A peek in my room on the eve before the first day!

Well this is it.  I'm as prepared as I'm going to be!  My room is as done as it can be!  My sweet first graders will come tomorrow for their first day!  I'm very excited to get to know them and begin this journey with them.

Here's a peek into my room as I left it today -

A view from the doorway into my room....on the opposite wall you will see my word wall and my schedule

Our carpet for carpet time with my chair and circus wall

My "messy" corner of centers storage and outdoor play toys along with our
Juggling Jobs clown

My boys' and girls' restroom with our library in between.  A few of our first days books are on top of the library with SkippyJon for now.

Each bucket in our library has a different type of duct tape on it.  Each book in that bucket also has the same strip of duct tape across the spine.  This enables my student whose job is librarian to know which bucket to put the books in.  

More of our library...

An example of a bucket with the strip of duct tape

The left front of my room with student boxes, centers trays, color words and our Whole Brain rules

The board area of our room

My agenda board with our essential questions and objectives as well as my teaching table

Looking back at the door into the hall with our 200 chart, shapes and number words

My data wall to hold student benchmark scores as well as goals and "Did we meet our goals?" information.  Please excuse my mess under the board.  Some are my items and some are supplies but those desks will hold my student netbooks when we receive them later this week.

Well I better get to finishing up my last minute things so that I can go to bed.  I hope I can sleep!  Can you sleep on the night before school?  I'm always SOOOO excited and nervous that it's hard to actually rest!

I think I'm ready......

Well, every good thing must come to an end.  My summer doesn't officially end until next Thursday morning at 8 a.m. but it's o.k. because I think I'm ready.   No, I'm not ready for summer to end but I am ready to see my kiddos.  My lessons are done.  My year is planned out.  My centers are prepared.  My room is NOT finished but getting there. 

 AND....the one that tells me every year that we are ready for school, 

my boys are fighting hourly.  Yep that means even they are ready for a distraction from each other.  This year they will be at different schools and that really scares me!  In fact, I almost cried the other night when I realized that they will never be in the same school again. 

I went up to school again today to work in my room like I do just about every day now.  I'm down to the last layers of trash and I can honestly see the end in sight.  I am very excited about this year and the potential to be organized!!!  

My two goals for this year are:

1.  I want to work on writing daily with my students to make better writers.

2.  I want to incorporate meaningful centers in my everyday classroom.

Before I leave you for the evening, I have a design question for you.

Which clown looks better?

Clown #1

Yes I know that the balls are a little crooked.  I could fix that.

or Clown #2??

I know which one I like but I wanted to see if everyone agreed with me! 

 

Monday Made It and a Freebie

Well I've been very busy getting my things back in order in my room this past week and it seems crazy to say that next week I will be back at work.  The students don't come back until later in August but we teachers start August 1.  I sometimes think our summers are on warp speed while the school year itself is on super slo-mo.  Do you ever feel that way?

Today I'm linking up with Tara from Fourth Grade Frolics for Monday Made It!  As you may remember I've been working on my sewing room for a while now.  Although the walls and floor are finished, I haven't found the perfect affordable furniture for it yet. 

First up, a look at the before......

I could not take that puke orange peachy orange any longer!!  

And the after......so far......

Excuse the leg....my poor father in law was working so hard to get that floor in.  I'm sure he cursed me for buying the cheapest floor possible! 

I would really like to build something like this to go in there.

It's a bookshelf screwed to the top of a small table.  I think I would like a wider table for my sewing machine but it looks neat.  Still looking for the pieces....

I did find this tall drawer set at a local resale.  I plan to refinish it pure white with no distressing to match my walls.

Enough of my sewing room and dreaming, so what did I make this week???  

Well, I made one of these.....

It's an itty bitty baby onesie for a sweet preemie!  Isn't it adorable? 

We also made a tent for my youngest's bed.  It was DH's idea and he built the setup but needed me to sew the fabric.  I just used a queen sheet and made a new seam in it.  Definitely NOT perfect but DS loves it and that's all that matters!!

This last one is my Pinterest FAIL of the week!!  Ever try something that will be "soooo cute" and have it turn out awful?!?!?!  lol....I had this "brilliant" idea that I would paint Mickey heads on the walls of my boys' bathroom since it's done in a Mickey theme.  How hard can that be right?!?!? WRONG!!! 

So after that failure, I ordered some wallpaper border and we are covering those little guys up! 

My one school related made it is for my job board.  Since my room is a circus theme, my job board is a clown juggling balls with the jobs written on them.  The title is "Juggling Jobs".  Well I made each of the balls this year all pretty and colored in but then I got to thinking about my current ink situation (Read that to mean little to no ink left) and I came up with a different idea. 

 I simply made a black circle outline with each job printed in black inside.  This way you can put ANY kind of paper behind it to print out on and it doesn't use colored ink.  If your room is chevron, print on chevron paper.  If you want solids, print on solids.  You can usually get the regular sized paper cheap at Michael's or Hobby Lobby or any local craft store.  

Pick it up here in my TPT store!!  Thanks for reading along!!