Preplanning and Awaiting The Madness...

Alright, so this week was preplanning, and I have pictures as promised.  First of all, I would like to let you know that out of the 30 items on my to do list (yes I admit it's a little excessive) I managed to successfully complete about half.  When I walked into my classroom Monday morning I felt as if I was taking a morning swimming class again as I did when I was younger, because my body was frozen with shock.  Only this time it was not from cold water, but because I realized I was going to have to completely start from scratch in just a couple days.  However, just as I did when I jumped into the freezing water, I took a deep breath and just kept going.

Here is what I walked into on Monday.  I know it is hard to tell, but this mess is not what a classroom should look like.  However, the positives are that is it is a very large room (this is not even the whole room as I am standing in the huge group/ literacy are), the huge windows let in plenty of light, and we have lots of wall space to display picture and art work.

I decided immediately that I did not like the bright green and baby blue, and since I could not change the baby blue at this time I began to rip down ever single board until the walls were bare.

Next, as I can not stand unorganized chaos and to not know where anything is I trashed the entire classroom in order to put it back together the I wanted it.

Until Wednesday I felt like I was drowning in a bottomless pool, however, by about Wednesday afternoon I began to see things slowly coming together.  We had organized mostly everything into its place, cleaned everything out, I unpacked most of the stuff I had brought from home (remember the huge pile of stuff), and my assistant had been working really hard on getting everything labeled (more pics on that project later).  I was finally able to tackle a couple items on my list.

I ran to the dollar tree (a teacher must have) and picked up these letters for our new boards...

I tackled the daily schedule (I didn't have this up until a month into school last year).

The group area is coming together...

I ordered a new calendar set so we are awaiting its arrival, and this are will also house our job chart and birthday board both of which still need to be constructed.

And finally... after a whole roll of yellow contact paper, the room was looking much more open, bright, and clean.  And I was feeling a lot better about having 22 students enter into it in just a couple days.

(This picture was taken before I put up their names on the cubbies)

This weekend is going to be spent organizing lesson plans, typing up newsletters, and mentally preparing myself for yet another school year.  I will be along next week with fun first day stories, and more classroom progress pictures.

Good luck to all teachers on a new school year!