Classroom Reveal 2015! {Teacher Week}

I am very excited to be linking up with Blog Hoppin' for this year's Classroom Reveal as a part of Teacher Week 2015! 

And also with Ashley and Angie for #2getherwearebetter September!

This is the first time in 7 years of teaching that I had a different classroom to decorate... in a completely new school... so I was totally starting from scratch! When I first arrived to assess the situation at my new school, I knew I had my work cut out for me. My school was built in the 1970s, and the room and furniture definitely showed its age! Starting with this terribly hideous brown chalkboard... YIKES!

There was no way I could stand looking at that thing all year... and I noticed that both of my teammates had covered theirs up in their classrooms, so I got to work with some butcher paper and covered that sucker up!

Much better already!

I added some black and white border around it, added my calendar and decor, and voila! Transformed!

Disclaimer... I've been in school for an entire month, so my classroom looks more lived in with more clutter (see the hundreds chart askew on the top left?) than it did before school started! Real teacher life, baby! Haha.

I have a ton of bulletin boards in my room - I've never had so many before! It took me awhile to figure out exactly what I wanted to do with them. I bought Amy Groesbeck's Editable Subject Banners on TPT, edited them to make a few signs, and hung them up with some black ribbon and miniature clothespins! I LOVE how they turned out!

I'm using this bulletin board to hang resources, posters, anchor charts, and anything pertaining to what we are currently learning. In my old classroom, whenever we had made a big chart or poster, I'd always have to move it around everywhere based on where I needed space to write on our whiteboard. I'm hoping making a dedicated space for that kind of stuff will be more beneficial to both me and my students!

I hung up our anchor chart with a couple of pushpins and binder clips! So easy to move and change for anything I want to hang here.

I also used the banners to create a math wall...

Where we hung up our first few math vocab posters!

You can grab these more/less gator signs here!

This is my word wall. I made a section with a pocket chart specifically for vocabulary, picture cards, and any other kinds of labeling words I want my students to use while they are there. I used one of these KUSINER storage baskets from IKEA (A set of 3 is only $4.99!!!) and hung it from the board. I put all of my sight word cards in there that we'll be using throughout the year. That way, they're all right there in one easy go-to spot.

I wanted to create a cute, functional way to display student work, so I came up with this adorable tree idea! I used brown butcher paper and twisted it up to make the branches on the bulletin board; then I wrapped green yarn around the branches to make something to clip clothespins to. 

I wanted to keep with the tree theme, so I printed off some leaf clip art and hot glued them to clothespins! Then I just hang work from each one!

Here is the area around my teacher desk:

I love this little area with my DIY filing cabinet I made over the summer. It's filled with all sorts of special gifts and decor from former students, teammates, and friends.

And a little peek at a few other areas of my room:

Dismissal Clip Chart Freebie from Wild About Firsties

It's still a work in progress, even though school has already begun! I plan on adding many more details as the year goes on. I'm really looking forward to making it a print and visually rich classroom environment for all subjects!

If you want to share your own classroom reveal or just check out other amazing classrooms, head on over to link up with Blog Hoppin' for Teacher Week Classroom Reveal 2015!

Teacher Week 2015: Five Fun Facts!

Teacher Week is back and I am so excited to link up with the Blog Hoppin' girls for Monday's theme - 5 Fun Facts About Me!

And here we go!

1. I'm currently in my 7th year teaching - 6 of those years were spent in Kindergarten, all at the same school, with my amazing kinder team pictured above! Sometimes you get blessed to work with an incredible group of people that become your close friends, and I love them all dearly! The phrase we wrote on the sidewalk sums it up... I may be teaching first grade this year, but my heart will always love teaching kinder! I'm at a different school now, but I'll always love my amazing former teammates!

2. It's true - I love my hometown sports teams and enjoy watching and attending games, especially hockey (Coyotes), baseball (D-backs), and football (Cardinals)! Even though I live in the desert... hockey is my favorite! In the picture above, I had just won a team signed stick from the Arizona Coyotes. (Oddly enough, I also have a strange knack for winning sports-related contests... why couldn't it be the lottery? HA!)

                       

3. I feel so blessed to be able to sing and play music on the worship team at my church. Better yet, I get to do it with some of my closest friends. My faith is one of the most important things in my life and this is one way I absolutely love serving Him. We play some pretty rockin' songs, too!

4. My favorite band is Switchfoot and it has been for YEARS! I love their music and lyrics, their live show is unbelievable, and they are five of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. When I met them in the above photo, I had told them they had outdone themselves with their newest album, so Jon Foreman (the lead singer) said, "Well, we need to outdo ourselves in this photo!" And so the above crazy photo ensued. It makes me laugh and it's one of my favorites!

5. My favorite book of all time is Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. The entire series is my favorite series as well (there are 8 books so far) but I love the first one, Outlander, the most! I've read it 3 times and it definitely will not be the last. So imagine my excitement when they made it into a TV show?!? And it turned out to be A.MAZ.ING! I had viewing parties all year with a bunch of my friends. And seeing Jamie Fraser in the flesh? Yes please! Love these books!

Phew! It was hard to narrow it down to these five, but there you have it! Hope that gives you more of an inside glimpse into my life! Link up with the ladies of Blog Hoppin' and join in the fun!

Blog Hoppin' Teacher Week: WHO!

Hi, everyone! Try not to be too overcome with shock... this is my second blog post of the day! I'm linking up with the ladies at Blog Hoppin' for Teacher Week 2014. Today's topic... all about me!

I don't usually share too much about my personal life on here, but I've shared glimpses here and there. Here are 10 things you might not know about me!

Thanks to Amy from Step into Second Grade for the great graphic!

It was hard to come up with the 10 things I wanted to share! Hopefully this gives you more of a glimpse into my life. It's been fun reading about all of the other bloggers who have linked up... you see the great things they have going on in their classrooms, but it's awesome to see what kind of people they are outside of school as well!

Click on the banner below to link up with Blog Hoppin' and share more about YOU!

Show Us What You Bought & Currently Fun!

Happy March 1st! It just occurred to me that I will be turning 30 in 25 days. Yikes!

Did you all take advantage of the TPT 3 Million Strong Sale like I did? I bought 9 items... WAY more than I usually do in one fell swoop, but totally worth it from all the discounts I had. I'm linking up with the fabulous ladies at Blog Hoppin' to share all the great items I bought!

To prepare for some upcoming monthly units I'll be making, I stocked up on a bunch of clip art and border sets! Here's what I snagged:

Educlips Signs of Spring Clip Art

Ashley Hughes 777 Patriotic Set

Teaching in a Small Town Twinkle Doodle Frame Bundle

KPM Doodles Day at the Beach Clip Art

Cara Carroll Font Set #2

Creative Clips Easter Buddies Clip Art Set

I also picked up some great packs that I've had on my wishlist for awhile:

Interactive Math Packet Addition to 20 and Spring Math and Literacy Packet by The Moffatt Girls

Monsters Back to School Activity Pack by Kindergarten Smiles

It was all I could do to keep a couple more items from my cart, but I figured they could wait till the next sale, haha.

Link up with everyone over at Blog Hoppin' to see what others bought during the sale! I've discovered a lot of new products this way. Click on the picture below to join in!

Since it's March 1st, I'm also linking up with Farley over at Oh Boy 4th Grade for the monthly Currently linky! It's been awhile since I joined in this one, but it's always a fun one.

{Listening}: The song "Glory and Gore" by Lorde. Her album was on sale on Amazon mp3 for $1.99... really! So I figured that was cheap enough to try it out, and it's a fun driving in your car album... love it!

{Loving}: My aunt introduced me to the Stephanie Plum series of books by Janet Evanovich, and I am totally hooked! In fact, I may or may not have read 2 1/2 of the books (there are 20 in the series so far) over the span of a few hours today... the books are so funny, and I love the characters!

{Thinking}: This is the first Saturday in a LONG time that I had absolutely nothing to do and nowhere to be. It was the perfect day for such a thing because it rained for the first time in ages and it has pretty much been pouring all day. Perfect for staying in, being lazy, and reading the books mentioned above! This week was especially busy and exhausting, so it's been nice to just stay in.

{Wanting}: Spring Break. Enough said. My students and I have spring fever!! 1 week left to go.

{Needing}: I have got to find some time this weekend to finish my lesson plans. With the crazy busy week I had, they kinda took a back burner, but it's Dr. Seuss week for us so I pretty much have most of my activities nailed down. I can't wait to introduce my kids to all of his books and all the fun activities that go with them.

{???????}: Coyotes, Diamondbacks. If you've ever read my blog, this one should be fairly easy to guess what my question is. ;)

Click here to join in the fun! I'm off to do some more reading....

Show us what you bought and Giveaway WINNERS!!!

I don't know about you, but I definitely scored at the big TPT sale that happened this week. I'm so excited about the things I bought! It made it all the more sweet using the $50 TPT gift card I won from the wonderful ladies at Blog Hoppin', who I am linking up with today to show you what I bought!

I tried to plan ahead on some creations I'll be making in the next few months, so I stocked up on Winter, Valentine's Day, and St. Patrick's Day clipart from the amazing Creative Clips and Ashley Hughes! I also got 3 new activity packs -- Let's Get Crackin' Math and Literacy Centers from The Printable Princess, Winter Math and Literacy Packet from The Moffatt Girls (I have the Fall pack and used it ALL the time!), and Filling in the Gaps {The Ultimate CVC Practice Packet} from Cara Carroll! I'm so, SO excited to print everything and get it ready for my students to use. I think they'll love every bit of it! And now that I'm armed and ready with some new clipart, I'm ready to make some new stuff!

I held my first little blog giveaway a few days ago to celebrate my blog redesign, and the winners have been chosen courtesy of Rafflecopter! Here are the lucky winners -- if you see your name here, you should be expecting your prize shortly! :)

Congratulations everyone! And thanks for entering. :)

Time Savers! {Blog Hoppin Linky} ... with a time saver FREEBIE!

I'm linking up with the fabulous ladies over at Blog Hoppin' for Thankful Week! The theme today is "Time-Savers" and I'd love to share a few ways I (try!) to help me save some time.

We all know that there won't ever even begin to be enough hours in the day for us teachers to get everything done that we need to. I feel like no matter how long I work or how many weekends/nights I put in, everything will never be completely finished. So I figure, if I can get a few things in order to make my life a little easier, it's worth it!

One of my goals this summer was to get. my. classroom. ORGANIZED! And it was worse than ever after this past school year -- on the last day of school we were informed that our classrooms were being cleaned for the summer beginning the very next day. Well, seeing as my classroom still looked like students were coming the next day, I literally had to shove everything into whatever basket, container, or cabinet I could find; shove all my classroom furniture to one side, and then crawl into a corner and cry about it. Okay, maybe the last thing isn't true, but I sure felt like it. ;)

As soon as we could get back into our classrooms over the summer, I started the long organization process. One of the first things I did was buy a huge plastic drawer set to organize all my student supplies. Here's the before and after!

It's a huge time saver for me this year because I don't have to go digging around in a huge pile of things for the one supply I need. I realize this time saver isn't exactly revolutionary, but you know how organizing always gets pushed further down the to-do list after school starts!

Another huge part of my classroom organization process was creating labels. I made labels for all different shapes and sizes of containers so that I knew exactly what was in them. This also saves a ton of time for me because I now know exactly where everything is!

The 5-day organizational filing tool from Lakeshore is a huge time saver for me. After I do my lesson plans, I stick every copy, material, etc. needed for that day in the bucket that matches that day of the week. That way everything I need is right there at the front of the classroom, easily accessible, when I need it. I don't have to go hunting around in piles around the room for the copies I need.

My last time saver project is still an "ongoing process". I decided I needed a new way to organize all of my math and literacy stations, so I bought a plastic hanging file tub, hanging files, and 3M Sticky Tabs to label and sort all of the different categories of centers I have. I've got labels made for Write the Room, Rhyming, Alphabet, Ten Frame, Brown Bear, etc! I put station materials and one copy of the recording sheet in a big Ziploc bag and stuck the sticky tab to the front with the center/games' title written on it. I'm kind of organizing them as I use them, but next year it will be SO wonderful to have them all right in this one spot. So, not really a time saver this year, but it will be!

Now for the freebie! If you want to use my classroom labels to save yourself a little time and get your classroom organized, you can download them for FREE in my TPT store! Just click on the picture below:

And, like I noted in the product description, if there is something you'd like for a label and you don't see it in this pack, leave a comment either on this blog post or a comment on the product in my store and I'll create one for you (to the best of my ability) and add it to the freebie! Just let me know and I am happy to do it.

Hope you'll join in on the fun this week over at Blog Hoppin'! Can't wait to see everyone else's ideas!