Classroom Tour & Freebies

Hello bloggy friends! I’ve been super busy getting my room ready for Monday. I just finished the physical setup yesterday and now I’m working on lesson planning and getting beginning of the year stuff taken care of.  I am so excited about this year! I really think I’m going to love 1^st grade. I have a great team of ladies I’ll be working with and a lot of fun ideas!

So here’s a little tour of my classroom…

This is the hallway outside of my classroom. I will be creating an interactive bulletin board on the large board and hanging student work from rings on the clothespins. The plan is to write the kiddos names on the clips and add their pictures above their names. I want to keep adding work each month to the ring to create a portfolio of work that parents and other teachers and students will be able to see. The great thing is that the whole hallway belongs to 1^st so we can use the other spaces to hang work as well!

 My door which I totally love! I’ll write the kids names on the owls when I get my roster.

 This is the wall to the left as you walk through the door. Because of the position of the reading loft, I decided to use the small space behind the door as my desk. I love how cozy it is! I never sit at my desk when the kids are in the room so it’s nice to have it tucked away but still accessible if I need something. 

 A horribly blurry (sorry!) close up of my desk! I'll post a better picture when I get in my room tomorrow.

 This is the door to the bathroom between my room and the room next door. Since the door is metal, I plan on applying magnet tape to my reading and math workstation cards and organizing the kiddos that way.  You can also see my math manipulative shelf & sink area.

 This is the wall directly opposite the door.  I’ve since rearranged the desks so it looks a bit different now. I love the huge windows and all of the light they provide. I’m going to try and see if I can do something about the frosted coating on the lower windows. I’d love to be able to have a bird feeder or something like that outside the room for the kids.  The whole group area will be in right corner. I have a rug coming that I plan on putting there.

 The front of my room! I used flat sheets from Walmart to cover my boards. After seeing this post on the Clutter Free Classroom blog, I decided to use all black borders this year. I love how organized it makes everything look.

 My class library! I have a cute rug coming to soften up the area. I also plan on painting the metal shelves white sometime soon. I have A LOT of things to say about how I organized and leveled my library over the summer so be prepared for a more in depth post soon!

 I love how these boards turned out! They are foam board covered in paper and border hung on a nail by a ribbon. I plan on using them for spelling words, Social Studies & Science, vocabulary words or whatever else I might want to do.

This is the wall by my door. You can see the animal goodbye rhymes, my rules and some signs I previously posted.  I think the flower clock is my favorite. Thank goodness for Pinterest!

So as promised, I have freebies for you! A lot of these things are things you can see in the photos of my classroom.

Can’t Sign – I really don't like it when kids say that they can’t do something. I'm all about letting kids know that some things will be difficult but with work, we can get through them. I’m using this little sign as a tool to reinforce that.

Welcome Letters – I printed these on colored paper and hung them in my window. You will notice in the document that instead of a W for welcome I have a M. This is because the W in the font I used is very wide and got cut off. I just hung the M upside down and it looks fine.  I've made them for K-5.

K 1 2 3 4 5

Classroom Rules – This year I plan on using Whole Brain Teaching techniques in my classroom and I tweaked my rules accordingly. You can get more info on their website here.

Brownie Points – I use the as a whole class incentive. I use these with the cookie sheet hanging on my whiteboard. Every time the whole class makes a good choice, a brownie goes in the pan. When the pan is filled I bring in brownies as a special snack!

Sub Binder Form – I’m currently getting my sub binder together. This is a form I made for the sub to fill out for me.

Brain Breaks – I laminated these and glued them on popsicle sticks. I plan on using these small activities to help my kids when they need a little break.

Thank You Letters – I plan on taking a class picture with my kiddos holding these up. I will then print the picture on half of a sheet of paper and fold it to make a thank you card.

I hope that everyone is having a great week so far. I hope you can use these freebies in your room. Thanks for letting me share my classroom with you!