Professional Development

Yesterday was the official first day back for teachers in my county.  Students in grades 1-12 start school on Thursday, and students in pre-school through kindergarten start next Tuesday.  Early childhood teachers use those three days to have entry conferences with our kinders and their grown-ups.  Yesterday, today, and tomorrow are days my county designates as professional development days.  I'm sure that most, if not all, schools have professional development days.  In my county, we attend back-to-school meetings to get the latest updates, as well as meet with other grade-level teachers across the county to discuss changes in curriculum.  Many schools are starting their first year with the Common Core Standards, however my school is going into its second year of Common Core so we feel more comfortable with it this year.  Not that we feel like we've mastered it yet, but we're working towards that goal.  I was wondering how other schools handle the beginning of the year.  Do you have days designated at the beginning of the year for professional development?  And if you're Early Childhood, do you have days set aside to have entry conferences with your incoming students?  Or is this something your school does over the summer break?  I would love any feedback!!

   I've been working hard on getting my room ready for this year's group of students.  So far I have a total of 19, 10 boys and 9 girls.  I've been working a little bit each day in my room to finish getting it set up, and I am almost finished.  In my classroom, I have a lot of different items that have a student's name on them.  Things like locker tags, mail box tags, BLURT! board tags, behavior chart clips, etc.  I laminated all of those items so that I could get as many years' worth of use out of them as I can!!  I brought all of these things home with me today in order to clean off the Sharpie marker so I can write this year's names.  I decided to clean them off using a Magic Eraser instead of the EXPO spray (which I LOVE too!!).  I had not realized just how many things in my classroom need to have student names written on them...needless to say my fingers turned black before I finished.  I have included pics so you can get a visual of what I'm talking about here.

 Doesn't it kinda look like I suffered a REALLY bad case of frostbite??  It got under my nails too...ick.

Here's all of the different things that I use in my classroom that need to have a student's name on them.  Don't forget that each item you see is one of 19!!

  For those of you starting with your kiddos tomorrow, have a SUPERFANTABULOUS year!!

Setting Up My Room

Holy Moley, long time no blog!!  My apologies to all!!  Been trying to suck the last bit of summer out of the past few weeks.  Don't know about y'all, but I'm headed back to work tomorrow.  My kiddos will come for their first day of kindergarten next Monday!!  Got a lot to do and a lot more planned, make sure to keep checking back!!  Here are some pics of my classroom as it waits patiently for me to finish getting everything set up!

 

This picture shows the view of my classroom from the front door.

Here is a shot of my storage closet!!  Room for improvement, but SO MUCH BETTER than it was!!

 This picture shows the lockers that my students use to store their belongings.  We spend some time the first week of school learning how to open and close them QUIETLY!!

 Here's a shot of the front of my classroom, you can see the SMART Board mounted to the chalkboard on the wall.  We spend A LOT of time learning how to use that piece of technology, but my littles love it!!

 This shot shows the side of my classroom located under the windows.  There are plenty of shelves behind all that stuff, and the door that leads to the outside playground.  I'll be getting our AWESOME custodians to help move around the heavier furniture.

 This is a shot of the back of my room.  I use fabric to cover the bulletin boards because it doesn't fade.

 This shows the back corner of my classroom, with a connecting door to a kitchenette as well as a connecting door to one of my team mate's classroom.

This is the butterfly bush located outside of our back door by the playground.  It got HUGE over the summer, ad there were SO MANY butterflies in it.  I really hope they are still there when my kiddos start!!


In order to wish everyone a great year, I have joined up with the Back To School TPT sale, where EVERYTHING in my store is 20% off.  Please stop on by!!