Fifteen minutes of crafting {polka dot clothespins}

Before I left school for the year I quickly decorated clothespins to use this fall. My first year I covered them in decorative duct tape. That was a pain. This year I just wrote had Niki write my kids' names on them in colored sharpie. That wasn't near enough fun. So for next year I decided I was going to paint them polka dotted! 

It was super simple! I used regular paint from school and an unused pencil.

 

I made sure to make some of my dots whole and some going off the edges so they looked like "real" polka dots. I let them dry for an hour or two then flipped them over to do the other side.

*Side note* I had them numbered with colored sharpies before I did the polka dots.  My plan is to reuse them, but we'll see how they hold up.

 

 

What DIY projects are you working for home or school?

 

Goals for June

This has been a pretty crazy year for me, but things are starting to come to a new normal and fall into place. So with things settling in, I have some major goals for June and the rest of the summer. I just finished my second year of teaching and got my "real" standard license- so I'm good to go there. That means it's time to make some changes in the classroom now that I feel a little bit more like I know what I'm doing and start on my masters! I have big plans for both this summer!

Classroom goals:
1. I MUST create a true reading nook- that means books move, another rug comes in, lamp comes in, and this is all in a different location in my tiny miniature room.
I love the idea of adding a functional little bench like this one {here}

                             

2. Relocate teacher desk to be less obtrusive and perhaps a little more minimalist action in that area as well.
3. New rug! Something bright, colorful, and cheap. Hopefully I can score something when dorm room specials start.
4. Get the tech people to fix my horrible cord situation!

Apartment goals:
1. Redeocrate/Rearrange bedroom. I feel like my bed should be in front of the window now. I was lucky enough to have my great aunt donate two dressers to me. Free = the best!
2. Move in new table. Sell or store current table.
3. Find summer home for Lola (my classroom guinea pig)

Personal Goals:
1. Start master's classess
2. Run 15K with Niki in September- this will mean training these asthmatic lungs all summer.
3. Figure out how to meal plan and stick with it over the summer!

What are you planning to do in June or this summer??

Setting up my classroom {what it looks like today}

 So after almost two years of teaching my classroom looks totally different, in a good way, I think. This counter acts as my launching area. The bright colored baskets hold my supplies that I need for each day. We run a six day rotation so my baskets are numbered and labeled for the day of the week. My teacher planner sits on the counter in front of my baskets to make sure I stay on track. Things that we accomplish get checked off, if we don't get to them, they get highlighted to remind me to try to fit them in later in the week.

 

Our rules are displayed on the cabinets above all of my baskets. These were a free download from an adorable blog that I can't exactly remember the name of now...

 When I started this wall had placed that were labeled for each child to have their own space to display work. This past summer I decided to hang a "clothesline" and clip work to it with clothespins. This cuts way down on the time it takes to hang up student work to display.

 My door frame has a collection of the letters we have learned, with the newest letter on the bottom for the kids to touch and say on their way out the door. On the door I have our "I can" statements but not "I can" statements like the common core requires. These are TK I can's. They say things like say my ABC's, use scissors, and count to 100. You can also see in the corner where we store our rest mats.

 

Our door also houses our morning routine reminder, behavior clip chart, daily schedule, and BEE ticket pockets (we are a PBIS school).  My behavior chart was a free download from the same place as my classroom rules, that I still cannot remember. (sorry).

  

We also added a good old fashioned classroom whiteboard since we use those a lot in classrooms. Thanks for noticing it's shiny newness :)

 Our aquatic frogs live in the corner above some of our centers and free choice activities, along with some of our stuffies.

 

 

The left side is more free choice activities and the right is more center activities, but some are interchangeable. I even have some kids chose to do a center activity during free choice time!

Our calendar is now located on the wall above all of our center storage. Not ideal, I know. I'm working on a better solution for next year. But for now, this is what it is?
Why did she move her calendar to such a bizarre place you ask?
 Oh to make room for this friend, of course!

 I had to loose to sections of shelving and put it in the strangest location, but still worth it!

My classroom library has also expanded into a whole reading nook. I bought a fluffy bath mat and a pillow I found on sale during college move in time. I have big plans for my reading nook for next year. *fingers crossed it works out in reality the way it does in my head*

 My desk area is now in the back corner and is basically a hot mess. My teacher books you can see are lined up in nice big baskets from the Dollar Tree. Our letter people pictures below the alphabet line get filled in as we learn each new letter person.

 And my front door got a new bulletin board set for the beginning of this year and I have decided to leave it that way and change out either side of the door seasonally. Our monthly calendar is on the chart paper.

I'd say over the course of the year I have made both changes and improvements. Hopefully there will be more improvements to come for next school year. 

Setting up my classroom {the final result}

 Meet the teacher night had finally come and my room was a ready as it was going to be....
Bring on the TK'ers!

My shelves were filled with all the goodies I had scavenged for all summer. I was under the mistaken impression that my shelves were going to stay looking like this.

And here's the back corner of the room.  Empty shelves, really? I know. Those were left empty on purpose to store the kids' rest mats.

Here is what my calendar area looked like at the beginning of the year. It looks so empty in this picture, but don't worry it looks nothing like this today.

My sister and my nephew were working hard to get my BEE folders ready to go for meet the teacher night so that the kids would have something on their desks when they came. I decided to use sort of a "BEE binder light" for my kids. I didn't think they needed a full BEE binder since they weren't reading and I used a simple behavior tracking method, so I went with the BEE folder.

 

This banner was a free download I found on pinterest and hung it with yarn, it is still hanging today.

And here's what it looked like from the door way in it's final stages. I scrounged a ridiculous white board easel from the basement and stole it to use in my room since i had no other whiteboard. I had a scavenger hunt on the tables for the kids to look around the room. My desk was so clean and empty- if only it still looked like that.

Next: see what it looks like a school year and a half later.

Setting up my classroom {taking shape}

 It was a family affair to put together my classroom. We all spent an entire weekend putting it together the weekend before school started because I wasn't able to get into my room any sooner. Yes, you read that right. We put my room together, as best we could, in one weekend.  It almost had me breaking out in hives!

Some of my decor I bought on sale that summer and some things came from the good old Dollar Tree. I also didn't get my laminating that I had sent out back until that Friday and I had to go pick it up. So as we were putting things up and getting everything set, someone was always cutting laminating. 

 My dad even had to take a little nap break in the middle of our long working weekend.

My birthday bulletin board was turned into a bulletin board out of nothing, I just framed out a space on the wall.
You also may have noticed that there is no whiteboard, no SMARTboard, nothing. That's because there wasn't one. I had one tiny bulletin board...which with my initial layout was located behind my desk so I used it to display our objectives and standards.

 I went with a "no theme" theme, which really is no theme at all. It wasn't in the budget to go out and by all matchy matchy things for the entire room, so it went with bright colors for everything, with a few polka dots and chevron things thrown in there.

 I had tons of garage sale and donated games, toys, and manipulatives...or so I thought until I got them into my room and my shelves still looked bare.
My frog numbers were also a sale purchase and didn't really match my theme of no theme, but the price was right.

 We start the year with nursery rhymes, so that's what went up on my otherwise empty cabinet doors. I got those on sale that summer also. Our daily schedule and clip chart are on the side of our classroom door that we don't use. Those were both from Teachers Pay Teachers, one free and the other a purchase. They match the classroom rules that you can see on the upper cabinets.
The color cars on the wall are Carson Dellosa and were another sale purchase. The rectangle shape posters are from Dollar Tree.

By the end of the weekend my room was looking almost ready for kids. As ready as it was going to be.

Check back for what it looked like for meet the teacher night and what my room looks like today.

Setting up my classroom { the move in}

Before I could actually start moving in I did some work at my apartment, specifically on the lawn. I bought a cheap rug from Menards- the indoor/outdoor type. And a few colors of spray paint. Because new teachers are b-r-o-k-e.

 

I used painters tape to mark the lines using a super scientific magazine as a measuring device. To vary the size of the lines I just used the magazine either horizontal or vertical. 

 

Since the ground is not perfectly flat I had to be sure to press down my tape lines to reduce the amount of overspray.

 

I thought that I could just throw some newspapers down on the sidewalk and spray paint my millions of tubs and then got real and realized that was going to be way more work and decided to grab some painter's plastic and go that way. (see below)

 

Two coats of spray paint and my rug was looking decent of a $19.99 friend. 

 

In between rounds of spray painting I was running things through the laminator as fast as I could. I ran full sheet things I wanted to be a little thicker myself, at home, and sent everything else to our AEA to be laminated on the big machine.

Here is what I ended up doing with my tubs, this was way easier and allowed me to just keep moving on to the next thing. I used dish tubs from Walmart and my stool was $4 at Goodwill.

When I was finally given the go ahead to move into my room we gathered a whole car-full of things and headed out! After everything was brought in, here's what we had:

 

This doesn't really seem all that much better than when it was a library, but we were hopefull :)

Next up: the classroom starts taking shape.

Setting up my classroom {the beginning}

We last left you with the news that I got a job...and then the blog came to a crashing halt because well, life got in the way. And so now like  a school year and a half later we're bring you the transformation of my TK classroom. From library to classroom in 3 days.
Here's what it looked like when I walked in the first day:

 

Holy Hot Mess, right? And top it all off I couldn't even start doing anything until after the library moved out! I was in complete panic mode. All I could do was print and laminate. everything.

Next up: 3 days of classroom madness.

How we put together my classroom in one weekend.

my first "classroom"

A few weeks ago I posted about a possible new position within my school...well, I got that job. And now I am trying my best to run the alternative high school. Keep in mind that I am an elementary teacher people! Any other teachers will agree, that you are elementary or secondary (middle school or high school) So kids that are in alternative high school is a huge leap from first graders and even being a one-on-one aide with an eighth grader. But since I'm not actually teaching the high school content, its not so bad. I just have to "manage the classroom," which some days can be a challenge. But the moral of the story is I got this room...a lifeless uninspiring boring place. There was a teacher in here, who quit, and then a sub for a couple weeks while they tried to figure out what to do with the position. So the sub did a little bit to make it more warm and inviting and a little less prison like...

So here's what I have done so far to make it better...but I am open to suggestions on other ways to improve it. Any other alt. ed. people out there?? I'd love some suggestions.

 The sub had made the original board...with the colored background stars and the students' names. The first thing I did was add the courses completed header so that you actually knew what the board was for. I also updated the name to a much cuter font. They were just in boring old Times New Roman--lame! But the addition of the board at all was much better than the room was before!

The sub also had a system in place for tracking how many "modules" they complete in a week. I forgot to take a before picture, so this in an in between picture. The previous system was just using white board markers- each student's name was written and they got a tally for each "module" that they completed. It was also labeled, I just updated it to be cute and bright. I also updated the names to match the other board.

Then, I took it a step further and made these adorable stars! I just love them. They are super simple, just printed on the bright colored paper, cut, laminated, cut out and add a magnet to the back. I also added the current leader space. These kids need all the extra motivation they can get!!

 Another thing that was lacking when I arrived was rules. The problem was, there weren't any! Swearing, phones out constantly, messing around and making no progress!! It was absolute chaos! So I posted rules and the At-Risk Coordinator and I made a contract for each of the students and their parents to sign.

  Next to the modules tracking board I also posted a few alternative education guidelines.  It tells them how many courses they need to complete per semester and how the modules are broken down so they know exactly how to earn stars and how many they will earn.

I also posted due dates for each of the courses. Common sense tells you that kids need directions, and rules and timelines. So deadlines were set for each of their courses. I set their first set of deadlines with way more than enough time to complete the course, just so I wasn't coming in as some crazy lady with insane expectations. They had little to no structure before, so I didn't any of them to stop showing up because of all the new rules.

I still feel like its very bare and unwelcoming...but maybe that's just because I'm used to elementary. I feel like it needs a comfy chair and a rug in the corner. But maybe that's just what I think it needs, and not actually what the kids need?

Any high school or alternative education teachers out there with suggestions??? I would appreciate any input!