters and then ribbon from Walmart around the side. I know it's crooked but it's ok. I am in love with this board. I still need to add the clothespins. I haven't found the mini die cuts that I want to put on them yet. I might go look for them today. I want a shoe or something.

I finally got some of my Rainbow Bright Classroom Signs up. I love the brightness.

Looking at these pictures I see how dirty my white boards are. I should probably clean them before school starts.
I'm planning on implementing some Whole Brain Teaching Strategies this year. So I started with the rules. I had gotten these from A Year of Many Firsts.

I'm trying to do a Pete the Cat kind of theme in my room. I had the greatest suggestion from a facebook fan to be Ms. Kerri's Cool Cats. I love it since I think Pete is a cool cat. I plan on starting the year with Pete Rocking his school shoes. Chris made me this Pete 2 years ago and I found the perfect place for him above my calendar with a speech bubble.

I used a speech bubble clipart from Little Red Hen. I think I'll change what he says depending on what we're doing in class. I laminated it so I could write on it with dry erase markers.
Last thing I worked was some labels for my word work drawers. I used super cute frames from Ashley Hughes.  I have a few more to make so check back for a freebie in the next few days.

So that's what I was working on yesterday. When do you go back to school? Have you been working in your room? I would love for you to leave a comment.

Classroom update

So this week, I finally ventured into my classroom. It's probably a little earlier than I usually go in but I want to reorganize and inventory my classroom library. It's a pretty big project so I wanted to give myself time to work on it. So Tuesday, I went into my room and started sorting all my books. I put them in as many categories as I could with authors, characters, and subjects. I discovered that I do not have as many non fiction books as I would like. But I'm thinking of creating my first donor's choose project to try to get more nonfiction books. Anyway, after I made my piles, I made a list of all the categories I had made. I also started scanning in some of my books into the app Classroom Organizer. It's a web based service to inventory all your books. Check it out here. I can add books with an app on my phone by scanning the ISBN number. Not all books will scan in, especially the scholastic ones that I got through book orders. A lot of those don't have bar codes. But you can type in the book. What I like is that I can see the lexile, ar level and points and guided reading level for the books. I've only gotten a small portion scanned or entered in. It is a little tedious and I can only work on it for a little while. I went home and made labels for all my categories. Some of them I combined into favorite authors or favorite characters if I only had 2 or 3 of one. I also made some labels for my monthly tubs that I keep all the books and activities to go with it. If you would be interested in these labels you can get them by clicking here. I don't know that I suggest doing them the way I did. I printed them out and then cut them out and mounted them on scrapbook paper and laminated them. Here's a picture of them all laminated and in need of cutting out.

This is a picture of all my baskets. I still need a few more baskets for books. But I'm kind of a spending halt. But you'll have to read about that tomorrow on my Friday finds.The next step next week will be to attach the labels to the baskets and get the baskets on shelves. I'm hoping I have enough shelves. I'm trying to give up some of my space and make the room more the kids' space. I plan to punch holes in the cards and use zipties to attach the labels to the basket. I'll take pictures when I'm finished. I still haven't decided exactly how I want to the label the books so they know what basket they put the books back into. I've used color stickers before but that didn't work. I'm really going to have work on modeling and modeling on keeping the library in order. I didn't feel like I had accomplished much with all the library stuff because I just kept making a bigger and bigger mess. So I worked on my bulletin boards some. I wanted to try out the tissue paper borders I saw on Classroom DIY.  I'm really trying to focus on the colors red, black and blue. I don't want to redo everything I already have like my clipchart but I did recover my bulletin boards using black fabric. My large word wall one already has red fabric. But I took down the Dr. Seuss border and am using black ribbon with white polka dots. Here a couple of blurry pictures of my bulletin boards. I ran out of tissue paper so they aren't complete.

I think they look pretty good. I'm planning on doing our work one with black tissue paper borders similar to these. I'll post pictures when I'm done. I didn't finish the word wall one and I didn't get a picture I might have to get an opinion when I finish the ribbon part. It might need an extra border. I also plan to take down my Dr. Seuss alphabet and numbers down and replace them with Annie at The Moffat Girls' alphabet. Here's a picture of it all laminated:

I haven't decided what to do about the numbers. I might make my own or keep searching for some that match my color scheme. I'm still working on super hero things and I have added a few things to my file. So be sure to download it if you are interested in the freebie. I've added some signs for different boards and places around the room. I also made some monthly signs for my calendar. I'm not sure how well they will work because it's my first time making these.
Click here to get the freebies.
I'm trying out dropbox so let me know if it doesn't work. 
If you download one of my freebies, please leave me a little comment love.