Our Party Rocks and a Freebie

Wow, talk about progress!  I'll be the first to admit that the school year started out a bit rocky.  We have a brand new math series and an ELA program that's a bit up in the air somewhere between hold steady with the old and change everything.  Oh, and let's not forget that 3 of our 4 first grade teachers {myself included!} are new.  So, baby steps was and still is the name of the game.  And then the kids showed up who really did rock...back and forth, onto their bellies, rolling around...All. Over. The. Room. It cause me to drink way too much Diet Pepsi for that to continue all year.  So, practice, practice, breathe, practice.  And now?  Our party is ROCKING for much better reasons.  Each and every day is way better than the last {I hope I'm not jinxing myself!} and we even earned our SECOND paw print for good behavior.  Our school has only earned 3 total.  Just saying....my class is rocking.

We're still knee deep in assessments and trying to find our normal routine.  Next week we're rolling out our full Daily 5 schedule with actual rotations.  I may have a small panic attack about not having total control over my class during this time.  I know it's not the "real way" but I usually have my entire class do each rotation at the same time.  This year we're going to try having different groups at different stations.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed this doesn't all fall apart after day 1.  I've spend too much time convincing myself it's going to work for it not to!

Oh, and those assessments?  We were on day 2 of Map assessments when...our servers crashed.  For our entire district.  As in a part actually broke and is still being delivered.  So, our internet is spotty at best and I have no access to any of our drives.  That includes ALL of my files.  Talk about being WAY too dependent on technology.  Luckily I still have a backup on my external hard drive that's mostly up to date to get us by.

Luckily the stuff I had planned to share with you tonight was also saved on the external HD.  I shared with you a tour of my classroom HERE.  I made most of the "poster" type things on the walls.  So, if any of them can be of use to you...here you go!  The file includes clock labels, color words, months of the year that I used as a birthday board, and money signs/labels.  I'll share my number words and tens frames as soon as I do a little editing.

I hope your party is rocking as well!

Making Progress

Slowly but surely, my classroom is coming together.  I've spent quite a bit of time in the past couple of weeks cleaning, throwing away, arranging, re-arranging, and begging people to help me.  Luckily, our cousin and her friend were in need of some volunteer hours.  I promised them lunch and my signature on their volunteer sheet and we were on our way!  They organized all of my books out of the moving boxes into the book tubs and labeled all of the books that were already in the classroom.  THANK YOU girls for saving me HOURS of work.  I also owe my life to one of my BFFs for staying at school with me until 10:00.  That's PM, people.  She's the BEST.

Meanwhile, I've been running around trying to find a home for all of my stuff combined with all of the stuff left behind by the previous teacher.  For anyone that has moved into a new classroom, you know this is no easy task.  I was JUST starting to get everything in my old room in a good place that worked for both me and the kids and now we're back to square one.  Oh well, it's almost there.  Almost.  And my November I'll have moved over half of it to a new spot.  

At the very least my room no longer looks like this...with piles of stuff.  EVERYWHERE.  Seriously, someone could've gotten lost in there!

Now, I'm onto the FUN stuff.  The bulletin board making, labeling, creating, and getting ready for school stuff.  Not that I don't secretly find organizing and arranging fun.  I just find the other stuff MORE fun.  First up - word wall.  I have a vision, I'm just not sure how well it will turn out.  I'll post pictures when it's done and keep you in suspense for now just in case I fail miserably and have to change my mind.  BUT I did get to create these fun word wall headers.  Click HERE to grab your own copy!  FOR FREE!

 12 different colors with a polka-dot theme

There are 2 letters per page to save on printing.