Chicka Chicka Boom Boom I just spent 4 hours in my room!

 Well, the title says it all! :) We are not due back at school for a few more weeks, but I am moving at the end of the month and need to have my classroom DONE and ready for the kiddos before that all happens. So, why not spend a beautiful Saturday summer afternoon in my classroom?

Here is a sneak peak of what's to come (not finished yet...):

  

When this is finished, there will be a coconut with each student's name on it and the alphabet will be climbing the tree. Chicka chicka boom boom, will there be enough room?

I also organized the you-know-what out of my math manipulatives and started to organize my shelves. Here is a picture of that ginormous undertaking:

What you can't see is all of the stuff I put behind closed doors in the closet. Also, I cropped out the giant mess on the floor and all of the stuff I stuck on the counters.  Why am I telling you this?! I'm excited about how organized everything is now! I bought the math manipulatives racks at Really Good Stuff at the end of the school year. Love them! (I was using old soup containers-which worked great, but weren't as pretty or organizable). They are in dire need of some labels, as is everything else in the room! Above the wire racks are the privacy folders (for testing), red pens for correcting (sometimes we self-correct/reflect), and felt for use with anything that involves rolling a dot cube (because I don't always have my headache medicine). I made that top shelf as small as possible because of the wire racks, but I liked it so much I decided to make smaller shelves in the next section, too.


The red dish tubs to the left are going to hold materials for each table group. They are right at the front of the room where kids can easily pick them up. I grabbed some Cricut vinyl that I am going to use to label them with big chunky numbers. The empty shelves will hold the student book boxes that I picked up at Ikea.


Speaking of Ikea, I also splurged on a clothes rack to hold this pocket chart.

Yikes, ignore the mess!

I haven't decided what I am going to do with it yet, but I am thinking it might be where kids put their folders when they come in (since we are sans-desks now-woo!). I bought it because a) it was on clearance and b) one side of it has orange, blue, purple, and green- which are the colors of the Treasures small groups! I just can't figure out how to use it for reading though...Oh well, it is a good little room divider, too. Oh, and I used shower curtain hooks to hold it up (thank you Lacey for the idea and Goodwill for 99 cent shower hooks!) instead of those fancy-shmancy hooks that I have no idea where to find.


Well, that's what I did today! I feel like I'm headed in the right direction now. :) I'm so inspired by everyone's blogs with pictures of their classrooms. There are so many brilliant ideas for organizing, decorating, and storing! Can't wait until my room is finished, too!

Oh my word- I almost forgot to show you the letters I made on the Cricut. I have had the thing a year now and am finally figuring out how to make things look cool! These will be two different signs. They're just sitting on this black piece of paper, not glued yet. I think I'll laminate them, too. I love the contrast you get when you use the shadow feature!