Open House Time

Tonight was our open house at school. I love seeing the kids and their parents; however, I dislike the long day at work and how exhausted I feel at the end. I've been doing really well with exercising every night this week and I'm currently trying to work up the energy to exercise tonight. No reason to stop a good routine, right?

Anyways, back to open house. (My easy-to-be distracted ways are kicking in majorly tonight.)

Open house is done drop-in style at my school. It begins with a spaghetti dinner hosted by PTO to raise money and follows with a PTO meeting and a visit to the classroom.

I decided my second year of teaching to make Open House about the kids, rather than about the teacher. Meet the Teacher night is my time to host. Open House is the kids' time to host. They show their parents around and tell them about the room. I also typically have lots of student work on display (like our pigs that I posted about yesterday!). 

Parents start the evening by playing "Guess Who" and looking around the room to find their child's work. These were pages I created that the students filled in on their own today. This was probably one of the few times in the year that I'll tell them "Don't put your name on it!"

Then, the parents sign in and take a bag of popcorn as a thank you. On the back of the student work, there were directions such as "Have your child show you our centers." This allowed the parents and kids to interact while the students showed them around the room.

How do you set up Open House for your students and parents?

Organizing the Chaos

Books are an essential part to the classroom. They are also one of the most challenging things to organize because there are so many of them and so many ways to organize them.

I have finally found a system that works for me and my kiddos and I'm super excited to share it.

I blogged about my individual book bins a little this summer. I didn't have access to my classroom so I had to improvise. I thought I'd revisit this topic now that I have real life pictures to share.

First off, I start by putting leveled books from our school library in the reading center:

Each basket contains one level of books and is tagged with the letter. There is also a letter in front of it to help kids put them back in the right spot.

So far, the kids have done great with keeping this area organized. The books that come from the library have a small circle label with the letter on it. This helps them put them back in the right basket.

Each kid gets their own book basket that stays in their cubby.

The book bin has their number on it as does their cubby. This helps them keep track of where the bins belong. You'll notice I used number words for the cubbies and numerals for the book bins. I did this on purpose to encourage them to match the numerals with their number words.

Each child gets to pick three books out at the beginning of the day from our reading center. They can do this during morning work. Then, when they have free time after working, they are able to get their book bin to read silently at their table.

We'll be adding reading beanie buddies soon to these bins and I'm sure that will excite them greatly.

The bins are simply ice tubs that I bought at Wal-Mart for about $2 each. I've used them for three years now and gave them a face lift over the summer with ribbon, hot glue, and card stock. They look great in the room now! These bins are super sturdy and have held up to the wear and tear of kids.

How do you tackle book organizing in your classroom?

Room Reveal!

 



I have so many things I want to blog about, but I feel a room reveal is in order first! My room and I survived the first week of school so I'm excited to share some pictures!

This is the before shot:

 

Our writing center. I will blog more about this and how I utilize it when we've started our center rotation. I decided to put it under the back bulletin board so that I can display student writing in the center, which is what will be on this board. Above it is my treasure map that shows the writing process.

This is the computer area - which will also be used for centers. I used dots on this bulletin board, which will soon show snapshots of our "First Grade Crew."  You can see my homemade bulletin board in the background. It's above my desk and I love the way it looks.

 

These little ducks added a little fun to our computers!

 

Our behavior chart found a new spot in the room. I figured it needed to be lower for my lovely firsties so I found a spot where it would hang lower. So far, it's working well!

Sign In table for Meet the Teacher night. I used my teacher table for this.

One of the crafty ships around the room. This project involved Dollar Tree bins, dowel rods, hot glue, and scrapbook paper. They turned out cute. :)  The inspiration for these came from the Schoolgirl Style website.

 

These were set up to show where their seats would be. I also included pens on the table for Meet the Teacher night because I always have them fill out an information form at Meet the Teacher. 

The updated book bins are in the cubbies! Don't they look great?

Our fish! He still needs a name. :)

Although I do have suggestions from Meet the Teacher night.

 

Some very interesting names...

 

 Cupcakes to go were a huge hit at Meet the Teacher night!

 

 A view of the whole room. :)

My number line finally put together and on the wall. You can find this product in my TPT store.

A view of our whole group meeting area.

Our birthday cupcakes. Coming soon to my TPT store!

I took an old bulletin board that was sitting in the classroom and transformed it into this:

Meet Mischief, our classroom helper:

And Anchor, our travelling buddy:

And Punctuation the Parrot - our writing helper:

The clips are stored in a ship and each morning, the students come in and put them on the chart themselves. It is taking a little while to get into this routine.

Their nametags were stored ready to find the tables. (I let them pick seats the first two days. Then, I started picking their seats - based off of what I noticed the first two days!)

Book bins were waiting for them to look at on the first day. They found morning work on their tables the second day.

A revamped mailbox. This was originally a small Valentine mailbox featuring Elmo. Now, it fits in much better!

 On the second day of school, one of my lovelies from last year found me, gave me a huge hug, and then handed me this HUGE shell. I almost cried.

She was delighted when she visited on the third day and I had the shell sitting on my desk:



 Well, that's the pictures I have to share for now! I'll have to get shots of the hallways display this week and share those. :)  I'm loving my room. It's gotten so many compliments, including one teacher that said it looks like a mini apartment in there!

Welcome Back!

I don't even know where to begin! It's back to school for me. I loved meeting all of my adorable kids today.

Here's a few snapshots of what we did today. Both of these activities are part of my new Jitter Bug plans! It was a huge success!

 

Get the pack here:

 

Monday Made It & Limited Time Freebie

I'm going to keep this a short Monday Made It. I made more things than just this one, but all I have time to share right now is one thing.

We started back to school today, but I wanted to make sure I posted about this since I'm offering it as a freebie for a limited time! (This week only!)

Today, as I was sitting at my desk, I decided I needed something cute to label my bookbag hooks. This is what I came up with:

Head over to my TPT store and snatch up these labels while they're free!

While you do that, I'm off to shower and collapse into bed...

Blogger Exchange

I have been anxiously waiting the day I get to make this post since I received my awesome package in the mail. A few weeks ago, I signed up to participate in a Blogger Exchange hosted by Covered in Glitter and Glue. I love buying things for others and I love receiving gifts in the mail! This was perfect for me.

I received the email saying I was paired with Sara at First Grade Funtastic. My first excitement with the exchange was discovering how cute her blog was! The second thrill was learning that she loved owls. Buying for her was so much fun!

I love buying gifts for people and I definitely love getting snail mail. The snail mail that came from Sara was beyond perfect! I'm not sure how, but she really nailed this gift for me! I've been working in my room this week and these items quickly made their way up to the school right away.

Here is a group shot of everything I got. The nifty organizer she decorated in red and black to match my room will be sitting on my desk this year. It was filled with lots of fun notecards and certificates. It also had the cutest alphabet cards that I will be showing off in an upcoming classroom reveal post.

Here is an up close shot of the pencil holder that matches the desk organizer. As you can see, I've already put it to good use. I love the homemade touch of this!

These notecards were so precious that I actually snuck them back into my bag to bring home. I think I'm going to use some of them to attach to the back to school gifts I have for my new first grade team. They were just so cute! And my mom and I couldn't say enough about the cute container they came in.

These adorable thank you cards also made it into the bag to go back home. They just scream me in so many ways. Like I said, Sara really nailed it with this gift. :)

These are the pictures I thought to take before leaving the school the other day. There were so many cute items included in this gift that I'm sure I'll be featuring them and thanking Sara for days to come!

Word Wall

I've been busy all week putting together my classroom. I'll have an official reveal after it's fully put together next week. Meet the Teacher night is a week from today - you can bet the room will be perfect before then! (It's nearly there actually!)

Today, I'm going to show you something new I'm trying for this year. The idea came to me after a lot of browsing on Pinterest and I'm still not sure if I actually saw something like this or if I put several ideas together.

I'll start with the picture for those of us that are visual learners:

For this word wall, I created the letters using a cute font and circle patterns on the computer. Then, I took ribbon and used it to hang them on the wall. Mine takes up a good sized space in my room, but you could easily adjust the space that it takes by printing multiple letters to a page. As we learn new high frequency words, I will use a clothespin to attach them to the ribbon. This has been the first year that I've made a space for a Word Wall in my room. Normally, I use a portable version that stays in their writing folders. I'm excited to try out this display this year!

You can find the abc letters pictured above by clicking the link below. How's your room coming along? When do you start back to school?

I'm Not Ignoring You

I'm not ignoring you! I promise!  I've just been up in my room working a lot. You can see some of the progress in the pictures below.  More pictures and details to come soon!

Teacher/Small Group Area

Reading/Writing Centers

Tables and cubbies

Leading to the hall.

My first attempt at using modpodge (a homemade variety at that). So far, I think it's turning out cute. I've still got some finishing touches to add to it. That is an "M" by the way. I'm not sure why it turned it.