Back to School

Betcha' thought I had dropped off the planet huh? I wasn't planning to be gone so long from the blogosphere, but now I can show you why. :)

I was working on my teaching space!  It's about 95% done and I stopped there because until I know the students I'll have I want to wait to see if what needs tweaking.  This cabinet was gifted to me by my good friend Michele (the awesome hostess I visit on The Cape each year) when she retired.  I've had it a few years now and when we decided to redo the theme in our room (I share my classroom space with 4 others) I knew it needed a new paint job.  Little did I realize how long it would take!!!! I also added new hardware, fixed a busted hinge, and added a cute dragonfly hook to hang my coat.  LOVE IT!  The back of my neighbors file cabinet got a facelift too.  I use it for messages to the students, our agenda, and to store the magnet men they get to use to hold their folders on their chairs during our lessons.  I'm still trying to decide how to hide her stacks of magnetic letters.  I might get a frame to fill with DP and use it as a faux whiteboard with messages about RAZ and Lexia goals.

This is the view from the file cabinet.  I laminated scrapbook paper to use as placemats.  I swap them out each month to go with the holiday/season.  They work great as workspace delineation for the kiddos.  I often have word cards/ chunk cards specific to each student and this helps keep them from getting their cards lost in another students pile.  One of my classroom-mates found a framed whiteboard for $3, but couldn't use it so she gave it to me.  I love how it's going to make the work on it have more importance because of the framing. :)  Pinterest inspired me to make a Teacher Toolbox which will hopefully help me use the stuff I have more often. :)

All of my bookshelves, which is to say the 4 I can fit in my space, are still a work in progress, but I love how the shower curtains have transformed the ugly mauve dividers.  I can only hope these pass inspection by the new fore chief.  Fingers crossed!  My white drawers are where my students drop off their folders before heading to class each morning and where they can store other books & work.  Still haven't figured out what the nametags will look like, but I always have them write their names themselves, so I have time yet.

I'm between two of my classroom-mates and this is the view from the "entrance" to my space.  I'm loving my new low profile chair that I found on sale at Office Max.  My last chair that I've have for about 10 years was a road rescue, so it seemed like it was time to upgrade to a real chair.  The little black desk in the back is an old telephone table I found up in Maine for a steal!  It replaced my other roadkill rescue laptop table and the nice part is that I bought it from a retired teacher!  Please take a moment to admire my white shades in the background.  I only mention them because they took 3 HOURS to clean.  It was totally worth it though.  They are so much nicer looking now. :)

Hope you enjoyed the tour...and I hope when I start on Tuesday I don't have a note about having to remove anything!

Happy Labor Day!

 

PS.  Stay tuned, I have some samples coming soon of a new Christmas card class I will be teaching in October.