WELCOME TO OUR HIVE!

Today was finally the day!!!! I was so excited by the time I got to school this morning (giant iced coffee + Lady Gaga jam session in the car + Open House excitement + bee bopper headband my mom sent me = OVERLY ENERGENTIC KVH) that I think I may have freaked several people out at our 8 am training for our Bright Links interactive white board.

Anyway. The administration (bless them) gave us the entire day to get our rooms ready, so I was very productive and my room has never.looked.better. Organization has never been a strong suit of mine (understatement of the year) but with all of the storage (and so few supplies so far) I am actually managing!

Here are some pics and details about my classroom and school:

Main entrance/office in the background.

2nd -5th grade wing in the background.

beautiful playground.

My door!

Work display board... "the bee's knees!"

Classroom library view one.

Classroom library view two.

Ribsy (as named by my first class of students). Just hangin' out on my file cabinet.

The fab easel that my wonderful Hubs put together on Saturday.

Welcome Message for Open House!

"Bee Day" board... I'm pretty proud of my hand-drawn "hives"

Featured Student (or teacher, as it were, for the first week) - I don't do a ton with it, but they do get to put pictures up and we have an Oprah-style "Interview" at the end of the week. It's really high energy and dorky.

Carpet area white board / book boxes / fun stuff

My cubbies look super boring right now because I have no supplies or kids' stuff yet!

Since there's not very much wall space, I'm using cabinet doors for a lot. Here are our "Math BUZZwords" - where I will post math vocabulary words corresponding to our topic, and our schedule for Specials. (Theater, dance, PE, music, art, AND Spanish!)

"Help Yourself Shelf" - supply shelf that students have free access to.

Tables and names on chairs. I don't know how it never occurred to me to put names on chairs instead of tables - SO much easier when they switch seats!

The Giving Tree for parents who are able to take a leaf and donate extra supplies to our room.

My impression of the kids and families was very mixed. I can tell I have a VERY high-energy group, and we will have to work on routines and procedures A LOT. I also laughed about how many parents came up to me and said, "Listen, my kid loves to talk. If he/she's acting up, YOU JUST CALL ME and I will take care of it."

Hopefully I won't need to!

I'm going to attempt to post some of my "bee" themed classroom materials later this week. Wish me luck going into the first day on Thursday!